Sugar cookies

Depression era.

Bless.

Something's not right.

She didn't add any baking powder. Did I miss that?

Although eggs are also a leaven and she used more eggs than than I've ever seen in any cookie recipe. 

She says "don't grease the pan because the dough has enough in it" yet she didn't add butter or Crisco or lard. Did I miss that?

And she didn't add any flavoring except sugar. At least vanilla or perhaps almond extract, or lemon or orange zest or cinnamon.

You could add cocoa if you wanted or even finely ground coffee beans.

1.5 cups of flour is obviously way too little. Even without butter, with that many eggs. She did correct that by 100%. 

And her cookies puffed up when they baked. No butter and no baking powder no vanilla. 

What temperature is the oven? Medium, 350℉.

How long do you bake them? 10 minutes. You don't want them to turn light brown. You want them to stay white. That is, bake minimally and gently. Just barely done.

And you'll have something excellent to dip in your coffee.

Or milk. 

Or wine, if you're French. What a a bunch of crackpots.

How do other people do this? Let's see if other baking types comport more closely with my cookie-intuition.

See what I mean? See what I mean? See? See? See what I mean?

Her cookies are too fat. I do not like them.

You'd get a mouthful of dry sweet cookie dust.

Aaaah, just right.

One time I ate a tin box filled with Scottish shortbread cookies. Delicious. And I gained a million pounds. 

Possibly ten pound. But even that doesn't makes sense because it wasn't close to ten pounds of shortbread.

How does that happen?

They call the dough "short" because it has a lot of fat in it. Trufax.

*assumes professorial pose* 

For you see, both fat and sugar break down gluten development in dough so the gluten molecules are short. 

*squeaky ventriloquist voice*  

But how does that happen?

*professorial pose again* 

When the fat is rubbed into the flour it coats the glutenin molecules in the flour that provides strength and the gliadin molecules in the flour that provides elasticity, behaving as a lubricant preventing the two from forming long strong elastic gluten molecules when the liquid is added, such as happens when kneading bread.

That clues you not to mix the ingredients too long. Or that lubrication is overtaken and gluten molecules form and your cookies will be tough and not tender. Not short.

And now you're all, OMG, this is like chemistry!