Easy Drop Cookies falls into a category I like to call back-pocket recipes: delicious never-fails that you can whip up in a jiffy with just a few ingredients (see also: Key Lemon Pie, cake panAND short bread).
They are made with only two ingredients: self rising flour and cream. This self-rising flour is the key—because the flour already includes baking powder and salt, it eliminates the need to mix any dry ingredients; the cream provides the necessary liquid (and fat). To make them, simply mix the two together until you have a cohesive dough.
Photography by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne
But here's the best part: You don't even have to follow a recipe! Cookie dough can be mixed following a simple, step-by-step formula: equal parts flour and self-raising cream by weight, or two parts flour and one part cream by volume. If you're stuck in a poorly stocked kitchen (or maybe at a campsite) or only have a certain amount of flour or self-rising cream, you can easily scale the recipe up and down. You don't even need measuring cups; you can only measure with a cup, can or jar if that's all you have.
Different from Buttermilk Biscuits, no flipping, folding or cutting; the dough is crushed and thrown in mounds on a baking sheet (a tablespoon of cookies is a useful tool here). They are baked for only 10 minutes, which means that the whole process takes a little more than a quarter of an hour. The resulting cookies are soft and fluffy – more than fried, with a rich mouthfeel thanks to the cream.
Photography by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne
The benefits of this recipe go beyond ease: Because the ingredients are so basic, Easy Drop Cookies have become my go-to budget bake for weeknight meals or a quick weekend breakfast. A bag with King Arthur self rising flour it costs $6.95, while a quart of heavy cream costs $6.39 at my local Target. Doing a little math, that works out to about $1.72 per batch of 12 cookies, or $0.14 per cookie. Not bad! (For context, a roll of Pillsbury Grands in the fridge! The cookies are about $0.50 per cookie based on the prices at my local Target.)
A 5-pound bag of self-rising flour yields about 160 cookies, so keeping a bag in the pantry will keep you 15 minutes away from a hot batch of freshly baked cookies for a long time. And while the basic recipe is satisfying on its own, you can customize it with toppings of your choice, like a combination of bacon, cheddar and chickpeas, or cooked sausage and diced apples. See the inspiration at the end recipe page to start.
Easy, fast and cheap? Three great reasons to make these cookies part of your repertoire.
Cover picture (Easy Drop Cookies) by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne.
