Freihofer's little chocolate chip cookies get all the press. But I always loved their hermit cookies even more. They were much bigger, for one thing, and had a satisfying chewy texture. The hermits were pillowy square bar cookies that tasted a little like molasses and a lot like cinnamon and cloves. They were full of flavor and the raisins in them always were juicy and plump.
When we went home to upstate NY for Christmas, I asked my mom to pretty-please pick up a box at the store. She looked. My aunt looked. No luck. Then I got the bad google news: the hermits have been discontinued.
I tried to ignore the siren call of the hermits, but this weekend I had had enough. I decided to make my own.
I found this recipe and gave it a whirl:
They started out looking a bit... strange (at right). You make the dough, then put it on the cookie sheet in long strips. Next time I might try giving the dough a LOT more (like, 1 cup more) of flour and/or chilling it before doing this. Or I'd just spread it evenly over the sheet. I used the fancy raisins from Trader Joe's, and highly recommend doing that, if you can find them. They were lovely and plump, unlike those sometimes dried-out little things that come in the Sunmaid boxes.
They spread a LOT as they baked (at left). I followed the directions and baked them for 15 minutes (mind you, in a convection oven, not sure if that really made a difference time-wise). But when I cut into them, they were pretty goopy (the directions say to let them cool 5 minutes, then cut them warm). So, I baked them for 6 minutes more. Still goopy. At that point I threw caution to the wind and cut them anyway. I have a feeling they were SUPPOSED to be goopy when you cut them. It cools into a chewy middle. That or I've just exposed my family to eggy food poisoning... gulp. Who wants some hermits?
And here they are, at right, cut and ready to chill out in a Rubbermaid container. The verdict from the family? DELICIOUS. FEED ME MORE. And this from two boys who regard raisins with suspicion, at best. As for me, I think the recipe comes close, very close, to Freihofer's. I want to play more with making them look like those happy square cookies. But in terms of taste, pretty dead-on.
My next mission: duplicate Berger's Cookies. Because despite those little beauties being from Baltimore, they are sometimes Far Too Difficult to locate.
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OH! I see a story here…lovely, Barb!! Lovely! And I am thrilled to know you are using the medium of PanPastels…I will show this to my daughter who loves pastels…gorgeous work!