Thursday, December 30, 2010

cottage cheese cookies



Here is another sugar cookie which is almost too boring for me, but not quite. It is a nice, very simple, moist cookie. They reminded me immediately of a cookie I favor and make too frequently for my own good, the sour cream cookie. The cottage cheese cookie is not frosted, however, and is crispier and not as cake-like as the sour cream cookie is, as DbR pointed out.

They also should be made teaspoon-sized, and with plenty of space around them so they bake into lovely, petite rounds. I dropped them onto the cookie sheet as larger dollops and crunched them all in together so I would be able to make only one pass at the oven. They still taste nice and we had about 35 of them when we started but they are not pretty-they have that forlorn square shape one gets when one's cookies all bake into each other and stop at the next door cookie's personal space.

I would make these again and take my time with a smaller amount and perhaps a light sprinkle of granulated on top which is a diversion from the Gourmet recipe. Interesting trivia note from book: this was the only cookie recipe published in that magazine during 1962.


Don't forget to brush.

Monday, December 27, 2010

cooky 2



At a friend's xmas party a couple days ago myself and all the other partygoers were delighted when two friends came in with candy. There was a deep fudge and two other kinds of candy they had made themselves as well as some nuts which were coated with something. Folks really dug in and many bemoaned the fact that they couldn't stop eating the nuts, they couldn't resist the fudge. DbR told the candymakers they should have made praline and everyone chuckled because there was really enough candy to put us all into comas but he insisted again there should be praline.

Yesterday, I was doing the dishes and he was sitting at the table reading the Gourmet book of cookies and he stopped at this cookie, the Dutch Caramel Cashew Cookie, and after reading the directions, he protested that the candy process was lacking in necessary directions. Temperature, for instance, wasn't described. I believe he has had some candy making experience and when I read the directions myself I did notice that it was brief in the description. Today, I thought that might work for me. It seemed easy to do and the cooky part of the directions was just what I was interested in accomplishing after a day at work. So I started the process.


I had made a pecan pie on xmas day but the only nuts we had in the house today was a small bag of salted mix nuts which we received from Tanya's parents as part of their overgenerous xmas offering. I chopped them up and started the pan heating up with the sugar and water. This mix dried up before it became anywhere near caramel and so I added some more water and turned it down. David was looking over my shoulder and noticed with some alarm that it wasn't going as smoothly as the easy directions had led me to believe. I kept stirring and as soon as it graduated from the yellow color, I threw in the nuts and after mixing them up, put them on the buttered surface. He and I looked at them dubiously and folded the other half of the buttered paper over the top of the "candy" and left the iron skillet on top, for whatever reason. I was dismayed and a little skittish but after calming myself by doing the dishes (do I ever do anything else?) I declared that the "candy", in whatever state it was in now, would still be interesting mixed in with cookie dough and this help me to let go of my praline failure. David seemed to agree that this was a correct attitude, considering the final product and I went ahead with the cookie plan.



They came out fine. If you like a sandy-type, shortbread cookie with a little crunch, then you would love these. They are a hearty, robust cookie. Not as salty sweet as I was hoping for, but still nice. One could use a more salty nut, perhaps.





Don't forget to brush.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Today I made Sugar Shuttles

This cookie is a very simple dough which is refridgerated and then formed into shapes like the shuttle one finds on a sewing machine. I was supposed to dip the cookies into egg whites and then dredge them in the granulated sugar before baking but perhaps I dunked instead of dipped and the soaking dough mixed with the sugar spread across the cookie sheet and hardened to a mess. I scraped the hardened sugar off with the spatula and scrubbed the pan as well as I could when they came fresh out of the oven but this mess ruined the cookys for me and after I ate one, I thought, "eh."
An hour later, I find them a nice sugar cooky with that delightful crispy outside but could stand perhaps some lemon or orange zest added to this uninspired cooky.
An hour after that, I have to comment that they have a very nice mouthfeel and crispy, interesting texture and although my tastebuds are still not aroused by any means, it is a fine cookie and perhaps with some zest may pick up the shouts of hurrah. Another improvement would be to use parchment paper instead of dropping the wet sugary dough shapes right onto the buttered pan.