Notes on Grandma Renner's Billie Goat Cookies

I’ve written about Billie Goats, also spelled Billy Goat Cookies, before. But it’s time for a more nuanced version of the instructions. Look, no matter how you make them, they’ll be delicious. But I’ve been taking notes every year, so I can get the shape and texture just right. Until now, it’s been hit-or-miss. But I think I’ve got the techniques figured out, now. (As Chef John says, “Never let the food win.”) By golly.

So yes, there's a recipe at the end of this post.

A true, enduring gift from my grandma Clara Renner, these cookies take the strong, separately distinctive flavors of brown sugar, cinnamon, black walnuts, and dates and combine them into a new flavor I can only call “Billie Goat.” It’s a genuine meld; the combination is much greater than the sum of its parts. If you don’t like one of the ingredients, don’t rule out these cookies, because each flavor is tempered and transformed by the others. This is one of the best cookies anyone can make, in my opinion.

And for us, it’s a must-have for the Christmas cookie tray.

I have used this combination of brown sugar, cinnamon, dates, and black walnuts in other recipes, and I’ve found they have the same profound, synergistic effect, where they meld into a new, milder, but very unique flavor. I think of it as “Billie Goat seasoning.” I use this combination in my bran muffins, for example. You could also apply it to a bowl of oatmeal, or use it in pancake batter or a quick bread.

Grandma Renner said these are called “Billie Goats” because they are lumpy and have little points that stuck out, like a goat. (This is why the shape and the texture of the dates is important; read on.) I don’t know why Grandma spelled it “Billie” instead of “Billy.” Grandma Renner, her sister, Lydia Meyer, and their friends apparently all started making Billie Goats about the same time.

Billie Goats/Billy Goats are in a family of similar drop cookies that were really popular among mothers in the 1930s and 40s. This was a generation of moms who were keenly conscious of their role as household managers. In school, their “domestic science” classes taught them to be faithful guardians of their family’s health and good stewards of the family food budget. Vitamins were a new discovery with their generation. These women wanted to pack maximum nutrition into the foods they made, including their children’s after-school snacks—while being very economical (first, because of the Great Depression; next, rationing during World War II).

So, instead of sugar cookies or candies, they made these proto-health-food snacks, using nuts, plus raisins, dates, and/or currants, and sweetening with surprisingly small amounts of brown sugar (some recipes call for a combination of brown and white). Other cookies in this group include “hermits” and “rocks”; oatmeal-raisin cookies are also close relatives. Look for all these recipes in old cookbooks and church ladies’ cookbooks. The names “billy goats” and “rocks” both apparently refer to the chunky, knobby look of these cookies. I don’t know how “hermits” got named.

Some notes about texture and form, since I’ve had some time to figure these out. They’ll taste great no matter what you do, but the goal is to have a chewy, cakelike inside, and a lumpy, chunky shape. So here’s a discussion of challenges, and my “pro tips.”

For generations, most American cooks could only get Dromedary brand dates, which were apparently Deglet Noor dates. They were packed tightly in cellophane (this was before plastic), stuffed into cardboard boxes, and, after languishing in a warehouse or on grocery shelves, they were as tough as shoe leather. Clipping them with kitchen shears, as Grandma’s recipe instructs, would literally hurt your scissors hand. (Grandma’s kitchen shears were stainless steel, dull old things; you know the type—the ones with the rounded “claws” for opening bottles at the base of the red-painted, hard metal handles. The base of my thumb still hurts, just thinking of them. This was way before “Fiskars” scissors were available!)

So billy goat cookies, being a midcentury recipe, were developed using the ingredients that, at that time, were available to most people: dried-up dates. The cooking softened them, but not to the point where they lost a distinctive, chewy, chunky presence.

Today, the Dromedary brand seems to have gone out of business, and you just cannot buy dry, hard dates like them; instead, they are all moist and tender, either packed in plastic or shipped absolutely fresh. This is actually a good thing, but it presents a problem for replicating this cookie’s texture, since moist dates tend to dissolve into gooey molasses during baking, producing a flat, uniformly chewy cookie, instead of distinct, chunky, jagged lumps of chewy dates and nuts in a cakey, rounded matrix of dough.

