Tag Archives: cookies

Desserts and Sweets

Linzer Schnitten Prune Bars

Ingredients for Linzer Schnitten: spiced prune bars

  • 2 eggs
  • 1-1/2 cups brown sugar
  • 3/4 cup butter or oil
  • 3-1/2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp cloves
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • rind and juice of 1 lemon
  • thick Hungarian-style plum (prune) jam
  • 1 egg beaten with 3/4 cup sugar

Preparation of Linzer Schnitten: spiced prune bars

Beat eggs until light. Beat in sugar. Melt and add butter. Sift together the dry ingredients. Blend with egg mix. Add lemon rind and juice. Turn onto a board and knead until smooth. Let stand for 1 hour.

Roll 1/2″ thick. Cut into strips 1-1/2″ x 10″. Mark a groove lengthwise down the center of each strip with the handle of a wooden spoon. Fill grooves with jam.

Place on greased cookie sheet and bake at 375 F for 15 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and immediately brush tops with egg/sugar mixture to glaze. Cut diagonally into bars and cool.

Desserts and Sweets

Polvorones

Polvorones are melt-in-your-mouth Mexican sugar cookies, extremely simple and popular.

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup icing sugar
  • 2-1/4 cups flour
  • 1/2 t cinnamon
  • 1/2 t salt
  • 1-1/2 t vanilla

Cream butter and sugar. Beat in flour. Add rest of ingredients and mix until smooth. Shape into 1″ balls.

Place 1″ apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 F for 10-15 minutes. Sprinkle with icing sugar.

Polvorones, Mexican cookies
One of Angel’s mystical forests

Desserts and Sweets

Brazileiras

Brazilian Coconut Cookies

  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cups water
  • 4 egg yolks, beaten
  • 1/4 cup flour
  • 2 cups flake coconut
  • 1/2 t vanilla

In a ,combine sugar and water until dissolved. Cook without stirring to 230F (hard thread).

Mix yolks and flour and add 2 T of the hot syrup. Pour into syrup, stirring. Add coconut and simmer, low, until thick and stiff. Do not boil. Remove from heat and add vanilla. Cool.

Set oven to 375 F. Shape mix into balls. Arrange 1″ apart on a buttered cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes or until delicately browned.

This type of Coconut cookie is also very common and popular in parts of Mexico. When we travel up into the Patzcuaro area I always pick up a golden coconut cookie, looking like a volcanic cone of toasted coconut, from the street vendors around the square and market there.

Desserts and Sweets

Mexican Wedding Cakes

Also known as Viennese crescents: delicious little nutty cookies.

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1/4 cup sugar (1/2 cup with pecans)
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 cup ground walnuts or chopped pecans
  • 1 t vanilla
  • if using pecans, 3 t water

Cream butter and sugar. Add flour, nuts, vanilla and water if pecans are used. Combine well and shape into crescents or balls. Bake on greased baking sheet for 15 to 20 minutes. Dust with icing sugar.

Desserts and Sweets

Hermits

The scent of spices wafting through our kitchen when I was a child many times heralded the emergence of sheets of fragrant Hermit cookies from the oven. Though usually crisp around the edges right after baking, they later soften up to a satisfying chewiness.

Ingredients for Hermits:

  • 1- 1/2 cups flour
  • 1/4 t salt
  • 3 t baking powder
  • 1/2 t cinnamon
  • 1/4 t cloves
  • 1/2 t nutmeg
  • 1 egg, beaten (vegans may use 1 flax egg or other egg substitute)
  • 3/4 cups sugar
  • 1/2 cup milk (vegans may use almond milk or any other non-dairy milk substitute)
  • 1/3 cup oil (coconut oil is my preference)
  • 1/2 cup raisins *

Mix dry ingredients together. Mix egg, sugar and milk. Add oil and raisins. Mix with dry ingredients.

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto greased baking sheet and bake at 425F for 10 minutes.

* Chopped nuts may also be added

Cookies

Desserts and Sweets

Oatmeal Cookies

This has to be a favorite in almost every family that ever made homemade cookies.

Ingredients for Oatmeal Cookies

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 T water
  • 1 cup wholewheat flour
  • 1/2 t cinnamon
  • pinch salt
  • 1 cup rolled oats
  • 1/2 cups raisins
  • 1/2 cup broken pecans

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs and water. Mix flour, cinnamon and salt. Add flour mix to butter mix. Add oats, raisins and nuts. Drop onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 F for 15 minutes or till light brown.

Desserts and Sweets

Scottish Fancies

Crispy oatmeal cookies are always a delight. These ones are extremely easy to throw together.

  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 t melted butter
  • 1 cup oatmeal
  • 1/4 t salt

Butter cookie sheets. Preheat oven to 325ºF.

Beat egg until light. Beat in sugar. Stir in butter, oatmeal and salt. Drop by teaspoonfuls 1-1/2″ apart. Flatten with knife dipped in cold water. Bake about 10 minutes till golden.

Yield: 36 cookies.

Desserts and Sweets

Bakeless Fudge Cookies

These easy-to-make chocolate and oats treats were always a great favorite in our household while growing up.

Ingredients for Bakeless Fudge Cookies

Bakeless fudge cookies
The bakeless fudge cookie monster. Kati’s, perhaps.

  • 6 T cocoa
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/2 cups butter
  • 2 cups sugar
  • salt
  • 3-4 cups rolled oats
  • 1/4 cup walnuts
  • 1 t vanilla

Combine cocoa, milk, butter, sugar and salt together in pot and bring to boil. Remove from heat and add oats, walnuts and vanilla. Stir well. Drop onto waxed paper and cool.

 

 

Desserts and Sweets

Pracny (Czech Bear Claws)

Pracny were cookies that Grandma baked at Christmas–amongst many other delicacies such as Walnut and Poppyseed Rolls (Beigli), Cottage Cheese Cake, Hoska, and Viennese Crescents (AKA Mexican Wedding Cakes). The Pracny were baked in special molds, were a rich, dark brown covered with a snowy sprinkling of powdered sugar, and had a most wonderful texture (and taste!).

This particular recipe is one that a second cousin gave us when she came to visit us from the Czech Republic. The measurements are in dekakilograms (each dekakilogram measures 10 grams)… happy converting!

(Note: below this recipe is a link to a very similar recipe with convenient conversions already made)

Ingredients for Pracny

7 dkg ground walnuts
10 dkg butter
7 dkg powder sugar
14 dky flour (very mild one)
2 tsp Vanilla sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves

Mix all this together and let is sit for at least an hour or 24 hours, it’s up to you.

Spread a lot of butter into small cookie forms (we use metal one, if you don’t have any, we’ll send you some). It’s very important to spread the butter properly, otherwise, you won’t be able to take the cookies out.

Lay the forms (with the open side up) on the cookie sheet. Put the sheet in oven (about 180 C or 350 F). Bake them until they are done (until the cookies turn gold). After you pull the sheet out of oven, let it sit for a while. Then comes the final moment–cookies digging. Sometimes it is easy to take them out and sometimes you get just crumbs. Sometimes just knocking on the sheet helps.

Then you prepare some powder sugar and vanilla sugar in a bowl. Every cookie you cover with sugar in that bowl. Then you have to keep them at the safe place without insect and with low humidity.

Merry Christmas….. Vesele Vanoce……. Marketa

Walnuts

Another Czech Christmas Cookie Recipe: Bear paws / Recept na medvedi tlapicky