Category: Nut-Free Cookies

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CHOCOLATE COVERED MARSHMALLOW TREATS – Part 3, The Marshmallow Filling Options

Part 3 of a 5-part series about those chocolate coated treats you adored as a child. This examines the marshmallow fillings.

Part 1 of this series provided an overview of this massive project, with some notes about the problems we ran into.

Part 2 listed several recipes we developed for different cookie bases: Vanilla, Spice, Graham Cracker, and Shortbread. You can also use a thin cake round, but we left that one out because this is, after all, a project devoted to heritage cookies.

This Part 3 examines the two main approaches to creating a marshmallow filling. There is a third approach too, for fruit-based Zefir marshmallows, but I’ve moved that discussion over to its own Part 5.

Piped with a round tip onto commercial wafers
Piped with a star tip onto commercial wafers
Rose, Vanilla, and Banana on homemade Vanilla Snaps. Color coded with a few drops of food dye.

As always, skip to the bottom if you only want the recipes. The rest of this article digs into the process behind those final results.

The Internet offers a metric ton of recipes for homemade marshmallows, most of which work pretty well. They’re the world’s easiest candy. Basically:

  1. Start with a thick and sticky substrate (made from the marshmallow plant in antiquity);
  2. Heat a sugar syrup to the soft ball stage (235‑240 °F a/k/a 112-115 °C), using a combination of table sugar (sucrose) and corn syrup (glucose) syrup to prevent crystallization; and then
  3. Whip the sugar syrup into the substrate until it balloons up to create fluffy marshmallows. These can be piped while warm, or else cooled in a pan to make cut-out eating marshmallows.

The American version uses a lot of gelatin to make that sticky substrate. The European version uses whipped egg whites with less gelatin; i.e., is a gelatin-strengthened Italian Meringue. NOTE: French meringue is egg white whipped with sugar; Italian meringue is egg white whipped with hot sugar syrup; and Swiss meringue is egg white heated to around 170-175 °F (76-79 °C) before being whipped. Swiss is stiffer and more stable than Italian, which is stiffer and more stable than French.

Problem #1: The filling was denser and sweeter than we wanted.

Think of a classic marshmallow you eat out of hand. They have a distinct chew to them, right? It’s part of the appeal. Now think of that chocolate covered marshmallow treat you grew up with. Much less chewy! And a bit less sweet, because flavor also comes from the cookie base and the chocolate topping. The The cookie would not be perfect until we got a handle on the problem.

Fair enough, but how do you change a marshmallow recipe to achieve those targets? It can obviously be done – the commercial products prove that – but we had to figure out how. And that was a major pain in the whosis, because our expertise on the baking side did not extend into this kind of candy making and sugar work.

The first and most obvious solution (cutting cut back on the amount of gelatin) proved to be impossible. Cut back too far and the structure dissolves rather than getting lighter, and I could not fidget my way into a perfect balance because kitchen scales only have so much precision. Plus the marshmallows were far too sweet for this use, and cutting back on the sugar too created other textural issues. I fought this problem for months, and ended up with a pair of solutions that work hand in hand.

Kate gets 100% of the credit for the first. She noticed that our trusty stand mixer began to really strain as the marshmallow mix cooled down. Part of this came from how the filling thickened as it cooled, but the overflowing bowl factored in too. Her solution? Shrink the recipe by a third. Huge difference. The lower volume resulted in a fluffier marshmallow because the machine wasn’t slowing down, and also because the bowl had extra room to accommodate it.

I claim credit for the second solution. I posted the question on some Internet groups/boards, and no one seemed able to help. All I got were suggestions for vegan substitutes that could be used instead of gelatin. That wasn’t the issue! Vegan shmegan; I just wanted to know what was going on in the chemistry, and how to adjust it. One long-suffering volunteer finally burst out with, “maybe you should take a food science class or two.”

Ding ding! For some reason I’d done all my Internet searches using the words “chemistry,” “physics,” and descriptions like “fluffier” and “denser.” I’d never done one using the term “food science.” Why not try? I did, and up popped this lovely article on a project for grade school science teachers: “Sweet Science – Making Marshmallows.” I urge you to read it, but here’s a quick summary in case you want to save some time. Loosely translated, the project reads as follows:

“Have your students make marshmallows with different proportions of sugar to corn syrup, and then measure the characteristics. They’ll find out that more sugar equals a denser and sweeter product, while a higher ratio of corn syrup reverses that. Then you can let the kids eat their experiment, and send the sugared-up darlings off to some class with a colleague you don’t like.”

Okay, I added that last last sentence on my own. But look at what it says! Lighter, and less sweet. Exactly what I wanted. We did the experiment; it worked just as predicted; and the results now appear in the recipes below.

