cookies

Persimmon oatmeal cookies.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

I have had a headache for three days. THREE DAYS. I think it’s the combination of too much to eat this past weekend and too little sleep, and whenever I can’t sleep my arthritis gets uppity and my mind races and all of a sudden I’m imagining worst-case scenarios like the student loan people beating down the door and shooting my cat because they want Nick and I to pay a combined total of $998 per month in loan payments so we’re always coming up short because that is too many dollars and they would shoot the cat, I just know. So, to counter that, I have been taking melatonin by the handful to get sleep, and Nick says that you really can take too much of that.

So, sleeplessness, oversleep, chemicals, joint pain, and never enough caffeine, and my head hurts. Also, logic has gone right out the window. With it, focus and discipline. Also, I’m a complainosaurus.

But because of all this, and because I had nothing to do tonight, I made cookies, and now I am happy and the universe promises to right itself. Tonight I will get a good sleep. Or I will smother the cat in a valiant attempt at saving her from my bad dreams. Either way, the apartment will smell like cookies!
These are made with persimmons, because we get a lot of those around here when they’re in season. Peel them first with a paring knife, and mince them fine. Their mindblowing sweetness is tempered here, balanced with salt and spice, and they make the cookies chewy and delicious. They’re crisp outside, and soft in the centre – all good stuff here.

Persimmon oatmeal cookies

(Adapted from Fannie Farmer. Makes about three dozen.)

  • 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
  • 1 tbsp. fancy molasses
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup finely chopped persimmon
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp. powdered ginger
  • 1/2 tsp. ground cloves
  • 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
  • 2 cups uncooked oatmeal (not the instant kind)

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Cream together butter, sugar, and molasses. Add egg, and beat until thoroughly combined. Add persimmon.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg. Pour gradually into wet ingredients, beating all the while. Add oatmeal slowly, and beat until well mixed.

Drop by tablespoons onto greased cookie sheets.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until slightly puffed and golden. Cool on racks. Eat almost immediately.

The autumnal spiciness of these will make any kitchen smell just wonderful, curing headaches and cookie cravings. I’m taking a plate of these to bed, where I’ve got a cold glass of milk waiting with a book by MFK Fisher, and by tomorrow I expect I’ll be a superhero. You too?

A little trip requires a lot of cleaning and I prefer baking so I made cookies and the apartment is still gross. But carrots! Cookies! Carrot cookies!

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

Tremendous news – we’re going on vacation! A short one, but it counts because there are planes involved (several … which is only glamourous if I don’t tell you that we have layovers … on a trip from Vancouver to San Francisco) and because we are staying in hotel rooms and not tents. I all-caps HATE tents. At the first sight of springtime sun, Nick gets all goobery-eyed at the idea of driving to the middle of nowhere and sleeping in a tent we borrow from one of our sets of parents, and subsisting on hot dogs and box-wine while sitting in busted folding chairs for four days. Which? I’ll pass on, thanksverymuch. The last time we went camping we ended up parked beside the highway and Nick fell asleep under a van in nothing but his underpants and running shoes, and at that point I didn’t even care if he got eaten by bears. We weren’t married yet, so I didn’t have a lot invested in his NOT being eaten by wildlife, and that weekend he had it coming.

But the important thing is not that Nick and I are charmingly, recklessly dysfunctional, or that since it’s my blog I can make him look like the irresponsible one and you have only my word to go on. No. The important thing is that we (me, Nick, and Paul) are going to San Francisco. And also Las Vegas. Because my friend Theresa is flying in from Australia with her boyfriend, and we’re going to have the most fun ever.

And I’ve digressed again, because this isn’t a post to brag to you about my exciting, margarita-filled journey or my tumultuous, margarita-filled marriage. I’m really here to talk to you about cookies, because I thought it would probably be wise to clean out the fridge before we go, and I always get so distracted doing that. Out came the carrots and a lime, and I thought about how nice cardamom would be with all of that, and before I knew it, the butter was unwrapped and the oven was preheating and I’d forgotten why I’d opened the fridge door in the first place.

