I've never met guerrilla cookie inventor Ted Odell, but I've heard he no longer thinks fondly of his creation. He's been quoted as saying the guerrilla-cookie recipe is evil and needs to be kept out of this world. That sounded crazy to me when I first heard it. But I came away from last night's Wisconsin Alumni Association's event, Madison's Main Course: Quintessential Cuisine, Past and Present, thinking of Gollum and Precious, and wondering whether Odell knows something I don't.
At this entertaining event, the Alumni Association served up treats remembered fondly by alumni, including Memorial Union's fudge-bottom pie; Babcock Hall ice cream; La Brioche bakery's Morning Buns; Paisan's Porta Bella salad; and the Plaza Tavern's burger with Plaza sauce. All were certifiably genuine. The guerrilla cookie was the only item surrounded by mystery and debate.
Carl Korz, Director of Dining Services for the Memorial Union, has been using his professional culinary skills and substantial campus connections to try to recreate the guerrilla. He brought two attempts to the event. They were good but not much closer to the original than other things we've tried--which actually is kind of close. Carl has made good progress with the taste. His professional skills allow him to be more confident with spices than I am. But the texture of both samples I tried was cakier and drier than the original guerrilla, which was very dense and moist.
In the genuine guerrilla spirit, Carl is sharing everything he knows. He has posted his recipe on the Wisconsin Alumni Association website. With his culinary training and experience, he was able to explain why I might have rejected soy flour, brewer's yeast or nutmeg as not tasting right, even though they might have been in the guerrilla cookie. Tastes interact, so if I didn't have the right other ingredients in those batches, they would have tasted wrong.
Like Gandalf bringing ancient wisdom, Martha Fish, Carl's aunt, is also willing to share. She's a UW alum who saved ephemera in her recipe box--including an actual insert from a bag of guerrilla cookies!!! Carl was handing out photocopies. I photoshopped it onto a picture of my cookies, below.
That label presents a few puzzles. Carl tracked down an unsuccessful patent application Odell submitted, which indicated that Odell lived in Oregon. This could explain why the label does not identify Madison as the location of the bakery.
The order of the ingredients, which is supposed to be by volume, is a problem. The cookies would have been inedible if they contained more brewer's yeast than sugar, eggs, or oil. So it's obvious the label tells us nothing about proportions.
Another puzzle is the absence of anything that would provide the white dots we all remember. It is not oatmeal pieces that we are now remembering as white dots; even undergraduates know what oatmeal looks like.
While I was delighted as Carl shared his expertise, enthusiasm, and theories, I also felt an occasional twinge of sadness for him. Like former Mifflin Street Co-op baker Glen Chism before him, Carl has now been drawn into a fellowship questing for something he has never even seen. I'm grateful for that sort of professional dedication, but how frustrating must that be?
My other interesting conversation was with a fellow cookie-quester whom I'll call Frodo. (He doesn't want his real name publicized.) He believes he has succeeded in reverse-engineering the guerrilla cookie. Possessing that recipe is weighing very heavily on him. Several times during our conversation I felt I was in the presence of a man who, if he were to reveal his secret to the wrong person, would soon hear the thunder of Ring Wraiths drawing near.
Among other things, Frodo believes Odell's eventual social withdrawal was caused at least in part by being hounded by people trying to steal his recipe, and that Odell likely lied about the ingredients in order to protect his secret. Frodo doesn't want to risk being hounded or having to lie, but feels that his recipe is too precious to be shared in a way that would enable its use by someone who might not do the right thing. He is getting advice from friends and relatives, but hasn't yet figured out what to do with his discovery. It's a hard decision, and I hope he finds his comfort zone soon.
My only regret about the evening is that while I spent so much time talking with these two interesting people, I probably missed some good conversations with other people. If the guy who was so adamant about honey is reading this, I'm sorry we didn't have more time to talk!
