Saturday, January 23, 2010

Marbled Cookies...last cookie from Alice

Finishing off the last of the gift bag cookie recipes:

I made a lemon not-so-crisp recipe and a Mexican Chocolate Cookie recipe and kneaded them together using my new-found kneading prowess (I still haven't gotten a loaf of bread to rise properly...)

Alice Medrich's lemon crisps are yet more freezer cookies, but have a shortbread-type dough, unlike the cornmeal cookies.

Flour
Salt
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
Unsalted butter
Sugar Vanilla
Lemon extract (I skipped this since I was going to combine them with the mexican chocolate cookies, so didn't want too much lemon flavour...also I didn't have any)
1 egg yolk
Almond breeze (or milk of choice)

Flour and salt goes in one bowl. Whisk them.

Cream the lemon juice, zest, butter in another (Just like the Disaronno-Soaked Dried Apricot and Yam Loaf), then add the sugar and extracts. Beat on high speed for 1 minute, then beat in the egg yolk and milk. Turn the speed to low and beat in the flour and salt mixture (Still no apron. Flour goes everywhere). Form into a ball and chill 1 hour in the fridge or freezer...or don't. It's not really necessary. Sorry, Alice.

Now the fun part. Take the lemon crisp batter and the mexican chocolate batter and push them together. Fold the upper edge back and over itself. Rotate the dough, press it down and out a little, and repeat. Do this maybe 5 times and then take a knife and cut through the dough to check the marbled pattern. Not marbled enough? Keep kneading. Basically the only way to mess this up is either to knead only a few times, or WAY too many times, but the dough is forgiving and takes awhile to turn into one uniform colour, so you'll probably be fine. I know that's terribly re-assuring.

Now roll the dough into a log, wrap it in wax paper and freeze for an hour or 3 months. Or, I suppose, somewhere in the middle. Slice off cookies as you need them and bake at 350 Fahrenheit for 12-14 minutes. You don't want them to get too golden or the marble effect looks weird. Some of the lemon will still look lemony and some will look more golden, so it gives the impression that you overcooked them.

These look gourmet and really aren't. You don't even have to know how to knead to do this right. Trust me.

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