Pineapple Cookies

You probably thought (or hoped) this Cooky Blog was gone for good after two whole months went by without a post.  Things got a little busy for a while and cookie-baking ceased… until now! The people (really just Ryan) requested more cookies! But before another batch hits the oven, I have a couple of recipes to mention from way back in March that never made it up on the site- the first of which is for these delightful Pineapple Cookies. 

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Pineapple Cookies

1 cup shortening

1 ½ cups sugar

1 egg

1 can (8 ¾ oz) crushed pineapple, with juice

3 ½ cups flour

1 tsp soda

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp nutmeg

½ cup chopped nuts

Mix shortening, sugar, and egg; stir in the pineapple. Stir together the dry ingredients and incorporate into the dough. Mix in the nuts. Chill at least one hour. Preheat the oven to 400̊F. Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of dough 2 inches apart on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until no imprint remains when lightly touched. Makes about 5 dozen cookies.

Pineapple Coconut Cookies

Make Pineapple Cookies, but omit nutmeg and add 1 cup flaked coconut.

Pineapple Raisin Cookies

Add 1 cup of raisins to the standard Pineapple Cookies recipe.

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So, the story behind these cookies is that once upon a time (probably about 12 years ago), I wanted to use up some coconut that had been hanging around in the cupboard for ages. For some reason, I picked this recipe even though it only calls for one cup of coconut… not really very helpful in using up coconut. Hmmm. (Insert Amy laughing at me right here.) Anyway, I ended up using two cups of coconut because, when adding ingredients, I dumped in the entirety of a 20 oz. can of crushed pineapple, accidentally necessitating a doubling of the recipe. (Insert Amy laughing at me again.)  I tend to make just one batch when trying out a recipe for the first time- and it would be very sad indeed to end up with 10 dozen of a gross kind of cookie. But don’t worry, these are awesome!  

I got wise and used slightly less than half of the 20 oz. can this time!

The first time I made these cookies, I only tried the Pineapple Coconut variety- but this time, I tried them all! This included Pineapple Cookies with nuts, Pineapple Cookies without nuts, Pineapple Raisin Cookies with nuts, Pineapple Raisin Cookies without nuts, Pineapple Coconut Cookies with nuts, and Pineapple Coconut Cookies without nuts. As with many other recipes, I couldn’t really tell the nuts were there, so in the future, I might just leave them out to avoid the confusion that comes from trying to keep six varieties of the same basic cookie separated.

I might consider re-naming these Pineapple Cookies to Pineapple Cake-ies; they are so moist and doughy, they remind me more of tiny cakes than cookies.  My favorites were the Pineapple Coconut Cookies, followed by the Pineapple Raisin ones. The standard Pineapple Cookies weren’t bad; they were just missing the YUM factor that the coconut adds.

Standard, Raisin, and Coconut Pineapple Cookies in the early spring sunshine.

Another tip for these cookies: eat them quickly. The longer you keep them around, the soggier they get! It’s easier to eat them fast enough if you make just one recipe. :)

Carly

This cookie recipe was found on page 9 of Betty Crocker's Cooky Book.

Shamrock Cookies

Betty says that these Shamrock Cookies are “a grand St. Patrick’s Day surprise for the whole family. Faith and begorra, they’re good!” Will they be the tasty treat she promises? Read on to find out!

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Shamrock Cookies

1 cup shortening (half butter or margarine)

1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar

1 egg

1 to 2 tsp peppermint flavoring

2 ½ cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 ½ tsp green food coloring

Preheat the oven to 375̊F. Mix the shortening, butter, sugar, egg and peppermint flavoring. Stir in the flour, salt, and food coloring. To shape shamrocks, roll three small (1/4 tsp) balls of dough and a small stem. Flatten them together and shape into a shamrock shape.  Sprinkle with green sprinkles. Note: complete cookies one at a time or the tiny balls of dough may dry out and crack when you try to shape them. Bake about 9 minutes. Makes about 9 dozen cookies.

Good Luck Cookies

Make Shamrock Cookies as above, but make 4 small balls for each cookie to shape into a four-leaf clover.

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Really, the first thing I had to do was look up the word “begorra.” In case you were wondering:

begorra- an interjection, used as a euphemism for ‘by God’

Okay! On to the cookies.

My first hang-up came as I was mixing up the ingredients and got to adding the mint flavoring. The flavoring itself smelled good (although strong), but once it was incorporated into the dough, the smell was kind of sickening… just a weird sort of minty bad smell.

