Saturday, May 17, 2008

Sparkling Cranberry Gems


I was a little misled by these cookies. I thought they'd be much more cookie-like, but instead they were very scone-ish. I guess the ingredients should have clued me in, but I kept waiting for them to spread out and become cookie-ish in the oven, instead of staying in their nice little balls. Don't get me wrong, they were FABULOUS. Just not exactly what I expected. A cookie-scone, I suppose. Anyway, I will definitely make these again. Cookie or scone, I like them both!

The recipe came from the King Arthur Flour blog, but they appear to have removed the recipe, or anyway I couldn't find it again. So here it is:

Ingredients
1C flour (whole wheat or white)
1.5C dried cranberries
2 tbs icing sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 tbs frozen butter
3 tbs milk

Coating
1/3C coarse white sparkling sugar

Put the craisins and flour in a food processor and process until it looks like each craisin is in four parts. This didn't work so well for me, but I found that having whole craisins in the cookie was just fine. Add the sugar, salt, and baking powder. Using a cheese grater, grate the frozen butter into the flour mixture. Once it is all in there, rub it in with your fingertips for a bit. Then add the milk and vanilla and mix. It will seem pretty dry, I found I had to get in there with my hands to mix it all up, but don't be tempted to add more liquid.

Put the sugar in a ziplock bag. Form the dough into 1-1/4" balls. Put about six balls at a time into the bag, shake around until they're coated with sugar, then squish them to the final shape you want them in (they won't spread out) and bake at 350 for 16 minutes. I actually cooked mine longer because I kept expecting them to melt out. You want to take them out before they get brown anywhere.

Yields 36 cookies.

I put about 2/3 of the dough in the freezer in a cookie turd, I'll report how those turned out. I'm not worried with all the butter to keep them happy.

And, uh... don't eat them all at once. You'll get a tummyache.

p.s. I labeled them as vegan, because I figured it would be an easy substitution--use soy milk instead of milk, and margarine instead of butter. Why you would want to do that is beyond me, but hey, it takes all kinds, right?

1 comment:

PJH said...

Alex, I don't think I ever did a blog about these - but the recipe is definitely on our Web site, kingarthurflour.com. I make these a lot; maybe I make them smaller than yours. They come out probably about 1 1/2" in diameter. And I flatten them before baking; otherwise, as you say, they won't flatten themselves. At any rate, they're the tastiest low-fat, low-sugar cookie I've had yet, if I do say so myself! - PJ Hamel, King Arthur Flour