Plus there’s this: Now you have the power too! By way of reference, American eating marshmallows have a sugar:syrup ratio of 6:1 by volume. That’s now at 3:2 for the cookie filling, which coincidentally works out to just about 1:1 by weight. This is just about perfect for us, but you can fuss with it to your heart’s content to find the proportion that’s perfect for you. Tastes differ. Though it must be said that we achieved a texture so “right” that our testers actually singled it out for special compliments! Yes, you really can tell.

Problem #2: Piping the Marshmallow was a P.I.T.A.

There’s no easy way to say this. I suck at piping. And that is a problem because this is a recipe where you need to work quickly. Cooled marshmallow filling stiffens, is harder to pipe, and tends to mound up unevenly instead of covering the whole cookie in a pretty layer. Nor does it help that our biggest piping bags are “mediums” on anyone else’s scale. Even the reduced recipe required us to refill the bag two or three times, which led to the filling cooling off that much faster, and becoming that much… You get the idea.

Marshmallow gets stiffer as it cools, and won’t pipe out cleanly.

In the end I found three solutions that worked pretty well.

  • Scott’s Solution. Rope in Kate or a daughter to cover for my sorry efforts. This works perfectly, and I recommend it highly.
  • The Doh! Solution. Buy a bigger bag. Maybe next time. They aren’t as easy to find as you’d think.
  • Solution #3. Prepare two or three of the medium-sized bags before you start to pipe the cookies out. This saves a few critical minutes, and also lets you use more than one tip.

Yes, I am overselling the difficulty a bit. Anyone with the right tools and some basic skills won’t find it as challenging as I did. The multiple-bags approach also solves a lot of the problem, and the cookies taste just as good even if the marshmallow cools enough to come out lopsided. Still, forewarned is forearmed. Be ready to pipe as quickly and efficiently as you can; and/or to laugh at your funky shapes.

Problem #3: The Infinite Variations

Continuing the theme from Parts 1 and 2, the marshmallow filling can also be varied in as many ways as your imagination permits. And it’s super simple to do!

So-called “plain” marshmallows are flavored with vanilla extract. An even teaspoon works perfectly at these amounts. “Flavored” marshmallows replace the vanilla with with any extract and/or food color that’s buried in your spice cabinet, and that same 1 tsp. will do the job just as well. Lemon, rose, rum, banana, coffee, mint, almond… there is some place in the world where that flavor of marshmallow is a beloved favorite sold in stores. I recommend some color coding to avoid frowns of confusion, but it really is that easy.

Spices work too but we found that spiced cookie bases were easier to control. Marshmallows have a ton of air, and adding enough spice to provide solid flavor can make them a little gritty.

Fruit flavors are a little different. The extracts work fine for a properly artificial flavor reminiscent of commercial products, but you can also get The Real Thing by making Zefir instead of a classic marshmallow. Talk about intense essence of fruit…! But that’s getting ahead of myself. I moved that discussion to Part 5 for very good reason, and you’ll simply have to wait.

CONCLUSION

It took some serious work and research to nail down the filling part of this cookie, but that really came down to exploring things at the food science level. [It had nothing to do with me being obsessive, no matter what my piping assistants may say!] If you follow the recipe below – either one – you will find it quick, easy, and effective. You’ve got your wheel, and there’s no need to recreate it.

So where are we at?

  1. Make a simple cookie base, flavored in any way you can imagine.
  2. Pick your choice of marshmallow approach, and flavor it with any extract or liqueur in your cabinet by substituting 1:1 for the designated vanilla, and color coding with a touch of food dye.
  3. Pipe your marshmallow creation onto your choice of cookie, using your choice of piping tip.

Bing, bang, boom. You’ve got these Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Treats 70% done. All that remains is coating them in everyone’s favorite darkest-brown food of the gods.

THE CHOCOLATE MARSHMALLOW TREATS SERIES

Part 1, The Chocolate Marshmallow Treat Overview

Part 2, The Cookie Base Options

Part 3, The Marshmallow Filling Options

Part 4, The Chocolate Coating and Finishing Options

Part 5, The Strange New World of Fruit-Based Zefir Marshmallows

VANILLA SNAPS AND WAFERS – a classic cookie and ingredient

The classic, with versions for eating out of hand or for using in other recipes

Here’s another head smacker cookie really should have gone into Volume I but somehow escaped our notice. It came up now in a sideways fashion. We’ve finally gotten around to working on Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Treats. You know that cookie. Everyone does. It’s the one you loved as a child, with a simple cookie base that has marshmallow on top, and is then coated with a thin chocolate shell.

That cookie has scores and scores of different version around the world, but the most common uses some equivalent to a Nilla Wafer® base. So that meant I should start by making… Doh! I’ve never actually worked up a homemade version of Vanilla Wafers. [Sigh]

The result was all we could have hoped for and more. In fact, we discovered that it isn’t a single cookie. It’s actually three.