Then, I got to the part when the dry ingredients are added. The only dry things are flour and salt, but it still seemed wrong to me to not to mix them together before adding them. Still, I decided to follow the directions and mixed in all of the flour followed by the salt, which I mixed for a long time to be sure that everything was evenly distributed.

Next, the food coloring. I first removed a small portion of the dough so that some cookies would be artificial coloring-free for Ryan. I think I used about half of my little squeezy bottle of green dying the rest of the dough!

The forming of the cookies was extremely time-consuming. Please see the following photo progression for that process.

A 1/4 teaspoon scoop for each ball.

3 balls + 1 stem= 1 shamrock! I also made a couple of four leaf clovers.

The pieces come together...

... and get squished!

A little poke in the side to get the right shape.

A little more flattening, and the shamrock is complete!

 Now imagine doing that for 9 dozen tiny cookies. Yikes!

When the first pan came out of the oven after baking for nine minutes, I found the cookies to be too dry. Also, my first one was super SALTY! YUCK! I knew I should have followed my gut and mixed the salt into the flour before adding it. Darn.

Sugary luck, fresh from the oven.

Pan Two was only baked for 8 minutes. The cookies still seemed a little dry, but they are just the type of cookie that is supposed to be more dry and crumbly than chewy, so I guess that’s okay.  The flavor was just weird, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong with it. All I knew was that, even after a non-salty cookie, the aftertaste was not good.

At this point, I was upset about the gross-ness of the cookies and the fact that it was taking so long to form all of those little shamrocks, and- I threw the rest of the dough away.  A big ball of funny-smelling green, tossed in the trash. Good riddance!

I still gave these to a few people to try (they are pretty cute, after all), with a disclaimer that they were not good. According to some, they were “not the worst cookies” or even “good.” But most people agreed that they were kind of bitter with a weird after taste. They were even described as “like eating toothpaste”!

At least they look good...

If this is any indication, the only thing they ARE good for, apparently, is fodder for ravenous, rapidly-multiplying populations of Tribbles. 

So, if you want something good for St. Patrick’s Day, don’t make these. The recipe should say, “Faith and begorra, they’re gross!”

Pineapple cookies are up next! I know Amy is excited. :)

Carly

This cookie recipe was found on page 29 of Betty Crocker's Cooky Book. The cute, fuzzy Tribbles are from Jen. :D

Brown Sugar Drops

I made these cookies a couple of weeks ago during Nerd Night… found out that Nerds love fresh-baked cookies so much, they will eat them straight off of the pan! These were nice and chewy, and- as Betty points out- very versatile. Add whatever you want to the dough, and the sweet scent of brown sugar will pull all your friends into the kitchen. 

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Brown Sugar Drops

1 cup shortening

2 cups brown sugar, packed

2 eggs

½ cup buttermilk or water

3 ½ cups flour

1 tsp soda

1 tsp salt

Mix together the shortening, brown sugar, and eggs. Blend dry ingredients together and then stir into the sugar mixture. Chill dough for at least one hour.

Preheat the oven to 400̊F. Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of dough about 2 inches apart on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake for eight to ten minutes, or until almost no imprint remains after touching lightly. Makes about 6 dozen cookies.

Jeweled Cookies

Mix 3 to 4 cups of cut-up gumdrops into the dough. (You can cut up gumdrops using kitchen shears. Just dip the blades in hot water if they get sticky.)

Coconut Drop Cookies

Mix 1 cup of shredded or flaked coconut into the dough.

Nut Drop Cookies

Mix 1 cup of chopped nuts into the dough.

Carly’s Variation (not from the Cooky Book)

Mix 1 ½ cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips into the dough. (I recommend mini chocolate chips rather than full-sized.)

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The first thing I did was chop up the gumdrops. This was accomplished using my Pampered Chef Salad Chopper (scary double-bladed scissors) which helped to speed things along as I could cut two gumdrops at once. I chopped them into eighths and called that good enough.

Salad chopper- turned- gumdrop chopper!

Then I measured out the rest of my mix-ins so they would be ready to go when the dough was mixed up.  I decided not to make the Nut Drop cookies because the cookies I have made with nuts seem to be the least popular. (After mentioning this to several people, they all claimed they like cookies with nuts. Go figure.)

I mixed up the dough, divided it into quarters, stirred in the mix-ins, and popped the dough into the fridge for an hour. Each type of dough was just the right amount for one pan of cookies (about 20 cookies of each). I baked them all for 8 minutes, but since they turned out so thin, I didn’t try the touch test.

