Star Spangled Cookies

Aren't these fun? Easy, too!


Sugar Cookies:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar*
1 egg
2 3/4 cups sifted flour
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
dash salt

* After I scraped the seeds from a vanilla bean for the Watermelon Sweet Tea Granita, I put the vanilla bean in a jar with sugar. It smells so good - sweet and vanilla-y! I used the vanilla sugar for these cookies.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add the egg and beat until fluffy.

Add vanilla, sifted flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix well. Cover and refrigerate. (Dough can be refrigerated for several days.)

When ready to bake cookies, preheat oven to 350°.

Roll dough to 1/4-inch thick. Cut out shapes with cookie cutter. I used a 2 1/2-inch star cookie cutter.

Bake cookies for 9 to 11 minutes, or until cookies are just beginning to brown on the edges.

Cool on pan for a minute or two, then remove to wire racks to finish cooling.

This recipe yielded something like 30 cookies.


I love this part...the cookie glaze:

2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
scant 1/4 teaspoon butter flavoring (or you can use more vanilla, or a 1/2 teaspoon of almond or lemon extract if you prefer)
red and blue food coloring

Before you start, place a couple of wire racks on top of baking sheets. It will make cleanup easier later; any drips and dribbles from the cookies lands on the baking sheets and not on your counters. (Some concentrated food pastes can stain!)

Put the water in a small bowl and gradually add the confectioners' sugar. Stir until smooth. Beat in the corn syrup and vanilla until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup.

Divide the glaze among three shallow dishes. Pie plates work great.

Tint one container of cookie glaze red, one blue, and leave the last one white.

Dip the cookies in the glaze and shake gently to remove the excess. Place the cookie on a wire rack to harden, which takes several hours.

This amount of cookie glaze covered all the cookies I made just right - I didn't run out and didn't have tons of left over. Just the right amount!


If you make these, I'd love to see your pictures!

Shortbread

I really get nothing in compensation for going on and on about how often I refer to Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. Pretty much everything I've ever cooked from it has turned out wonderfully.

I like, too, the fact the cookbook has recipes for things like popcorn. It's not hard to do but I never can remember how much oil and is it 1/2 cup popcorn kernels? That book has the answer.

This shortbread is simple to make, can be made ahead, and has limitless variations. Shortbread can be dunked in coffee or dipped in semisweet chocolate. It's hard to go wrong with shortbread.

2 sticks unsalted butter; softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1 and 1/2 cups flour
scant 1/2 cup cornstarch
1/4 tsp kosher salt

In a small bowl, stir together the flour, cornstarch and salt.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until combined
Add the egg yolk and vanilla, scraping sides of bowl if neccessary, and beat until combined.

Stir in the flour mixture, a little at a time, until combined. The dough will be sticky.

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.

Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

The dough can be rolled out to 1/4-inch thickness and cut out with cookie cutters, like sugar cookies. Or you can use a knife to cut dough into strips (like ladyfingers) or triangles. At this point, I like to slide the cookies in the refrigerator to chill for a bit longer. It helps the cookies hold their shape while baking.

Bake until the cookies are just firm, about 30 minutes. Allow to cool completely on wire rack.

Shortbread keeps well at room temperature. A batch makes a great gift!

More springtime cookies

It's not hard to beat a good sugar cookie, especially when it's frosted, decorated, and packaged for fun.

I made my favorite sugar cookies (recipe below) and frosted them using the all new icing glaze I came across. Love that icing. Best thing since sliced bread.



Classic Sugar Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar
1 egg
2 3/4 cups sifted flour
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
dash salt

In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until fluffy.

Add vanilla, sifted flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix well. Cover and refrigerate. (Dough can be refrigerated for several days.)

When ready to bake cookies, preheat oven to 350°.

Roll small pieces of dough into balls and place them on an ungreased baking sheet.


Bake cookies for 9 to 11 minutes, or until cookies are just beginning to brown on the edges.

Cool on pan for a minute or two, then remove to wire rack to finish cooling.

Now comes the fun part: decorating them with the magical cookie glaze.

