For a recent gourmet club, we were charged with making something from locally garden and market grown ingredients. I spend most of the summer cooking this way, so I decided to pick something that is far from my normal food fare.
I almost never bake. If you know me, you know I have a tendency to burn myself whilst taking things in and out of the oven. Also, with only my hubby and I at home and most dessert recipes making 10 or more servings on top of our lack of self-control, it isn't usually a good combination.
I found a very well rated recipe for Rosemary Cookies on epicurous.com from a cookbook by David Lebotvitz.
These cookies were delightful! At gourmet club they went fast and they were proclaimed the winner (note it isn't a competition). Try them out and enjoy.
Ingredients:
- 4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal or polenta
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 4 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 cup sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 4 tablespoons finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves
- Tomato Jam (Hubby will blog this b/c he made it)
Add the flour mixture
and mix until the dough is smooth and holds together.
On a lightly floured work surface, divide the dough in half. Shape each half into a log about 6 inches (15 cm) long and 1 3/4 inches (4 cm) in diameter.
Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled and firm, at least 1 hour. I actually ended out lightly freezing them with very good results.
At this time, preheat the oven (we did this at an earlier time because our oven door doesn't hinge shut so it takes hours to pre-heat) to 350 with racks in the bottom half of the oven.
Also, line 4 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Then wait for the dough to finish chilling because it needs to be cold and hard to be sliced.
Take one log out of the freezer at a time. As they warm, they are more difficult to work with.Slice the logs thin. The disks should be 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick. I experimented a bit with the thickness, but really tried to slice it as thin as I could while still getting cookie shaped results.
These cookies don't expand much while baking so you can place them close together (at least 1/2 and inch apart) on the prepared baking sheets.
Total bake time in 12 minutes. However, set the timer for 6 minutes. After 6 minutes you need to flip the cookie sheet. I was able to maintain an assembly line where I was slicing and filling a cookie sheet while one was baking on its final 6 minutes and another was on its last 6 minutes and I just kept rotating.
Cookies are done when slightly tan around the edges.
Let the cookies cool. Then it is time to add the magic to these delicate cookies:
TOMATO JAM!!!
This is a spicy sweet jar of deliciousness. Hubby will blog how he made it soon.
Spoon a small amount of jam onto a cookie and then top with another cookie for a sandwich of pure deliciousness.
YUM!
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