Speedy Rosemary Sugar Cookies

I read this recipe by Sally's Baking Addiction for sugar cookies, and decided to make something very similar for my mother, who is a rosemary aficionado.  The cookies are super soft, smell strongly of rosemary, and are just fine without any topping-- though I think they're much prettier with the icing.
My take on the recipe takes less time than Sally's, because I skip the long chilling of the dough.  But do bear in mind that my kitchen is freezing-- if you are in a warmer house, you may want to chill the dough for an hour or so before baking the cookies, to avoid excessive spreading.





Ingredients:

For cookies:

♕1 stick / 115g unsalted butter at room temperature
♕3/4 cup / 220g white sugar
♕1 egg
♕1 tsp / 5mL vanilla extract
♕1 Tbsp / 3g rosemary leaves
♕2 tsp / 3g baking powder
♕1 1/2 cups / 190g white flour

For frosting:

♕3/4 cup / 100g powdered sugar
♕2-5 tsp / 5-20mL milk
♕1 tsp / 5mL vanilla
♕2 tsp / 2g rosemary leaves
♕1/4 tsp / .5g dried lemon zest

Procedure:

♕Line 3 baking sheets with parchment paper.
♕Beat butter until it is light and fluffy.
♕Cream sugar and butter, then stir in vanilla extract and egg.
♕Add rosemary leaves and stir until smooth.
♕In a separate bowl, combine baking powder, salt, and flour.
♕Mix dry and wet ingredients.
♕Roll dough into little columns, about half the size of your index finger, and about 1 inch/2cm diameter.
♕Place these dough columns far, far apart on the cookie sheets-- you'll end up with about 10 cookies per sheet.  The column shape makes the cookies tall and fluffy, not flat, as they spread out.
♕After rolling all of the dough, place the baking sheets in a cold place.  Fridge, freezer, or cold outdoors (covered, of course!)
♕Set oven to 350˚F / 180˚C.
♕Bake cookies for eight minutes.  They will be white when you take them out.
♕Let cool on sheets for about five minutes, then transfer to cooling rack.


Make the icing:
♕Combine powdered sugar, lemon zest, and rosemary.
♕Stir in vanilla extract, then add milk until everything is just smooth.
♕Immediately drizzle over cooled cookies and let harden for seven minutes.
♕Serve!

Orange and Walnut Shortbread Cookies

Shortbread cookies are rather simple to make.  This recipe has a subtle nutty aroma, and the sort of orange you select for zesting strongly influences the final result's smell.  If you have no turbinado sugar, you can easily substitute white sugar, but I also recommend adding a couple pinches of shaved dark chocolate to the batter.

Ingredients:

♕1/2 cup / 120g butter, unsalted, at room temperature.
♕190g / 1.5 cup white flour
♕1/4 cup / 55g turbinado sugar
♕10 walnut halves, ground
note: you want the largest pieces no larger than 3mm
♕zest of one small, aromatic orange
♕1 t / 3mL vanilla extract
♕Approximately 30 walnut halves
note: or more, depending on how thin and small you cut your cookies

Procedure:

♕Combine butter, zest, and sugar.
♕Mix in chopped walnuts flour, and vanilla and combine until dough is homogeneous.
♕Roll the dough into a tubelike shape and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.
♕Preheat oven to 375˚F / 190˚C.
♕Cut the dough into thin cookie slices.
♕Top each cookie with a walnut half.
♕Bake for 20 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway if you have poor convection.
♕Allow to cool, and serve.

Apple Cookies

These apple vanilla cookies get a lot of flavoring from whichever sweetener you use, be it brown sugar or maple syrup.

When writing this recipe, I wanted something closer to American chocolate chip cookies dough-wise, with lots of vanilla and a little bit of apple and maple syrup.  I'll have to look into making a recipe like that sometime in the future!
I confess that this recipe is not too pretty, but taste-wise, they are light and cake like.  The cookies rise high but spread apart little.  I am more fond of more compact dough, but those who prefer softer cookies would like them.  These would be good to serve along with a variety of scones for tea, or like sandwich cookies with a cup of milk.

Ingredients:

♕3/4 cup/90g whole wheat flour

♕1/4 cup/31g all purpose flour

♕1/2 t/2g baking powder

♕1/4 t/1g baking soda

♕pinch salt

♕1 egg

♕1 small apple, chopped
♕1 t/5 g vanilla extract
♕2 T/ molasses or maple syrup
♕4 T/65g butter, room temperature
♕1/2 cup cane sugar (or brown, if using molasses)
♕1/4 cup/25g walnuts, peanuts, or almonds + 2 1/2 T sugar (optional) if you add molasses instead of maple syrup, feel free to use brown sugar, but make it packed and reduce the amount to 2 T.

Procedure:

♕Preheat oven to 350˚F/175˚C
♕In a food processor or otherwise, pulverize nuts with sugar to a fine crumb.  Pour into a bowl and set aside.
♕Core and chop apple up into small cubes, approximately half a centimeter tall. 

♕ Mix dry ingredients well, save for the walnuts and all sugar, sifting if your baking soda is clumpy.

♕In a separate bowl, cream the butter with the egg and sugar, then stir in other wet ingredients.

♕Gently stir in the dry ingredients and apple, being careful to cease mixing as soon as they are incorporated.

♕Pinch off balls of dough, roll them in the pulverized nuts, and place on a parchment paper covered baking sheet.
♕Bake for 16-20 minutes
♕Once the cookies are golden brown, remove from oven and let cool under a cotton cloth.

♕Done!

Orange Rye cookies

I'm a big fan of rye flour, as well as cookies.  These cookies are very wintery in appearance, which is a pity, since Winter is almost over for everyone except for our friends in the southern hemisphere.  Perhaps I will make them once more as Easter rolls around, but include rabbits as the garnish.
These cookies have a very strong orange taste, and the honey merges well with the rye flour.  The dough's flavor would be much more accurately described as "light", not at all reminiscent of rye bread.

I intended to make a very small batch with this recipe, but the ingredients used in their recorded proportions yield a surprisingly high amount of cookies, good for one small Christmas party.


This recipe makes 26 cookies 2 cm in diameter.

Ingredients:
For the cookie
♕1/3 cup/65g rye flour
♕2/3 cup/100g white flour
♕4 T+1t/90g honey
♕5 1/2 T/60g butter, cut into cubes
♕zest of 1/2 orange

For the filling:
♕30g dark or white chocolate
♕1 sprig rosemary
♕a pinch of orange zest

Procedure:
♕Preheat oven to 350˚F/175˚C
♕Combine dry ingredients including zest, mix in honey, and stir in butter
♕Stir vigorously (or just use clean hands) to mix everything into one mass
♕Once the mass is ready, begin pinching off pieces the size of your lower thumb joint.  You should get 26.
♕Onto a baking sheet covered in parchment paper, place rolled circles of dough.
♕Press an indent into each cookie with your finger note: if you don't want to put any filling in your cookie, roll your dough out and cut shapes, instead.  The cookies are good with and without a filled center.
♕Bake for 16-20 minutes
♕Remove from oven and cover with a cotton cloth while it cools
♕Melt the chocolate, adding a few crushed up leaves of rosemary halfway through the melting process
♕Using a very small spoon drip the chocolate into each cookie's indent
♕While the chocolate is still pliable, garnish the cookies with rosemary leaves and orange zest


♕Serve cold