  1. Use the full amount of flavor and you’ll get a very pleasant cookie to eat out of hand, that adults will enjoy as much as children.
  2. Use a moderate amount of vanilla, and you’ll make something very close to the commercial product. Just better in every way. Real butter and real love make a real difference. Kate says that toddlers in Prague were fed a similar cookie whenever treats were earned.
  3. Reduce the amount of flavor all the way, and you will get the plain, invisible cookie that’s perfect for all the “other” uses these get purchased for. Banana Pudding; El Cheapo Tiramisu; Chocolate Marshmallow Treats; etc., etc., on and on, and suchforth and suchlike.

As always, skip to the bottom if you only want the recipe

This is a simple cookie, and it’s meant to be a simple cookie, so I’m going to try to keep the discussion brief. There weren’t many issues that needed to be addressed. It was really a matter of focusing on what we wanted the cookie to be.

First the Eggs

I wanted this to be a light, crispy cookie with a fair amount of air, that would taste a little buttery without coming off as rich. Most recipes in our books and online resources called for one whole egg to go with each stick of butter. I tested that, along with one egg white, and one egg yolk.

The whole egg won handily, both for ease and flavor. Yes, you can make a good cookie with both egg white and egg yolk, but the whole egg is simpler and, for this use, better.

Wait; Haven’t We Made This Before?

For crying out loud! Butter cookies. Sugar cookies. Shortbread. Alfajories. Spritz Cookies. Snaps. They’re all pretty much the same, right? Just butter, sugar, flour, starch, and egg in slightly different proportions, plus a hit of flavor. Was this one really different, or just a variation on one of our existing and already-tested recipes?

Well… no. I went back and crunched the numbers. These are in the same family but the proportions are distinct enough to earn their own name. Same for the classic French cookies we plan to work up someday, such as Langue du Chat (“Cat’s Tongues” a/k/a Homemade Milanos®), and Tuiles. Those use several egg whites to create a different species within the same genus.

What’s In A Name?

All that recipe comparison work did clarify one thing that was bugging me. These are not a “wafer”!

I am a lawyer in my real life, and have been for 30 years. So I can speak for my profession when I tell you that virtually every non-criminal problem I see comes down to a variation on the theme of frustrated expectations. Person X thought s/he deserved or would get an “A,” ended up with a “B”, and grew angry at that result. So Person X goes back to Person Y to complain, “where is my A?”, and the situation then grows worse because Person Y insists that s/he meant “B” all along. And most of the time both interpretations fit the actual words.

The solution? Define your bloody terms so you can at least know where you really disagree! Try it the next time someone wants to argue about politics. “Exactly what do you mean when you use that word?” You’ll be shocked at how much of your fight disappears, or at least settles down to the amicable question of how words ought to be used.

In any case, I have spent a lot of years getting frustrated over that stupidity, in both my profession and in politics, so I get a little [ahem] picky about calling things by their proper names. A “wafer” is an extremely thin, usually broad cookie like our different Snowflake variations, Tuilles, or Lace Cookies. You can get to that result in many different ways, but that’s the definition.

This cookie does not meet that definition, and thus it isn’t a “wafer.” This cookie is a “Snap”. Harrumph.

We define Snaps as any plain, simple, round cookie that features a clear and focused flavor. Cardamom, Anise, and Black Pepper Snaps feature a single spice. Ginger snaps feature a spice mix with a touch of molasses. But that is the family group, and that is where this cookie belongs. Harrumph I say again! And harrumph for good measure. Harrumph. Harrumph. Harrumph!

Alas, but the outside world does foolish things on occasion. Sometimes it will even [gasp!] ignore it when some large company mislabels what ought to be a Snap as a Wafer. And a wise man has to know his limits. So let us agree on a simple formula, okay?

First, I am in the right. Harrumph. And that means the world is wrong. And thus equity, justice, and fair play are unanimously on my side.

Next, I am not being petty no matter what certain females in my household may choose to imply. Nor childish. Not, not, not!

And no, this isn’t a fight I’m going to win. So how about a compromise?

Let’s agree to call the eating version of this cookie a Vanilla Snap. That’s the tasty one with a full tablespoon of vanilla, which is going to make people sit up and say, “I never thought I’d say it, but these things are capital-G Good.” The weaker versions, which are intended for use in other recipes anyway, can be called by that other name for the sake of allowing the rest of the world to save some face.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Confirmed Again: “Other” Starches Work Better Than Corn Starch

Is the cookie better with a bit of gluten-free starch to supplement the flour? Yes, it is. Cake flour might work too, but we didn’t test it.

Would corn starch work? Yes… but it isn’t as reliable as rice flour, tapioca flour, arrowroot, etc., because you’ll occasionally get a less-done piece that leaves a gummy sensation in your mouth. It’s an effect we wrote about in our book Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World. Corn starch breaks down at a higher temperature than those others, and thus cookies made with corn starch are more likely to have leftover “uncooked starch” in the final product. That’s the underlying problem; it was confirmed again in these experiments; and there’s simply no reason to fight the science. Vanilla Snaps cook until the bottoms brown, which gives a margin of error, but why make use of that margin if you don’t have to?