Icing Glaze for Cookies

I love to bake rolled cookies. I love decorating them, too.


But I don't really enjoy making royal icing. It's a high maintenance ordeal: one batch to outline and do detail work, another batch to fill the cookies. It seems like a fair amount of trouble.

Plus royal icing doesn't taste good. It doesn't taste bad, exactly, but it's not good, either. It's kind of like fondant in that way: pretty to look at, not so much to eat.

This icing recipe is it. Easy, I mean, super easy. The icing dries hard enough so that cookies can be packaged in cellophane bags or stacked. The color stays true after the cookies dry, too.

1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons milk or water (I used water. I'm always leering of leaving anything that has dairy product out at room temperature for any amount of time.)
2 teaspoons light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
assorted food coloring

Put the water or milk in a small bowl and gradually add the confectioners' sugar. Stir until smooth. (I had to add another teaspoon or two of water.) Beat in the corn syrup and vanilla until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup.

Divide the icing into separate bowls, and add food colorings to each to desired intensity.

Place wire cooking racks over paper towels. Dip cookies into the icing and place the cookies on the wire racks. Any excess icing will drip onto the paper towel.

While the icing is still wet, you can embellish them with sanding sugars and sprinkles. You can spoon a bit of other colors onto the cookie and use a toothpick to swirl the colors around. It makes a marbelized-tie-dyed effect.

The cookies need to dry several hours before they will be hard enough to package or stack.

But you can eat them right away.

Easter Egg Sugar Cookies

Perfect for filling Easter baskets!

Start with your favorite sugar cookie recipe.

The one I use:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar
1 egg
2 1/2 to 3 cups sifted flour (2 1/2 to start, because the dough will pick up flour during rolling)
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
dash salt

In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat until fluffy.

Add vanilla, sifted flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix well.
Cover and refrigerate. (Dough can be refrigerated for several days.)

When ready to bake cookies, preheat oven to 350°.

Roll out cookies and put them on baking sheets. I like to put cut-out cookies in the fridge to chill for a bit so they’ll hold their shape while baking. I slide them in the fridge and then turn on the oven to preheat. By the time the oven is ready, the cookies are chilled just about the right amount of time.


The copper cookie cutters come from Kitchen Collectables. Their web site has step-by-step lessons, recipes, and lots of fun baking supplies.


Bake cookies for 9 to 11 minutes, or until cookies are just beginning to brown on the edges.

Cool on the pan for a minute or two, then remove to wire rack to finish cooling.

Start with a batch of royal icing to outline the cookies. It can also be used for detail work, such as polka dots, stripes, writing a monogram or name on a cookie.

1 pound confectioners’ sugar
3 tablespoons meringue powder*
4-6 tablespoons warm water
2 teaspoons flavoring (such as vanilla, lemon, butter, or almond)

*Meringue powder is available at cake decorating supply shops as well as many craft stores and large discount stores.

Sift powdered sugar into large mixing bowl. Add meringue powder and combine. With mixer running on medium, add about 3 tablespoons warm water, 1 tablespoon at a time. Add desired flavorings and additional water as needed.

To outline cookies and pipe details, icing should be fairly stiff. After outlining and piping, simply return any unused icing to the bowl, mix, and add more water until icing is thin enough to spread or pour easily.


Tip: Royal icing is like glue. When it dries, it’s like really, really hard glue. In fact, royal icing is the “mortar” that’s used to build gingerbread houses. So when you’re not working with an icing that’s in a pastry bag, store it upright in a drinking glass, into which you’ve first put a dampened paper towel in the bottom. Rest the tip on that and it won’t dry out.

Next make a batch of royal icing that is "flow consistency." To make flow consistency, add water a tablespoon at a time, until the icing falls from a spoon about the same way cake batter does. It needs to be good and thin.

Divide the icing into bowls and use food coloring to tint each bowl the colors of your dreams. Spoon a bit of icing in the center of each cookie and use an offset spatula to get it even.

