Your neighbor's recipe: Room for more

It’s not easy for 5-year-old Layla Ratliff of Seymour to pick her favorite Christmas confection.

“I lo-o-ove the chocolate peanut butter balls,” she said, eyes glistening, while helping her grandmother Julie Ratliff ice red and green sugar cookies Tuesday night.

“Oh, but I love the M&M cookies too,” Layla said excitedly. “And the sugar cookies, they’re my favorites.”

Layla doesn’t have to worry about running out of her favorites anytime soon, as Julie plans to make plenty of cookies, candy, pies and other tasty treats for the Christmas holiday.

“I try to make everyone’s favorites,” Julie said. “We’ll have roast beef and mashed potatoes and all the trimmings. Not to mention lots of desserts.”

Last year it wasn’t so easy to prepare a meal, as Julie was forced to fit her entire family of 12 into their tiny, outdated kitchen. But after rubbing elbows with home-style guru Martha Stewart earlier this year, Julie doesn’t have to worry about where she is going to fit everyone or how she’s going to find room for all her culinary creations.

The Ratliffs were selected in January as the winners of the second annual Martha Stewart Dream Kitchen Makeover and received a $100,000 upgrade to the most used room in the house.

“Everything is absolutely perfect now,” Julie said. “It’s so organized. I have all my things for baking in one place and so much more counter space, which makes it easier to prepare and serve meals.”

And now instead of trying to maneuver around her husband, kids and grandkids, she has plenty of room to enjoy cooking for and with her family.

“Six us of can be in here all at once and we aren’t running into each other,” she said. “It’s so handy.”

Ratliff said her family’s 15 minutes of fame from the Martha Stewart experience haven’t ended.

“We still get asked about the kitchen all the time,” she said. “I can’t go to the grocery store without someone stopping me to say something about it, but it’s nice that people are so interested and care.”

Cooking and being in the kitchen have long been a part of Ratliff’s life, as she recalls “wonderful memories” spent in the kitchen helping her mother.

“I was probably 10 when I started figuring out recipes and exploring with cooking,” Ratliff said. “Mom let me go in the kitchen and make whatever I wanted, which was nice.”

Ratliff said some of the first recipes she remembers making are sugar cookies, oatmeal cookies and butter cake.

“I still have a lot of those old recipes,” she said.

Her love of and talent for cooking don’t remain in just her kitchen.

As a longtime home economics and consumer science teacher at Seymour High School, Ratliff says she enjoys bringing an excitement and appreciation for cooking to a younger generation.

“I really enjoying introducing recipes they’ve never tried,” she said. “And the sugar cookie recipe I use in class is the same one I use at home. That’s the number one cookie they want to make. It really gives me a good feeling when the kids tell me they went home over the weekend and made some of the recipes we learned in class.”

M&M Party Cookies

1 cup shortening (use Crisco)

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 eggs

2¼ cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1½ cups M&M's (milk chocolate)

Save the rest to decorate the tops of cookies.

Mix shortening and brown sugar and white sugar together in a bowl. Add vanilla and eggs. Mix well. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda and salt. Stir into the sugar mixture. Add the M&Ms. Drop by heaping teaspoons onto prepared baking pan. Allow 2 inches between cookies. They spread. Decorate the tops with more M&M's. Bake in a preheated 375-degree oven for 10 minutes.

Date Nut Balls

½ cup butter or margarine

¾ cup sugar

1 8-ounce package pitted dates, chopped

2½ cups crisp rice cereal

1 cup finely chopped pecans

Flaked coconut

Sifted powdered sugar (optional)

Combine butter, sugar and dates in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil; cook, stirring constantly, 3 minutes. Stir in cereal and pecans; cool to touch. Shape into 1-inch balls and roll in coconut or powdered sugar. Store in airtight container. Yield: About 4 dozen.

Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies

1¼ cups flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup butter

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup packed brown sugar

½ cup peanut butter

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 12-ounce package chocolate chips

1 cup coarsely chopped peanuts

Combine flour, soda and salt. Cream butter, egg, vanilla, peanut butter and white and brown sugar. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Stir in chips and nuts. Drop dough by rounded teaspoons and flatten slightly with a fork. Bake at 375 degrees for 9 to 10 minutes.

Grandma Pfaffenburger's Liebkuchen

*See note below

1 pint molasses

1½ tablespoons soda

1½ cups brown sugar

1 cup sour milk or buttermilk

1 cup lard

2 teaspoons cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon cloves

½ pound thin sliced almonds

¼ pound candied citron

6½ cups flour

Mix ingredients together. Chill overnight. Roll out thin and cut into bars or shapes with cookie cutters. Bake at 350 degrees and ice with hard powdered sugar glaze - 3 beaten egg whites, ½ teaspoon vanilla and 3 cups powdered sugar. Will be runny but will dry hard. These cookies improve after being stored in a tight container.

Springerle

*See note below

4 eggs

1 pound powdered sugar

1 pound cake flour (more than 3 cups, less than 4½ cups)

5 or 6 drops anise oil

1 tablespoon melted butter

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon grated lemon peel

Beat eggs and sugar about 15 minutes until very light-colored. Add ½ the flour, baking powder, lemon rind and butter. Mix. Add remaining flour and the anise oil. Chill. Roll ½ inch thick with a regular rolling pin, then use a springerle rolling pin to make designs. Cut and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Let set overnight on cookie sheets to dry out the design on top. Bake at 325 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

*German Christmas cookies

German people love to make and eat cookies at Christmas. My mother's recipes for springerle and liebkuchen have been among her family's recipes for more than 100 years. Both recipes are from family members who immigrated from Germany in the late 1800s. Liebkuchen means "love cake." This recipe came from my great-great-grandmother Dena Pfaffenburger. The other recipe is from my great-great-grandmother Berta Brackemyre.

— Julie Ratliff