I had never noticed the common ground covered by cooking and citizenship until I leafed through This is What Democracy Cooks Like, the new cookbook from WORT, a listener-sponsored community radio station at 89.9 FM in Madison. Yes, I'm blogging about it partly because I submitted a guerrilla cookie recipe from this blog, to which the editors gave two full pages and a fitting quote from Michael Ruhlman. But even if they hadn’t accepted my submission, I’d consider this a fabulous cookbook.
Recall your most rewarding cooking experience and I’ll bet it involved community. From raw materials brought to you by a multitude of farmers, butchers, truck drivers, and grocers, you created an end product that included friends and family sitting around a dinner table sharing flavors and aromas, being nourished by the same sustenance. Or consider that feeling of accomplishment when you share a good recipe. Makes the world a better place, it does.
Citizenship feels the same way. We build on foundations prepared by others, using whatever knowledge and skills we can bring to the task. The end product is a community that sustains ourselves and others.
In January 2011, the folks at WORT decided to create a fundraising cookbook. The cookbook committee had met only once when Governor Scott Walker began his assault on democracy. The cookbook editor wrote that "the project then went on the back burner as we played our parts in the struggle--marching, chanting, reporting, occupying, singing, tweeting, blogging, documenting, and disseminating information. When we finally got back on track...the title had changed to reflect the events of this year and the tenor of the cookbook had changed as well.
This Is What Democracy Cooks Like rises to the level of art in the success with which it captures the communitarian spirit in both cooking and in citizenship. You can cook with this book; read it for amusement; enjoy its graphics; and keep it as a souvenir of the historical moment when democracy started to come back to life in Wisconsin and, I hope, the United States.
The recipes, of course, reflect the community. Ethnic variety, a bit heavy on German and Scandinavian heritages (Schwarzbrot fur das Brot Maschine, page 35.) More than the typical proportion of vegetarian recipes (Clean-out-the-Refrigerator Vegetable Bake, page 205), but still enough sausage, beef, and bacon (Uncle Porky’s Chops, page 190.) Lots of whole grains and veggies, and nothing that needs a fancy pan you don’t have in your kitchen.
Contributors were asked to write a paragraph or two about each recipe. Here are a few:
My sister’s ex-boyfriend cooked this for my family when he visited from his home nation of Austria. Because I did not see them lasting, I asked him for the recipe right away. Turns out I was right and our family now has a delicious staple pasta dish. (Red, White, and Blue Pasta, page 161)
I have a mixing bowl and a muffin pan from my great grandma, who was a fabulous baker. Whenever I move into a new house, I christen the kitchen by making her recipe with her mixing bowl and pan. (Banana Muffins, page 41)
I developed this recipe using canned pumpkin, applesauce, onions, and Canadian bacon from the food pantry. I had to buy only a few things to make this wonderful soup. (Food Pantry Pumpkin Soup with Ham, page 108)
This lasagna won a small lasagna cook-off in 2008 on the near east side of Madison. It is, therefore, famous. (Spinach Lasagna, page 154)
I made up this pie out at the Creamery Café in Paoli. We had a bottle of brandy needing to be used. It’s become popular among our regulars. (Chocolate Brandy Pie, page 289)
In addition to the recipes and interesting culinary sidebars, the cookbook includes some straight history of the 2011 Wisconsin Uprising. “A Seat at the Table” tells the story of the uprising in four pages, and throughout the book are several dozen well-captioned photos of the best protest signs, the crowds inside and outside the Capitol, and other scenes, including the infamous Faux News palm trees.
It was put together with obvious care—the graphic design is outstanding and the marginal notes well-researched and amusing. The spiral binding keeps it laying perfectly flat and staying open to the right page; the sturdy paper will hold up to splashes and an occasional wet finger.