We usually bake with tapioca starch because it is cheap and readily available in large quantities at our local oriental market. We have tested rice flour and arrowroot too, and found them to be identical. We have read that potato starch fits in too. Corn starch is the only one that requires a higher baking temperature.

Would A Drop Cookie Work?

We always prefer to write up drop cookie recipes when possible, just because they’re so much easier for new people. Refrigerator slice-and-bakes come in second, followed by roll-and-cut cookies, and then by ones you pipe out. What was the best way to go for this one?

The answer depended on what we wanted to do with them. Drop cookies worked fine from the baking perspective, but I simply couldn’t get them to come out even enough to use as a consistent base for the other project. So here is my verdict:

  • If you’re after the eat-out-of-hand Vanilla Snap version, make a simple drop cookie and be done with it. You don’t need to do it that way, but you can. Kate swears that they also came out a little lighter and crispier than the rolled-and-cut version, though I couldn’t tell the difference.
  • If you’re after a cookie to use in some other role (like the base of a Chocolate Marshmallow Treat), roll them out and use a cookie cutter. These are dead consistent and thus better as an ingredient. The dough is a little on the sticky side, but works fine if you simply dust with flour as needed.
  • If you’re trying to jazz things up, add a bit of milk to thin the dough out to a batter, and then pipe out something fancy. You could even sprinkle it with a bit of sanding sugar. It ought to work with a spritz gun as well.

Bake Until The Bottoms Are Good And Tan

Part of the flavor in this cookie comes from actual browning on the bottom. Most cookies want to come out of the oven when they’re still pale, and the edges feel barely set. Leave these in for the full 12 minutes, or until you can see browning around the edges.

CONCLUSION

That’s about it. One forgets that plain old vanilla isn’t that plain at all. It’s a really delicious spice, and it fully deserves to be just as celebrated in a Snap Cookie of its very own. They are as “heritage” as you can get, and well worth making.

ORESHKI (FAUX WALNUTS) – Eastern Europe’s Cookie Of Childhood

Confession: I love crossword puzzles, and I’ve done enough to learn certain words that writers can’t seem to do without. Here are some examples of recent clues I’ve seen:

  • Clue: “Treat that is often twisted”
  • Clue: “Crispy, pull apart snack”
  • Clue: “Cookie eaten from the inside out”

Oreos! Duh. Everyone knows that, right? Yes… if you’re from the U.S.A. People who grew up in Ukraine, Russia, Poland, or other countries of central and eastern Europe might well stare at a clue like that with nothing but bewilderment that “Oreshki” doesn’t fit in the grid. What else could the writer possibly be thinking about?

As always, skip to the bottom if you only want to read the recipe. And what the heck. This link will take you to the Dulce de Leche recipe in the middle.

Oreshki are a classic treat that are known and loved from Russia to the east, through Poland and the Czech Republic to the west, all the way down to the Crimean Sea. The formula is easy to describe: start with a very basic cookie dough, shape it into hollow nuts, and then fill the nuts with something gooey that children will love. Subtle? Bah. Sophisticated? Hah! Adult with a capital “A” like spice cookies or ginger snaps? Not in the slightest.

Nice, sweet, and simple. That’s your ticket. This is the cookie of childhood.

Working On The Cookie

If you’re here doing research, let me give you a tip as someone who’s actually read through and pondered several dozen online recipes. Don’t overthink it!

Your problem is easy to state: natives adore their Oreshki to the point that innumerable Eastern European families have now shared their “secret” methods to get them just, exactly right. There’s a lot to go through. The wonders of online translators, combined with a wife who can translate what those will not, allowed me to put together a humongous file of different trips, tips, options, and formulae. It was a true brain buster! But do you know what I found when I averaged things out, and then compared the results to other cookies?

Your target crust is a plain, light, crispy wafer that won’t fight with the filling. Period. Keep that in sight and you won’t have any problems.

Yes, you will be a little confused by how some of the common ingredients get used. I certainly was. But there is a pattern to the strangeness: those “touches” all add up to (i) a hint of acid, and (ii) a bit of “other” fat to supplement the butter. I don’t know why they do it. The amounts are so small that it’s hard to see how these additions could change the result. Nevertheless, it is a clear pattern, our work is about “heritage” just as much as “right,” and so I made a point of testing the variations.

The most common version marries a touch (½-1 tsp.) of vinegar with a tablespoon of mayonnaise, and then uses baking soda instead of powder. I ended up going with 1 tbsp. of sour cream paired with baking powder. Feel free to pursue either route as you wish. The differences will be subtle at best because you aren’t really supposed to notice the crust in the first place. It’s the filling that make Oreshki special.

