Lemon Meltaways
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I had never heard of meltaways until I read about them on my friend Jami’s blog. They sounded so light and delicious and I was all set to make her recipe until I measured out my flour and had just barely 1 1/4 cups. So off to the Internet I went, and I came across this recipe which was super easy to make.
The cookies are so light that they really do melt in your mouth. But the flavor? Just didn’t do it for me, and I found them to be really bland. I brought them into the office today and while they weren’t a hit with everyone, they did seem to attract quite a following. It seems people either love or hate these cookies. Me? I’m a hater.
Cookie Ingredients
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup LAND O LAKES® Butter, softened
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon peel
Frosting Ingredients
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup LAND O LAKES® Butter, softened
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Preparation
Combine all cookie ingredients in large bowl. Beat at low speed, scraping bowl often, until well mixed.
Divide dough in half. Shape each half into 8×1-inch log. Wrap each in plastic food wrap. Refrigerate until firm (1 to 2 hours).
Heat oven to 350°F. Cut each log into 1/4-inch slices with sharp knife. Place 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8 to 12 minutes or until set. (Cookies will not brown.) Cool completely.
Combine all frosting ingredients in small bowl. Beat at medium speed, scraping bowl often, until fluffy. Frost cooled cookies.
Recipe from Land O’Lakes.
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In other cookie news, Aunt Helen’s Mandelbrot recipe won a Hallmark Magazine Cookie Contest, and I got some really fun prizes!
Oatmeal Caramel Bars
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Have you ever read reviews of a five-star recipe that everyone is raving about it and then gotten excited to make it, because you know it’s going to be spectacular and your coworkers will just love it? OK good, I thought you have. But have you ever made the five-star recipe that everyone is raving about only to be incredibly disappointed and left wondering HUH? This is one of those recipes.
I took the bulk of the reviewers suggestions and implemented them only to find the end result very eh. The cookie is an ooey, gooey mess of oatmeal, too much chocolate (I know, I never thought I would utter those words either), and a thin layer of caramel. Disappointing. And I’m guessing there will be some left at the end of the workday tomorrow.
Ingredients
32 individually wrapped caramels, unwrapped
6 tablespoons heavy cream
2 cup all-purpose flour
2 cup rolled oats
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Preparation
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Butter a 9×13 inch baking pan lined with foil or parchment paper. In a medium saucepan over low heat, melt together the caramels and heavy cream, stirring occasionally until smooth.
- In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, oats, brown sugar, baking soda and salt. Stir in the melted butter until well blended (I used my hands). Press half of the mixture into the bottom of pan. Reserve the rest.
- Bake the crust for 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Remove and sprinkle with chocolate chips. Pour the caramel mixture over the top and then crumble the remaining crust mixture over everything (I used my hands to pat the mixture down).
- Return to the oven and bake for an additional 20 minutes, or until the top is lightly toasted (you may want to check it around 15 minutes). Cool then cut into squares.
Recipe adapted from Allrecipes.
Caramel Fleur de Sel Macarons
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I’ve done a lot of reading about macarons and the one common theme on every food blog is that making them is hard. And yet, I still stupidly attempted them. Let’s just say I now understand why these cookies are $1.75 each–they are a huge pain to make.
I had a few different problems–cracked tops, air bubbles, no feet, and a runny filling. What I learned: The cracked tops were remedied by doubling up the baking sheets. The air bubbles could be prevented by tapping the baking sheet on the counter before letting the piped macarons rest. The no feet issue I have no idea how to solve, as some of my macarons had feet and some didn’t, and they all came from the same batter. The runny filling I attribute to lousy weighing by my cheap kitchen scale I bought years ago when I was actually weighing food and counting points. (Some of you know what points are, right?)
While these taste good, the frustration just wasn’t worth it. I think it’s safe to say the next time I have a craving for macarons, I will drive myself the three miles to Paulette in Beverly Hills.
Caramel Fleur de Sel Filling Ingredients
200 g sugar
¼ cup water
2 tbs. corn syrup
1 vanilla pod (I used two teaspoons vanilla extract)
200 g cream
5 g fleur de sel
140 g unsalted butter, chilled and cut into cubes
Macaron Ingredients
1 cup blanched almond meal
1 1/4 cup confectioners sugar
3 egg whites from large eggs.
1/4 cup white sugar
Preparation
Sieve almond meal & confectioners sugar together.
Beat egg whites until foamy on medium. Slowly add sugar, and turn to high. Beat until stiff peaks form.
Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Mix well, until batter becomes fluid (lava like–slow moving, but moving nonetheless). Use a HUGE piping tip, and pipe onto parchment lined baking sheet. The batter should spread out to another third of its size. Also, any peaks from piping should very slowly fall back into the shape. If it stays a peak, you didn’t stir it enough.
Let the cookie sheets sit out for at least 45 minutes, as this forms the crust.
Bake at 325 for about 12-14 minutes. The macarons should be able to be removed from the paper. If they stick, something went wrong. (I experienced this on two of the four baking sheets.)
Fleur de Sel Caramel filling recipe from Veronica’s Test Kitchen.
Macaron recipe from Jess.
Chocolate Roll-Out Cookies
For the past couple of years, I’ve used this sugar cookie recipe to make Valentine’s Day cookies. This year, I wanted to make some for the chocolate lovers too.
