I love making these tiny French butter cookies at Christmas. They are not difficult, but a tad laborious. I realize I skipped photographing a step - the slicing of the dough. Such is the case, late at night, when one's hands are awfully sticky. My apologies...
Step one: Hurl partially formed dough onto a parchment sheet.
Step two: Try to persuade dough to conform to the sized paper under the parchment.
Step three: Try harder... use rolling pin "persuasion."
Step four Cut dough into strips, and alternate.
Step five: repeat, using eggwash "glue" and reverse the colour scheme. Repeat again, reversing colours once more for the final layer.
Step six: chill and thinly slice the completed cookie logs. (You can wrap them well in waxed paper or parchment, and freeze them for several months. Defrost slightly before slicing, or they will be shattery.)
Step seven: bake for 8 minutes.
Step one: Hurl partially formed dough onto a parchment sheet.
Step two: Try to persuade dough to conform to the sized paper under the parchment.
Step three: Try harder... use rolling pin "persuasion."
Step four Cut dough into strips, and alternate.
Step five: repeat, using eggwash "glue" and reverse the colour scheme. Repeat again, reversing colours once more for the final layer.
Step six: chill and thinly slice the completed cookie logs. (You can wrap them well in waxed paper or parchment, and freeze them for several months. Defrost slightly before slicing, or they will be shattery.)
Step seven: bake for 8 minutes.
7 comments:
Wow...now that is dedication to cookie baking. I don't have the patience for anything like that.
They look FABULOUS!! Way to go. I've wanted to make that cookie before (I think Martha Stewart has a recipe for it too) but it just seems like it's so labour intensive and I've always opted for the quick and easy. But looking at these makes it seem worth all the hard work. Love all the different stages of pics.
Thanks Sara & Stefanie!
The recipe is from Fine Cooking - the January 1999 issue, if I recall correctly. I find they work the best if I make the dough sheets, and then let them sit in the fridge while I have dinner and do other things for a couple of hours. Then I can get down to assembly and it doesn't feel like so much work. The first "log" is always the hardest, more tentative than the others. Those are the ones you see baked off here. The others will be a little more uniform, and I'll bake them off "on demand" over the holidays.
I kind of crapped out on the production stages, a bit. There should be another one of a completed log, but I'm not sure where the photo went. If I can find it, I'll add it in tonight.
Dawna, These are simply gorgeous!!!!so beautifully done .Happy Holidays and Merry X'mas to you:)
Those are so cute! Now you need little X's and O's and you could play Tic Tac Toe!
What a great pictorial! My mom loves checkerboard cookies, but I haven't been able to show her how to make them. They're simple, yes, but seem daunting when you haven't been shown how. I will send her a link to your site.
I like to wrap the entire roll with a layer of dough.
Thanks, Lera - Happy holidays to you, too!
Kate, now that you mention it, I'm dying to play tic-tac-toe! Maybe next year I'll make some icing to get a few games going. Fun!
Taryn, thanks! I like the idea of wrapping the whole log in dough - I was also given some on a mixed cookie plate this year which had been rolled in red sugar (see ginger snaps in the post above). Very festive, and quite little effort. The big secret is to make sure that the strips that you cut are only as "wide" as the dough is "deep." If you want squares, that is.
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