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Holiday Cookies: Almond Cookies and Meisli
Holiday Cookies: Almond Cookies and Meisli
Almond Cookies
Almond Cookies
Ingredients
Ingredients
Cookie Dough
2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup confectioner’s sugar
3 egg yolks
2 tbsp. cream
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cup sifted flour
1 cup finely chopped almonds
Icing
1 egg yolk
2 tbsp. water
1 tbsp. butter
Confectioner’s sugar to thicken (approx. 1/2 – 3/4 cup)
Making the Cookies
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Cream butter and sugar together in a large bowl.
Add egg yolks and vanilla extract - mix in thoroughly.
Sift in flour and mix until firm and able to hold its shape.
Place the dough on a board dusted with confectioner’s sugar and flour.
Roll dough to thinness not exceeding 1/4 inch.
Cut in diamond shapes with crimping wheel or cut into shapes with cookie cutters.
Place cut dough on greased cookie sheet.
Bake on middle rack for 10 minutes; check cookie bottoms for brownness and increase cooking time in two minute increments until base of cookie is light brown. [Ours browned very quickly. Mind your cookies closely and don't trust the color of the top surface.]
Cool cookies on wire rack.
While the cookies are cooling, make the icing:
Beat egg yolks lightly and stir in water.
Add and beat in confectioner’s sugar in small increments (~1 tbsp. at a time) until a thick paste is made
Ice the cookies generously - we used ziplock bags filled with icing as piping bags, a tiny corner cut off to pipe the icing onto the cookies.
Then sprinkle or decorate the iced surface with chopped almonds.
Yields about 2 dozen cookies.
Meisli (Mouse Cookies)
Meisli (Mouse Cookies)
Ingredients
Ingredients
3/4 cup unsalted butter
2 tbsp. confectioner’s sugar
1-2 tbsp rum. Or so.
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. cardamom
1 cup finely ground nuts (hazelnuts, hickory nuts, almonds)
NOTE: the nuts must be ground into an even, fluffy, sawdust consistency, best accomplished in a coffee grinder or nut mill. Food processors will evidently create a paste, which is not the desired consistency, so be aware.
2 cups all-purpose flour
Icing (see recipe above)
Currants
Sliced almonds
Making the Cookies
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
Cream the butter and sugar together.
Mix in the vanilla extract and the rum. Maybe add a bit more rum. Maybe a bit more? Perhaps have some for yourself too. There's probably some eggnog around here somewhere...
Add the ground nut flour, then gradually beat in the wheat flour.
Knead the dough by hand until it's stiff and moldable.
Break off small-ish pieces of dough and roll each into a ball. Then shape it into slightly elongated mouse-shapes (pointy nose to plump body) about 2 inches long from nose to haunches.
Put the mice on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 20-24 minutes until light brown on the bottom.
Cool cookies on wire rack.
The original recipe called for rolling or dusting the mice in powdered sugar. We dusted a few in powdered sugar, opting not to roll them as the mice were sufficiently crumbly to become dust themselves. For the rest of the batch, we opted to ice them with the same icing made for the almond cookies. Therefore, ice the mice liberally and let set for a few minutes, but before they fully set...
...in the still-sticky icing, attach 2 currants for eyes and almond slivers for ears.
Yields about 30 mice.
Read the Holiday Cookies 2023 blog entry.
Let us know what you think! padutchtable@gmail.com
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