So these are carrot cookies, but because I was procrastinating, they’re different from your typical carrot cookies. The carrots are not grated as if you were making carrot cake; they’re puréed. The cookies are soft, so fluffy – like little cookie cakes, or sweet tiny scones. I’m going to eat twelve of them with tea for breakfast. There are no awful raisins crammed in, and the spices aren’t autumnal either. Not a whiff of cinnamon in the batch. And forget about cloves! These are carrot cookies for the bunny rabbits – all spring and POP! and there is no way I’m sweeping the kitchen floor tonight.

Carrot cookies

(Makes about 24 cookies.)

  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 1/2 cup butter (at room temperature)
  • 1 lb. carrots, cooked and puréed (you should end up with 1 cup of purée)
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1 tsp. lime zest
  • 1 tsp. lime juice
  • 1 tsp. cardamom
  • 1/2 cup sugar, for rolling

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

Cream together sugar and butter until fluffy. Add carrot, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and mix well. Beat in eggs, vanilla, lime zest, lime juice, and cardamon.

Stir flour mixture into carrot mixture and beat until thoroughly combined. What you will end up with will look like a thick cake batter and a very moist and sticky cookie dough. Place in fridge for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Roll chilled dough into one-inch balls, dropping and rolling each ball in sugar. Place each ball on a buttered cookie sheet, about an inch apart, and press with the tines of a fork. Repeat, 12 to 24 times.

Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, until puffed and lightly browned. I’d say golden, but these are already orange. I wish I could show you how orange.

Eat as many as you can hot from the oven. Or, cool on a wire rack, and store in a sealed container.

Peanut butter and white chocolate shortbread cookies.

~ wellfedemily ~ 7 Comments

It’s my birthday (tomorrow)! Exciting news, I know. I’m now 27, which is three years older than my mom is in that picture, which makes me feel fairly unproductive and much less like an adult.

Fortunately, those feelings are easily forgotten by eating cookies, so I made myself some special birthday cookies and then stuffed my face with them. Being a grown-up means that I can have all the cookies I want, which is the best but most often overlooked part of adulthood. And tomorrow we are celebrating my birthday by driving two hours to Hope for pie, and then to a dodgy casino across the border for $1.75 pints and $3.00 blackjack. Adulthood can be kind of awesome if you don’t take it very seriously.

Peanut butter and white chocolate shortbread cookies

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy, whatever you prefer)
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup white chocolate chips, melted (if you don’t like white chocolate or simply prefer dark, use the same amount of semi-sweet chocolate chips)
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour

This is the kind of recipe for which you need to have some sort of electric mixer or food processor. You can do without, I suppose, but that would be an incredible pain in the ass. The thing about shortbread, especially shortbread made with granulated sugars (including brown sugar) is that you literally have to beat the hell out of it. And not for a minute or two either – I’m talking 25 to 30 minutes, so that the sugar rips tiny little tears into the butter before dissolving back into it.

Yes. Now. Cream together the butter, the peanut butter, and the brown sugar. Meanwhile, melt white chocolate in the microwave or in a bowl over a pot of simmering water on the stove. Once melted, pour into the butter-sugar mixture, and continue beating. Beat for 25 to 30 minutes, total.

After what will seem like forever, especially if your mixer needs to have its engine WD40d or something because it howls like it’s been stabbed, add the flour, a bit at a time, until a dough forms. Mix for another three to five minutes, until the dough forms a ball and pulls away from the sides of the mixing bowl.

Divide into two balls. Roll out into two logs, about a foot long each, and an inch and a half in diameter. Cover tightly in plastic wrap, and place in the freezer to firm up, 30 to 40 minutes.

Preheat oven to 325°F.

Slice each log into about 24 equal pieces, place on a baking sheet about an inch apart, and poke each piece with the prongs of a fork. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, but check occasionally during the last few minutes to ensure the cookies have only just begun to brown. You want them firm and crumbly, but pale.

