Tag: Cookies

Kolacky Cookies

December 29, 2011January 31, 2017

For Christmas, Jonah and I went to Salem (where his Grandma Patty lives) with his parents. It was my first real Christmas and Jonah’s family made it so wonderful. They pulled out all the stops, and even though we’re adults we still left cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for his reindeer. And it was all worth it because he left us a thank you note!

Anyway, the day before Christmas was full of baking: I made cookies (the chocolate peppermint cookies I made with Carmelle), Susan (Jonah’s mom) made pies, and she also made these wonderful cookies called Kolacky cookies. Pronounced ko-lach-key, these are Slovak cookies from Randy’s (Jonah’s dad) aunt. They’re yeast cookies, so they rise and get kind of flaky like bread, and are filled in the center with jam.

Kolacky Cookies

Ingredients

3 cups flour
2 sticks butter, room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 package active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup sour cream
1 egg
Jam (we used the homemade raspberry jam that Jonah and I had made Susan for Christmas)
Powdered sugar

Instructions

Mix butter with flour, sugar, and salt using a mixer (or pastry blender). In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in the water. Add the yeast mixture, sour cream, and egg to the flour mixture, combine well. If the dough is too dry , add a little bit of milk. If it’s too wet, add a little bit of flour. Ball the dough up, wrap it in buttered or greased wax paper, and refrigerate for at least 3 hours or overnight.

After removing the dough from the fridge, roll it out on a floured surface until thin. Fold it in thirds and re-roll it. Then do that again (the “fold it in thirds and re-roll it” part). The last time you roll it out, you want to get it to be about 1/4-inch thick. Now cut it with cookie cutters into round/square/diamond shapes, just nothing too crazy. Imprint the cookies with your thumb and fill the imprint with about 1/2 – 1 teaspoon of jam. Now let them rise for 1 hour. (During this time you can preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Back them for 15 minutes. After removing from the oven, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

These cookies were a nice change from a lot of the goodies we’d been eating because they weren’t so sugary sweet. But I liked the touch of fruitiness from the jam and that the cookies were a little more scone or bread-like. And they were a big hit with the family, as you can see from the photo below.

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies + Happy Holidays!

December 23, 2011January 31, 2017

So many of our friends have left Portland to go home for the holidays. Luckily for us, one of our dear friends, Carmelle, was still in town during the earlier part of this week. And her boyfriend, Mac (one of Jonah’s bestest friends ever), was out of town, so we had her all to ourselves. Carmelle is a baker extraordinaire (I believe I’ve mentioned her a couple times before), and so I thought it’d be fun if she came over and we made something together for the blog.

This recipe for Chocolate Peppermint Cookies is hers, and I just want to warn you all that while I usually have pretty good self control when it comes to not eating sweets that are laying around are kitchen, these cookies have broken my good habits. They are amazing. So incredibly good. So be warned, if you’re not taking them to a party or giving them as Christmas gifts, you will eat them all yourself.

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

Ingredients

3/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp peppermint extract
1 3/4 – 2 cups flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 – 2 cups chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugars together. Then mix in the egg and extracts. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt, mixing well. In batches, add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in the mixer.

Now fold in the chocolate chips. Grease a cookie sheet, and place balls of the dough (about 1 1/2 – 2 Tbl in size) on the sheet. These guys spread a bit, so leave enough space between them.

Put them in the oven for 7-11 minutes. I think we ended up doing 9 minutes. You want them not to fall apart, but you still want them to be a little gooey and chewy. After removing them from the oven, let them cool a little bit on the pan and then transfer them to a cooling rack. I advise trying one while still pretty warm and the chocolate chips are all melted. Oh lordy, very very good.

And that’s it! These are, once again, great holiday time cookies. Enjoy with a big ol’ glass of milk. After we had eaten our fill of cookies, we lit the menorah that Jonah made for me and played cards. It was a lovely, relaxing evening. I hope you all have just as lovely holidays!

Sea Salt and Thyme Chocolate Chunk Cookies

December 22, 2011January 31, 2017

Last weekend when I was in Seattle for my dad’s birthday, he informed me that he had been wanting some cookies or something sweet around the house. My sister and I were a bit dumbfounded because my dad always hated having sweets around the house when we were younger. Of course I told him I’d take care of it. So I pulled up a recipe I had saved on my pinterest for sea salt and thyme chocolate chunk cookies. This recipe is adapted from Desserts for Breakfast, a blog I discovered about 2 weeks ago, and it looks so lovely, so I couldn’t wait to try something from it.

