Foodbuzz

Friday, September 17, 2010

Hazelnut Cookies


This recipe produces a delicate buttery sugar cookie with a hint of cinnamon. The original recipe calls for icing the cookies, but the icing proved to be a little too sweet for my taste.  This recipe comes from Bouchon Bakery Cookbook and you can find the original posting on the web here, should you want to ice these cookies.  For those who love to cozy up to warm tea or coffee, these plain cookies make a great addition.

Hazelnut Cookies
Ingredients
2 sticks unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1/2 cup plus 3 tbs sugar
1/4 cup plus 1 tbs almond flour
1/4 cup plus 3 tbs plus 1 1/2 tsp hazelnut flour
1 cup plus 3 tbs all purpose flour
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tbs plus 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Sift together the three kinds of flour, cinnamon and baking powder and set aside.   In a separate bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Then mix in vanilla extract. Your egg will need to be beaten first and added to the butter mixture until combined.  Take the flour mixture and using a wooden spoon, mix in with wet ingredients in the other bowl.
You will find that the dough is very wet and sticky, so it will need to be covered and go into the fridge for about an hour.  During this time, you can set your oven to 300 degrees to preheat and line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper.
Once that is completed, take 2 sheets of wax paper (the size that will line your cookie sheet) and roll out a section of your dough between the sheets.  Place on a 3rd cookie sheet and freeze for 10 minutes.  Then take out and pull wax paper off of dough and cut out desired shapes with cookie cutter. Due to the fact they spread, you probably do not want to use a real distinctive cutter such as an alligator.  The alligator will probably not be recognizable after baking.  Anyhow, place your frozen cut outs on parchment paper lined cookie sheet and bake for 8-15 minutes or until light golden brown.
I found that this recipe produced a little under 3 dz cookies for me.  This will vary, depending how large your cutter and how thick you make them.