Preheat oven to 375°F.
Beat together brown sugar and butter; stir in eggs and mix until combined.
In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Combine milk and vanilla.
Stir 1/2 of flour mixture into sugar, butter and eggs mixture (no need to measure - just approximate). Add 1/2 of the milk, then the remaining flour; finally add remaining liquid ingredients. Stir until combined.
At this point, you may stir in raisins or chopped nuts, if desired.
Drop onto a parchment lined baking sheet by tablespoons about 2 inches apart. (If cookies tend to spread too much, add a little more flour as your flour may be too dry; don't add more than a few tablespoons or the cookies will be dry and heavy.)
Bake 7-12 minutes or until cookies are golden around edges. Remove to cooling racks. It is better to slightly underbake the cookies than overbake.
Traditionally, the Amish used no electric mixers in preparing these cookies. It's important not to overmix the cookie dough when the recipe is prepared using a food processor or electric mixer.
The original recipe calls for lard; we substituted butter. The cookies may also be made using half butter and half coconut oil (found in health food stores).
In recent years, lard has gotten a bad rap, because like Crisco, it was hydrogenated (to preserve keeping qualities). In the past, lard was rendered at home and was frequently used for baking. In it's non-hydrogenated form, it had about the same amount of saturated fat as does butter (or slightly less).
Submitted by: CM