Allow to cool completely on a wire rack before eating, and then enjoy with chocolate milk (as much as you want).

Meyer lemon shortbread.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been thinking about shortbread lately, and I wasn’t going to give in to temptation (especially after I consumed 80% of the butter/cream/cheese buns the other day), but then I needed comfort food and my stew failed last night and cookies always make everything better when we’re out of the stuff to make pudding (pudding is the most soothing of comfort foods). My grandpa died yesterday, and though we all knew it was coming, that kind of advance warning doesn’t make the news any less surprising or unpleasant. And while I certainly have thoughts on the matter, I think I’d best save them for now – I’m well past the age of emo, and besides, it’s impossible to think clearly about anything until you feel able to focus.

So this morning, I am busying myself with shortbread cookies, the kind that sparkle with Meyer lemon and whisper vanilla. Regular lemon – or any citrus you like – will do if your local market didn’t surprise you with Meyer lemons this week. To replicate the taste of Meyer lemons, use two tablespoons lemon juice and one tablespoon orange juice (preferably mandarin orange juice), and that should give a suitable impression.

Meyer lemon shortbread cookies

(Makes about 24.)

  • 1 cup butter, softened (room temperature)
  • 1 cup confectioner’s sugar
  • 2 Meyer lemons, zest and juice (zest = about 2 tbsp., juice = 2 to 3 tbsp.)
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour

Cream together butter, sugar, lemon zest and juice, vanilla, and salt until liquid is absorbed into the mix. Mixture should be shiny and light.

Add flour, stirring until a soft dough forms. Form dough into a log (make sure the ends are equal to the middle in girth), and wrap tightly in plastic. Place in the freezer for up to one hour.

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Slice cookie roll into approximately 24 equal pieces. Place cookie slices on a baking sheet, and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, checking after 15 minutes for doneness.

Shortbread is different from regular cookies, in that it’s best if it isn’t allowed to bake until golden. The other thing that’s different is that you don’t want to eat it warm. Like bread, there are changes that occur when the shortbread cools, and you want the texture to have a sandy fall-apartness that you have to wait for. Troublesome, isn’t it? Not really, but they smell so good when they bake you’ll want to dive in right away.

Allow to cool on the baking sheet for five minutes before removing to a cooling rack. Serve with tea.

Blood orange cookie bars.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

I love blood oranges so much. It’s not just their deep red flesh – they taste like a mash of oranges and raspberries, at least to me, and they peel easily and they aren’t so bitter that you can’t eat eight of them in one sitting if you wanted to, and I want to, most of the time.

When I was a kid, my mom used to make lemon slice – lemon custard baked onto a shortbread cookie crust. I think everyone’s mom made it – it was the kind of thing you’d have at open houses, grown-up birthday parties, or on Sundays. I’ve made them with limes, and the result was delicious, and with oranges. I wonder about grapefruit – I bet grapefruit cookie bars would be pretty interesting. Today, we have blood oranges, because to be honest when it’s blood orange season we always have more than we can peel and eat on hand anyway. I hope you like these. They’re like mom would make – especially since they’re adapted from a recipe I swiped borrowed from her tattered kitchen binder. But prettier, because they’re pink.

Blood orange cookie bars

Shortbread crust:

  • 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • Zest of one blood orange
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour

Custard:

  • Zest of one blood orange
  • 4 tbsp. blood orange juice
  • 1 tbsp. lemon juice
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/4 cup flour
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 2 to 3 tbsp. confectioner’s sugar

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

Cream together the butter, sugar, and zest to make your crust. Stir in flour until a crumbly dough forms, and then press it into a 9″x9″ square baking dish. Bake for 20 minutes, until the edges have browned and it smells like cookies. Remove from oven and cool in the pan on a rack, about 20 minutes.

