Friday, June 3, 2011

Jamaican Coin Cookies

Today, I decided to make cookies. I seem to have a lot of recipes for very large cookies and cookies that included chocolate.  There is nothing wrong with that-but I wanted something smaller and not as rich. Through trial and error, I came up with these little tropical cookies. They are about the size of a coin, hence the name.

The ingredients combine to make them triple textured.  The cookie part is crumbly and the pineapple provides a chewiness. Lastly you have the crunch from the toffee bits.  I also added rum to the mix.  Right now, (just baked them) I cannot taste the rum.  The flavor may show up after these have sat for a day or two.  In the recipe below, vanilla extract is also listed as an option.

Regarding the dried pineapple, the best method is to chop by hand.  The end result may be a little sticky, but I tried using flour and a food processor.  Even though the flour was sifted off the pineapple after processing, it ended up too fine,  It resulted in tasteless crumbs!  Stickiness was better.

The size of the cookie varies when you round out the dough, 1/2 rounds or 1 inch rounds.  The recipe makes 60 small or 30 of the 1 inch cookies.

Jamaican Coin Cookies
by flourtrader

Ingredients
1/2 cup of toffee bits
1/2 cup of chopped dried pineapple
3 tbs of rum or 1 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
3/;4 cups of butter
2 cups of flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Prepare two cookie sheets by lining with parchment paper.  Then preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium size bowl, beat butter and sugar together until smooth and creamy. Then add the rum or the extract (whichever you prefer) and mix with a wooden spoon.  Stir in the flour..  Then add the pineapple, separating it and sprinkling the best you can.  Lastly, add the toffee bits. Mix until the bits and pineapple pieces are evenly distributed into the batter.

Take dough and form into balls, either 1/2 to 1 inch in diameter, and place on cookie sheet one inch apart.  Place one sheet in oven and bake.  The 1/2 inch balls will take 12-15 minutes.  For the 1 inch balls add 5 minutes bake time. When baking cookies with candy (other than chocolate) you want to be careful, over baking results in a rock hard cookie. Repeat with remaining cookie dough until all is formed and baked.

Remove cookies from baking sheet and place on rack to cool.