Category: Cookies

Almond Cookies

 

 

 

 

 

Meet my favorite cookie ever.  All I need is a cup of tea, a plate of these, and I’m in heaven.

This recipe is another gem from my grandma Zella; it is simple, with only five ingredients, and the cookies have a slightly crumbly texture reminiscent of biscotti.  They pair very well with coffee or tea, and yes…I have eaten them for breakfast.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 ¼ cups shortening
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon almond extract
  • 3 ¼ cups flour

Preparation

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Measure out flour into a medium bowl and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, cream together sugar and shortening.

Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each.

Add half the flour, along with the almond extract, and beat to combine.

Add the remaining flour and beat until well combined.  The dough should be soft, but easy to roll into balls.  If your dough is too soft or sticky, add one to two tablespoons of additional flour to achieve a firmer texture.

Using a small cookie scoop, scoop out dough and roll into balls.  Place on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake for 15 minutes, or until light golden brown.

Cool on a wire rack.

Sugar Cut-Outs

 

 

 

 

 

Several Thanksgivings ago, I delighted my family with an array of pumpkins, acorns, and what my cousins Barb and Robb called anatomically correct turkeys.  In truth, the turkeys weren’t quite anatomically correct, but rather decked out with sprinkles and colored sugar to make them look as festive as real toms do.

Since St. Patrick’s Day is this Saturday, and I’m baking up a storm for Mike’s Masonic lodge meeting tomorrow night, I decided to do some shamrock cut-outs.  You could easily sprinkle these with green sugar, but I iced them with the almond-vanilla frosting recipe that was passed down to me by my grandmother, Zella.  For the icing recipe, check out Zella’s Icing.

Ingredients

  • ½ cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 2 cups flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Preparation

Stir together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.

Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy.

Add egg and beat well.

Add vanilla and about half the flour mixture, beating until combined; beat in remaining flour.

Note: if your dough is too crumbly, you can add just a bit of water or another ¼ teaspoon of vanilla.

Divide dough in half and knead each just slightly until dough sticks together.  Form each half into a disc and wrap in plastic.

Refrigerate until just barely firm, about 20-30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Roll dough to 1/8 inch thickness and cut into desired shapes.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, until just golden.

Cool on a wire rack.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Home.  Comfort.  Family.  Love.  The chocolate chip cookie embodies these concepts unlike any other baked good.  Let’s thank Ruth Graves Wakefield, proprietor of the Toll House Inn, for the invention of this iconic treat, a staple in the baking repertoires of moms, grandmas, aunts, godmothers, kind neighbor ladies, and bloggers.

I could bake chocolate chip cookies in my sleep.  They’re Mike’s favorites from my arsenal, always his answer when I ask what I should bake.  The recipe below is based on the Toll House recipe, with a few very minor tweaks.

Ingredients

  • 2 ¼ cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup butter, softened
  • ¾ cup brown sugar (very generously packed)
  • ¾ cup white sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2-3 teaspoons vanilla extract*
  • 1 12-ounce bag milk chocolate chips

*I like a lot of vanilla in my cookies, but you could stick to the standard 1 1/4 teaspoons that the original recipe calls for if you like.

Preparation

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

In a mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugars until fluffy.

Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Add vanilla, beating well.

Add half the flour mixture and beat; add remaining flour and beat until well-combined.

Stir in chocolate chips.

Using a two-inch cookie scoop, place on cookie sheets about two inches apart; I bake six cookies at a time on each baking sheet.

Bake for 11-12 minutes, until nicely browned.

Cool on a wire rack.

Cocoa Meringues

 

 

 

 

 

What does one do with leftover egg whites from yesterday’s yolk-only hamantaschen?  She makes meringues!

Meringues are simple ingredient-wise, but they definitely take patience.  Whipping egg whites to stiff peaks can take upwards of 10 minutes, depending on your mixer, so this isn’t a recipe you can rush.  The result, though, is a light, airy, fluffy cookie that is definitely worth the time.

Ingredients

  • 2 egg whites
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

Preparation

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a small bowl, combine sugar and cocoa powder; set aside.

In a mixing bowl, beat together egg whites, vanilla, and cream of tartar until soft peaks form.

With the mixer running on medium speed, add sugar/cocoa mix, one tablespoon at a time, until combined, gently scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary.

Continue beating at high speed until stiff peaks form.

Drop by rounded teaspoons, spacing about two inches apart.

Bake for 20-22 minutes, until bottoms are very light brown.

Cool completely on the baking sheet.

Hamantashen (Poppy Seed)

 

 

 

 

 

It’s almost Purim!  Time to celebrate the triumph of the Jews over Haman’s plot with some tasty cookies.  In case you’re not familiar with story of Purim, visit http://www.aish.com/h/pur/b/48970736.html.

Anyway…as I’ve mentioned, Mike and I are an interfaith Jewish-Catholic couple, so we have a lot to celebrate.  This was my first experience making hamantashen, and I must say I was thoroughly humbled by the process.  Folding circles of quick-to-tear dough into pinwheels/triangles is much, much more difficult than one may imagine.  Next time, I’ll try a different recipe, but if I were to make these again, I wouldn’t chill the dough for nearly as long so that it would remain as pliable as possible.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter, cut into small pieces, softened
  • 2 egg yolks
  • Zest of 1 large orange
  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 2 ¼ cups flour
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 1 10-ounce jar poppy seed filling

Preparation

Combine butter, egg yolks, orange zest, flour, and salt in a food processor.

Pulse until dough forms.

Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead very gently, just until the dough comes together.  Chill briefly, about 20 minutes, until dough is easy to handle.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

Roll out dough to ¼ inch thickness and cut with a round, 2 ½ inch cookie cutter or drinking glass.  Gently press the circles between your palms to make them more pliable if necessary.