These cookies were so delicious. After baking, the thyme becomes really aromatic. I was a little worried you wouldn’t taste it, but you definitely do. It’s not too strong though, so don’t worry. And the salt and chocolate is a perfect combination. These are just a really lovely grown-up version of a chocolate chip cookie. Enjoy!

Sea Salt and Thyme Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour
1 2/3 cups all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp coarse salt
2 Tbl fresh thyme leaves
2 sticks butter, room temperature
1 cup dark brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
1 Tbl molasses
2 eggs
1 cup semisweet chocolate chunks, more or less if you like
1 cup dark chocolate chunks, more or less if you like
sea salt

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease your cookie sheets. In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients: bread flour, all purpose flour, baking soda, salt, and thyme. Set aside. In your mixer, cream the butter, then add brown sugar, white sugar, and molasses. Beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs, mixing well after each addition. Then, slowly add the dry ingredients (think a few batches). Combine well! Now fold in the chocolate chunks.

Now, form the cookies using about 2 Tbl of dough, rolling it into a ball, putting it on the pan, and pressing down slightly. These guys spread a bit, so make sure they aren’t too close together. Now sprinkle a little bit of sea salt on each cookie.

Pop them in the oven for 12 minutes or until the edges are just turning brown, rotating the pan halfway through. When you remove the pan from the oven, let the cookies cool on the pan for 2 minutes and then move them to a plate or cooling rack to cool completely.

Nutmeg Maple Butter Cookies

December 13, 2011January 31, 2017

Last night I was like “It’s COOKIE TIME!!!!” I may or may not have a problem. Last week I was surfing Smitten Kitchen (like you do) and happened upon these delicious looking nutmeg maple butter cookies. If you still haven’t visited her website, Deb (the author of smittenkitchen.com) is pretty hilarious, and writes very informatively about the food she makes. It’s splendid. Check it out. Anyway, I wanted something easy but not so simple as just a sugar cookie, so I pulled up this recipe.

Nutmeg Maple Butter Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 large egg yolk
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg or 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg (because it packs more tightly)
1 teaspoon table salt

Instructions

In an electric mixer, combine the butter and sugar, mix together until light and fluffy. With the mixer still mixing, add yolk and slowly drizzle in maple syrup. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, nutmeg and salt. Add to butter mixture and mix until just combined. The dough will be in loose clumps. Gather them together into a tight packet with a large piece of plastic wrap and chill dough for at least two hours until firm. I’ll say that I had some trouble with this. My dough was moist in parts and really dry in others, and was really crumbly, making it difficult to pack it into a nice package and wrap up. Also, once I took it out of the fridge I had to wait for it to warm up a significant amount before I could roll it out without it crumbling all over the place. So be warned: mix VERY thoroughly.

Once you remove the dough from the fridge, preheat oven to 350 degrees and either butter a cookie sheet or cover with parchment paper. Jonah and I save the little papers our butter comes in and keep them in the fridge. They’re great for greasing pans, and they’re free with your butter, unlike parchment paper. Roll out 1/4 of the dough at a time, you’ll have plenty to work with (it’s a lot of dough). Roll to about 1/8 of an inch thick, and cut into whatever shapes you want! I just did circles because…well…I don’t have any other shapes.

Arrange the cookies on baking sheets and bake for 8-11 minutes. They don’t really spread, so they can be pretty close together. Here’s a word about baking time: If you want crunchier edges and harder, chewier cookies, bake closer to 10 or 11 minutes. If you want them a little bit softer and not crunchy edges and bottoms, bake closer to the 8 minute end. I liked them crunchier, Jonah liked them softer, so we did a few batches of each. Transfer to racks or a plate to cool. According to Deb, the cookies keep in an airtight container for a week, or in the freezer till…well, till they aren’t good anymore.

Jonah took some of these into work today, and they were a big hit. I am planning on bringing some to my rehearsal tonight, where I am quickly becoming the cookie lady (or will be after I bring these in). But whatever, everyone in the show is too skinny anyway. They need some butter and sugar.