These crusts get cooked in a special stovetop mold (electric versions being available in some countries). Here is ours, which is made from aluminum and available for a very low price from various sources:

You’ll need to fidget a bit to get the timing right. We ended up at 65-70 seconds per side on our average-sized burner with the gas set to a “2” out of “9.” Don’t expect that to match up with your burner! We also noted that molds filled with fewer cookies toasted faster than ones which were completely full.

Make an effort to keep the inside cookie-tan, like a shortbread, rather than nut brown. That was the one critique we got from our taste testers, and when I went back to do the final batch with that correction all of us noted that the new and lighter-colored cookies were also a bit airier and crisper when eaten.

Finally, you’ll need to trim the shells when they come out of the mold. It’s impossible to get the sizes right every time! A sharp paring knife is the perfect tool. Just don’t throw those trimmings in the trash! Most people simply add them into the filling for a bit of texture. We prefer to recycle them into crumbs for a leftovers-cookie or pie crust (think of how many recipes you know that begin with the instruction, “Grind up some vanilla wafers and then use the crumbs for…”). Do as you will, but please don’t waste what ought to be used.

These shells are too dark. Don’t throw them out, of course. They’ll work well enough. It’s just that lighter colored shells will be crisper, airier, and that much better.
These are what you want. The outsides are darker, the insides are “light tan shortbread”. BTW, do you see that one untrimmed shell on the top right? That’s the norm, and where your extra crumbs come from.

Nailing Down The Filling

The all time classic Oreshki filing is a peculiarly addictive caramel made from dulce de leche. More on that below. But honestly, anything that’s sweet, sticky, and a little bit runny will do. Nutella® works like a charm. So does lemon curd. It’s hard to go wrong, and none of my native taste testers had anything bad to say about those variations. Playing with your filling is fair game. But there’s that ‘heritage’ thing again, so we really ought to discuss the original version that left so many millions of 8 year old addicts in its wake.

Let’s start with an overview. You’ve seen this flavor profile before! When push comes to shove, this is just another plain shortbread being paired with rich, gooey caramel. In South America that takes the form of Alfajores. In the U.S. it’s a Twix® bar. In the U.K. it’s Millionaire’s Shortbread. Western Europe has it’s Stroopwafel. Got it? There’s nothing complicated about it. We’re only going to tweak things a little to match the Eastern European palate.

You can start from a true caramel if you wish, but native recipes follow the South American approach by starting with tins of sweetened condensed milk, and then boiling them for a few hours.

After that it’s easy. Soften this up with a bit of butter, add some cream cheese for a mild sour tang, and you’re done. Most recipes suggest the addition of crumbs from the crust-trimmings, and some will also add ground nuts, but those are both optional steps. It really comes down to whether you’re after pure, luscious smoothness on the inside, or luscious smoothness offset by a little bit of crunch.

How To Fill Your Oreshki

It took a few tries, but I’ve now got the system down pat.

  1. Take one shell. Top it off completely with your filling. Use a second shell to scrape that level. Set aside for the moment.
  2. Add filling to the second shell, and scrape that level with a third shell.
  3. Put shell half #1 on top of shell half #2, and then repeat the process until all your shells are done.
  4. NOTE 1: It’s not a bad idea to overfill a bit, and then squeeze the halves together so the excess filling will squish out the sides. Wipe it off with a finger, and then set aside your perfectly filled nuts for further decoration as desired. [What do you do with your filling-dirtied finger? Come on. Really? Being the baker has its upside!]
  5. NOTE 2: Oreshki with a runnier filling may want to go in the fridge to set up.

The only question left is, “to seal or not to seal.” These shortbread-and-caramel treats often come with a chocolate coating. Think of the aforementioned Twix® bars and Millionaire’s Shortbread. Heck, it’s common to coat Alfajores too in recipes that don’t add coconut. So it makes perfect sense to seal those two halves together with a bit of chocolate, right?

The answer is both yes and no. We liked the caramel ones better with a chocolate seal. No doubt about it. And every one of our native tasters expressed the same preference. “That’s a great touch!”

But then they’d add something like this: “My grandmother never did that. Of course, she didn’t have much access to chocolate back when I was a little girl.”

Again, it’s entirely up to you. A simple dusting with powdered sugar works just as well for chocolate-free versions, and better for those with an alternative filling.

With the ends sealed in chocolate. Very tasty, but not entirely traditional because chocolate was hard to obtain back in the day.

Conclusion

This is a really fun cookie so long as you don’t try to fight its basic core. Oreshki are designed for children, and adults who loved them as children. Sharing them with those children, old and young, is why American bakers will want to make them.

That said, you really, really do want to make them. I can pretty much guarantee a downright special reaction from the actual children in your life, and an even stronger one from adults who grew up in the Oreshki Zone. It’s like dropping a puppy in the lap of their inner child.