Place circles on your cookie sheet, and using the tip of your finger, lightly brush the edge of each circle with water.

Place about 1 teaspoon of filling in the center of each circle.

Fold dough to form a pinwheel/triangle shape; begin with the left side and fold inward, then fold the right side inward, leaving some of the filling exposed.  Fold up the bottom, tucking the right bottom edge under the right side of the triangle, and folding the left bottom edge over the left side of the triangle.

Bake for 15 minutes, until light golden brown.

Cool on a wire rack.

Lemon Tea Cookies

Have I mentioned how much I love lemons?  Yes, I believe I have.  I also love tea, and nothing accompanies a good cup of tea as well as a good tea cookie.  These cookies are a delightful companion to your favorite tea, light and cakey, with a tangy lemon glaze.  You can make your glaze as thick or as thin as you like; mine is about the consistency of corn syrup.

Ingredients

  • ½ cup butter, slightly softened
  • ¾ cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon lemon zest
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 egg
  • 2 teaspoons lemon juice
  • 1/3 cup milk
  • 1 ¾ cups flour

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a mixing bowl, beat butter on low speed for 30 seconds.

Add sugar, lemon zest, baking powder, and baking soda and beat until well-combined, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary.

Add egg, lemon juice, and milk; beat until combined.

Beat in flour until well-combined.

Drop by rounded teaspoons onto foil-lined baking sheets.

Bake for 12-16 minutes, until tops are firm and cookies are just golden.

Cool completely on a wire rack.

Drizzle with lemon glaze.

Lemon Glaze

Ingredients

  • 2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
  • Juice of 1 1/2 lemons

Combine powdered sugar and 2 tablespoons lemon juice.  Continue adding lemon juice, 1 tablespoon at a time, until you reach your desired consistency.  For thinner glaze, you can add water in addition to the juice.

Spoon over cookies, allowing the excess to drip down the sides.

Coconut Macaroons (Gluten-Free!)

Mike and I are an interfaith Jewish-Catholic couple.  Passover and Easter sometimes coincide, which presents a variety of culinary challenges; Mike can’t have anything made with flour for eight days, and throughout Lent I give up sweets and avoid meat on Fridays.  I first made these macaroons a few years ago while Mike was in the midst of his nothing-leaven-for-Passover endeavors.

This recipe is entirely gluten-free and fairly easy to make, so it’s a good option for family and friends with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity.  Check out more gluten-free recipes!

Ingredients

  • 3 egg whites, room temperature
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla (McCormick pure vanilla extract is gluten-free)
  • 3 cups shredded coconut

Preparation

Preheat oven to 325.

Line three baking sheets with waxed paper.

Beat egg whites on medium-high speed until frothy.

With the mixer on low, add vanilla and continue to beat.

With the mixer on medium, add sugar gradually, then increase speed to high and continue to beat until stiff peaks form; this can take 10 minutes or more, depending on your mixer.

Gently fold in coconut one cup at a time.

Drop by rounded tablespoons, spacing about two inches apart on the baking sheet; you should be able to fit 9 macaroons on one sheet, and the entire recipe makes 21 cookies.

Bake 18-20 minutes, until very, very light brown.

Cool completely on baking sheets.  When cookies are cool, carefully peel the waxed paper away from the baking sheets, then carefully peel the cookies from the waxed paper.

Russian Tea Cakes

These classic powdered sugar-covered treats are also known as Mexican Wedding Cookies, but my husband calls them Nut Bombs.  One Christmas during my childhood, my mom Genny (who fully admits that she’s no Betty Crocker) attempted to bake a batch.  I’m not sure what went wrong with her recipe, but they turned out like rocks and she called them Christmas Bombs.  I must have told Mike this story way back when we were just dating, but it stuck with him.  This past Christmas, a colleague of Mike’s asked if I could bake these for her, and when he told me what she wanted, he said, “you know, those nut bombs.”

Today’s batch is for my sister-in-law Kristin.

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened

½ cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

¾ cup finely chopped walnuts

2 ¼ cups flour

¼ teaspoon salt

powdered sugar for rolling

Preparation

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Beat butter, ½ cup powdered sugar, and vanilla together until creamy.

Stir in nuts, flour, and salt until dough comes together; you may need to reach in with your hands and knead the dough a bit.

Shape into balls using a small cookie scoop.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, until bottoms are light golden brown.

Let cool about 4 or 5 minutes, then roll in powdered sugar and place on a wire rack to cool.

When completely cool, roll in powdered sugar again.

Italian Polenta Cookies

This recipe came from the Martha Stewart Cookies book.  The cookies are meant to be piped into an S-shape before baking, but either Martha’s recipe needs a bit more liquid or she gets the world’s strongest man to do her piping, because the dough was far too thick to pipe.  Alternatively, I rolled the dough into balls and shaped it into logs, then twisted the logs like bread sticks.

Ingredients

  • 1 3/4 cups flour
  • 1 cu polenta
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup butter, softened
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 1 tablespoon lemon zest
  • 1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Line several baking sheets with parchment.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, polenta, and salt; set aside.

In a mixing bowl, combine butter, sugar, and lemon zest and beat on medium for about two minutes, until fluffy.

Add egg and yolk, one at a time, beating after each addition.

Add vanilla and beat.

Add flour mixture in thirds, beating after each addition to combine.

Roll dough into walnut-sized balls, then form a log and twist it like a breadstick.

Bake for 15-18 minutes, until edges are golden.

Cool on baking sheets on wire racks for 10 minutes; remove from sheets and cool on wire racks completely.