So how did they turn out? All of them were delightfully soft and chewy. I liked that no icing was required, so they could be enjoyed while still warm from the oven!

Clockwise from top: Jeweled Cookies, Coconut Drops, Chocolate Chip Drops, and Brown Sugar Drops.

I found the plain ones kind of bland, which seems weird considering there were two cups of sugar in the recipe! 

Brown Sugar Drops!

  The coconut ones were sweet, but not overly sweet.

Coconut Drops!

The gumdrop ones ("Jeweled Cookies") were just bizarre- as one person pointed out, it was weird to have a sudden taste of peppermint amongst the brown sugar. I also found the texture to be strange- the cookies were soft while the gumdrops were gummy (big surprise!) and stuck to my teeth. However, I don’t like gumdrops even when they aren’t in cookies, so I had pretty low expectations for those.

Jeweled Cookies!

The very best of the bunch, in my opinion, were the chocolate chip variety. I thought they were very reminiscent of Chewy Chips Ahoy, which I feel an inexplicable craving for every now and then. The only problem with them, that I found, was that the chocolate chips were kind of big for the size of the cookies and weren’t very evenly dispersed- perhaps this could be remedied by using mini chocolate chips.   

Chocolate Chip Drops- homemade version of Chewy Chips Ahoy!

So there you have it! Give them a try, and if you ever make the Nut Drop cookies, let me know how they turn out.

Festive St. Patrick’s Day cookies coming up next!

Carly

This cookie recipe was found on page 8 of Betty Crocker's Cooky Book; the chocolate chip addition was my idea!

Chocolate Drop Cookies

I may not have done this recipe justice… I was in a hurry and wasn’t very careful about reading the directions- but they still tasted good! If you need something chocolaty, give these a try. 

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Chocolate Drop Cookies

½ cup butter or margarine, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg

2 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled

1/3 cup buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla

1 ¾ cups flour

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 cup chopped nuts, if desired

Mix the butter, sugar, egg and chocolate. Stir in the vanilla and buttermilk. Stir together the dry ingredients and then blend in. Mix in nuts or other add-ins, if desired. Chill for at least one hour. Preheat the oven to 400 ̊F. Drop rounded teaspoonfuls on an ungreased baking sheet about 2” apart. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until almost no imprint remains when lightly touched. If desired, frost cookies with Browned Butter Glaze, Mocha Butter Icing, or Marie’s Chocolate Icing and sprinkle with nuts or flaked coconut. Makes 4 ½ dozen cookies.

Chocolate Cherry Drops

Add 2 cups cut up candied or drained maraschino cherries to Chocolate Drop cookie dough.

Double Chocolate Drops

Add 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips to Chocolate Drop cookie dough.

Marie’s Chocolate Icing

1 Tbsp butter

1 square unsweetened chocolate

1 ½ Tbsp warm water

1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar

Melt the chocolate and butter over hot water. Blend in the warm water; beat in the confectioners’ sugar until the icing is easy to spread. Makes enough icing for 3 to 4 dozen cookies.

Browned Butter Icing

2 ½ Tbsp soft butter

1 ½ cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

1 ½ Tbsp cream

¾ tsp vanilla

Brown the butter in a saucepan over medium heat until a delicate brown color. Stir in sugar, cream, and vanilla until blended. Makes icing for 4 dozen cookies.

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So, the process of making these cookies went wrong in a lot of little ways. Perhaps part of the problem is the way it listed four different variations and three different icings were suggested… that can get confusing.

Chocolate, cherries, and walnuts- oh, my!

I elected to skip one of the variations (Cocoa Drop Cookies; see note below) because it involves actual changes in the dough, not just something different being mixed in. Also, I limited myself to two of the three icings- I felt mocha may not have as broad of an appeal (although I think it sounds delicious!).

The first step was melting the chocolate. I had to remind myself that it was unsweetened to keep from eating it, it looked so good!

Makes me want chocolate fondue

I mixed up the dough and popped it in the fridge to chill. Mistake number one: not dividing the dough and mixing in the add-ins BEFORE chilling. This was rather difficult to do once the dough was hard.

Mistake number two was baking these for the full ten minutes. After ten minutes, lightly touching the cookies still left an imprint- and the cookies were a little tough. I think the pans I baked for eight minutes were better.

