Michael Pollan, author of the Food Rules, once stated that you should eat anything you cannot be bothered with cooking from scratch. ; His point is that most bad for you foods have quite a bit of hassle in cooking them, so most people will not want to go through the hassle. ; Store bought cookies, for example, are easy. ; Making them from scratch is not easy so therefore cookies become a special treat.
Makes sense to me. The other night we really wanted cookies. ; I decided to try my hand at butter cookies. ; I mean, if you are going to cheat, then cheat.
Ingredients: ; Stick unsalted butter softened, ¾ cup sugar, 1 teaspoon Mexican Vanilla, 1 egg, 2 cups all purpose flour, ½ baking powder, pinch of salt, ¼ cup of milk (more if needed.)
Process: ; I creamed the sugar and the butter slowly and then added the egg and the vanilla. ; In a separate bowl, I mixed dry ingredients, then added half to the dough, and then beat it for a couple of seconds. ; Then the same procedure is done with the other half. ; I baked them at 375 for about 13 minutes. ; This recipe is from How to Cook Everything.
Results: ; The recipe said it makes about 2-3 dozen. ; Unless the recipe meant teaspoon instead of tablespoon when doling out to the cookie sheet, I could only produce about a dozen and half. ; The flavor was nice and buttery but a little dry. ; ;It reminded me of the tea cookies. ; ; ; In addition, the recipe allows for extra spices, and I think I should have added a little cinnamon and sugar especially at the top.
Verdict: ; ; This recipe is decent starter cookie recipe that begs for experimentatio
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Hello Kurt,
Looks like a great easy butter cookie recipe. You make me want to get Mark Bittman\’s books now!
BTW, you have a typo in the recipe-it is FLOUR not FLOWER. 🙂
I do editing for a living as well as write web content, SEO etc.
Great job though!
Polly Motzko
Thanks for the catch…I\’ve always struggled with writing homophones (as well as mixing up d and p and all those types of letters) so anytime someone catches a mistake I\’m more than grateful.
Yep, I know what you mean. 🙂 I usually catch most everything, but it is nice if someone tells me if there is a glitch with a link or something. 🙂
I love your blog and your recipes and would love you to join both my cooking sites. 🙂
Also, after looking around on \”Cooking Up a Storm All Over The World!\”, if you are interested in being a weekly writer on it, I would welcome it with open arms. 😉
Also, this year I am also doing Travel Correspondents who talk about what is new, hot and interesting in the city, state, and country they live in.
CookingUpaStorminCa.ning.com
CookingUpaStorminCA@gmail.com
Keep up the great work!
Polly Motzko
The simpler the recipe, the stronger the need for quality ingredients. If your butter was old, or supermarket brand….or if your vanilla extract was, God Forbid, the cheap, double-strength Watkins kind made of half real vanilla and half fake vanilla, or if your eggs are the flavorless industrial kind, a recipe like this will seem blah. Try it again some time with a yard egg, some Smith\’s Creamery butter, and use a quality vanilla extract (like Neilsen-Massey), plus scrape the innards of a vanilla bean into the batter. Voila–an entirely different result.
Will do. This was a spur of the moment after supper decision to have something sweet.