First comes the delighted grin. Then the delighted cry, “Oreshki!” Then some insight into a delighted childhood soul. Everyone who eats Oreshki has his/her own special technique. Some pop them in whole and crunch. Others twist them in half, and then crunch. There’s a twist-and-stretch school too; twist, scrape, and crunch; twist, stretch, and lick in midair… You get the idea. Pure, childish glee.

Think that’s going too far? Head on back to the beginning of this article, and the analogy to Oreos®. Imagine your typical American expat who has moved overseas and built a life somewhere that knows nothing about their childhood treats. Get him or her in a friendly environment, like visiting your home or receiving a tin as a gift. Now open it up and reveal a crispy, black-and-white, twist-apart cookie. What will happen? The exact same thing.

That memory is what Oreshki are really about. That, and creating a similar memory for future generations. It will work, I promise. There’s nothing that Littles enjoy more than something gooey, sweet, and crunchy that looks like something it isn’t. Oreshki are flat out fun at every level.

Enjoy!

PUMPKIN PIE SPICED SNICKERDOODLES – The American spice cookie with the American spice mix

Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World contains a whole section on spice cookies, with a long set of recipes for the spice mixes alone. The idea is simple. Find the spice mix you like, acknowledge the regional roots for that combination, and then use the mix willy nilly in refrigerator cookies, snaps, molded cookies, and whatever else you choose to make.

Bing, bang, boom. Simple as can be.

I always forget how good these are until I make them again, and say “Wow.”

America’s signature spice cookie has to be Snickerdoodles, an extremely simple drop cookie made purely with cinnamon. No spice mixes for us! Until the last few decades, that is. Writing in 2021, I can certify that Pumpkin Pie Spice has become an annual harvest event every bit as common as Jack O’Lanterns in the yard. Why fight a good thing? Here is our version of this now-ubiquitous spice blend, along with a variation on our published recipe for Snickerdoodles.

Please Note: We aren’t kidding about the capital-O Opinions that people have on what makes the proper ratio for your spiced sugar coating. Our daughters join me as Even Steven Types. We prefer a 50/50 ratio. Kate, a summa cum laude graduate of the Accent Only School, greatly prefers a 2:1 ratio of sugar to spice. Any more than that leaves bitter notes on her palate. Make a note on your recipe about where you stand.

Enjoy!

Scott and Kate’s Pumpkin Pie Spice Mix

(makes slightly more than ¼ cup = 4⅓ tbsp = 65 ml)

  • 2 tbsp. cinnamon
  • 1 tbsp. ginger (not old)
  • 2 tsp. nutmeg (not old)
  • 1 tsp. ground allspice
  • 1 tsp. ground clove

ITALIAN ORANGE COOKIES

Italy has a fascinating cookie tradition that is broad, deep, and very distinct from the rest of Europe. That’s particularly true for the citrus cookie genus. North and central European countries tend to make a buttery shortbread or sugar cookie base, which they’ll kick up with a sharply flavored glaze. The Lemon-Lime Cookies from HERITAGE COOKIES OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD are a perfect example.

Italians tend to make their cookies vastly more puffy by adding copious amounts of baking powder, with thinner and often optional icings, and a lot of orange or lemon zest in the dough. Many recipes reinforce the zest with some citrus oil or extract. But that’s not all. There’s also a very different philosophy when it comes to the fat. Shortbreads and sugar cookies are built on butter, but Italian cookies will often play around with that aspect. The Ricotta Cookies in our book use butter, but lighten everything up with cheese to create a unique experience. Lemon Drops a/k/a Lemon Knots a/k/a Anginetti use liquid oil. This recipe uses shortening, or in older versions, lard.

Butter is wonderful stuff. Extraordinary stuff. There’s a reason why simple butter cookies like French Sablés, American Meltaways, Middle Eastern Ghorayeba, and the ubiquitous Spritz Cookies fill bakery and market shelves alike. They’re good. Nor will we deny that butter and citrus marry extremely well. They do. But the offspring of butter and citrus tends to be a pleasing, 50/50 combination of the two. Neutral fats like shortening or oil are the way to go if you want a purified hit of citrus essence (or of chocolate for that matter).

Enter Italian Orange Cookies.

NOTES ON THE RECIPE:

There is no surprising technique required to make this cookie. It hardly takes any attention if you have the basics down. (1) Whisk or sift together the dry ingredients to evenly distribute the baking powder. (2) Cream together the shortening/lard, sugar, orange zest, and extract(s) so the fat can absorb the citrus and vanilla flavors. (3) Add in the eggs, taking care to go one at a time in order to create an emulsion. (4) Thin with some fresh orange juice from the one you zested, which is slightly unusual. And then (5) mix in the dry ingredients, taking care to avoid a flour eruption.

The only odd ingredients are the sheer quantity of eggs (three of them, when most recipes will use just one) and baking powder (a whopping tablespoon of baking powder where most recipes would use just a half-teaspoon).