This was John’s recipe, the best starting point for my next attempt: Madison Guerilla Cookies take 1
1 cup Seeds or Nuts 2 cups plain granola, no fruit 1 cup whole grain rolled oats 1 cup raisins 1 cup whole wheat flour 1 cup turbinado sugar 1/4 cup dry milk powder 1/4 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp cinnamon 1 egg 1/2 cup milk 1/4 cup molasses 2 tbsp honey 2 tbsp salted butter 1 cup sunflower, canola, or rice bran oil
Mix all dry ingredients including raisins in food processor but don't totally pulverize. Mix well all wet ingredients in stand mixer with paddle blade. Start with egg and end with the oil. Add dry ingredients to stand mixer with wet ingredients. Mix well and let stand for a few minutes to 36 hours. (The granola and oats need some time to soften a bit) When ready to bake, place about two tablespoons for each cookie on cookie sheets and flatten slightly. Bake for about 10 minutes (overdone gets too hard in a hurry after cooling)
Step 1: I made John's recipe with only one significant modification that might have affected shape or texture: no baking soda. I was careful to mix the dough in a way that did not incorporate air.
The chopped walnuts worked just fine for the visual little white dots.
Frustration: the first time I made John's recipe, it produced the pancake shape I'm aiming for. This time I followed the same recipe, I get taller, rounder cookies: (They weren't overdone; that's just the lighting.) I'm blaming the granola. The first time I made John's recipe, I used granola that had big chunks, and the second time I used a granola that was more uniformly finer grained. Two cups of the first kind probably contained less fiber and bulk. I wish our custom was to write recipes using weight rather than volume. I can't help but think it'd be more reliable. Fannie Farmer, you know I love you, but I wish you'd had a scale.
I'm sticking to my suspicion that the original guerrilla cookie recipe did not rely on commercial or ready-made granola.
I made more alterations that would affect the taste. I toasted the oats, walnuts, and sunflower seeds, and doubled the cinnamon and I added a full teaspoon of salt. On top of the sweetness in the basic recipe, those additions made a cookie that is (I know this is silly) too flavorful. Call me obsessed, but I still want to recreate the original guerrilla as closely as we can, and then we can declare victory and choose whether to make a close-to-original guerrilla cookie or something sweeter and spicier.
Step 2: So, I started playing around with the remaining dough. I added one more egg (hoping for the sheen and chewiness), a splash of milk (to flatten it out) and some wheat germ (to cut the sweetness with more earthy, grainy flavor.)
Step 3: I added even more milk and egg:
All of those cookies were fine. Just fine. We could stop now and have a cookie that is closer to the guerrilla than anything I've put in my mouth for 25 years. But this has come too far: I still want to see if I can recreate a cookie that makes me say, "Yes! This is the guerrilla cookie of my youth!"I want to figure out how to make it without prepared granola; I still want to get them just a little stickier (these don't cling together when stacked); a little less sweetness, more grain flavor, more chewiness, and that slightly, occasionally crunchy edge. I also want to carry a few around in a backpack for eight hours and see what happens.
And I'm still curious about what figs would do to the taste.
Here is a recipe that Donna posted on Lindy’s blog, saying that it came from her friend, Margie.
1 ½ cups oats some nutritional yeast (I used 1 tbsp—too much) 1/8 -1/4 teas. cloves & nutmeg (I used 1/8 tsp each) ½ cup whole wheat flour ½-1 cup sugar * (I used ¾ cup) ½ tsp cinnamon ½ cup soybean flour 2 eggs salt to taste 1/4 cup non fat dry milk ½ cup veg. oil ¼ up raisins
ground walnuts (I added 1/4 cup)
sunflower seeds (I added 1/4 cup)
* May substitute honey, but use a lot less liquid to get a thick batter.
Bake @ 350 for approx. 15 minutes
The excessive amount of brewer’s yeast I used gave these cookies a downright medicinal taste, but that was my fault. I'm learning. Also, as I’d concluded before, neither nutmeg nor soy flour are right for the original guerrilla.
Here’s what I learned from this experiment, though. The cookie dough was too dry for the guerrilla—it made tall, round cookies instead of flat pancake cookies. In earlier tries when the batter was too stiff, I've always added more oil or milk to flatten the cookie out, but this time I added 2 tbsp honey and an extra egg. This gave me the stickiness, the chewiness, a bit of the browned edges, and more of the sheen that I’ve been looking for. All of these things were attributes that, I think, would bring John's recipe one step closer to the original. Next, I'm going to make John's recipe with more egg.