Mistake number three was making Browned Butter Icing instead of Browned Butter Glaze! The directions suggest the glaze, but I just flipped to the icings page, saw “Browned Butter,” and made the icing. Oops.

Mistake number four was reading the ingredients for Marie’s Chocolate icing and then just mixing them up however I pleased. Perhaps if I had followed the preparation directions (instead of just melting the chocolate in the microwave and then stirring everything else in at once) it wouldn’t have continually gotten hard while I was trying to spread it on the cookies. Maybe that’s just how it is, though.

And the final mistake- forgetting to take pictures of the finished, frosted cookies before giving them all away. You’ll have to use your imaginations and try to picture them with their tasty frostings if you didn’t get to see them.

Here is how my cookies measure up to Betty’s in the looks department:

Betty's cookies (from Cooky Book, page 8)

Carly's cookies (clockwise, from top left: plain, with nuts, chocolate cherry, and double chocolate)

Actually, my last mistake was probably telling all of you about the mistakes I made; good thing people have already eaten them. :)  Despite my errors, these were chewy, chocolaty, and delicious! My favorite were the Double Chocolate Drops, but most people who commented on their favorites picked the cherry ones. While the chocolate icing was good, the browned butter icing was a nice contrast to the chocolaty-ness, especially on the cherry cookies.

If you tried these cookies, please leave a comment letting me know what you thought!

If I get the chance, I’ll try to come back to the Cocoa Drop variation, but there are a lot of other cookies to try! Here are the directions for those, though, in case you would like to try them:  

Variation I did not try- Cocoa Drop Cookies

Make the Chocolate Drop Cookies, except increase butter to 2/3 cup, omit the unsweetened chocolate and add ½ cup cocoa to the dry ingredients.

Up next: Brown Sugar Drops!

Carly

This cookie recipe was found on page 8 of Betty Crocker's Cooky Book; the icing recipes were found on page 150.

Conversation Heart Cookies

I kind of cheated.

I have wanted to make Conversation Heart Cookies since last Valentine’s Day. I had a vision of cute little heart cookies, iced in pastel colors and carrying a little message in red to look like Necco® Conversation Heart candies.  Last year, I didn’t have enough time to finish the cookies and ended up selling them at a church bake sale sans written messages. (They looked really boring, but at least they all sold!) I promised myself that I would complete the cookie project for this Valentine’s Day.

 

So why is this cheating? Conversation Heart Cookies are not technically featured in Betty Crocker’s Cooky Book and perhaps do not belong in this blog. I could have made the Love Letters cookies Betty suggests for Valentine’s Day, but I elected to  follow (more or less) her suggestion of “Heart Cookies” (Mary’s Sugar Cookies and Easy Creamy Icing) from the book and make my dream cookies instead.

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Mary’s Sugar Cookies

1 ½ cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

1 cup butter or margarine

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

½ tsp almond flavoring

2 ½ cups flour

1 tsp soda

1 tsp cream of tartar

Easy Creamy Icing (see below)

Mix sugar and softened butter. Thoroughly blend in egg and flavorings. Stir together the dry ingredients and incorporate. Refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours. Preheat oven to 375 ̊F. Divide the dough in half and roll out the dough on a lightly floured pastry cloth to a 3/16” thickness. Cut with a cookie cutter and place on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake for 7 to 8 minutes or until cookies appear delicately golden. Makes 5 dozen 2 to 2 1/2” cookies.    

Easy Creamy Icing

1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar

¼ tsp salt

½ tsp vanilla or other flavoring

1 ½ Tbsp cream or 1 Tbsp water

Mix sugar, salt and flavoring; add cream to make the icing easy to spread. Tint with a few drops of food coloring if desired. Spread the icing with a spatula or pastry brush. 

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I mixed up the dough on Tuesday after lunch, intending to chill it until after dinner and then bake the cookies that night- that way, they could be decorated Wednesday afternoon and be ready to share Wednesday and Friday evenings that week.

My carefully laid plans were foiled, however, and I didn’t end up baking the cookies until Thursday night. By this point the dough was as hard as a rock and super dry and crumbly. I got really upset, thinking I would have to start over making new dough and that the cookies would never be ready in time for Friday night, much less Valentine’s Day on Monday.  I was starting to think these cookies were cursed. Would I have to wait another whole year, until next Valentine’s Day, to make these cookies???