Whisk together your zest, orange juice, lemon juice, sugar, eggs, flour, and salt. Pour over crust. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly golden around the edges, dry on the surface, and pretty much firm in the centre when tilted slightly.

Cool, again in the pan, on a wire rack. Once completely cooled, sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar and cut into slices. Serve with tea. Or, if you had a crappy work week and it’s over now, serve with a glass of sparkling wine with just a squish of blood orange for colour.

Thank-you cookies.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments


I wanted to do something nice for Judy, our building manager, who has been all kinds of nice to us and gave us a reference so we could get the kitten. She also came by and told me everything I needed to do to bond with the kitten and make her comfortable, and lent us some equipment and litter to get started, as we were confused about the process and didn’t think to buy things like a litter box before we brought her home. We’re smart.

Cookies are always nice. Everyone likes cookies.

I was going to make her peanut butter cookies because I thought that way there would be tons and then I could keep some, but I’m pretty sure I have no idea as to whether or not Judy has a peanut allergy, and while chances are probably slim, it would still be a shitty thank-you move to poison someone, even accidentally. Judy doesn’t have that coming to her. From me, anyway.

So, these are almond butter cookies, with a little smear of jam on top.

Almond butter cookies

(Makes about two dozen)

  • 1/2 butter
  • 1/2 cup almond butter
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1 egg
  • 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 cup jam

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a large bowl, cream together butter, almond butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and the one egg. Beat these until the mixture is fluffy and the ingredients have lightened in colour.

In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir these into wet ingredients, until dry ingredients are just moistened and a dough is formed.

Roll cookie dough into one-inch balls, and place on a lined or greased cookie sheet. I ran out of parchment paper, so I used tin foil, and it worked just fine. Press your thumb into the centre of each cookie to form a hole big enough to contain a drop of jam.

Spoon jam into cookie holes, about one-quarter teaspoon into each.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until lightly golden but still slightly soft. You want these to be chewy. You really do. Let them cool on the pan for a minute or two when they’re fresh from the oven, then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling. Then eat with tea, or package up with a thank-you card to give to someone who was nice to you.

Root beer cookies.

~ wellfedemily ~ 7 Comments

I think I told you I’m writing a book. Aren’t we all? By “writing a book,” of course I mean spending four hours tonight on Facebook, Twitter, MyLifeIsAverage, and everyone-else-in-the-world’s blog. Four hours is probably not even an exaggeration.

As there’s no point in going outside for the next two to three weeks, and since this whole book-writing thing is much less fun than anything ever, today’s off-the-couch distraction was cookies. Root beer cookies, actually, because there was a little bit of a bottle of the stuff left in the back of my fridge and I get super neurotic about throwing anything out. Which explains why I have so many mostly empty jars taking space in my little fridge (at least eight of the jars are condiments that I felt compelled to purchase because they were so weird I couldn’t just leave them there to not be bought).

Most root beer cookie recipes I’ve come across call for root beer extract, which apparently is as easy to find as regular old vanilla, but I’d never heard of it, and, frankly, I can’t be bothered to go looking – why use root beer extract when a root beer reduction works just fine?

Well, maybe it would make the cookies more root-beery. But I like what I came up with here – it’s like sugar cookies high-fived vanilla, and the result is a chewy, sugary delight. A whiff of root beer, and that’s all you really need. If you wanted root beer hyperbole, you’d just drink the stuff, wouldn’t you? Yes. That’s what I thought. So here you go: my root beer cookie recipe. I hope you like it.

Root beer cookies

(About 30 cookies)

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1 to 2 cups root beer, simmered until reduced to 1/2 cup (30 minutes to one hour), and cooled
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar (for rolling)

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Gradually pour in root beer reduction, then each egg individually, beating continuously until just after the last egg has been added. Stir in vanilla extract.

Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda. Pour into the wet ingredient mixture, stirring to combine until dry ingredients are just moistened.