Again, I got little holes in the surface of the baked cookies, which don't look right. I'm going to try to avoid incorporating any air into the batter from now on.
Information about the Quercus Alba/Ted Odell guerrilla cookie, which was sold in Madison from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s can be found in several blogs and newspaper/magazine articles. Some of these are linked below. I’ve compiled the information here in the hopes that knowledgeable readers will come forth to correct or add information, recollections, and observations.
I’m also hoping that anyone associated with the cookie’s production, such as anyone who worked in the bakery, supplied the bakery, or inspected the bakery, might share anything they remember. Most of all (please, dear god), I’m hoping someone saved a copy of the label with the ingredients list and will share it here.
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In a Doonesbury cartoon from the early 1970s, Zonker observed, “Even revolutionaries like chocolate chip cookies.” If Doonesbury's creator Garry Trudeau had attended college in Madison instead of New Haven, that line would have been about guerrilla cookies.
Guerrilla cookies were a dietary staple among UW-Madison campus denizens from the late 1960s through the early 1980s. Campus-area co-ops and grocery stores sold the flat, lumpy cookies by the dozen, stacked like rice cakes in tubular bags. Some remember a white paper label tucked inside each bag with a blue-ink line drawing of some sort of a bucolic scene, perhaps a cow and a sunrise. In food co-ops and in the student unions, the cookies were sold individually.
There was nothing warlike about the guerrilla cookie. Nevertheless, the name suited: It was easy to imagine this tightly packed, portable nutrition as sustenance for a life on the run.
The guerrilla cookie did not become a Madison legend simply because it traveled well in a backpack. Packed with grains, nuts, and seeds, one or two made a decent meal, particularly when paired with a container of yogurt or an apple. The dense cookie’s abundant moisture gave it a slight sheen and caused the cookies to cling together in the package. With edges that sometimes got a bit crispy, the cookie provided tender resistance upon first bite and meaty substance to chew on.
The guerrilla cookie was produced in the small Quercus Alba bakery, which may have been for a time in the kitchen of the Brooks Street YMCA and was later in the downstairs rear part of 301 South Bedford Street. The baker was Ted Odell, who is reported to be still living in Wisconsin. On one blog, Snoqueen, a reader who owned a neon shop above the bakery, commented that Odell “was a little hard to talk to and most people knew to leave him alone.”
History has not been kind to Odell, likely because he has not been kind to anyone seeking the recipe. Odell has maintained a stubborn stance that he and only he possesses the recipe and that he will never divulge it. Odell once wrote to the UW alumnae magazine, On Wisconsin:
As their true and only creator (popular journalism to the contrary notwithstanding), I testify under oath: they came into existence and were made in the service of certain principles. To release them into the public domain advantages those who exploit them contrary to principles. (Consumerism is an example of what these principles are not).
More recently, Glen Chism, a Wisconsin baker, has contacted Odell. Chism reported,
We will never get a Guerrilla Cookie recipe from Mr. Odell. My attempts at communicating with him have resulted in a series of bizarre letters, complete with interesting pieces of sheet music and sort of disturbing drawings. As for the cookie, ...he was willing to share that he stopped selling the cookie because it had become a symbol of what is most wrong with our world.
Chism wrote that Odell considers the cookie “a bad thing that should not be produced in the world,” and that Odell said that there are no physical copies of the recipe and it will die with him.
The first high-profile attempt to recreate the guerrilla was undertaken in 2000, when Nature's Bakery on Williamson Street in Madison held a contest. This contest produced the Guerrilla 2000 cookie (G2K), which is still sold by the bakery. The cookie is more homage than imitation, and the bakery does not claim that there is any direct connection. The homage cookie contains several ingredients that recall the nuts-and-seeds chewiness of the original: unsulfured coconut, walnuts, and sunflower seeds. However, it is taller than the original and lacks the moistness. Finally, it contains peanut butter and chocolate chips, which were not in the original.
