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About Rolled Cookies
Feb. 17th, 2020 01:18 amIf that sounds like a section heading from Joy of Cooking, that's probably because that's where a lot of this entry came from.
A local polyamorous-people group was having a cookie-decorating party on Valentine's Day, and I felt inspired to do some of the semi-experimental cookie making that I'd been thinking about for a while, and so I decided to make cookies for the party. The sort of basic cookies that one cuts with cookie cutters are called "roll cookies" or "rolled cookies", at least in Joy of Cooking, and I started with their basic recipe for them. In practice, that ended up like this:
The experimenting that I'd been thinking about was with flavorings, and I did four batches of cookies. The first batch just followed the recipe, although I put in an extra teaspoon of vanilla extract.
The second batch was a citrus flavor -- two teaspoons of lemon extract, and a half-teaspoon each of orange and grapefruit extracts. I also put in a half-teaspoon of turmeric, which gave these a nice yellow color to distinguish them.
The third batch was intended to be rose-flavored, but the rosewater we had was fairly weak (it was rather old) and a tablespoon of it didn't add any notable flavor. I also flavored these with a half-teaspoon of almond extract, which did come through nicely. I wanted these to be pink, so I added a tablespoon of beet juice, and reduced the eggs to one egg and an egg yolk to compensate for the extra two tablespoons of liquid. It turns out that the transition from "biscuity" to "proper cookie" in doneness seems to happen just after the beet juice transitions from bright pink to pale pink, but it was still a pleasant color.
The fourth batch was the most experimental. The main flavor in this one was two teaspoons of Peychaud's Bitters, and also a tablespoon of cocoa powder to give these a distinguishing color as well (and also a pleasant addition to the flavor). I think the bitters are a good bit less strong than the extracts, so that may not be enough for the flavor to really come through, but they were reasonably tasty nonetheless.
As it turned out, this made way more cookies than could possibly be eaten. I took the leftovers to a second event on Saturday, and a third event on Sunday, and still have a few dozen left to take in to the office next week....
A local polyamorous-people group was having a cookie-decorating party on Valentine's Day, and I felt inspired to do some of the semi-experimental cookie making that I'd been thinking about for a while, and so I decided to make cookies for the party. The sort of basic cookies that one cuts with cookie cutters are called "roll cookies" or "rolled cookies", at least in Joy of Cooking, and I started with their basic recipe for them. In practice, that ended up like this:
Take a 1/2-cup stick of butter and soften it in the microwave for 12 seconds, in lieu of having taken it out earlier to warm to room temperature. Put this in the mixer bowl along with 1/2 cup of sugar. Beat these together until they're a homogeneous mixture.This is apparently a fairly flexible recipe; Joy of Cooking also has a "Rich Roll Cookies" recipe that is essentially the same except with a full cup of butter and only one egg, 2/3 cup of sugar, and no baking powder.
To the bowl, add two eggs (approximately; I had some egg yolks left from cooking egg whites for the picky 7-year-old, so in some batches I substituted two yolks for one egg, which worked fine), 2+1/2 cup flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, and flavorings -- the original recipe called for 1 tsp vanilla extract.
Mix all of this together until it clumps together into a dough. Yes, the only moisture in this is the butter, eggs, and vanilla extract. If you miscounted the number of half-cup-measures of flour or the eggs are small, it may just go into a sort of coarse potting-soil-like texture; in this case, scrape any sticky bits off the bottom of the bowl, and if that doesn't work, add a little moisture (I used a spare egg yolk). If it's clumping together even a little bit, it will rather suddenly form up into a single wodge of dough in about a minute.
Put the dough into the fridge to chill. Apparently this can be anywhere between three hours and two days in the fridge, or a couple of months in the freezer; I left it about a day. Then roll out and cut into cookies. Joy of Cooking didn't say how thinly to roll it out; I went for about 3/16th of an inch or so, but it wasn't particularly consistent. The chilled dough is quite solid, so you will need a firm hand on the rolling pin, and possibly also to let the dough warm up a little. To avoid getting a floury dry layer to the dough, use powdered sugar instead of flour to dust the rolling surface and rolling pin.
Bake at 375F for 8-12 minutes, on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. The correct amount seems to be when they have just stopped being moist on the bottom. I didn't cook most of mine quite that long, and the result was that they tasted slightly biscuit-like (in the American form of "biscuit"); comparing them to one batch that got cooked a little more and to some fancy-bakery-cooked cookies someone else brought to the party, it seems that they have a sharp transition to a "cookie" texture and flavor at the point where they get dry.
The experimenting that I'd been thinking about was with flavorings, and I did four batches of cookies. The first batch just followed the recipe, although I put in an extra teaspoon of vanilla extract.
The second batch was a citrus flavor -- two teaspoons of lemon extract, and a half-teaspoon each of orange and grapefruit extracts. I also put in a half-teaspoon of turmeric, which gave these a nice yellow color to distinguish them.
The third batch was intended to be rose-flavored, but the rosewater we had was fairly weak (it was rather old) and a tablespoon of it didn't add any notable flavor. I also flavored these with a half-teaspoon of almond extract, which did come through nicely. I wanted these to be pink, so I added a tablespoon of beet juice, and reduced the eggs to one egg and an egg yolk to compensate for the extra two tablespoons of liquid. It turns out that the transition from "biscuity" to "proper cookie" in doneness seems to happen just after the beet juice transitions from bright pink to pale pink, but it was still a pleasant color.
The fourth batch was the most experimental. The main flavor in this one was two teaspoons of Peychaud's Bitters, and also a tablespoon of cocoa powder to give these a distinguishing color as well (and also a pleasant addition to the flavor). I think the bitters are a good bit less strong than the extracts, so that may not be enough for the flavor to really come through, but they were reasonably tasty nonetheless.
As it turned out, this made way more cookies than could possibly be eaten. I took the leftovers to a second event on Saturday, and a third event on Sunday, and still have a few dozen left to take in to the office next week....