Roll dough between your hands to form a ball the size of a golf ball. Roll the balls in the sugar, and place on a cookie sheet, about an inch and a half apart. Press each ball down with a fork.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes, to desired doneness, or until golden around the edges. I like mine just shy of underdone, so that they’re still chewy, but I know other people like theirs finished. Serve warm, with cold milk, or store in a sealed container for about a week, if they last that long.

Tomorrow’s distraction? Cookie eating. I win two nights in a row!

Olive oil orange cookies.

~ wellfedemily ~ 6 Comments

Cookie porn.One of the annoying things about being broke is running out of butter, especially when you want cookies. The day before payday is always incredibly bad for that. I ran out of milk too.

Good thing we never run out of the really important stuff, like wine.

So not only did I need a cookie. I needed a cookie that would go with my wine, and my, oh my, I think we’ve got one.

This recipe is a hybrid of sorts, a little of this and a little of that from Mario and Mark, and a bit of me as well. You should definitely give these a try – not too sweet, with a pronounced POP! of orange, and a nutty olive oil undercurrent. Perfect with wine, or even just on their own. Crunchy outside, chewy inside, and certainly not your everyday cookie. These are immodest, show-off cookies. Don’t be put off by the oil. It may not replace butter in your life, but it will be a nice little change.

Olive oil orange cookies

(Makes about three dozen cookies.)

  • 3 cups flour
  • 1 tbsp. orange zest
  • 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 1/4 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice (1 navel orange should do you for the recipe, zest and juice)
  • 1/2 cup dry white wine
  • 1 tsp. brandy (optional)

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

Whisk together your dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together your wet ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredient mix, and stir to form a sticky, very shiny dough. Again, don’t be put off – it looks greasy. But the cookies, for some reason, won’t be.

Shiny dough.Roll the dough into balls about an inch in diameter, and plonk onto a cookie sheet. Bake about an inch apart, on the middle rack, for 12 to 15 minutes, or until lightly browned, slightly golden. Inhale deeply as these bake, and behold the fragrant wonders. This stuff smells AMAZING.

Cool on racks, but feel free to eat piping hot. Once cool, store in an airtight container. If they last that long. I ate, like ten cookies. I’m not even embarrassed, because olive oil is apparently good for you.

Okay, I’m kind of embarrassed, because it’s nearly midnight and I have to work tomorrow but instead of going to bed even though I’m tired, I’m drinking wine and eating cookies. For the win? I guess we’ll see tomorrow?

Maximum noms.

Lemon sugar cookies.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

Strange thing, how your hands in a bit of dough can soothe you.

After midnight, it was clear that I would not be sleeping. I uploaded all of my travel photos – Disneyland with my mom, but only 12 photos, since we spent most of the time walking and eating and eating and eating and my hands were mostly busy dispensing cash and transporting foodstuffs into my face … more on all of that later – and blog-stalked all my favourite imaginary people, who are all probably real but I can’t see them in real life, and then realized that Nick was asleep and I had no one to talk to and it’s dark and I was bored. And I’m an eater, more than anything else, so to busy myself: Cookies.

Nothing strange about how butter and sugar make everything better. A little lemon and good vanilla don’t hurt either. I tried to make these with a mixer, but it’s very quiet here, so I had to quit. I used my hands instead. Very rustic.

First, measure out half a cup of butter. Don’t use margarine. Margarine never made anything better, ever. Half a cup. It should be room temperature, which, if you’re like me and leave your groceries on the kitchen floor overnight because you’re forgetful, will be normal. The butter is only cold when Nick assists.

Whisk the butter. If it doesn’t whisk, you can cream it with an electric mixer, but work quickly, because it’s noisy and maybe you don’t want everyone in the building to know that you’ve got no will-power. Is it will-power or willpower? Whatever, I can make up words if I want to because it’s late and that’s how I roll.

