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Believe it or not I had never made cookies from scratch until now. I decided to give it a try when my wife asked me to make something we could give to some new neighbors that just moved in up the street. I found this recipe in the book I have been using for my cakes and other tasty treats.
For this one, you will need:
- 2-1/3 cups flour
- 1 tbsp double acting baking powder
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
- 3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp. sugar
- 1 tsp salt (I will admit I forgot to add this when I made it)
- 5 large egg yolks, lightly beaten
Sift the flour and baking powder together and set aside. Cream the butter until smooth, then add sugar in a slow stream, then the salt (that I forgot) and beat until the mixture is light, pale and fluffy. Add the yolks and beat to incorporate, then fold in the dry ingredients. That is it. Super easy.
Then you roll the dough into tubes about 1.5 inches in diameter and wrap them in plastic and put in the fridge for at least four hours. Afterward, you cut discs of the dough 1/3-1/2 inch in thickness. Sorry for out of focus, Carl style photo here.
Then you put a disc into a muffin tin and bake at 325 for 13-15 minutes.
Or so the directions say. And you are supposed to get these, so the photo in the book says.
But my cookies just were NOT getting done. I kept putting them back in over and over until a half hour later I got these burned up hockey pucks. My first sacrifice to the cookie gods - into the trash they went. Sigh.
So I tried to go with a thinner slice, closer to the 1/3 inch mark than the 1/2 inch mark. I went the recommended 13-15 minutes, but they were under done. Not wanting to give up on this, I did the same thing (1/3 inch slice) and went 16 minutes - perfect. These are wonderful little cookies and turned out pretty damned well after I tweaked the recipe. I suppose there are always differences in the humidity of the room you are working in and the oven you have. Once I dialed in the recipe, I was able to start banging these puppies out. I was pretty satisfied that I figured out by trial and error what I needed to do to make the recipe work.
I ended up with about double the amount you see above, plenty to give to the neighbors and enough to have around at the house for the wife and kids. They won't last long. I wonder if any will even make it over to the neighbors - but that is not my department.
2 comments:
The cookies look great. Buy how does the name "Breton Sand" come in? Is it a place? Odd name.
Stop pickin' on Carl's photos. He's getting a lot better : )
Sand - because the bottom of the cookies (I should have taken a photo) look like sand.
Breton - is a word used to describe a person from Brittany, in France. I assume either the author of the book I am using is either from there or got his training in France at some point.
As far as Carl's photos go, yes they are improving after almost half a decade of me imploring him to read the manuals. So a little abuse here and there is more than justified. And he is on vacation anyways so this is a perfect time to heap some abuse his way ;)
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