Don’t worry, the story has a happy ending! Ryan calmed me down and got me to try to fix the cookie dough. I let it sit at room temperature for about an hour and then cut the dough into quarters. After massaging a quarter of the dough until it was warm enough that it would hang together, I rolled it out. The dough cracked around the edges when I rolled it out, but at least it stayed in one piece. I used a non-greased baking sheet, trusting in the butter in the cookies to keep them from sticking. I made the first pan of cookies according to the directions- 3/16” thick, baked for 7 minutes- but they came out dry and crunchy. Since I prefer my sugar cookies soft and a little thick, I decided to adjust the dough a bit.

I read in my Cooky Book that the way to fix dry dough is to work 1 or 2 Tbsp of soft butter or cream into the dough by hand. (page 6) So after massaging the dough a bit, I spread on some softened butter and mixed it in. The dough became much more flexible and rolled out in a smoother circle. I increased the amount of flour on the table and the rolling pin to account for the increased stickiness of the dough. In the end, the best pan of cookies was the one with extra butter in the dough, a thickness of ¼”, and a bake time of just over 5 minutes. In all, this recipe made 74 small heart cookies.

Friday afternoon, I mixed up some Easy Creamy Icing. I used a lot more cream than it called for, although I didn’t measure how much. I just wanted it to be thin enough to be painted on with a pastry brush. I did my best to recreate the pastel colors one finds in a traditional box of Conversation Hearts: pink, orange, yellow, green, and purple. (I considered keeping some icing white, but the vanilla made the icing slightly brown so I decided not to use it uncolored.)  Because I also like my icing a little thick, I had to leave the cookies out on the table overnight for the icing to harden enough to decorate.

 

Saturday morning rolled around and I had now missed both of my pre-Valentine’s Day cookie-sharing opportunities… However, it was still two days to Valentine’s Day and I was determined that the cookies be decorated!  I tried a red Wilton FoodWriter™ Edible Color Marker, but the color didn’t really show up on the icing. Then I tried some red CakeMate® decorating icing since I had a tube of it lying around, but even the smallest tip wasn’t fine enough to write on the cookies. My solution was to thin a little bit of the red icing with some cream and then write it onto the cookies using a toothpick.

A few hours later, all 70 cookies had a unique message inscribed and my cookie dream had become reality! Here are a few examples of the finished product:

 

So this is basically a story of me freaking out (as usual) and things working out okay in the end (as always).  I had fun decorating these and just ended up having lots left to share with people after Valentine’s Day. Still, maybe I’d be safer making those Love Letters instead next year.

 Where else can you get a cookie like this?

Sorry I’m behind on posts! I’ll be back soon with more drop cookies.

Carly

Credit where credit is due:

This cookie recipe was found on page 18 of Betty Crocker's Cooky Book; the icing recipe was found on page 150.

Orange Drop Cookies

Continuing the foray into drop cookies, this week’s recipe is Orange Drop Cookies- a recipe sent in by Mrs. Paul Lindemeyer of Mason City, Iowa.  This time, there is a color photo, so I can compare my finished cookies with Betty’s!

Book photo- will mine look this tasty?

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Orange Drop Cookies
2/3 cup shortening
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup orange juice
2 Tbsp grated orange rind
2 cups Gold Medal Flour
1/2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
Orange Butter Icing (see below)

Pre-heat the oven to 400̊ F. Blend together the shortening, sugar, and egg. Mix in the orange juice and orange zest. Stir the dry ingredients together and then stir into the wet ingredients. Drop rounded tablespoonfuls of dough onto an ungreased baking sheet spaced about 2 inches apart. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until delicately browned on the edges.  Let cool, then frost with Orange Butter Icing. Makes 4 dozen cookies.

Orange Butter Icing
2 1/2 Tbsp soft butter
1 1/2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp orange juice
2 tsp grated orange rind

Blend the butter and sugar together. Stir in the orange juice and grated orange rind. Mix until smooth. Makes enough icing for 4 dozen cookies.
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The first thing I did was zest the oranges, so that the grated orange rind (zest) would be ready when it needed to be added.  I don’t have a zester, so I used my box grater. I was pretty excited because I had never zested anything before; it turns out that zesting is not all that exciting. My hands got all sticky and the grater was kind of hard to clean off, but the kitchen smelled citrusy and amazing!  To get the 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons needed, I had to zest almost two whole oranges! That surprised me for some reason. Then I had to peel two exocarp-less oranges. (sigh)

In the middle of zesting. Orange oil smells so good!