Zest one lemon into the bowl. Squeeze the juice out into there as well, and then pour a half a cup of white sugar into the mix. Add a teaspoon and a half of good vanilla. The Barefoot Contessa is always talking about “good vanilla,” and I’m not entirely sure what that means. Around here, it’s vanilla from Mexico. Real vanilla, the kind that actually tastes like vanilla when you dab a little drop onto the middle of your tongue. Artificial vanilla extract is the kind of thing you use if you have to bake with margarine, and life is too short to eat weird chemicals unless you’re eating Cheetos or maybe drinking Cherry Coke. I don’t know if Ina Garten would qualify it as good vanilla, but the smell when anything’s baking around here reminds me of bakeries at 7:00 am, all warm and sweet, the kind of aroma that trickles into your nose and tricks your stomach into thinking you’re hungry.

Whisk again, blending everything together. Crack an egg into the bowl, and continue to whisk. Once you’ve got everything thoroughly combined, shake the whisk off and toss it into the sink. If you miss and it lands on the floor, shooting dough hunks everywhere, whatever. Maybe you’ll get mice or something and they’ll run across the floor right when a potential buyer visits to view the place, which your landlord has listed for sale and he’s very nice so you feel conflicted about thinking unkind things especially as the apartment is his and he can do whatever he wants with it, and they’ll be so grossed out that they won’t buy it and you’ll get to stay here forever. You can get an exterminator once it’s official that you’re staying. You can’t whisk dough, and dough is what happens next.

Measure out your flour, a cup and a half, and dump it into the bowl. Measure a quarter-teaspoon of baking soda and a half-teaspoon of salt and add both on top of the flour, and stir with your finger, or perhaps a wooden spoon, until the mix begins to form a ball. Knead it lightly with your hands. Press the soft dough between your fingers, watching as it crests your knuckles and absorbs your hands, like Play Doh, and be sure to taste it, which I also did with Play Doh and doesn’t that explain a lot.

Roll it into a log, about an inch and a half thick. Maybe two inches. The width of a piece of plastic wrap minus an inch on either side. That’s what you want. Roll it up like that, wrap it tightly in the plastic, and throw it into the fridge. If you doubled the batch for sharing, make two logs of equal size.

RollTurn on your oven, heating it to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Pour yourself a glass of wine. Maybe watch the last of America’s Got Talent and wonder why the guys who did the Power Rangers dance got roundly dissed by the judges when CLEARLY they were awesome and what does David Hasselhoff know anyway? Not enough to do up his shirt and cover his sparkly dog tag, which should be a secret, especially if it’s been designed for Walmart by Hannah Montana, which it probably was, so maybe I expect too much.

After 30 minutes, at least, you can take the log(s) out of the fridge. At this point, unwrap the dough. If you’d like, you can sprinkle the sides with sugar. I did. “No added sugar?” Not around here.

Using a sharp knife, slice the log into pieces approximately a half-inch thick. You should end up with twelve slices. If you have more, that’s okay. If you have less, that’s okay too, and it’s okay if you’re not good at math because they have apps now for your iPhone that’ll do it for you. There are also still calculators, which is nice.

Roll, cut.

Midnight cookies.Bake for ten to twelve minutes, unless you cut these thinner – then cook for six to eight minutes, or unless you cut them thicker, and then give them up to 15 minutes, until the sides and tops are golden and everywhere around you smells like good vanilla. Give them five to ten minutes to cool enough that they won’t burn you when you stuff that first one into your mouth.

The best thing about these cookies is that they pair excellently with a nice Riesling, preferably a French one, from Alsace. Something with a delicate hint of citrus, just enough to make the lemon sparkle. You could drink cold milk with these as well. I guess. You don’t drink wine and eat cookies at midnight on a Tuesday all by yourself? You’re missing out.

Cookies!And it’s now after one o’clock, which means I have to be up in too few hours. Fortunately, there are cookies for breakfast, and if I’m responsible, maybe a little wine?

Here’s the roundup of ingredients and their measures, for good measure. In case you were paying as much attention to the details reading as I was to the writing …

Lemon Sugar Cookies

(Makes one dozen)

  • 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
  • Zest and juice of one lemon
  • 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp. salt

Bake at 375°F, for ten to 12 minutes.