I’ve learned to replicate the type of dates Grandma had by purchasing them (Deglet Noors) a few weeks ahead of baking, clipping them in the prescribed herringbone pattern while they’re still soft (which is a much easier task, now), spreading these out on cookie sheets, and letting them sit (under wax paper) in a quiet place while they dry. The house isn’t at all humid in November. Or, you can put them in the oven warmed only by the pilot light. Or you can try a dehydrator. An alternative might be to try to find one of the so-called bread dates (varieties such as Thoories that are sold rather dry, dry enough you can carry them in your pocket)—but those might lack sweetness. Also, I think it’s cheaper and easier to use regular Dole (or whatever) brand Deglet Noors, cut them, and let them dry. That seems the best way to replicate the texture and flavor of old-fashioned Dromedary dates.

Another point about texture: These cookies have caused me more vexation than any others, except perhaps when I was first figuring out springerles. If you only make a cookie once a year, it’s hard to fine-tune the recipe! My Billie Goats recipe card is full of penciled-in notes: “try doing _____ next time.” You don’t want the cookies to be so soft they spread out, but you don’t want them crunchy or hard. How to get that cakey, chewy texture, and chunky look? Here are some key tips:

• Use a 50/50 combination of margarine and butter-flavored Crisco. Real butter does make them taste better, but it complicates the texture; the cookies turn out drier, less moist. Save your butter for some other recipe.
• Pack the flour; forget the rule about spooning fluffed-up flour into your measuring cup and leveling it off with a knife. It turns out Grandma R used her measuring cups as scoops: swipe the cup through the flour, like you’re using a dip net to fish something out of water. You can level it off if you want, or just kind of shake off the excess, but you need to pretty much pack the flour into the cups.
• Let the dough sit overnight in the refrigerator or on an unheated sunporch. The flour will absorb the liquids and be easier to work.
• . . . But the dough will still be sticky and hard to handle. Put on some happy music. Use parchment-lined cookie sheets. Try dabbing the dough into little rounds with two spoons, or (if you haven’t much patience for the spoon method) use your fingertips to pinch off bits of dough (put some water on your hands so it doesn’t stick so bad; even then, you’ll have to clean your hands and start again several times).
• I tend to make smallish cookies, because I figure twenty-first-century people would rather select six different morsels from the tray than settle on just two huge cookies. Big cookies are a joy, but variety is the spice of life. Also, with smaller cookies, a single batch of dough goes farther. A 1¼-inch blob of dough, slightly flattened before cooking, produces about a 1½-inch diameter cookie. Back in the day, Mom and Grandma’s cookies tended to end up about 2 to 2½ inches in diameter. Different sizes account for the difference in cooking time; smaller cookies cook faster.
• Do a single tray of cookies first and see how they turn out. These shouldn’t flatten very much. If they spread out flat, you may have to add a bit more flour to the dough, or you might need to adjust the size of the cookies.
• Finally, don’t overcook these, or they will be too hard. Mom says this was a principal criticism Grandma R had about her sister, Lydia’s billy goats: “she bakes them too long, and they get too hard.” (I’ve heard this criticism plenty, too.)
• But if they come out kind of hard, don’t panic. Seal them in a tin, with the layers of cookies divided by wax paper, and take half of a tart apple, wrap it loosely in wax paper, and nestle it in the tin with the cookies. After a week or so, you’ll discover the cookies have softened and developed a je ne sais quoi in terms of flavor.

. . . Does all this sound too hard? Please don’t be put off by these tips; it’s all stuff I’ve learned the hard way, and I’m sharing it here, so you have a super-duper head start!

Finally, again, you can’t really ruin these. They’ll taste great regardless of the texture and shape.

Billie Goats/Billy Goat Cookies

1½ c. brown sugar
1 c. butter [Pat S. uses margarine, sometimes butter-flavor Crisco; I use half margarine and half butter-flavor Crisco; real butter tastes good, but then the texture will be off]
-----------Cream together butter and sugar.

3 eggs: beat whites [till light; use a hand mixer or whisk] and [then] add [whisk in] yolks

1 level tsp. baking soda dissolved in
¼ c. lukewarm-to-hot water

1 Tbs. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla
1 c. black walnuts [chopped]
1 lb. clipped dates [using a scissors, clip whole, pitted dates in an alternating herringbone pattern; the idea is to have them big enough to kind of “poke out” of the cookies; if you buy pre-chopped dates, it’s okay, but the pieces are too small to achieve the characteristic lumpy look.]
2½ c. flour [basically pack it]

Make the cookie dough [let it sit overnight in the fridge] and drop it onto [parchment-lined] cookie sheets by small spoonfuls. Bake in a moderate (ca. 350-degree) oven like you would other cookies, about 8–11 minutes. [Don’t overcook; they should be rather chewy and cakey inside.]

Makes about 100 cookies.

