Aunt Velma's Waffle Cookies

The following is a guest post from my sister, Jolene, who is sharing her family's Christmas tradition.  Here's her story about waffle cookies:

Waffle cookies are a Christmas tradition in my husband's family--specifically Aunt Velma's Christmas tradition. Before she died in 2006 at age 91, one of the nieces wrote down her recipe and shared it with the nieces and nephews.

Everyone in my husband's family calls them "Aunt Velma's Waffle Cookies," but they actually come from her mother, Annie Rohrig Halstead, who was born in Fayette County, West Virginia, in 1892. Like all the Rohrigs and Halsteads of her generation, she lived her whole life in West Virginia never traveling west of the Ohio River Valley. 

Here's a little history about waffle cookies (courtesy of my historian husband): 

Europeans have cooked waffle cakes for centuries using open fires and iron plates with long handles. At some point, perhaps in the 13th century, the plates began to be stamped with various designs ranging from family crests and landscape scenes to the characteristic grid pattern.

During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, sweet wafer cakes were often consumed on religious occasions and saints' days or sold by street vendors outside churches. (For some images of early waffle patterns and tools, check out Ivan Day's historic food site.)

The Dutch were particularly fond of wafles and introduced them to the New World in the early 17th century. (It was in the New World that these cakes met their perfect companion, maple syrup.) Thomas Jefferson is said to have brought the first long-handled waffle iron to America in 1789. About 80 years later, New York's Cornelius Swarthout patented the first stovetop waffle iron.

Waffle cones for ice cream debuted at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. On the home front, the old stovetop waffle irons were outfitted for electricity and became common household appliances by the 1930s. Then, in 1964, the thicker, yeast-leavened Belgian waffle was introduced to Americans at the New York World's Fair.

Enjoy!

Aunt Velma’s Waffle Cookies

Yield: About 12-15 dozen cookies depending on size of your “dough balls.”

8 large eggs
10 cups all purpose flour
1 lb butter (NO oleo)
3 cups brown sugar (about 2 lbs) tightly packed
2 T vanilla extract

1.  Leave eggs and butter on the counter for about an hour so they are at room temperature when you start cooking.

2.  In a large mixing bowl, hand mix the ingredients (use hands—no spoon or electric mixer). Mix until well blended (about 15 or 20 mins).
3.Pinch out enough dough to make a ball about 1” – 1-1/2” in diameter. 

4.  Cook in a waffle iron until brown (2-3 mins). Remove and let cool thoroughly. 

Thank you, Jolene, for being my first guest blogger.  The cookies are delicious.  Jolene sent us all these cute little Christmas bags of waffle cookies this year.

My niece has been eating them at breakfast dunked in coffee and another sister ate them with butter and syrup.  I bet they are really good hot off the waffle iron.  I love waffle cookies and may start our own tradition!