042211Peanut Butter Whoopie Pies

These cookies are as good as they look! You can't go wrong with chocolate and peanut butter - they're meant to be together!! It's amazing how smooth the cookie tops come out - the dough is more like a thick batter. The filling is rich, smooth and light. One cookie is quite a serving - excellent with milk or coffee. I have to say, this recipe is high on my list of favorite recipes in Martha's Cookie collection! A keeper soon to be repeated...

041711Maple-Pecan Shortbread

This shortbread cookie is very yummy - it's not too sweet and the toasted pecan flavor comes bursting through. The turbinado sugar adds a nice sparkle and just the right amount of sweetness and crunch. The dough is easy to roll-out and I actually made ~5dozen cookies ?? The recipe predicted only 24 cookies and so I thought I must have rolled the dough out too thin. But, I think they came out a good height -go figure. If you're looking to add a little twist to your shortbread cookies, this recipe does the trick.

041011Alfajores de Dulce de Leche

OMG!! These cookies are so good - there's a bit of airiness to the buttery cookies, begging for the sweet, decadent dulce de leche. Instead of the simple (but time consuming - 5hrs to cook) Dulce de Leche recipe, I used Williams and Sonoma's Chocolate Dulce De Leche - can we say YUMMMM! Making the dough was a cinch - everything goes in the food processor. I'm not a big fan of "cookie cutter" recipes but these were well worth the effort. It took a while to sandwich all 5-6 dozen cookies with the dulce de leche - much more than the recipe predicted. The cookies don't spread in the oven, and so I was able to put up to 3 dozen on a single baking sheet. Delicious and nice presentation!

040311 Italian Polenta Cookies

These cookies were hard to pipe into the "S" shape - as called by the recipe. I didn't have a 7/16inch star tip so I cut the tip of a pastry bag (disposable, of course) - even with an opening larger than 7/16" it required a great deal of squeezing and muscle to form the cookies. The recipe called for either polenta or cornmeal, where I used the latter. And, I used a little bit of lemon juice instead of 1T of lemon zest (it was cold and I didn't want to go pick lemons in the backyard at night). My baking pans were too big to fit in my freezer, so I couldn't chill the cookies prior to baking. Considering all the improvising that occurred, these cookies turned out to have a wonderful flavor and texture!! I would seriously consider making this recipe again using polenta and lemon zest....