Scrambled Eggs with Dates and Turmeric

Hi! It’s time for another recipe! This is a new recipe for me, and we’re pretty pleased with it. I think you’ll like it, too. Scrambled eggs with dates and turmeric is pretty much what it sounds like, but below I give you some tips.

If you’re wanting to put more turmeric in your diet for its purported health benefits, this is a great way to do so. At the same time, the turmeric makes the eggs look temptingly deep yellow, which is a boon if you’ve got store-boughten eggs that are otherwise rather pale.

First, however, credit where credit is due: I got the idea from one of my newer favorite cookbooks, Breakfast: The Cookbook, by Emily Elyse Miller (London and New York, Phaidon Press, 2019), where it’s called “Date Omelet” and is on page 47: “Dates are an essential ingredient in Persian cooking. The dates provide an unexpected sweetness to a simple omelet and the addition of turmeric adds a bright color and an earthy note.” (Phaidon has a really fun selection of these gigantic “[fill in the blank]: The Cookbook” cookbooks.)

. . . Yes, yes, yes. I don’t know much about Iranian breakfasts (though a friend of mine from Iran once told me that at his house, “It’s not breakfast without feta!”)—but I do know that one’s breakfast eggs can definitely go in a sweet direction with success. Among the many omelet variations commonly suggested in midcentury American cookbooks is a “jelly omelet,” which I’ve tried and found actually pretty good (though the folded-over version is a little sloppy, since the jelly or jam melts and turns into drippy syrup). And also keep in mind other sweet eggy dishes, such as French toast, and any kind of sweet custard preparation.

So, dates in scrambled eggs. In addition to turmeric, I like to add some coarsely ground black pepper, in order to further ground the dish and temper the sweetness of the dates. My version is not terribly sweet. Anyway, it’s not rocket science; you can alter it however you like. Here’s how I’ve been making it. Extra tips at the end.

Scrambled Eggs with Dates and Turmeric

• 1/2 tsp. ground turmeric
• 1 tbsp. water
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 tsp. coarsely ground black pepper
• pinch of salt
• 1 tbsp. butter
• 1/3 cup dates, chopped (approximate)

In a little bowl, stir together the turmeric powder with the water to make a smooth mixture (no lumps). Crack the eggs into a small mixing bowl, add the turmeric mixture, black pepper, and salt, and beat with a fork to combine ingredients.

Heat the butter in a nonstick skillet to coat skillet. When it starts to bubble, add the dates and sauté for a few minutes; just get them heated up and coated with the butter. Pour the egg mixture carefully into the pan; let the eggs start to set, then lift the edges with a wooden or heat-proof rubber spatula and let the uncooked eggs run underneath; push the cooked eggs gently toward the center. Fold or turn over as necessary to get them cooked.

Serving suggestion: Serve with pita, naan, or other flatbread; a chunk of feta cheese; a few oil-cured black olives.

Tips and comments:

For breakfast, Sue and I usually split a three-egg omelet, especially since we’re having other stuff with it. You can adjust quantities however you want.

Mixing the turmeric with the water, first, to form a slurry ensures that the turmeric will blend evenly with the eggs; otherwise, the turmeric can form lumps that are hard to break up with a fork or even a whisk. You don’t need that kind of hassle—it’s too early in the morning to be muttering “dang it!”

The reason for the gentle pouring and folding of the eggs is to give it a prettier presentation, with the dates clearly separate from the eggs. You can stir it all around if you want, but depending on how finely chopped your dates are, or how much they break up during cooking, it might look kind of, well, vomitous.

The nonstick skillet is a good idea, since you’re heating dates. Dates vary in texture (dryness) a lot. When heated, they can get really syrupy, and their sweet goo can really stick to a skillet, if it’s not nonstick.

Choice of dates: it’s up to you. I find this is a good use for leftover pre-chopped cooking dates (the kind that look like little nuggets that are coated with oat flour or whatever). This would also be really good with high-quality, soft dates that are only halved. Pit them, of course.

I like how the saltiness of the feta and olives plays off the sweetness of the eggs.

Extra points for making your own fresh flatbreads.

Date Nut Bars: A Christmas Classic from “Ann Pillsbury”

A few posts ago I told you about Sue’s mom’s Christmas cookies. Just a day after I posted it, the postman brought us a box containing . . . Sue’s mom’s Christmas cookies!

Oh, joy!

Here’s the first one we chomped: Date Nut Bars!

They’re cakey and chewy and a little crumbly. Not too sweet. And they look great, too.