And the only odd decoration part is the very common use of half a maraschino cherry to create a “Rudolph’s Nose” effect like you see with Amaretti (a macaroon rather than a drop cookie). We were tempted to ignore that cherry in favor of an orange glaze (see the photo below), but it turned out to be a nice touch. Maraschino cherries add nothing to an ice cream sundae beyond a neon-red flash of color, but their almond-laced flavor makes a real difference on this scale. They create an odd counterpoint that actually enhances the orange flavor rather than competing with it.

(1) Rolled in sugar with a cherry on top, (2) With an orange glaze, and (3) Cherry on top coated with orange glaze. All three are delicious, so choose the one that you like best.

In the end we decided to leave the decorations in the recipe as an option.

  • First option: roll the dough in sugar before baking, and then press in a well drained maraschino cherry that’s been patted dry with a paper towel.
  • Second option: coat the baked cookies with a quick orange glaze made from extra OJ and powdered sugar, plus grated orange peel if you wish.
  • Third option: bake with the cherry and then coat with the glaze.

All three work fine. Just make sure to dry the cherries well. Scott forgot to be careful enough in the test batch, which led to that unfortunate pink stain you can see in the photo. (He was going to do a second batch to make them look perfect, but Kate put her foot down and pointed out that showing the problem offers more value to readers than just giving the warning).

Limited Life Span

These puffy, super-leavened cookies have a particular charm but they do come with a downside: they’re going to go stale in no more than a day or two.

The word “stale” actually refers to a series of small effects that are all caused by oxidation. Sitting out in the open gives the oxygen in your air a chance to do its evil work. Cookie tins slow the process down by limiting the O2 levels to just the amount that was in the container when you sealed the lid. Freezing reduces oxidation even more by slowing down the chemical process. This is why freezing in a vacuum provides the best of all worlds for preserving your food, though that isn’t really practical for delicate cookies.

Leaveners like baking powder work by expanding in the oven to create CO2 bubbles in the dough, which rapidly get replaced by plain old air as the cookies finish baking and then cool off. Well leavened cookies feel and taste “light” because they quite literally are: they’re puffed full of air on the inside. Air that will turn them stale from the inside out if you give them any time at all.

So we’re afraid there’s no way around it. Italian Orange Cookies are made to be eaten, and eaten on the day they’re baked. Have your cup of tea handy (even Scott admits they are fabulous with a cup of tea), and your cookie-hunting spouses and children on standby.

Conclusion

This is a simple, happy and cheerful cookie. They’re simple to bake, a joy to behold, and pack a clear orange flavor that’s certain to make you smile. They’re also an absolute classic that shows why Italian bakeries thrived so well and spread so quickly as the immigrants flooded through Ellis Island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Scott had a lot of fun making them. Kate had a lot of fun making the photos. And you’re going to have a lot of fun with the recipe for many years to come.

Enjoy!

SOUR CREAM MOLASSES SPICE COOKIES – How Could Anyone Forget?

Most of the cookies that Americans would consider ‘obvious’ and ‘normal’ made their way into the original Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World. We are, after all, Americans. That is our world view, like it or not, so the things that have become traditional for the U.S. qualify by definition. But every so often you hit one of those “Doh!” moments when you’re reminded of a recipe everyone knows, that somehow slipped through all nets to lie there waiting for Volume II.

Case in point: Sour Cream Molasses Spice Cookies.

The moment happened in this case when a Facebook friend published an odd version of Speculaas – the great Dutch molded cookie – that included sour cream in the dough. Sour cream is a uniquely American ingredient, created in the U.S. as a version of Europe’s crème fraiche that could be produced on an industrial scale. She wrote that the recipe came from family friends who presumably brought the recipe back to Europe after visiting the States; reverse immigration at its best!

We’ll probably work up a version of that recipe for some future article, but the important thing here was Scott’s reaction: “Oh, I know where that comes from; this is that soft molasses spice cookie we had growing up… DOH!!”

There’s really not much more to say. This is a cookie you knew as a child; as warm, comforting, and familiar as Grandma’s lap. It’s a classic American drop cookie, made extra tender and pillowy by the addition of a little sour cream, and interesting by the addition of some sweet gingerbread spices. Bing, bang, boom: done. They really are just that easy.

There are only two notes we’d like to emphasize before closing. First, please customize these by using your favorite spice mix. We went with our Speculaas mix for the recipe in deference and thanks to Hayden for bringing the memory back to life, but the cookie will work just as well with anything that suits your particular, mood, taste, and spice cabinet. Pumpkin pie spice; classic. Apple pie spice; classic. Your mother’s gingerbread mix; classic. Just make it balanced, and maybe weighted a little bit toward the cinnamon since this is, after all, an American cookie and we are obsessed by that particular spice in our baking.