To quickly fill in large portions of cookies that have been outlined, fill a squeeze bottle (like ketchup and mustard come in at hamburger joints) with icing and use it to fill in the areas. This is a quick method, great especially if you are making a large quantity of cookies. Be careful not to overfill the cookie, causing the icing to run over the “dam” created when you outlined the cookies.

Now we can get creative. While the icing is still wet dust some with colored sugar or sprinkles. Add small dabs of icing to the base color and use a toothpick to swirl the colors around - it will produce a marbelized look.


Use the outline consistency icing to layer on stripes or polka dots.





Allow cookies to dry completely, several hours. After they are dry, cookies can be stacked or wrapped in cellophane bags.


Place a bit of Easter basket grass in the bottom of a cellophane bag and top with the cookie. Tie with ribbon. I love this part.

Espresso Chocolate Shortbread

Recipe by Dorie Greenspan
1 tablespoon instant espresso powder
1 tablespoon boiling water
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate (plain, or a toffee variety), finely chopped, or 3/4 cup store-bought mini chocolate chips
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting (optional)

1. Dissolve the espresso in the boiling water, and set aside to cool to tepid.

2. Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter and confectioners’ sugar together on medium speed for about 3 minutes, until the mixture is very smooth. Beat in the vanilla and espresso, then reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour, mixing only until it disappears into the dough. Don’t work the dough much once the flour is incorporated. Fold in the chopped chocolate with a sturdy rubber spatula.

3. Using the spatula, transfer the soft, sticky dough to a gallon-size zipper-lock plastic bag. Put the bag on a flat surface, leaving the top open, and roll the dough into a 9 x 10 1/2 inch rectangle that’s 1/4 inch thick. As you roll, turn the bag occasionally and lift the plastic from the dough so it doesn’t cause creases. When you get the right size and thickness, seal the bag, pressing out as much air as possible, and refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours, or for up to 2 days.

4. Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

5. Put the plastic bag on a cutting board and slit it open. Turn the firm dough out onto the board (discard the bag) and, using a ruler as a guide and a sharp knife, cut the dough into 1 1/2-inch squares. Transfer the squares to the baking sheets and carefully prick each one twice with a fork, gently pushing the tines through the cookies until they hit the sheet.

6. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and front to back at the midway point. The shortbreads will be very pale–they shouldn’t take on much color. Transfer the cookies to a rack.

7. If you’d like, dust the cookies with confectioners’ sugar while they are still hot. Cool the cookies to room temperature before serving.

Makes 32 cookies

Black & Orange Cookies

Or brown and orange cookies.

Some people call these cookies monkey poop or cat poo. In our house, we call them "those chocolate things that you cook on the stove with the peanut butter and oatmeal."

Black & Orange Cookies is catchier, don't you think?

To make:

2 cups sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1/2 cup milk (I use 1%)
1 stick butter

Combine in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Bring mixture to boil. Continue to boil, stirring, for one minute. Remove from heat and add:

1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup peanut butter (crunchy or smooth)
2 cups oats (See - they have oats. They're totally healthy.)

Combine well and drop by teaspoons onto wax paper or parchment paper or silpat. The mixture will be soft and wet (like monkey poo!) and will set up in a few minutes.

For Halloween, I used orange candy melts.


Craft stores and large discount stores carry them. They are orange-colored, not orange-flavored.

Put about 1/2 cup in a microwave-safe bowl.


Heat in the microwave until melted. You know your microwave best; mine took about a minute at half power, stopping every 20 seconds or so to stir well.

Ladle the melted candy in a zip-top bag and snip the very end of one corner. Drizzle the candy onto cookies and let sit.



If kids will be at the Thanksgiving table, these would make a good dessert as long as they can eat peanut butter. Kids may prefer monkey poo cookies to pumpkin pie. You could drizzle cookies with red, yellow, and orange candy melts for a fall look. Or top with sprinkles while the cookies are still wet. Go crazy with it.

Icebox Cookie: Orange Sable Cookies

From Martha Stewart. Hers are much prettier than mine. That's okay; they all taste good.