I found this recipe on Epicurious and heeded the warnings in the reviews regarding the dough so I was ready for a battle. And what a battle it was! I took the dough out of the fridge and after 30 minutes it was still rock hard. I let it sit for about 30 minutes more and then it was at least slightly pliable. I had to work it with my hands to get it close to roll-able, and even then I had to roll it out between two sheets of plastic wrap so it wouldn’t stick to the rolling pin.
The flavor is not intensely chocolaty, but it definitely satisfies. And I rolled the dough thin enough so the cookies have a nice exterior crunch. Flavor wise, these are good. But I’m not sure if the flavor outweighs the pain they were to roll out. We’ll see what my guinea pigs say when I bring them into work tomorrow.
Ingredients
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Sprinkles or other sugar decorations (optional)
Royal Icing (optional)
Preparation
Sift first 5 ingredients and cinnamon, if desired, into medium bowl. Stir chocolate in metal bowl set over saucepan of simmering water until melted and smooth. Set aside. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl at medium speed until smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add sugar and beat until mixture is pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add egg; beat until well blended, about 1 minute. Reduce speed to low and beat in vanilla and chocolate. Add flour mixture and beat on low speed just to blend. Gather dough into ball; divide in half. Form each half into ball and flatten into disk. Wrap disks separately in plastic and chill until firm, at least 4 hours. DO AHEAD: Can be made 2 days ahead. Keep chilled. Let stand at room temperature 30 minutes before rolling out.
Position rack in center of oven; preheat to 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
Working with 1 disk at a time, roll out dough between 2 sheets of waxed paper to 1/8-inch thickness for smaller (2-inch) cookies and 1/4-inch thickness for larger (3- to 4-inch) cookies. Using waxed paper prevents you from adding too much flour, which will make the cookies tough.
Using decorative cookie cutters, cut out cookies. Cold dough is much easier to work with. If it gets warm as you’re cutting out the cookies, place the dough—waxed paper and all—in the freezer for about 5 minutes.
Use an offset spatula to peel away the excess dough and transfer the cookies to parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing 1 inch apart. Gather scraps, roll out dough, and cut more cookies, repeating until all dough is used. If not icing cookies, decorate with sprinkles or other sugar toppings, if desired.
Bake 1 sheet at a time until cookies are firm on top and slightly darker around edges, about 9 minutes for smaller cookies and up to 12 minutes for larger cookies. Line baking sheets with fresh parchment as needed. Cool completely on rack. Decorate cookies with royal icing if desired. DO AHEAD: Cookies can be made 4 days ahead. Store between sheets of waxed paper in airtight containers.
Recipe from Epicurious.
Brown Sugar Shortbread
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As some of you may know, I’m losing my job at the end of March. (Anyone want to hire a writer? I use my coworkers as recipe testers!) My company was acquired, a bunch of us were given termination dates, blah blah blah. Needless to say, everyone at the office has been super stressed. And when you’re stressed, you crave sweets. Right?
Right. And that’s where this recipe comes in. Brown sugar, butter, flour, and salt–it can’t get much easier than that. And we all know anything that has brown sugar and butter as the first two ingredients can only be delicious. And to make these even better, they are chewy on the inside, crispy on the ends, rich, and have just a hint of salt.
Since this recipe made two pans, I added a teaspoon of wattleseed to the second half. This gave the shortbread a slightly nutty flavor, and cut down on the sweetness a bit (not that it needs any cutting down.)
Photos of the process here.
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Note from the LA Times: This recipe makes enough dough for 2 pans of cookies, so you can try a pan of each variety if you’d like. Because they’re baked in pans, the wedge cookies will retain more moisture, giving the cookies a chewy texture. Conversely, the bar cookies will be crisp because they are baked on an open, flat sheet.
Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar (I used dark because that’s all I had)
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 cups flour
Preparation
Heat the oven to 325 degrees. In a stand mixer or medium bowl with electric beaters, beat the butter, sugar and salt until creamy, about 2 minutes, being careful not to overmix. Gradually beat in the flour, working in the last one-half cup with your hands if necessary (the dough will be stiff). Divide the dough in half.
- To make chewy wedge-shaped cookies, butter 2 (8-inch) metal cake pans and line with parchment. Butter the parchment and press each half of the dough into a pan. Smooth the top with the bottom of a buttered measuring cup. Prick the dough with a fork in a decorative concentric circle pattern. Refrigerate the pans, uncovered, for 30 minutes.
- To make crispy bar cookies, shape each dough half into a 10-by-4-inch rectangle on a lightly floured board. Run a blunt knife or your fingers along the edges to straighten them (it doesn’t have to be perfect). Carefully lift each rectangle onto a buttered baking sheet, lifting both edges with your hands. With a blunt knife, score each one once lengthwise without cutting all the way through. Score crosswise 11 times to make 24 rectangles. Prick each one several times with a fork. Refrigerate the sheets, uncovered, for 30 minutes.
Bake both the wedge and bar shortbread until lightly brown along the edges, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove and cool for 5 minutes, then slice the shortbread while still warm (if the cookies are allowed to cool before slicing, they will crumble). Unmold the wedge shortbread by running a knife around the edge of the pan to loosen the cookies from the sides. Gently flip the pan over, then slice the shortbread into 12 wedges. Slice the bar cookies all the way through the scored marks before moving to a cooling rack.
Recipe from the LA Times.
