Recipes from Cooking with Doyle Moore on Focus 580

December 6, 2006:  Holiday Cookies

A prize-winning recipe from the Eating Well people.  A no-bake treat.

• ¾ cup sugar

• ½ cup dried cranberries

• ½ cup pitted and snipped-up dates

• 2 large eggs, beaten

• 1/3 cup chopped pistachios, preferably unsalted

• 1/3 cup chopped walnuts

• 1/3 cup chopped pecans

• 1 teaspoon rum extract

• ¾ cup shredded coconut

Mix the sugar, cranberries, dates, and eggs in a sauce pan.  Cook over medium-low heat (don’t scramble the eggs) until it thickens and becomes a little pale; it should be at least 170° on a thermometer.  Put aside and stir in the nuts and rum extract and let the whole thing sit until it’s cool enough to handle.  Have your hands damp, maybe with a little bit of oil.  Roll the mixture into 1-inch balls, then roll in coconut.  Place the finished balls on a baking sheet lined with wax paper and store in the refrigerator.  You could up the rum extract; maybe use some bourbon. 

SUGAR COOKIES

America’s Test Kitchen cookbook tells you exactly how to get a recipe to work.  When making sugar cookies, the problem is getting the texture just right.  Sugar cookies should be light and crisp around the edges, but have a slightly chewy center.  The texture hangs on the delicate balance of butter to sugar to flour to eggs.  Not only does the ratio of these ingredients matter, but the cookies come out better if the dough is slightly flattened before baking.

One way to assure that the cookie dough is perfect is to use a packaged of refrigerated sugar cookie dough.  On a late-night cooking show, I saw it done thus:  unpeel the wrapper and flatten the dough out to about 6 by 9.  Then chop up some unsalted pistachio nuts and sprinkle them on the dough, mash them in a bit.  Then sprinkle some dried cranberries on top of that.  Fold the dough back to loaf shape, roll it into a log, then cut cookies that have pistachios and cranberries in them.  They bake perfectly, done in no time at all.  Afterwards, they were dipped in white chocolate made from white chocolate bits melted with 2 tablespoons of butter.  You could also try walnuts with dried apricots, or almonds all alone.

SPRITZ and SPRINGERLE

Basically sugar and butter with a little flour, a little salt, maybe an egg, a very simple dough.  You put them into a kind of press and a disc with a shape (depending on the press) came out.  Very attractive. 

A caller just made some.  The trick is that your pan has to be cold enough so the dough adheres to the pan when you lift the press.  You can flavor the dough with orange or lemon or almond; you can even color the dough so they come out green and red, and you can ice them.  The dough should be relatively stiff.  Springerle are a different sort of cookie: they have an anise flavor and are put in a mold.

Another caller baked some spritzen for diabetic friends, using Splenda instead of sugar, and they came out just fine.  She used the Splenda that comes in a big bag and is substituted cup for cup for the sugar.

Recipes for all sorts of spritz cookies can be found at the Recipe Goldmine website, along with information about the presses.  Visit http://www.recipegoldmine.com/cookpress/cookpress.html

A caller from Champaign remembers her mother making spritz and springerle.  Springerle (flavored with anise) were made using a carved rolling pin to create the design, then you would cut them apart.  After baking you put them in a tin; they start out very very hard, but they soften over time.  The spritzen were made with a press (the German word “spritz” just means to spray or inject; term can be used for anything put through a pastry tube).  The dough needs to be chilled as well so that it holds it shape when it goes through the tube.  The other Christmas cookies she remembers are pfeffernüsse.

 Another caller had some questions about springerle. 

• I think I may be over baking my springerle.  How do you know when they’re done so that they are not hard? Baking until it’s “done” depends on the oven.  You should experiment, starting with the time given in the recipe, then raise or lower the temperature.  You don’t want to have it completely cooked on the bottom, because you want it a little softer. 
• How do you get them out of all of the crevices of the mold?  Dust the mold with the slightest amount of flour. 
• If I use anise extract instead of anise oil, what amount should I use?  A small capful is generally enough (less than ½ teaspoon) for either oil or extract.

Various molds and rolling pins for springerle, along with some recipes, can be found online at http://www.fantes.com/springerle.htm

A caller from Savoy has a “fruitcake-haters’ fruitcake.”  It has dried fruit in it:  raisins, dates, apricots, dried peaches.  Made in little molds, the small loaf pans.  Doesn’t use very much flour: 2 cups with a pound of pecans, etc.   She also has a fruitcake cookie:  pecan crispy balls, cooked on top of stove with dates in butter until smooth; throw it into Rice Krispies and roll them while still hot, then roll in granulated sugar. 

A caller from Champaign described Sicilian fig cookies that her aunt used to make.  She makes them now with little black figs.  They also contain nuts and candied orange peel.  They are made in little logs that you slice into disks, so you end up with the fig in the middle and the dough around the edge.  In Sicily, it’s not particularly a Christmas cookie.

A caller reports having good luck using parchment paper to bake cookies on.  The cookies slip right off it, and it keeps the pan clean (and it’s disposable).  Another good material is Silpat, a silicon mat that you put on your baking sheet, and the cookies will not stick to it.