Hats Off to Grandma Florence

Robin and I were fortunate to have this woman in our lives.  Well into her 90’s she still had more energy and drive than most people ever hope to have.   I was reminded of that on Saturday when I tried to duplicate her Lily Cookies.

Every year Grandma Florence brought a platter of Lily Cookies to our Easter feast.  They were made from a flaky cream cheese and butter pastry folded over an apricot preserve mixture to look like calla lilies.  They were always perfectly formed and delicious.  She passed away 1 month short of 99 and made those cookies every year.

I decided to surprise everyone this year with a platter of grandma’s Lily Cookies.  Wow, are they a lot of work!  After the dough was made it had to be divided into 4 sections, rolled out to 6 inches in diameter on floured wax paper and refrigerated for an hour.  Then one section at a time the dough is rolled out, cut into rectangles, spread with the preserve mixture, and folded over to make a cone-like lily shape.  I finally got one cookie sheet filled with very unlily shaped cookies into the oven.  Took longer than I ever expected so I was thinking I would just take a small plate of cookies to Connie’s for Easter dinner.

25 minutes later I took them out of the oven.  80% of them had flipped open and were flat rectangles covered with apricot preserve mixture.  If that wasn’t bad enough, the apricot preserve mixture had cooked over the sides of the dough and had become hard brown stuff stuck to the cookie sheet.  When I removed the cookies from the cookie sheet, some of the them fell apart because they were still attached to the preserve mixture that was stuck to the cookie sheet.  As for the cookie sheet, it is soaking in the laundry sink in the hope that by morning the preserve mixture will have loosened up.

So, hats off to Grandma Florence that she could successfully make a platter of Lily Cookies every year for our Easter dinner.  We miss you Grandma.