Bacon fat cookiestravaganza. Or, how to make you fall in love with me. Except that I probably wouldn’t tell you what was in these if I was trying to woo you.

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

I hadn’t had a peanut butter cookie in a really long time.

And when Nick went out to get dinner stuff, he mentioned that maybe I should do the dishes, and I was like, “If I’m helpful, maybe he’ll come home with a present!” So I did the dishes, and Nick came home, and I pointed out the four dishes I washed, and he wasn’t as impressed as I’d hoped, and then he asked if I bothered to clean out the fridge yet. Of course I didn’t. But I thought, I could at least open it and see what happens. And then it happened. The bacon fat resurfaced!

Mmmm!Please don’t quit on me yet. I promise you, this is worth your while.

Bacon fat is better for you than margarine, if you haven’t heard, and while I can’t actually back that up, it’s a fact, and if you want proof then I would be happy to recommend some literature that will help you along. And we’re in a recession. And I’m saving the butter for mashed potatoes. My grandmother used to make the best peanut butter cookies in the world using schmaltz (rendered chicken or goose fat), which would have been left over anyway, which she kept in the freezer just for baking. And being (constantly) broke, my cold little heart breaks when I have to throw stuff out. I always save my bacon fat.

The peanut butter cookie recipe I like the best comes from Fannie Farmer. I have long been a fan of Marion Cunningham, who is like everybody in the world’s grandmother’s cookbook (but not my grandmother, the story of who’s cookbook is a novel for another time) mashed into one divine being who makes everything you want to eat and is tall (I imagine) and regal and is friends with Jeffrey Steingarten, who is another kind of hero. I make half-batches of this recipe, because two dozen cookies is quite enough for me. The recipe in its full measure claims that it will produce 120 cookies, which I have never found to be true. This is either a gross miscalculation or they’re supposed to be tiny little cookies, and I hate little cookies because they’re a tease and before you know it you’ve eaten two bags of mini rainbow Chips Ahoy and you’re drunk and it’s 3:42 am and you’re crying on the kitchen floor (again) and the reason is embarrassing but also you wish you could carry on a conversation with normal people without saying something wildly inappropriate or them thinking you had tourette’s syndrome, for once, and who the hell let you have the phone in the first place?

Peanut-Butter Bacon Fat Cookies

(Adapted from the recipe for Peanut-Butter Butter Cookies from the Fannie Farmer Baking Book, circa 1984. Makes about two-dozen cookies.)

  • 1/2 cup bacon fat
  • 1/2 cup peanut butter
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • Pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Beat your bacon fat, peanut butter, and sugar together in a large bowl. You want the colour of the goop in the bowl to lighten and get creamy. Once it’s there, crack open your egg and drop the contents in, and keep beating the mixture.

Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt, mix well, and then slowly add it to the mixture in the bowl, beating until all your ingredients are combined.

Cookie doughIf you’re like me and you’ve never been disappointed by a hunk of cookie dough in your mouth, then sample away. At first you may think it’s a little weird – and it is. But in a good way. The bacon fat makes the peanut butter seem peanut-butterier.

Roll the dough out into balls about an inch or so in diameter. Place about an inch apart on a cookie sheet, and press the tops down with a fork dipped in granulated sugar.

Raw cookie deliciousnessBake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes, and cool for a bit on a wire rack before eating.

I have to say I was pretty pleased with myself/these cookies, and not just because I used something in the fridge and therefore made progress toward a cleaner tomorrow. They are TASTY. You really ought to try this. I’m pretty sure a pound or so of bacon will produce enough fat for these, and then some, if you don’t already save your fat. Don’t waste fat. Baby Jesus cries when you wash the fat of the pig down the drain.

COOKIES!Seriously. You need to try these. Go render some pork fat, and then let me know how it all works out. Or, just come over for cookies and milk, and inhale my good baking stink.