'Cookie Bake Day' is a family gathering

 

Suzie Lushbaugh of Sharpsburg shared her family's recipe for AP Crackers. She doesn't know why the cookies are called AP Crackers; the old recipe has been handed down in the Dusang-Jones family without that information.

Alta Jones Blalock of Hagerstown, Lushbaugh's aunt, is 80 years old and remembers her mother, aunt and grandmother making them together in the 1920s and '30s. Lushbaugh and Blalock revived the tradition in the 1960s, and "Cookie Bake Day" continues on the first Saturday of December every year. Now female members of the family - sisters, daughters, cousins, granddaughters and daughters-in-law gather at Lushbaugh's home.

The women bake all day and then are joined by other family members to go out to dinner.

"We deserve it - we make several batches of the recipe," Lushbaugh says.

 

AP Crackers

• 2 cups country lard
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 cup clabbered milk *
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 6 cups flour (approximately)
• 2 teaspoons baking soda

Cream together lard and sugar. Add milk and vanilla. Mix flour and baking soda. Add flour-soda mixture to lard mixture one cup at a time. Have dough just heavy enough to hold a fingerprint.

Put in plastic bag or covered bowl in refrigerator for at least 24 hours.

Work with about one cup of dough at a time. Keep the rest in the refrigerator.

Roll out on cutting board heavily covered with flour. The thinner you roll them, the better they will be. Cut out shapes with cookie cutters no larger than four inches long. Put on greased cookie sheets and decorate. The family uses white sugar colored with food dyes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake for 6 to 8 minutes, keeping a close eye on them. Remove from sheets with metal spatula and cool on a flat surface. Number of cookies depends on the thickness of your rolling and size of your cutters.

* Lushbaugh specifies "clabbered" - thickly curdled sour milk, because she says it has to be thick.

The desired effect can be achieved by adding a tablespoon of either white vinegar or lemon juice to a cup of milk, according to Mary Ellen Waltemire, extension educator for Maryland Cooperative Extension, Washington County.