They’re ex-cel-lent with coffee and tea!!! (Three exclamation points = Big emphasis!)

Mrs. F. says to double this for a 10×15 inch pan, or a 9×12. And yes, you’ll want to make plenty.

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Date Nut Bars

“Developed by Ann Pillsbury.”

“Easy and quick to make! Chewy and moist to eat!”

“Makes 2 dozen.”

Bake at 350 degrees for 25–30 minutes.

Sift together into a large bowl:

3/4 c. sifted Pillsbury’s Best Enriched Flour*
1/2 t. double-acting baking powder
1/2 t. salt

Add:

1 c. firmly packed brown sugar; mix well.

Blend in, and mix thoroughly:

2 well-beaten eggs
2 T melted butter

Stir in:

1 c. walnuts or pecans, chopped [Mrs. F. uses pecans!]
1 c. dates, cut in small pieces

Spread in well-greased 11×7 or 9×9 inch pan.

Bake in moderate oven (350 degrees) 25–30 minutes. While warm, cut into bars. If desired, roll in confectioners’ sugar before serving.


* “If you use Pillsbury’s Best Enriched Self-Rising Flour (sold in parts of the South), omit baking powder and salt.”

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A Few Notes

Mrs. Ferber got the recipe from a vintage Pillsbury cookie cookbook from the fifties: Pillsbury’s Best Butter Cookie Cookbook, volume 2. Hers is a well-loved and well-used cookbook! You can find copies of the publication for sale online.

Originally this cookbook was only 20 cents a copy, but now it and volume 3 of the same book are selling for $10–13 for a decent copy. (Hey, Pillsbury! Maybe it’s time to think about a special vintage-reprint edition, with all the same cool artwork, typesetting, and recipes, just modified slightly where your products have changed?) (I mean, look what Better Homes and Gardens recently did—they’re offering a glorious facsimile edition of their 1950 Picture Cookbook! What a cool thing, huh?)

Not thinking I was ever going to quote it for anything but my own use, I didn’t copy the recipe word-for-word. So Capital “T” means tablespoon; lowercase “t” means teaspoon. The original had that kinda stuff spelled out. I did copy the important points of the recipe. It’s from p. 36.

By the way, I’m pretty sure that “Ann Pillsbury” is a myth, like Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima, and Mrs. Butterworth. (Duncan Hines, however, was indeed a real person!)

Finally, my blog-formatting skills don’t allow me to reproduce the unique and helpful two-column typesetting pioneered in the original publication. If you can find a copy, you’ll see it’s pretty neat.

Sue’s Mom’s Awesome Christmas Cookies!

Okay. Here is something we can all agree on: the awesomeness of “Mom’s Christmas Cookies.”

You know what I mean—it’s when your mom makes at least, oh, a half dozen different types of cookies, and makes them in abundance. She always makes the favorites, the traditional ones you “can’t have Christmas without.”




And then, because she loves baking so much, each year she usually tries out at least one new cookie recipe, or a variation of an old one, just for fun. Sometimes these receive such an enthusiastic response that they’re added to the list of “must-haves.”

So there’s a cookie platter available all winter long, replenished by the dozens of cookies in tins and plastic tubs out on the back sunporch.

Yeah!

Sue’s mom is one of these holiday bakers. Now, she doesn’t make many of the cookies I personally find necessary for the holidays—lebkuchen, billy goats, “animal cookies,” orange balls, springerle. Mostly German-ethnic stuff from my family.

But she makes her own set of “regulars” that are just as necessary to her family as leppies are to mine, and she shares abundantly with Sue and me. Over the years, naturally, most of her cookies have become “Christmas must-haves” for me, too. I guess that is one of the benefits of being in a marriage with someone: You not only gain a second family, you also gain a whole new set of Christmas cookie traditions!

Let me introduce you to some of her Christmas cookies!

First, her spice cookies! Yes, they look kind of like ginger snaps, but they’re not crunchy at all—no danger of chipping a tooth on these! They’re soft and chewy. The ingredients include brown sugar, molasses, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger; you chill the dough, roll them into balls, then dip in white sugar before baking briefly. Mrs. F. always makes them to perfection!

Sue’s brother-in-law has always adored these, and Sue’s brother in South Carolina and one of his sons, I hear, raid the box of cookies Sue’s mom sends them, picking out the spice cookies, then squirreling them away like hoarded treasure. It’s Mark and Michael’s hands-down favorite. Good pick, guys!




These are incredibly tasty, though not cloyingly sweet. There’s something tangy, almost salty about them. Is it the molasses? The baking soda? Anyway, as Sue described them, they’re “a yearly absolute-can’t keep-them-on-the-plate favorite.”

