A cookie can be so many things: a hearty breakfast substitute, a dainty two-bite morsel, or a guilt-inducing volcano of instant gratification. I love them all! Here are five of my favorite recipes, from the righteous to the utterly self-indulgent, which, if you slip into the school week, will undoubtedly be met by shouts of surprise and delight.
I’ve been making the Big Breakfast Cookie since the Silver Palate cookbook came out, and they were a popular item in the packages I used to send to the girls when they were away at school. It’s a grab-and-go breakfast substitute because they are BIG. The shortbread is a simple snack with a rich buttery flavor – and only five ingredients. The next two offerings, Chocolate Crinkle Cookies and Polvorones, come from Mountain Sky Ranch in Montana, a favorite family vacation spot for over twenty years. Every day at lunch at Mountain Sky they bring out a different type of cookie for dessert, and if our favorites haven’t turned up by a certain point in the week, we go looking for them in the ranch kitchen. (There was lively internal debate within our family about which Mountain Sky cookies deserved the nod for this post, and let’s just say I’ll get the recipes of runners up on the blog ASAP.) Finally, from Primrose Bakery in London, the Caramel Slice. It’s a sticky, chocolatey, addictive bar, and I cannot be left alone in the house with it.
– adapted from the Silver Palate Cookbook
Yield: 32 cookies
Prep Time: 45 minutes
Ingredients
- ¼ cup canola oil
- ¼ cup unsweetened applesauce
- 1 egg white
- ¼ cup frozen apple juice concentrate
- ½ cup seven grain cereal
- ¼ cup flour ¼ cup whole-wheat flour
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon cloves
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon minced crystallized ginger
- ½ cup golden raisins, or dried cranberries, or dried apricots, chopped
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon fresh orange juice
- 1 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- ¼ cup unsweetened shredded coconut
- 1 ½ cups oatmeal
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Use silicon baking sheets, or lightly spray pan with vegetable oil.
- Combine all ingredients and mix well.
- Place ¼-cup measures of the dough, two inches apart.
- Press dough into large circles and bake for 15 minutes, or until golden. Remove from cookie sheet and cool completely – cookies are soft when still warm and will firm up as they cool.
Serves: 6
Prep time: 1 hour
Ingredients
- 2 cups unsalted butter at room temperature
- 2/3 cup granulated sugar
- 4 cups pastry flour
- 1 1/3 cups cornstarch
- Superfine sugar for sprinkling
Directions
- In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy, using an electric mixer.
- In another bowl, stir the flour and cornstarch together. Gently mix the flour mixture into the butter until it forms a soft dough.
- Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate about 15 minutes.
- Preheat over to 325 degrees.
- Dust dough lightly with flour and roll it out to ¾ inch thickness on a piece of parchment paper.
- Transfer dough and parchment paper to a baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes, or until lightly golden and firm.
- Remove from oven and sprinkle with superfine sugar.
- While still warm, use a knife to cut the shortbread into pieces. (I had a shortbread mold, which I used for this recipe.
- If you use a mold, give the shortbread five minutes less in the oven.
- If the shortbread does not come out of the mold easily, give the back of the mold a sharp tap with the end of a knife. That will loosen it.)
-from Mountain Sky Guest Ranch
Yield: 4 dozen cookies
Prep time: 45 minutes, plus 6 hours to chill dough in refrigerator.
Ingredients
- 2 cups sugar
- ¾ cup vegetable oil
- ¾ cup cocoa
- 4 eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 2 ¼ cups flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- confectioners’ sugar
Directions
- In a large mixing bowl, combine ¾ cup sugar and oil.
- Blend in cocoa gradually, beating in eggs and vanilla.
- Combine flour, baking powder and salt.
- Add to cocoa mixture, blending well.
- Cover and chill at least 6 hours.
- Heat oven to 350 degrees.
- Shape dough into one-inch balls, roll in confectioners sugar.
- Place two inches apart on a greased cookie sheet.
- Bake 12 to 14 minutes.
-adapted from Diana Kennedy’s Essential Cuisines of Mexico
Yield: 1 dozen cookies
Prep time: 40 minutes plus two hours for dough to chill before rolling out
Ingredients
- ½ cup unskinned almonds
- 8 ounces flour
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 4 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 2 ounces unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
- 2 ounces vegetable shortening
- 1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Spread unskinned almonds and flour on separate cookie sheets and toast each on top shelf of oven until nuts are crisp and flour is a deep cream color – about 15 minutes.
- Set ingredients aside to cool.
- Turn off oven.
- Sift cooled flour with salt and baking powder and put onto a pastry board. Make a wide well in the center of the flour.
- Put the cooled nuts into the blender with the granulated sugar and blend until fine.
- Put the mixture, along with the butter and shortening, into the center of the well in the flour and mix until dough is crumbly, like pie crust.
- Put the dough onto a square of plastic wrap and gather together.
- Set the dough to chill for two hours in the refrigerator.
- Preheat oven again to 350 degrees.
- Butter a cookie sheet, or use a silicon baking sheet.
- Unwrap the dough, and place it between two squares of plastic wrap.
- Press the dough out between the wrap with a rolling pin until it is ¼ inch thick.
- It will be crumbly around the edges. Using a cookie cutter 2 inches in diameter, cut out as many cookies as you can.
- Gather remaining dough and roll out and cut more cookies.
- Transfer cookies to cookie sheet with care, as the dough is fragile.
- Bake on top shelf of oven until they are a pale golden color – 10 to 15 minutes. Sprinkle well with confectioners’ sugar and set aside to cool.
- Remove polvorones to an airtight container.
-from the Primrose Bakery Book
Yield: 12
Prep Time:one hour for preparation, 2 hours waiting for biscuits and caramel to cool
Biscuit Base:
Ingredients
- 1 ¼ cups flour, sifted
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ¾ cup dessicated coconut
Directions
- 1 cup (or 8 tablespoons) of butter plus 6 tablespoons butter, melted, and more for greasing panCaramel filling:
- 1/3 cup golden syrup (Golden syrup is a British product, which can be found at World Market, or specialty groceries.
- It’s a form of pale treacle, and while I have not tried this, it is said that corn syrup can be substituted for it.)
- 9 tablespoons butter
- 14 ounces condensed milkChocolate topping:
- 10 ½ ounces good-quality dark chocolate, broken into small pieces
- (chocolate should be at least 70% cocoa solids)
- 2 tablespoons corn oil
- cocoa powder for dusting
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease large rectangular baking sheet. Line with parchment paper and extend paper above sides to you can lift out the entire slice when ready.
- For the biscuit base, sift flour and sugar into a bowl. Add coconut and better and mix together with mixer. Press mixture firmly into baking sheet and bake 10-15 minutes, until golden brown.
- To make the caramel, put the golden syrup, butter and condensed milk into a saucepan over low heat until butter is melted. Continue cooking for 7-10 minutes as the caramel thickens and darkens in color. Pour over prepared based and put back in oven for 20 minutes.
- Remove from oven. Once it has cooled, prepare chocolate topping by melting the chocolate and oil together in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water, or in a microwave for one minute.
- Pour the mixture over the caramel and smooth gently over the top. Allow to set before removing the whole slab from the baking sheet, then cut into slices. Sprinkle with cocoa powder over the top before serving.
- Keeps in airtight container for 3 days.