1 1/4 cups whole blanched almonds
1 cup confectioners' sugar
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
3 tablespoons finely grated orange zest (2 to 3 oranges)
1 large egg
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed orange juice
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sanding or granulated sugar, for rolling

Place almonds and confectioners' sugar in the bowl of a food processor. Process until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal; set aside.

Place butter and zest in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on medium until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. On low, add almond mixture; beat until combined, 10 to 15 seconds. Add egg and orange juice; combine. Add flour; combine.

Place two 12-by-16-inch pieces of parchment on a clean work surface. Divide dough in half. Form a rough log with each half; place on parchment. Fold parchment over dough; use a ruler to roll and press dough into 1 1/2-inch-diameter logs. Wrap. Chill for at least 3 hours.

If desired, finely chop candied ginger and put in a wide, shallow container. Place chilled cookie dough roll in the ginger and roll, pressing ginger into the dough. I also added a sprinkle of crunchy raw sugar, too.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment. Spread sanding sugar in a baking pan. Unwrap logs; roll in sugar to coat. Cut into scant 1/4-inch-thick rounds; place on sheets, 1 inch apart. Bake until edges turn golden, about 15 minutes, rotating halfway through. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Bake or freeze remaining dough.

Store baked cookies in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

Rose's Crescents

These cookies may not be the showiest cookies on the table. No sparkles or glittering red and green sugar. But one bite...

They are delicate and melt in the mouth. I wish I had one right now.

After baking they do a little roll in a bowl of superfine sugar with a hint of cinnamon is perfect. I had thought about adding a bit of freshly grated nutmeg to the mixture but didn't; the first time I make a recipe I like to go exactly by the directions before I add my own touches and twists. I'm glad I didn't add anything else - it was just right.

Recipe from Rose's Christmas Cookies, a fabulous cookbook.


Cookies:
2/3 cup slivered blanched almonds
1/3 cup sugar
2 sticks (1 cup) softened unsalted butter
1 2/3 cups of flour

Topping:
1/2 cup superfine sugar*
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

*Make your own superfine sugar by whirling granulated sugar in the food processor a bit.

Combine the sugar and cinnamon in a shallow bowl and set aside.

Soften the butter. Grind the almonds very finely. In a large mixing bowl, combine the almonds, butter, and sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Stir together the flour and salt and beat them into the mixture on low speed until incorporated.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Divide the dough into 8 portions. Work with 1 section at a time, keeping the remainder of the dough refrigerated. Knead the dough between floured hands until malleable. Pinch off a portion and roll it into a 3/4-inch round ball. On a lightly floured surface roll each ball into a cylinder with tapered ends, about 3 inches long by 1/2-inch thick. Form each cylinder into a crescent shape and place on a cookie sheet about 1 inch apart.

Bake cookies for 14 to 16 minutes, rotating cookie sheets halfway through to ensure even baking.

Cool the cookies on sheets for 10 minutes. While still warm, lift cookies from the baking sheet and dip them, one at a time, in the cinnamon mixture, turning gently to coat all over. Finish cooling the cookies on wire racks.

Cookies keep 1 month at room temperature, 1 month refrigerated, or several months frozen.

Makes 5 dozen.

Chocolate Mocha Cookies

I make these year 'round although Christmas seems especially appropriate for cookies.

What I like about these is that you can mix up the dough, shape into a log and slice and bake the cookies or you can roll out the dough and use cookie cutters. This cookie dough works with you. You can pinch off a bit, shape it into a ball, and roll it in sugar before placing it on the baking pan and gently smooshing it down.

2 cups sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 eggs
3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup cocoa
4 tablespoons instant coffee
heaping 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Cream together sugar, butter, vanilla, and eggs in a medium bowl until light and fluffy. Stir in remaining ingredients. Cover and refrigerate at least one hour or overnight.

If you’d like to make your own slice and bake cookies, after dough is well chilled, shape into a log shape, about two inches or so in diameter. Dust lightly with flour, wrap in aluminum foil and place in a freezer zip-top bag.

When ready to bake, slice off rounds about 1/4-inch thick and place on ungreased baking sheet. No need to thaw first.

