Cooking with Michy

Makes 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup (100 grams) white granulated sugar

1 large egg

3/4 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups (175 grams) all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/3 (75 ml) candied red cherries, chopped

Directions:

1. In the bowl of your mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (3-4 minutes).

2. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until incorporated.

3. In a separate bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt and then add to the butter and egg mixture. Mix just until a dough forms.

4. Stir in the cherries until evenly distributed throughout the dough.

5. Place dough on a large piece of parchment or wax paper. Smooth and shape the dough into an evenly shaped cylinder that is about 10 inches long. Then thoroughly wrap the shaped logs in the parchment or wax paper, twists the ends of the paper to seal the logs, and place in the refrigerator to chill for at least three hours, or up to three days. The logs can also be frozen for about one month. If freezing, it is best to let the logs stand at room temperature about 15-20 minutes before slicing.

6. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F with the rack in the center of the oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

7. Using a thin bladed knife, slice the logs into 1/4 inch (5 mm) thick slices. Place the cookies on the prepared baking sheets, spacing about 2 inches (5 cm) apart. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and cool completely on a wire rack. Store at room temperature for about five days or baked cookies can be frozen for a couple of weeks.

Review: These cherry ice box cookies were something different, they tasted so good and were fun to make to. What went well was that we cut the cherries up small enough so there was enough to balance out the dough. This helped us in making sure that all the cherries weren’t in one part of the dough and not the other. What didn’t go well was that when we were cutting the dough into uniform shape, they king of got squashed a little bit causing them to not have as nice of an appealing look, although it didn’t harm the overall taste it was a bit of an eye sore. We learned to today that you can make certain cookies that you can refrigerate and cook later. This allows us to be able to make fresh cookies fast all the time. The one thing I would change is to find a better way to cut up the cookies so that the appearance doesn’t get squashed. All in all these cookies were fun to make and had a nice sweet taste to them!