The second well-known attempt to recreate the guerrilla cookie came about in 2003 or 2004. A former UW student, Mary McDowell, provided a recipe to Chism, who was at that time with the Mifflin Street Co-op, saying that she wanted to help with the co-op’s financial difficulties by enabling them to re-introduce the guerrilla cookie. McDowell said that her recipe was close to the recipe that she had shared with Ted Odell shortly before he began production.
The account that McDowell provided at this time introduced the idea that one important ingredient might have been Tigers Milk beverage powder. She told George Hesselberg of the Wisconsin State Journal that she “cut a recipe from the back of a Tiger's Milk box and modified it.” She said she then gave the recipe to Odell, who made further alterations, including the addition of cracked wheat, before he started selling his cookies. Tiger’s Milk beverage powder is no longer manufactured, and the Schiff Company has declined others' requests for an ingredients list. (I’ve contacted them and have not yet heard back.)
Hesselberg published the list of the ingredients in MacDowell’s recipe, which did not include Tiger’s Milk. Some ingredients could easily have been in the original: rolled oats, turbinado sugar, dry milk, wheat bran, almonds, sunflower seeds, cracked wheat, brewer's yeast, molasses, and cinnamon. However, other ingredients in her recipe are unlikely. No one who knew the original cookie has mentioned soy nuts, soy grits, or almond butter among the ingredients they remember. Consensus is that the original did not contain peanut butter, and finally, canola oil did not exist in the late 1960s. Hesselberg's article quoted two women who had tasted the MacDowell recipe. They said they could taste peanut butter and described the cookie as ‘slightly dry,’ neither of which describes the original guerrilla cookie.
Some recall that Odell adjusted the recipe over time. One former staff member of a local grocery, Claire,commented:
From 1980 until 1985, I worked at Whole Earth on East Johnson Street and we sold the cookies, both individually and in bags. There was a great uproar when he changed the recipe: he substituted malt syrup for either the sugar or the honey. Many of us swore we'd never eat the cookies again because the taste was so altered. But we ate them anyway.
In 2008, knowing none of this yet, I went on the Internet looking for a guerrilla-cookie recipe. I found a kindred spirit in Lindy, of the Lindy’s Toast blog, who in February 2007 had written:
It is my firm belief that Recipes are for The People! (If Odell gave it to me,) I'd feel honor bound to liberate that recipe, and won't be pretending otherwise. I don't like the whole concept of hoarded secret recipes, and firmly believe that the sharing and preparing of real food is an important human link.
I agree. Begging or waiting passively for someone to turn over a recipe that may or may not be the real thing seems to me to be unnecessarily helpless and not at all in the guerrilla spirit. A few people with decent foodie memories and a bit of experience in the kitchen can, I am sure, recreate a recipe that is close enough to the original. So I joined in the discussion there, and when my attempted recreations got good enough to share, I started this blog.
The tag line on the blog comes from a charming worker at Willy Street Coop who was helping me find ingredients. He was too young even to have heard of the cookie, so I described it to him and acknowledged we would never know for certain how close we come with these re-creation efforts. He replied, "Well, then, you'll just need to call your re-creation the 'Large Primate Cookie."
I laughed and said, "That'd work, except the original was a guerrilla cookie--like Che Guevara, revolutionary, that kind of thing. Healthy, portable, good for shoving into a backpack and staying on the go."
"Oh, I get it--because you never know when you will need to grab your cookies and run into the jungle."
This weekend, I baked a batch of John's 'Take 1' recipe, his recipe and photo here. The cookies I baked were just as stackable as the original guerrilla cookie, if a little thinner.
The first batch I baked, after letting the dough rest for only about a half an hour, had little holes on the surface. I think the cookie would have done better if the binding dough baked up a little more cake-like. I refrigerated the dough overnight and got slightly better texture (stack on the right, below--a little overbaked.) I added a few tablespoons of oat flour to the remaining dough and got the cookie stacked on the left, below. The extra flour achieved a more cake-like cookie and cut some of the extra sweetness, but ruined the nice flat profile.
