Family Recipe from the Vault: Log Cabin Cookies

There is hardly a month that goes by that someone doesn’t reminisce about the bakery to me.  It’s hard to believe that Latshaw’s Bakery has been closed for more than 35 years.  It was started by my great-grandfather Hosea in 1882 and my dad was the third generation baker.

Latshaw's Bakery, circa 1965
The 1961 Chevy station wagon in which I learned
to drive is in the driveway.

Everyone who misses the bakery usually misses a particular item that was sold there.  For some it is the cinnamon buns.  Others miss the cream puffs and éclairs.  For many it’s the pound cake.  However, more than any other single item, people mention a craving for the Log Cabin Cookies.

Log Cabins were serious cookies.  They were huge; 3½” to 4” in diameter.  Log Cabins were thick, not too sweet, and really a little dry, but I think that was why people liked them.  They were great for dunking.  Coffee, tea, or milk…it didn’t matter.  And when dunked, they didn’t fall apart.

We have the original Log Cabin recipe.  We’ve had it for years.  It’s been published in countless church cookbooks and it’s always passed along to anyone who asks for it.  However, I’ve never heard of anyone actually making the cookies.  It probably has to do with the fact that the recipe calls for 3 lbs. of sugar and 6 lbs. of flour.  (That’s pounds not cups!)  In fact, the recipe that we’ve distributed has a disclaimer at the bottom:  “We have no idea how many this makes!”

Here are the ingredients from the original recipe:

3 lbs. sugar

1-1/2 lbs. shortening

10 eggs

5 yolks

1 qt. milk

4 oz. baking soda

6 lbs. flour

Cinnamon

Cloves with spices & lemon flavor

This year, I set about converting the recipe from mostly weight measurements to cups or teaspoons.  Obviously, I knew it would also be necessary to reduce the recipe down to a manageable size.  Most home bakers don’t have floor mixers with the same gear box that Mack Trucks use.  (It’s true.  The bakery’s mixer had a Mack transmission…just no reverse!)

I knew I was on a difficult mission.  Recipes for baking are not always easily decreased successfully…or increased successfully, for that matter.  My first step was to find an online conversion website.  I found a great one!  Not only does it convert weights and measures, it also converts just about anything else you can think of…clothing sizes, currency, even astronomical units.  The site is  www.onlineconversion.com.  (Of course.)

I converted everything to cups or teaspoons.  Then I divided by 10.  The resulting quantities of the ingredients didn’t seem like enough, so I decided to divide by 8. Did you know that there are 27.4 cups in 6 lbs. of flour?  Divide by 8 and get 3.425.  I rounded to 3½ cups.  What’s another .075 cup of flour?  Here is my converted recipe.

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

6 Tablespoons shortening

2 eggs

¼ cup milk

3½ teaspoons baking soda

3½ cups flour

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¹/₈ teaspoon ground cloves

½ teaspoon lemon extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cream the sugar and shortening.  Next add the eggs, milk, spices, and lemon extract, blending until relatively smooth.  Add the baking soda and mix for about a minute.  Finally add the flour gradually.

I’m glad I didn’t divide the original recipe by four.  It probably would have burned out my Kitchen Aid mixer.  The dough produced by this recipe is very thick and the mixer was “groaning” when the final ½ cup of flour was added.  As long as you’ve added the flour gradually, it doesn’t need to knead for very long!

I honestly do not remember Dad adding any spices or flavoring to his Log Cabins and the quantities are not specified in the original recipe.  So, I made the first attempt without any just to see what the base taste would be.  The first batch smelled like Log Cabins while they were baking, looked like Log Cabins when they came out of the oven, and had the texture and consistency of Log Cabins.  But the taste was “off” just slightly.  They were pretty bland.  For the second batch, I added ½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon, 1/8 teaspoon of ground cloves, and about a ½ teaspoon of lemon extract.  The spices brought the taste right back to the way I remember.  When I make the next batch, I'm going to try to kick up the cinnamon a little and ease back on the ground cloves.

The cookie dough is pretty sticky.  Coat your countertop or cutting board with a light dusting of flour.  Take cookie dough, about the size of a golf ball, and pat it onto your floured surface.  Shape it into a disk about 2½” in diameter and about 3/8” thick.  Don’t use too much flour; just enough to keep it from sticking to the surface and your fingers.  It also helps to keep the dough cold.  I kind of remember Dad rolling the dough out and using a round cookie cutter to make the Log Cabins, but I’m not certain about that.  Mine got better as I perfected my shaping technique.

I remember a full sheet pan filled with granulated sugar at the bakery that was used almost exclusively for coating the tops of the Log Cabin cookies.  After dipping in sugar, the unbaked cookies were placed on large sheet pans lined with parchment paper.  That helped them to bake evenly and the cookies never stuck to pans lined with parchment.

After the cookies were positioned on the baking pans, Dad would mark the top of each cookie with an old two-pronged fork, crosswise, making kind of a double “X.”  I still have that old fork, and it was very cool to call it out of retirement for resurrecting this recipe.  I have to admit I was a little out of practice and marked some of the cookies a little too deeply.  I could hear my dad saying, “Use a lighter touch, Dave.”

Bake cookies at 350° for 10-12 minutes, until the edges just begin to turn brown.  Be careful not to over-bake.  This is not a real sweet cookie.  I wasn’t sure if my converted recipe was just “off” a little, or if Log Cabins came from a time before so much sugar and other sweeteners were used.

Oh, and I now know how many cookies the original recipe made.  This one-eighth recipe made 18 large (3½”-4”) cookies.  That means the original recipe made 12 dozen!  With that many cookies, you could build a log cabin!