In the meantime, I tried a recipe yesterday that I thought was brilliant and would be impressive for a cookie exchange or a gift. Mint Shortbread! They are drizzled with white and milk chocolate and they taste a little like a grasshopper cookie, only much, much better.
Mint Shortbread Cookies
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons mint extract
2 and 2/3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
Green food coloring
White and Milk Chocolate chips
-In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
-Beat in the egg and then stir in the mint extract.
-Add the flour and salt and stir in until completely mixed.
-Add several drops of food coloring and mix well. (I find this works best if you mix until the dough is marbled and then knead it with your hands so it gets well mixed, but you don't get green fingers.) Add food coloring until desired shade of green is reached.
-Roll the dough into a log and wrap in plastic wrap or waxed paper and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
-Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
-Slice dough into 1/4 inch thick slices and place on ungreased cookie sheets.
-Bake for 8-9 minutes or until cookie just begin to brown at the edges.
-Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.
-Drizzle with melted chocolate chips if desired*. (Melt each kind seperately in microwave safe bowls. Instructions on how to do this follow.)
Makes about 60 cookies
(depending on what size log you make...mine was about 1 and 1/2 inches in diameter and about 2 feet long)
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*Some tips about chocolate and how I did my drizzling!
Once upon a time, right after I graduated from high school, I worked at a chocolate factory. I guess that would make me an Oompa Loompa of sorts, but this chocolate factory wasn't anywhere near as fun or pretty as Willie Wonka's. (Nor was my manager anything as lucious and Johnny Depp.)
I learned lots of things while I was there, like how to make nifty designs so you could tell the chocolates apart and also how to eat so much chocolate that you don't ever want to eat it again.
All kidding aside, it's important how you heat chocolate so that it doesn't do scary things that make very un-attractive treats. Overheating it and/or getting any water in it will make it sieze up and turn into a lumpy, sugary mess. Cooling it too quickly will cause it turn grey, and it won't set up properly. Not cooling it enough will ensure messy, sticky fingers.
Here is the easiest way I know, short of owning a warm chocolate vat, to melt chocolate:
Put the chocolate (chips in this case) in a microwave safe bowl and microwave them for 30 seconds. Stir them around and put them back in for another 30 seconds. Stir again. Don't be tempted to put them in until they melt. This will overheat your chocolate and make it sieze. If the chips aren't melted yet, put them back in for another 30 second but watch them. As soon as the chocolate starts to look like it's melting you need to take it out and stir it. Make sure you stir it really well because this may be all it needs for it to melt the chips.
Without trying to get too scientific, the reason you need to do this is because everything you're cooking in a microwave will conduct heat from the bottom up. The bottom of the chips will melt first while the top chips might not look melted at all. In fact, some kinds of chocolate don't even look like they're melted at all until you stir them up. If you wait for all the chips to melt, the chocolate on the bottom will already be overcooked. This is why it's necessary to stir, stir, stir. The hot chips on the bottom will melt the less hot ones on the top and your chocolate will never get too hot if you remember to stir it often and cook in short bursts.
As soon as there are no more lumps in the chocolate you're ready for drizzling. You can do it freehand with a fork or spoon, or spoon the chocolate into a plastic bag, snip a tiny bit of the corner off and drizzle them that way. You may even be tempted to make nifty swirly designs or star shapes with your chocolate. You little artist, you. :) Just remember that as soon as the chocolate starts to come back to room temperature it will harden up, so you need to do the drizzling in a relatively short amount of time.
The last tip is that you need to give yourself time to let the chocolate set up. It will harden again if you let it sit at room temperature long enough. Faster in a cooler room. Don't be tempted to put them in the freezer. Reason being that when you introduce too much cold into warm you're going to get condensation, and that equals water on your chocolate. Water+Chocolate=Grey, Sticky Chocolate. If you absolutely need them to be done faster, you can put your cookies in the fridge, but not for longer than 5 minutes. This will give the chocolate a chance to cool down just enough. Let them finish out cooling at room temperature. This will ensure perfect cookies.
I will now dismount from my chocolate soapbox.
1 comment:
Can I just say that you are the bomb? Love you much
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