MMMMmmmm Cookies! I'm a big cookie baker. Thanks for posting these!

Alice made cookies from cake mixes for her friends. I didn't care for them. They were very sweet and tasted chemically to me. Her high school friends loved them, though.

The second cookie reminded me of the no-bake cornflake cookies. I haven't seen anyone make those in a while. I've never made them so I can't recommend a recipe. Easy, though.

E

I am NOT recommending these cookies....just posting the odd ones....we also have a cookie made with a container of frozen lemonade and another with a jar of strained baby carrots...just to name a few!!

Speaking of lemonade, I made these years ago out of curiosity. They were tasty after aging (see notes).

Lemonade Cookies (Pink Ladies #4)

1 cup butter
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
2 3/4 cup flour
3/4 tsp. bk. soda
1/2 cup thawed lemonade concentrate

Preheat oven to 375 degrees (orig 400 was too hot)
Cream butter & sugar; beat in eggs.
Sift dry ingredients & add alternately with lemonade concentrate.
Drop small spoonfuls on ungreased sheet 1 1/2 inches apart.
Brush with remaining ade & sprinkle with sugar if desired.
Bake about 15 min.
Remove immediately.
Makes 5 dozen.

Note: these brown quickly on bottoms. Use upper 1/3 of oven.
Keep these cookies smallish. Prefer 4 days of aging.

What a fun project that must have been....

I've purchased recipe collections for years when I find them at yard sales and thrift stores - purchased mostly for the boxes and 3-ring book covers that held them. I was going to use the decorative recipe boxes and books for the art on a cover for a cookbook, but the REAL fun was comparing recipes. Watergate Salad sounds so benign until you compare 10 recipes for it. All those "secret" ingredients in Chili are revealed before your very eyes.

I often wonder is it inspiration, desperation, or something in between, with some of the more "interesting" recipes, like those Linda shared. Why DID someone add a can of sauerkraut or a 4-oz. bottle of red food coloring to chocolate cake? Were you desperate to use that box of Shredded Wheat your family hated (waste not, want not) when you crushed a biscuit and added it to your meatloaf - or were you out of what you normally use?

I checked a cookbook out from the library years ago - "Beyond the Bowl" by Debby Maugans using breakfast cereal in the recipes - it included snacks, appetizers, main courses, breads, desserts and more. What a great idea for people who love cereal. I checked the book out because it had a recipe where you use York Peppermint Patties in Rice Krispie Treats - two of my son-in-laws favorites - and it was something our young granddaughter could make him for his birthday, having just learned the art of making Rice Krispie Treats - which is yet one more example in and of itself.

And when you think about it, Sandra Lee - with her semi-homemade recipes - has made a living with short-cuts.

There used to be more recipe contests for name-brand foods and free recipe booklets were the result, which helped people incorporate the product in their cooking/baking. Those booklets often include some interesting adaptations...

-Grainlady

This assortment was published in 84....and complied in the years before.
I am amazed at the number of recipes calling for sweetened condensed milk and by the number that include coconut....in addition to strained carrots!!

Many years ago, when my boys were just tykes, they were
screaming for cookies, on a cold wintery Saturday afternoon. Well, I wasn't about to go anywhere to buy
cookies, and mother was out with her boyfriend, so I
had to get inventive. I took a box of cake mix out
of the cupboard and thought that if I just added less
liquid, and dropped spoonfulls of it on a cookie sheet,
then I would have cookies. Well, lo and behold, they
LOVED them, (yeah, they were pretty good). I made
them again, this time adding chocolate chips and nuts,
and I was the king of the whole world. Hey . . .
'what's a father to do'?