I have a little problem. I'm addicted to cookbooks, food writing, recipe collecting, and cooking. I have a lot of recipes waiting for me to try them, and ideas from articles, tv, and restaurants often lead to new dishes. I started losing track of what I've done. So now I'm taking photos and writing about what I've prepared—unless it's terrible in which case I forget it ever happened.
Once I stared baking from the Gourmet Cookie Book, I couldn't stop with just one cookie. As I flip back through the book again now, I don't see any cookies in it that I don't want to try. This next one I baked is the second to last cookie in the book, and it's from a 2008 issue of the magazine. The glittery, sparkly little butter cookies sandwiched with a lemon buttercream just had to be tried. They're made with a straightforward dough with no surprises, and the hardest part of making these was rolling the dough into little balls to be coated with sanding sugar. The very next day after baking these, I found a similar recipe from which I learned that if you chill the dough for a bit, rolling it into balls is much easier. I'm set for next time. Each cookie is tiny, made with just barely a teaspoon of dough, but when they're sandwiched together they're just the right size.
To start, flour, cornstarch, and salt were whisked together and set aside. Butter and confectioners' sugar were mixed until fluffy, and lemon zest and vanilla were added. The flour mixture was mixed in until the dough formed. At that point, I should have chilled the dough for at least 30 minutes. Had I done so, rolling teaspoons of it into balls and then coating them in sanding sugar would have been a breeze. Since I didn't chill the dough, I had sticky cookie dough all over my hands and repeatedly had to stop and wash my hands and start again. I rolled half the cookies in plain white sanding sugar and the other half in sugar in confetti colors. The sugared balls of dough were placed on baking sheets and baked for about 12 minutes. When they were cool, the filling was made with confectioners' sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, corn syrup, and softened butter. The buttercream was placed in a plastic bag, the corner was snipped, and filling was piped onto the flat sides of half the cookies before they were paired up and sandwiched.
I think these dazzling, little treats look a lot more complicated than they really are which is one reason I liked them. Another reason is that the tart lemon flavor in the smooth filling is a nice contrast with the sugary, crunchy cookie coating. They're festive and eye catching, and this is a cookie I know I'll be making for many more occasions to come.
When the holiday baking season was fast approaching, I grabbed a copy of the new Gourmet Cookie Book. A couple of years ago, there was a cookie article in the magazine that offered the best cookie, as chosen by the editors, from each decade going back to the 1940s, and this book is an extension of that idea. It includes the best cookie from each and every year the magazine was published from 1941 to 2009. What I find particularly interesting about this book is that the recipes were reprinted as they were originally written, and there are notes throughout regarding how recipe writing styles have changed over the years. In some of the earliest recipes, the instructions were a little vague with suggestions to place cookies in a "moderate" oven and "add butter" with no reference to what temperature either should be. If you've baked similar cookies before, certainly you can figure out the process, but it's interesting that these days recipes leave no detail to the imagination. Just in case, the book's editors have provided updated notes on those early recipes to clear up any possible confusion. I started with one of those older recipes, from 1947 to be exact. It's an old-fashioned butter cookie, and I was intrigued by this recipe's use of hard-boiled egg yolks in addition to raw yolks in the dough. I'd seen that done before on a cooking show several years ago, and I wanted to find out how that affected the texture of the cookie.
So, three eggs were hard cooked, the whites weren't used here, but the yolks were pushed through a sieve and set aside. Butter and sugar were creamed, and the instructions suggest doing that by stirring. I only took the old-fashioned concept so far. I used my stand mixer. To the fluffily creamed butter and sugar, the sieved egg yolks were added alternately with sifted flour and three raw egg yolks. Last, some lemon zest was mixed into the dough. The dough was chilled before being rolled and cut into festive shapes. It was an easy dough to roll and cut, and it held its shape well. Before going into that moderate oven, which the editors noted should be 350 degrees F, the cookies were brushed with egg white and sprinkled with chopped nuts and sugar. I used roasted, salted, chopped macadamia nuts for mine.
These were crunchy, crumbly, buttery cookies. They had a nice snap, and I heard that snap repeatedly as these were possibly the easiest-breaking cookies I've baked. Once I realized I needed to handle them more carefully, I started to like that snap with each bite. The sandy, crumbly cookie and the crunchy nutty topping made these a great treat for the holidays or any time of year.
I couldn't stop with just one cookie. As I flip back through the book again now, I don't see any cookies in it that I don't want to try. This next one I baked is the second to last cookie in the book, and it's from a 2008 issue of the magazine. The glittery, sparkly little butter cookies sandwiched with a lemon buttercream just had to be tried. They're made with a straightforward dough with no surprises, and the hardest part of making these was rolling the dough into little balls to be coated with sanding sugar. The very next day after baking these, I found a similar recipe from which I learned that if you chill the dough for a bit, rolling it into balls is much easier. I'm set for next time. Each cookie is tiny, made with just barely a teaspoon of dough, but when they're sandwiched together they're just the right size.