Dough can also be rolled out on a lightly floured surface and cut out with cookie cutters.)

Preheat oven to 375°.

Bake for about 8 minutes or until set. Cool slightly on baking sheet; remove and cool completely on wire rack.

Sugar Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
4 cups sifted flour
1 tablespoon vanilla
4 scant cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
dash salt

In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until fluffy.

Add vanilla, sifted flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix well.

Cover and refrigerate. (Dough can be refrigerated for several days.)

When ready to bake cookies, preheat oven to 350°.


Working with small portion of dough at a time, roll out on floured board until about 1/4-inch thick.


Dip cutter in flour and cut out shapes.


Place on ungreased baking sheets


and refrigerate while working on the next batch; this will keep cookies from spreading, making their shapes more defined. (For best results, put cookies of the same size on each sheet.)

Bake cookies for 9 to 11 minutes, or until cookies are just beginning to brown on the edges.

Cool on pan for a minute or two, then remove to wire rack to finish cooling.

We decorated these cookies one night last week. We were aiming for fun and for tasty cookies, so how they looked wasn't so much important.

That's why we used a simple buttercream rather than royal icing, which turns out gorgeous cookies but doesn't taste as good as buttercream and wouldn't have been nearly as much for a seven year old.

I creamed a stick of softened butter and added a few cups - about one box - of confectioner's sugar, then a teaspoon or two of vanilla. I love vanilla so you may not need that much. Then add water or milk (I used water because the faucet was closer than the fridge), a tablespoon at a time until it's the consistency you'd want on your sugar cookies.

Keetha's Classic Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

You may remember from your readings here that we promised the recipe of the sugar cookies we made and decorated to take to our friends who welcomed us into their tailgates with open arms. Some of you dear readers may remember seeing the recipe here, with a slight variation.

When your ready to bake your cookies, begin working with a small ball of dough at a time. Keep the rest of it in the fridge as it will be easier to work with when it's cold. Lightly flour your workspace and rolling pin. Roll out the dough slowly until it's about 1/4" thick. Keetha tells me that anything thicker and your cookies run the risk of not cooking all the way through. Dip your cookie cutter into flour, and cut away! Try to put the same size cookies together on the same baking sheet for the best results. Finally, bake the cookies at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.

To decorate the cookies, we mixed up a batch of royal icing.

1 pound of confectioners' sugar
3 tablespoons of meringue powder*
4-6 tablespoons of warm water
2 teaspoons of flavoring, if desired (we use vanilla, but you could use almond, lemon, butter, etc...)

*meringue powder can be found at cake decorating supply shops or heaven forbid, large discount stores!.


(Sorry about the photo, Blogger is being difficult!!! Just cock your head to the right and MAYBE you can get the picture!)

Start by sifting the confectioners' sugar into a mixing bowl. Add the meringue powder and mix thoroughly. Set your mixer on medium speed, and add the warm water 1 tablespoon at a time. Then add any flavorings that you may wish to use, and any more warm water to get the consistancy that you need. The icing should be fairly thick for outlining, but have somewhat of a thinner consistancy for large fill areas.

Start off with the outlining. This will create sort of a damn for the fill area, if you chose to do so. Keetha suggests using squeeze bottles (like those neat, old soda fountain ketchup & mustard bottles) to ice as they are a little easier to handle for those of us (and by that I mean ME!) that have trouble using a piping bag. The icing can be stored at room temperature for a pretty good while as long as the container is sealed very well.

Let your decorated cookies dry completely, and then you can wrap them in small celophane bags and tie with a nice colored ribbon. Something to this effect...


(This photo used courtesy of Write Kudzu...Thanks Kiddo!)

We had a great time in Starkville this past weekend, and already have plans set for this weeks game! Stay tuned in to the Kudzu Kitchen and Write Kudzu for updates about GAMEDAY! GO DAWGS!!

PS... These recipes and MUCH, MUCH more can be found in Keetha's books, Culinary Kudzu and More Culinary Kudzu. Go on over to Pecan Street Press and take a look!