In the run-up to Christmas I read a lot of year-end cookbook reviews. A lot. You can see links to most of them from this post I wrote in December. The more I read, the longer my Christmas list grew and on Christmas morning there was a tall stack of cookbooks under the tree. I've been dipping into my new books here and there, and will be sharing some of my new finds with you, but one book that I've not yet used is Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston's Flour Bakery + Cafe, written by Joanne Chang, owner of the three Flour bakeries in Boston.
My friend Mary of Popsicles and Sandy Feet is pretty much the reigning expert on the Flour cookbook. She's probably baked half of the recipes from the book at this point! I got the chance to meet Mary in person in November, and we hit it off instantly. We don't live very close to each other - Connecticut and Georgia - so we keep up with what's going on in each other's kitchens via Twitter. We got to talking and planned a Twitter bake-along for the Cornmeal Lime Cookies. We baked at the same time, in our own homes, and compared notes as we went along. Lucky for me, Mary was a bit ahead of me and I got to benefit from her tips as she baked! Check out her cookie post for more lime-cookie goodness!
n.o.e.'s notes:- I made 3/4 recipe, which scaled fairly easily. I would have needed 1.5 eggs, but luckily I had an 81 gram jumbo egg (a chicken egg!) which was a perfect equivalent for the way I scaled the recipe.
- The recipe calls for creaming the butter and sugar for a very long time. I used my hand mixer and instead of the recommended 10 minutes, I creamed for 7. The butter was plenty fluffy at that point.
- The specified size of 1/4 cup of dough would make a bigger cookie than I wanted, so I used 1/8 cup of dough per cookie. After 16 minutes in the oven they were perfectly done.
- Don't skip the glaze, even if you don't normally like frosted cookies - I don't - because the glaze makes these cookies. The glaze recipe yields just enough to thickly glaze the cookies.
the verdict:
We loved these cookies! They are soft and pillowy and taste sweetly of lime. The crunch from the cornmeal is fun and the zing from the lime glaze keeps things lively. Even though they are not pink or heart-shaped, I think these cookies would be a great shot of citrus sunniness to dispel any of your Valentine sweetheart's late winter blahs.
8 comments:
I bookmarked this recipe in my copy of Flour after seeing Mary's post earlier today, these sound fantastic! I love a soft cookie so they're right up my alley. If I had limes on hand I'd be tempted to make them tomorrow :)
Those look amazing, Nancy! I can't wait to try them. I visited Flour in Boston and it was one of the best bakeries I've ever been to. I have been enjoying baking from the book, though not blogging about it; I made the lemon poppyseed cake last night (I definitely recommend it).
Yum. Why is it I feel I need a cookie at 10am after reading your post? Do I like them better with orange juice after breakfast or with tea in the afternoon? Hmmm...must go do research!
I loved these cookies when I ate them last night! They are delicious.
Mmm, those look yummy. After all the twitter talk about the Flour cookbook, I'm going to have to take a closer look at it next time I'm at Borders.
OK, yum! I love anything lime and the cornmeal sounds like a great little crunch. ;-)
Citrus flavors rule, enough with all that chocolate stuff...lol. These sound wonderful. Skip the glaze?? Not me, never! Need to put these on my list along with those scones.
Guess I will have to put Flour on my list for my B'day. Everything you/Mary have made looks so good. And since the hubs is a lemon fan, maybe he would like the lime as well.
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