Sunday, March 24, 2013

Sable/Linzer Cookies


Last night at about eight o'clock, Chris and I decided to make cookies. Earlier this week I made cookies with one of my best friends, Olivia, for French class. They were so popular that I thought we should make them again to have around the house for Easter guests.



The ingredients are pretty basic.


For the cookies:

1 cup of butter
1/2 cup of sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of baking powder
2 1/2 cups of flour (plus more for covering your work-surface, rolling pin, clothing, hair, and floor)



For decorating:

Fancy jams
or good ole Smuckers

Instructions:
1. Preheat your oven to about 350 degrees.
2. Cream the butter and sugar.
3. Beat in the vanilla extract and egg. It will look like scrambled eggs at a bad hotel.
4. Fold in the baking powder and flour.
5. Mix together until you finally have something that resembles dough.
6. Roll out the dough until it is about 4 mm thick. I know. I can't eyeball that either. Just roll it out until you think, "This would be nice for a cookie."
7. Cut out the base for the cookie using a small cup or other object with a reasonable diamater.
8. Cut out a top for each base by cutting another base and then removing the middle. You may need to use a toothpick to get the middle out easily. The hole in the middle can be as fancy as you like.
9. Bake the tops and bases in the oven. The recipe I used said eight minutes, but we have a weaker oven so it was more like nine or ten. They should still be white when you take them out of the oven. Let them rest for about a minute after you remove them from the oven.
ALTERNATIVE STEP: Generously dust the tops (not the bases!) with powdered sugar. We lacked the energy for this step.
10. Spread jam on the base. Be as generous or as stingy as you like. Put a top on the base.

Voila! You have beautiful cookies to give to friends, neighbors, and family or to hoard to yourself!

Here are some pictures for our process:

Working on that creaming...

Bad hotel scrambled eggs, right?

Getting ready to roll!

Chris made the dough into a little heart. I thought it was too cute :)

Destroying the heart.

Before going into the oven. Just make sure you have enough tops for your bases!

Delicious!!!

(original recipe available HERE)

***
Jennifer Kahn is a chef from Maryland whose repertoire includes such delicacies as Ramen, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese with peas, and oven pizza from Costco. Once, she made tandoori chicken for her parents' anniversary, but that was ten years ago.