Monday I had a meeting, so I didn’t start baking till close to 8 p.m. I made the Moravian Ginger Thins, but I don’t think they’re as thin as last years, which seems odd to me since last year I was rolling with broken thumb.
I decided to make a double batch of the rainbow cookies, and that was difficult. You have a stiff egg yolk and butter and sugar and almond paste dough, into which you fold beaten egg whites. Kinda hard with that much volume. After struggling to mix the dough, things improved – I was gazing proudly at my brightly colored cookie layers, then I tried to flip one of the green layers onto a clean sheet, and it slid right out and pleated up on the floor, and I could only pick it up it in chunks. You’re supposed to undercook the layers, but this green layer had especially soupy parts because the wax paper pan lining folded back in and kept the dough from cooking done – but this taught me to flip the wax paper, opposite the curl it’s got from the box, so it wouldn’t do that. The cat loved it – she was on the lookout for more of that tasty green stuff the next night when I glazed the bars and a few crumbs dropped off. I decided that every year I’ll think up a new way to fuck up these cookies – one year I inadvertently added green to the red bowl, and got a dark-flesh-colored layer. One year I used all-natural food color; the green was sort of yellow, and the red was mostly pink. One year the chocolate glaze cracked. This year, besides dropping that green layer, I also divided the dough unevenly, so my white layer was really thin. Thin white layer and double batch meant that I ended up with one set with the appropriate green, white, and red layers, and one set with just white-red – so I stacked the red and white layers, cut them in half and stacked again, to end up with a 4-later bar. They still taste good, no matter what I do, and I think this year is an exceptionally tasty batch – good almond paste, and really good chocolate for the glaze.
Rainbow cookie edges on a Tupperware lid; 4 -layer white & red at the top, 3 layer green-white-red below
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[…] was ruggelach night. Well, I glazed the rainbow cookies with chocolate, and cut them up, and I made the windmill dough logs and chilled them to be sliced […]