Recipe Tue Dec 18 2007

Two Days of Cookies

It's been two days of cookies. My sweetie and I kicked it off with small, thin and crispy chocolate cookies with a slightly chewy peppermint filling that refreshed quite well. We used the Minty Chocolate Christmas Cookies recipe that Heidi Swanson posted from her Super Natural Cooking book. I changed out the egg white for one tablespoon of tapioca flour, the butter for non-hydrogenated margarine and I was keeping vegan. Stuck on peppermint the next day, I moved to the shortbread recipe Heidi posted from Castle Cookbook that she found nearby Hearst Castle. I added one-quarter teaspoon peppermint extract with the vanilla, one-half teaspoon ground cardamom mixed with the flour, replaced margarine for butter again, and halved the original recipe to limit sugar shock. I got just what I'd expected, a cookie that held together brilliantly but crumbled in the mouth. The cardamom fragrance hit first, before the peppermint vapor invigorated. Meanwhile, a friend was on linzertorte cookies from a found recipe in two varieties (photo), hazelnut-coconut-orange-zest-vanilla with apricot jam, and almond with raspberry jam. Hers turned out quite nutty, hearty and wholesome with the perfect touch of sweetness in the center jam dot.

— Chris Brunn / Comments (1)