Last night I made the cranberry-pistachio slice & bakes, one of my major disappointment last year – I mixed the eggs that you are supposed to use for egg wash to stick sugar onto the outside of the logs into the dough, and ended up with a softer, blander cookie. This year’s still seemed a little not quite right, too big, and not densely shortbready enough, but better than last year. I made the dough for the boomerangs, and plan to bake and sugar-cinnamon coat them tonight. I baked the Mexican wedding cookies, and rolled them in powdered sugar. And I tried out another new kind, pffernuse, and I just love them – little brown spicey cookies – you are supposed to roll them in powdered sugar, too, but I glazed them with a powdered sugar glaze, the one that’s supposed to go on the Aspen rocks – date spice cookies – from Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts. And speaking of Maida, I made her Palm Beach brownies, too – they have a layer of peppermint patties inside. She has very specific instructions, which I actually followed, all but one, and the brownies were perfect. She has a specific method of lining the baking pan with foil, where you essentially wrap the bottom of the pan with foil, tucking the edges like wrapping a package, then lift off the shell of foil, turn the pan over, and fit it to the inside. This will absolutely not work on 13 X 9 X 2 pan unless you have a sheet of foil from an institutional (or Costco) roll of foil that’s 17 or 18 inches wide. But fortunately that’s what I had so it worked perfectly. The other thing I won’t do is bake the brownies at 425°s like she says – I baked them at 375°s for the specified 35 minutes, and they were perfect. I ate edges for lunch at work today.
Dunno how tonight’s going to turn out – here it is 8:12 and I have not even started yet. I think I will get the boomerangs done, and make the doughs for spoon cookies and Sambucca crinkles, but I probably won’t make the coconut cookies. And I have t stop trying to photograph cookies at night …
- Mexican Wedding Cookies
- Pfeffernuse
- Cranberry Pistachio Slices
