Cookie cutter was the key

Sally Newton offered a family favorite for a request from reader Rebecca McGeorge for raisin cookies with a biscuitlike dough.

The recipe came from Newton's mother-in-law, Violet Newton, who lived in New Hampshire and always kept homemade cookies on hand, which, Sally Newton said, "probably accounts for her four children and three grandchildren being 'cookie monsters' today."

"She was the best cook of simple New England food I've ever met," said Newton, who splits her time between Chesterfield County and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. "Her recipes keep her memory alive for all of her family members."

Violet Newton often made the raisin cookies around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and Sally Newton can recall receiving them in Christmas packages when she and husband, Joel, didn't make it to New Hampshire for the holidays. Violet Newton died in 1996, and Sally picked up the cookie-baking soon after.

"The first time I baked them, they tasted fine but they didn't look the same," she said. "I finally realized that was because she always used an old cookie cutter which had serrated edges, and when I used that cutter, the cookies both looked and tasted the way I remembered them."

Like her mother-in-law did, Sally Newton makes them around the holidays and often mails them to family members as a gift.
Send your recipe requests, answers and your best recipes to Bill Lohmann at or P.O. Box 85333, Richmond, VA 23293. Please put "Recipe Exchange" in the subject field or on the envelope and include your name, address and a daytime phone number.