Retro floating cooky surprise!

I got a nice surprise as I was digging through my cookbooks. I didn't think there was anything between two of my big cookbooks, but when I moved them a little baking pamphlet fell out and it had a familiar-looking picture on the very retro front:

Those random treats floating against metallic cross-hatching are from Swift & Company's 1962 pamphlet "Our Best Cooky Recipes" by Martha Logan. This looked so familiar because my family used this booklet at least every Christmas (and usually, a few other times during the year too). My mom got her copy from her home ec class in high school. Apparently I picked this up at a flea market and promptly forgot about it, but now it's mine!

Here are a few highlights. First up: a recipe we usually made a few times a year:

The title does not lie. These are super-chewy, stretchy, gooey, and sweet as a collision between a semi full of sugar and a tanker truck of cream soda. I prefer brownies, but if you use good vanilla and expect to be hit with a wall of sweetness, these are a fun change of pace.

A few days ago, I mentioned some fruit cookies my parents made that I found disgusting, and I believe the recipe was from this book:

It looks right. I know they had some oatmeal, holiday spices, dates, mixed candied fruit, and extra candied cherries. They were kind of pretty with all the bright fruit and if you're the fruitcake kind of person, I guess they're supposed to be pretty good. I was happy to help mix them up, but not to eat them!

I just picked the next cookie because I like the title:

Snaparoons! A hybrid gingersnap and macaroon from the looks of it. We never made them because nobody was too crazy about coconut, but I couldn't resist a chance to write the word snaparoons. So snaparoons, snaparoons, snaparoons!

I saved the best for last. These were my favorite cookies:

And even though they were supposedly man-sized, as a little girl I had no trouble polishing these off in no time! If you want my holiday recommendation for delicious cookies, this is it. They're light and fluffy and loaded with chocolate flavor. Maybe they don't look very Christmassy, but they make up for it in pure deliciousness. You could always put red and green M&Ms or holly sprinkles on top if you had to dress them up.

Here's hoping we all get more happy surprises!