The First Sugar Cookies Began As 7th Century Oven Testers (How Hot The Oven Was)

Observed each year on July 9th, National Sugar Cookie Day honors the ever-popular and delicious sugar cookie.

• 7th-century –  Persian bakers used a cake batter sample to test the oven’s heat. They discovered that people loved to eat these mini-cake testers. They created what we now call the sugar cookie.
• 16th Century – Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) is credited with overseeing the first biscuits cut into the shape of men from the ginger dough, the precursor to today’s gingerbread men.
• 1700s – The sugar cookie is believed to have originated in the mid-1700s in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. German Protestant settlers created a round, crumbly and buttery cookie that came to be known as the Nazareth Cookie.
• 1700s – Early American tinsmiths began making cookie cutters by hand.
• 1902 – Animal Crackers, introduced by Nabisco in 1902, were the first commercial cookie to be mass-produced in the U.S.
• 1930s – during the great depression in the US, it became popular to leave sugar cookies out for Santa as a thank-you for the gifts you were about to get!
• 1960s – Little Debbie cookies, produced by McKee Foods, were branded in the 1960s after owners O.D. and Ruth McKee’s granddaughter, Debbie, then four years old.
• 1972 – The Cookie Cutters Collectors Club, a nonprofit organization, was founded as a way for aficionados to collect and use cookie cutters.
• 1989 –  New Mexico named the ‘bizcochito’ its official state cookie. Bizcochito, derived from the Spanish word ‘bizcocho’ which means biscuit, is a delicious shortbread cookie flavored with anise and topped with cinnamon sugar.
• 20th Century – The Oreo was the best-selling cookie of the 20th century. Americans spend $550 million on Oreos each year.
• 2001 – The Nazareth Sugar Cookie was named the official cookie of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
• 2015 – Pillsbury set the world record for the most biscuits/cookies iced within 60 minutes. They enlisted the help of shoppers at the Mall of America, resulting in 1,169 sugar cookies being decorated.
• American cookie jars evolved from British biscuit jars. They appeared during the Depression in the 1930s when housewives began making more cookies at home, rather than buying them at the bakery, and needed containers for them.
• The U.S. has a National Cookie Cutter Historical Museum located within the Joplin Museum Complex in Joplin, Missouri.
• The U.S. leads the world as the biggest cookie bakers and eaters, spending more than $550 million annually on Oreos alone.
• Early cookie recipes that probably morphed into the modern sugar cookie were called gimblettes in France and cimbellines in Italy.
• Sugar adds bulk and contributes to the cookies’ color. There are often different types of sugar used in a single recipe. With more light brown or dark brown sugar, the finished cookies will be darker in color.
• Girl Scouts sell 200 million boxes of cookies a year.
• The largest collection of cookie jars numbers 2,653 and belongs to Edith Eva Fuchs, a resident of Metamora, Indiana.
• Americans consume over 2 billion cookies a year or about 300 cookies for each person.
• The average American eats 35,000 cookies in a lifetime.
• 95.2 percent of U.S. households consume cookies.
• Half the cookies baked in American homes each year are chocolate chip.

Sources:

National Day Calendar

Foodimentary

Mobile-Cuisine

Sugar

Cookie Elf

National Today