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Dec. 14th, 2005 05:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI had a very quiet day today, watched a little more Rome (JC is off fucking Cleopatra. This series has rather a lot of fucking and delightful horses and men in leather skirts. It's all good.) The online yarn store I shop at emailed me to let me know that they were out of the one color I wanted, but since they had my second choice color, I got that and we're moving forward on the super sekret yarn-related projects. The super sekret yarn-related projects also justified the purchase of more addi turbo needles (a lust item for me) so it's all to the good. Huzzah. And I mixed up dough for moravian spice cookies which I will roll out and bake tomorrow.
Moravian Spice Cookies
(No, I do not know where Moravia is.)
4 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon each of nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon each of allspice, cloves
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup butter (one stick)
1 cup light molasses (Grandma's is a palatable brand)
Cream sugar and butter until smooth.
Add molasses, spices, soda, and salt. Mix well, until uniform.
Add in flour, a cup at a time. You will probably need to use your hands to get it all mixed in, as it's a very stiff dough. The dough will look kind of crumbly, like you have added too much flour. Please have a little faith. The dough is fine.
Divide dough into eight equal balls and flatten each ball into a hamburger patty shape. Put patties in a ziplock bag and store it in the fridge overnight to chill. You will regret trying to skip this step.
Rolling instructions: This is a very sticky dough. I know you think it's too dry, having just mixed it up and stowed it in the fridge, but by tomorrow, a miracle will have taken place. The moisture will have equalized and you will have a very sticky dough. I promise. Chilling it helps some, but basically it sticks to everything like a demon and as it warms up, it gets stickier. I blame the molasses.
In order to get the dough rolled properly thin for crispity cookies, you need to flour the heck out of your rolling surface. Use a flour sifter or similar to lay down a nice, even layer of flour. Do not neglect your rolling pin, either. Flour is cheap. Use lots. You may wish to flour the top surface of the dough if you can't get the pin floury enough to not stick. Things should be so floured that you can pick up the cut out cookies without smushing them out of shape in the process.
Roll the dough out thin, less than 1/8" or so, and cut out in cookies to suit you. The cookies will not puff up or deform very much when cooked. These are a what-you-see-is-what-you-get cookie. They hold up beautifully if you want to drill holes in them and frost them with white icing (not the tube stuff, it tastes like wallpaper paste, make the real kind, directions below.) and hang 'em on your tree if you do the tree thing. They're also surprisingly low-fat for a cookie, satisfyingly crunchy, and great with coffee or tea.
At my house, they're uniformly plain round and unfrosted, but that's because I don't do the tree thing and I don't have kids. (Kids really like decorating them and hanging 'em on the tree, so if you have your own kids or grandkids or other sources of kids, this might be a worthwhile activity to pursue.)
ANYWAY. Bake them 6-8 minutes at 375 on a GREASED cookie sheet (I use Crisco. You really do need to grease the cookie sheet.) and if you're doing the holes thing for tree-hanging, you have to poke the holes (use a toothpick or something) when the cookies are still piping hot from the oven. As they cool, they firm right up into solid, crisp, sturdy cookies so waiting until later to poke holes is a bad idea.
Because they are so dark, they can burn before you see it. Pay attention and don't feel bad if you kill a tray or so. Makes (if you roll thin) about eighty 2" round cookies.
Proper frosting for the cookies:
one egg white
powdered sugar (to desired thickness)
Beat egg white a bit. Add in powdered sugar slowly to reach appropriate frosting-like texture -- you'll want it fairly dry. Pipe onto cookies using ziploc bag with teeny piece of corner cut off.
I should point out that I'm fond of plain Christmas cookies and process-oriented cooking. I don't *do* fancy for the sake of fancy and I don't spend much time on exotic and rare ingredients... but I still make things that are not very replicable by others because the process is vital to success. These are plain, round, thin brown cookies when I make them. They look like they'd be easy to do. They're, er, not. That's why you get an involved discussion of how to roll the damn things. That's why I changed the order of mixing things so that you get a more uniform dough (the original recipe said to sift all the dry ingredients together, which I thought was too much fucking around for the level of results) and the spices are distributed evenly. You can ignore the detailed instructions if you want, but they are there for your benefit.