Second, have a source ready to receive your largess because these things won’t last in the house. They are high powered, superconducting hand magnets, and once the cookie reaches your fingers, you know where it is going to end up. On the plus side, this is also a perfect way to get the children in your life started on a lifelong enjoyment of the wonderful world of spiced breads, cakes, and other treats. And to teach them basic courtesy. “Please” and “thank you” are easy concepts to learn when there are cookies in the jar.

Enjoy!

BUTTER JELLIES, SPITZBUBEN, & MAILANDERLI – The one that everyone loves

When you make as many high quality cookies as we do, you get used to a couple of standard questions. The top two have to be, “What are your favorite cookies?” and “What is the favorite cookie overall?” The answer always disappoints: there are no real, statistical favorites because individual tastes end up dominating. But one thing we can say for sure is this:

People adore filled cookies.

There’s just something very “extra” about treats inside a treat. And that’s extra “extra” for Butter Jellies, because the jam in the middle (a) makes them spectacularly pretty, and (b) adds a series of bright berry flavors that cannot be baked into a dough. Yes, you can now find freeze dried berries in a lot of supermarkets. And yes, they add a bit of true berry flavor into your dough that people can taste even through all the butter and other ingredients. But it isn’t the same because the full berry flavor includes a lot of things that don’t come through, such as all the bright high notes.

Those require either an icing or, as in this case, a filling. The combination of tart/sweet jam and buttery cookie is irresistible. If these aren’t the #1 favorite on our annual tray, they probably count in the top three for a vast majority.

It’s really a simple cookie. Butter Jellies and their variations are a basic, roll-and-cut, shortbread/butter cookie with just enough flour to hold together for a few days after they’re sandwiched around liquidy jam. The variations are subtle, and amount to either more egg yolks (Grandma Kandler’s version, which is known in Switzerland as star shaped Mailanderli), or the use of egg whites instead of yolks for a drier mouthfeel (Swiss Spitzbuben). What about whole eggs? We tested it of course, and they work fine from the sturdiness point of view, but we ended up preferring either the rich chew of yolks alone or the dry counterpoint from using only whites. Your mileage may vary.

The jam is up to you. We used to adore rose hip jam, but it became unavailable 5-10 years ago. Nowadays it’s currant jam or blackberry because we reserve raspberry for Linzer Tarts.

And no! These are not Linzer Tarts! That is a name that comes from a classic, pie-sized Austrian Torte made from a fragrant hazelnut/lemon piecrust. No nuts, no Linzer. Thus Sayeth The Lord! So do not blaspheme. These are Butter Jellies.

Make Linzers too. That’s our solution, and if it’s good enough for our family, it’s good enough for yours!

BONUS FREEBIE! To convert Grandma’s version into true Mailanderli:

  1. Use 3-4 yolks in the dough.
  2. Increase the amount of lemon zest to a full 1-1/2 tsp.
  3. Increase the amount of vanilla to a full 1-1/2 tsp.
  4. Cut the dough into stars
  5. Coat the top before baking with an egg wash made from 1 whole egg thinned with a bit of water.

You can follow Grandma’s cooking technique but we’ve had equal success with a constant 325.° Either way, they will want to cook longer because of the lower temperature. 20-25 minutes should be about right.

MOLDED GINGERBREAD – How about a special treat?

Greetings from Kate!

One of my favorite bakes is gingerbread, and I especially like the way it comes out of the mold. I know that Scott gave you got a molded cookie in a recent blog, but we tend to start with the hardest ones first. We also start our baking with cookies that need to sit for a while and soften naturally.

Behold the soft plentitude of molasses and spices! The glaze is optional – I like to mix rum or brandy with powdered sugar until it’s thin enough to paint on with a soft, clean paintbrush.

These beauties are raw, the way they come out of the carved wooden mold. Their features dull a little upon baking, but the glaze will bring them back out. Stay tuned for more images later.

[Two Tricks From Scott:

  1.  For finer features, replace the baking soda in your recipe with Hartshorn a/k/a baker’s ammonia a/k/a ammonium carbonate a/k/a smelling salts. This 19th-century leavener creates smaller, more even bubbles that in turn create a finer, better refined texture.
  2. Leave the formed cookies out to dry overnight, preferably in the fridge or under a fan. This will create a surface that’s just a little firmer than the bottoms that were resting on your parchment or tray. When the cookies rise during baking, Boyle’s Law says they will tend to have that surface rise up instead of spreading out with the moister, underneath part of the dough.

These are the two main tricks that allow for the creation of super-fine features on Springerle, the smooth caps on Macarons, and all the other cookies that feature a “foot” on the bottom..

And now I’m off to order our special, “we’re releasing our cookbook” tins! We’re not scouring local dollar stores this time. I want all the tins to have a nice, streamlined design and a custom-made label that will echo the branding of the cookbook cover – something I hope to show you next week.

Till then, happy baking!

~Kate