Hot Cookie - the Archive

Light as a feather, these cookies showcase the Brazil nut. After my fiasco of many ingredients (the Oatmeal Molasses Cookies seem so last month), I wondered if only four ingredients would be enough to make a decent attempt at a cookie. I creamed the butter, added sugar, flour and finely chopped Brazil nuts, as instructed. I kneaded the dough on a floured surface a bit, and formed my 2-inch cylinder of dough. The ridged crescent shapes emerge when you cut off each slice. As you cut, each round compresses into more of an oval or square. Help it shape by giving it a pat on top. Then, poke a finger sideways into the middle of each slice, and pull the ends toward you to form the crescents. Cookie rounds flatten as you slice them. I expected a firm cookie, like the Mexican Wedding Cakes I've made. But these are lighter. When I bit in, they crumbled like an abandoned sand castle. OK, edible sand castle. I wondered how they had stayed together until then. The texture difference c...

Thumbprint Cookies with apricot, strawberry and blackberry centers. A Thumbprint Cookie by any other name ... is still a thumbprint cookie. In 1948, these were called Jelly Centers. OK, so that is also descriptive. The dough for these cookies is firm and can be rolled into little balls immediately, although it does ask for 2 hours of chilling. The recipe calls for a 3-to-1 flour-to-butter ratio, and the equivalent of an egg (actually, two yolks) per cup of flour. Compared to the floppier doughs I've been mixing, this has a higher solid to liquid ratio. The egg yolks add richness to the recipe. After baking two batches on different days, I did not get the baking time just right. They got a bit overcooked when I turned off the oven after 15 minutes and left them in to evaporate the butter that bubbled at the edges. Then, after chilling the dough a couple of days, 10-12 minutes of baking was not enough; the dough inside remained uncooked and, well, doughy. Maybe if I'd fo...

Amaretti fresh from the oven. The editors of The Gourmet Cookie Book selected a light almond cookie as their favorite of those published in 1941.  The book contains one from each year, 1941-2009, the duration of the Magazine's publication.  This one has a recipe nearly identical to an amaretti recipe I have, the main exception being that my amaretti have no flour, so are celiac-friendly. Amaretti are best eaten as soon as they emerge from the oven - crisp on the outside, and chewy with the egg-white and almond paste mixture on the inside. The macaroon recipe, in contrast, says these are best a few days later, kept in a sealed container. I made the sacrifice and taste-tested these at two intervals. Right off the parchment, the macaroons have the same texture as amaretti, and the flour might extend the recipe a bit farther, as almond paste is the most expensive ingredient. Two days later, they are very chewy, the same consistency throughout, and the last bits in my mouth...