After a little snack (take a guess… yes, I had oranges!), I continued with the recipe. I was glad to find that the dough was stickier than in the last recipe, making it a lot easier to handle.

The dough smelled so good, I wanted to eat it (but didn't).

I baked each pan for 9 minutes, until I thought they looked ‘delicately browned’.

Cookies baking, as seen through the oven window

Delicately browned and smelling delicious!

The recipe made 55 cookies- slightly more than the 48 predicted in the book. The frosting, however, only lasted for 44 cookies, 4 less than the recipe said.

And finally, the moment of truth: testing the first cookie.

Why do I look so guilty? 

These were amazing! All of the zesting craziness seemed worth it after tasting these.  They reminded me a lot of an orange scone, but softer.  As long as you like citrus-flavored things, you will love these cookies. Between the frosted and un-frosted cookies, the frosted ones definitely win, although the non-frosteds were still good.

Looking back at the book photo and comparing to my cookies, I think I did pretty well. :)

The final product!

See you soon for some Valentine's Day-themed cookies!
Carly


Credit where credit is due:
This cookie recipe was found on page 7 of Betty Crocker's Cooky Book; the icing recipe was found on page 150. The picture of Orange Drop Cookies was found on page 86.

Applesauce Cookies

The first section of the Cooky Book focuses on drop cookies- cookies that involve mixing up the dough and then dropping spoonfuls of dough onto the pan in little mounds. According to Betty Crocker, the perfect drop cookies have "fairly uniform mound shape, delicately browned exteriors, and good flavor." Let's see how these turn out! 
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Applesauce Cookies
1 cup shortening
2 cups brown sugar (packed)
2 eggs
1/2 cup cold coffee
2 cups well-drained thick applesauce
3 1/2 cups Gold Medal Flour
1 tsp soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp EACH cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup coarsely chopped nuts

Blend together the shortening, sugar, and eggs; stir in the coffee and applesauce. In a separate bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients. Stir the dry ingredients into the applesauce mixture. Chill dough for at least 2 hours.

Pre-heat the oven to 400̊ F. Drop rounded tablespoonfuls of dough onto a lightly greased baking sheet spaced about 2 inches apart. Bake for 9 to 12 minutes or until almost no imprint remains on the cookies when lightly pressed. Optionally, frost when cool with Lemon Butter Icing. Makes 7 to 8 dozen cookies.

Lemon Butter Icing

2 1/2 Tbsp soft butter

1 1/2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar

1 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp grated lemon rind

Blend the butter and sugar together. Stir in the lemon juice and grated lemon rind. Mix until smooth. Makes enough icing for 4 dozen cookies.
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I followed this recipe pretty closely. I used walnuts for the chopped nuts (I added the nuts to the dough after I baked a pan without nuts for the people that have walnut allergies) and Mott's Natural No Sugar Added applesauce. I did not, however, used Gold Medal flour. :)

Ingredients, ready to become cookies!

The dough was very soupy, even after chilling for two hours. I made a couple of pans after the two hour chill period and then stored the dough in the fridge another 24 hours, and the dough was still so soft that it was hard to work with. The dough could possibly have been improved by adding a little bit of extra flour.

A pan ready for the oven

I baked the cookies on ungreased cookie sheets and baked each pan for 9 minutes. They were very cakey cookies and were really, really moist. I thought that the nuts were not very noticeable and that more raisins would have been good.

Action shot!

While the cookies cooled, I made the Lemon Butter Icing. I didn't have a lemon to get any lemon zest, so I just left that out. I always think of icing as more of a glaze than a frosting, but this came out extremely thick. I ended up adding a couple of tablespoons of milk to thin it out a little. I thought it added a little sweetness to the cookies, but not much in the way of lemon flavor. I would take these cookies with or without the icing.

My cookie tasters (both at Arts and Cats night and Nerd Night) responded pretty favorably to these cookies. They did have a nice cinnamon spice flavor and were pleasantly cakey and moist, but overall, they were not my favorite cookie.  I guess they just lacked a wow factor.  

Don't forget to check back soon for my next recipe- Orange Drop Cookies!
Carly

Credit where credit is due:
This cookie recipe was found on page 7 of Betty Crocker's Cooky Book; the icing recipe was found on page 150.
My copy of the Cooky Book was a gift from my amazing husband, Ryan.
My sweet Carly apron was a hand made gift from Ryan's cousin Maggie.
Bridget and Jay gave me the penguin spatula, seen in my cookie-moving action shot.