Moravian Spice Cookies
(No, I do not know where Moravia is.)
4 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon each of nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon each of allspice, cloves
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup butter (one stick)
1 cup light molasses (Grandma's is a palatable brand)
Cream sugar and butter until smooth.
Add molasses, spices, soda, and salt. Mix well, until uniform.
Add in flour, a cup at a time. You will probably need to use your hands to get it all mixed in, as it's a very stiff dough. The dough will look kind of crumbly, like you have added too much flour. Please have a little faith. The dough is fine.
Divide dough into eight equal balls and flatten each ball into a hamburger patty shape. Put patties in a ziplock bag and store it in the fridge overnight to chill. You will regret trying to skip this step.
Rolling instructions: This is a very sticky dough. I know you think it's too dry, having just mixed it up and stowed it in the fridge, but by tomorrow, a miracle will have taken place. The moisture will have equalized and you will have a very sticky dough. I promise. Chilling it helps some, but basically it sticks to everything like a demon and as it warms up, it gets stickier. I blame the molasses.
In order to get the dough rolled properly thin for crispity cookies, you need to flour the heck out of your rolling surface. Use a flour sifter or similar to lay down a nice, even layer of flour. Do not neglect your rolling pin, either. Flour is cheap. Use lots. You may wish to flour the top surface of the dough if you can't get the pin floury enough to not stick. Things should be so floured that you can pick up the cut out cookies without smushing them out of shape in the process.
Roll the dough out thin, less than 1/8" or so, and cut out in cookies to suit you. The cookies will not puff up or deform very much when cooked. These are a what-you-see-is-what-you-get cookie. They hold up beautifully if you want to drill holes in them and frost them with white icing (not the tube stuff, it tastes like wallpaper paste, make the real kind, directions below.) and hang 'em on your tree if you do the tree thing. They're also surprisingly low-fat for a cookie, satisfyingly crunchy, and great with coffee or tea.
At my house, they're uniformly plain round and unfrosted, but that's because I don't do the tree thing and I don't have kids. (Kids really like decorating them and hanging 'em on the tree, so if you have your own kids or grandkids or other sources of kids, this might be a worthwhile activity to pursue.)
ANYWAY. Bake them 6-8 minutes at 375 on a GREASED cookie sheet (I use Crisco. You really do need to grease the cookie sheet.) and if you're doing the holes thing for tree-hanging, you have to poke the holes (use a toothpick or something) when the cookies are still piping hot from the oven. As they cool, they firm right up into solid, crisp, sturdy cookies so waiting until later to poke holes is a bad idea.
Because they are so dark, they can burn before you see it. Pay attention and don't feel bad if you kill a tray or so. Makes (if you roll thin) about eighty 2" round cookies.
Proper frosting for the cookies:
one egg white
powdered sugar (to desired thickness)
Beat egg white a bit. Add in powdered sugar slowly to reach appropriate frosting-like texture -- you'll want it fairly dry. Pipe onto cookies using ziploc bag with teeny piece of corner cut off.
I should point out that I'm fond of plain Christmas cookies and process-oriented cooking. I don't *do* fancy for the sake of fancy and I don't spend much time on exotic and rare ingredients... but I still make things that are not very replicable by others because the process is vital to success. These are plain, round, thin brown cookies when I make them. They look like they'd be easy to do. They're, er, not. That's why you get an involved discussion of how to roll the damn things. That's why I changed the order of mixing things so that you get a more uniform dough (the original recipe said to sift all the dry ingredients together, which I thought was too much fucking around for the level of results) and the spices are distributed evenly. You can ignore the detailed instructions if you want, but they are there for your benefit.