Here are some “jubilee jumbles”—also chewy, but more cakelike and with crushed pecans inside. So good! Brown sugar, white sugar, evaporated milk, vanilla, and chopped pecans are the flavoring ingredients. And that’s a burnt butter glaze: browned butter plus powdered sugar plus evaporated milk. My mouth is watering just writing this.




Sue’s mom makes candy, too. She’s the queen of fudge, and she usually makes several types—Sue’s partial to the peanut butter fudge; but the black walnut is good, too. And of course, the straight-ahead chocolate. And there in Ohio, those chocolate-dipped peanut butter balls known as "buckeyes" are de rigueur, too.

Then, there’s the white-chocolate peppermint bark, the preparation of which calls for you to pound up candy canes! I really have to watch myself with this one, folks.




But here’s my real weakness: the peanut butter kisses. Also known as peanut blossoms. Uh-oh! I literally have to have people move the cookie platter away from me when there are peanut butter kisses on it. I know, that’s really bad. . . . But these cookies are really good!

The recipe was probably invented in the Hershey’s Corp. test kitchens, but man, whoever invented this recipe deserves a medal.




Other favorites are:

“Delectabites,” also known as “pecan puffs,” crescent-shaped nut cookies coated with powdered sugar;

Oatmeal cookies without the raisins. Mrs. F. has always hated raisins, so she makes raisinless oatmeal cookies. This year she used chocolate chips instead. There were no complaints about it!

“Honey bunches,” also called “haystacks,” an oats-coconut-flour-brown sugar-butter-and-honey concoction; and

“Date nut bars,” from a vintage Pillsbury cookie cookbook—chewy and nutty and dusted with powdered sugar. A beautiful celebration of The Date.

Billy Goats

A recipe from my Grandma Renner. These are Christmas cookies, a kind that you can’t have Christmas without. They’re not tremendously sweet in the ordinary, sugary sense. They’re rich and sweet with dates and have that smoky flavor of black walnuts.

And yes, you must use real black walnuts (not the English kind or any other kind of nut). They’re a key flavor ingredient. (We’ve talked about black walnuts before on this blog.)

(We have also talked about billy goat cookies before, as an example of what I mean by "Opulent Opossum.")





When I was a little kid, I often got fooled by these cookies, because they look something like chocolate chip. But they aren’t. They taste very different.

So here we go. My notes are in brackets.

Billy Goats

Cream together: 1 1/2 c. brown sugar + 1 c. butter.
3 eggs: beat whites, then add yolks.
1 level tsp. baking soda dissolved in 1/4 c. lukewarm to hot water.
1 tbsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla
1 c. black walnuts [gotta be black walnuts, not any other kind, I mean it]
1 lb. clipped dates [see note below]
2 1/2 c. flour

Make the cookie dough and drop it onto cookie sheets by small spoonfuls. Bake in a moderate (ca. 350-degree) oven like you would other cookies.

Clipped dates: Start with whole (pitted) dates. Using a scissors, starting at one end of the date, snip off alternating diagonals in a sort of herringbone pattern, so you get rhomboidal shapes.

These cookies are called “billy goats,” Grandma told us, because they have little bumps poking out of them. No, I don’t quite understand that, either, but the “point” is that the dates have to be big enough to protrude a bit after you bake the cookies. If you cut them too fine, then I guess you have “nanny goats” instead!

What's Op Op, Part 2

(Part 2 of trying to explain the title of this blog. With more to come.)

So, yeah, it’s an attitude. “Opulent opossum” is an oxymoron, and it describes so much of life. There can be such richness and luxury, exquisite gourmet extravagances, while at the same time we plod along in our mundane, unexciting little ruts. Or, to put it another way: Sometimes the things that we think are boring, the same ol’ same ol’, can actually be a wellspring of luxury.

Take, for example, the humble billy goat cookie. I held up on eating the last one we had left over from Christmas, a cookie made by my mother, a cookie just like all the other lumpy brown billy goat cookies she’s made every year for at least four decades, and which her mom no doubt made all the years she was able to.

Billy goats aren’t hard to make, though they take some attention to detail. They’re not exactly “pretty” cookies, either. But man, do they taste good! The flavors of dates, black walnuts, and spices harmonize as well as the flavors in any high-class European pastry.

You can’t buy these in stores; they only come from Mom. And because we have them only once a year, because we associate them with Mom, and with her mom, they become important beyond description. . . . That’s opulence, man.