Hershey's Cocoa Bread Crumb Cookies

More food favorites from the past.  This is fun, by the way, delving into these cookbooks.  I've been coming across some crazy good, and some just plain crazy, recipes.

In addition to yummy choclate recipes, my "Hershey's 1934 Cookbook" (10th ed, 1971), also had a page of helpful Chocolate Hints, some of which I was not familiar with.

▪ Hershey's Cocoa may be used in placed of baking chocolate. 3 Tablespoons of Hershey's Cocoa plus 1 Tablespoon of shortening or oil equals 1 ounce (1 square) of baking chocolate

▪ Do not substitute Hershey's Baking Chips or Milk Chocolate for Hershey's Baking Chocolate in recipes.

▪ Bloom, the gray film that appears on chocolate, occurs when chocolate is exposed to varying temperatures.  It does not affect the taste or qualify of the chocolate.

▪ When melting chocolate for coating and dipping candy centers, be sure all utensils are completely dry.  Also, when adding a shortening to the chocolate to make it more liquid, use only vegetable shortening, not butter or margarine.

Good stuff that.  And now, for our recipe.

Cocoa Bread Crumb Cookies

1/4 cupful butter...1/2 cupful granulated sugar...1/4 cupful Hershey's Cocoa...2 eggs...1 teaspoon vanilla...1 cupful fine bread crumbs. (That's how it's written out in the book.)

Cream the butter, sugar and cocoa together thoroughly.

Add the eggs and vanilla,...

...then the crumbs. (The mixture should be thick as cake batter.)

Spread thin in a well-greased cake pan (8 x 8 x 2-inch), and bake in a slow oven (300 degrees) for 20 minutes.

Cut into squares or rounds, and put together sandwich fashion with jelly or jam.  Ice lightly with any plain or chocolate icing.  Yield: 2 dozen squares.

NOTES

The batter is less like cake batter (which I consider to be fluffy, light and or runny) and more like brownie batter which is thicker and harder to spread.

You could spread more chocolate on these, but I highly recommend a nice, sweet berry jam.  The cookies aren't overly sweet themselves, but with the jam on top it will take placate anyone's sweet tooth.

Check out these "new" butters!  Bought a regular 1 lb box and was more than a little surprised when 8 mini-sticks skittered out of it.  Each is 1/4 cup so makes measuring even easier, as if that was even possible.  (And I'd like to give a shout out to Falling Skies for reintroducing the word "skitter" to my vocabulary, so handy.)

In case anyone was wondering what F-R-O-G Jam is (in first photo), it's a jam I picked up in Newcastle, PA at a local farm stand.  It's made with Figs, Raspberries, Orange peel, and Ginger -- tasty!