the cookie thread

[Gary Mitchell]

^But butter makes the batter better.

[Rhubarbodendron]

One of my favourites, a recipe from Austria:

Date-Almond Kisses

1/2 lbs almonds, peeled and thinly sliced
1/2 lbs dates, deseeded
2-3 Tbsp rum
4 egg whites
1/2 lbs sugar

dark chocolate


Chop the dates or cut them to fine stripes. Soak them in the rum.
Beat the egg whites very stiff, gradually adding the sugar.
Gently stir in the dates and almonds

Lien a baking tray with greese proof paper and with 2 spoons put little mounds (about walnut-size) of the mixture on it. Leave about an inch of space between them as they might run a little.

Bake at 200°C / 390°F

Leave to cool and then ice with dark chocolate. Keep them in an airtight container to keep them crispy.

[MLJames]

Since we're going to be spread all over the map during Thanksgiving weekend, my family got together this weekend for a pre-holiday bash. We spent some time talking about various recipes, and my niece asked me for a copy of a recipe for whole wheat gingersnaps. After I sent it off to her, I figured I might as well put it up here as well and add another log to the fire:

Whole Wheat Gingersnaps


Ingredients
1 cup packed brown sugar
¾ cup shortening
¼ cup molasses
2 tablespoons milk
1 egg
2¼ cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon salt
granulated sugar

Instructions
Mix brown sugar, shortening, molasses, milk and egg in medium bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients except granulated sugar. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour. Heat oven to 375°. Lightly grease cookie sheet. Shape dough by rounded teaspoonfuls into balls. Dip tops in granulated sugar. Place balls, sugared sides up, 3 inches apart on cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or just until set. Immediately remove from cookie sheet. Yield: 4 dozen cookies.

[AlDaja]

Cookies! It don't matter I'm a cookie whore...I'll eat any cookie. Well, just don't make too many of the boring sugar cookies.

[RoJoHen]

I made these a few weeks ago when I was feeling autumny, and I'm going to make them again before I head home for Thanksgiving.

Pumpkin Spiced Latte Cookies!

They're oatmeal pumpkin cookies with a coffee buttercream frosting. Basically heaven in your mouth.

[Lumi]

Gary Mitchell wrote:

---

^But butter makes the batter better.

Haha. Didn't see this until now. :P

Shortbread takes an entire pound of butter! I fear I'll kill my entire family with just one batch.

[Rhubarbodendron]

as my granny used to say: you have to die of something, after all.
So why not make that something delicious?

I made cinnamon stars on Sunday. They are propably the most popular cookies in Germany. A christmas without them is unthinkable.


Cinnamon stars:

4 egg whites
Juice of 1 lemon
300 g (2/3 lbs) icing sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
300-350 g (2/3 -3/4 lbs) ground hazelnuts
+ another 200 g (1/2 lbs) ground hazelnuts for the table.

beat the egg whites very stiff, gradually adding the lemon juice and sugar.
Put aside a good 1/4 of the mixture for icing.
Mix the remainder with the cinnamon and stir in the nuts.
The dough should be soft but solid enough to roll it out. If it is too soft, just add more nuts.

Dust a table or a big wooden board with ground hazelnuts and roll the dough out on them. It should be a good 5 mm (1/5 inch) thick.
Cut out small stars with a cookie cutter and place them on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper.
You can easily knead the leftovers together and roll them out on ground nuts again and again. The last batch gets a littly drier than the first, but that doesn't matter, except that they'll take slightly shorter to bake. Later, they'll get just as juicy as the others.

Spread the egg white mixture you set aside on the cookies.

Bake at very low heat (130-150°C / 270-300°F) for 30 minutes. The icing shold stay white.

The cookies are soft as long as they are warm and will turn hard as stone after a day. Don't worry, that's perfectly ok. They'll soften again after 2-3 weeks.
They keep up to a year if you store them in a container with a tight fitting lid.


The dough is rather sticky and therefore many people are scared of making them but if you use ground nuts to roll out the dough, they are really easy. Don't use flour for rolling them out. It'll make the cookies very dry and they won't soften properly.
As these cookies get soft after 2-3 weeks, you must make them well in advance. Propably the biggest problem is where to hide them from your family for that long a time