New Year Cookie

Ozhan — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 07:13:12 +0000

In the previous post I promised you to share my New Year cookie recipe and just to keep my promise I am writing down this post under difficult conditions. Weather is cold outside in Istanbul and I realized that I forgot my key at home during the morning rush. Now I am sitting at a small cafe’ in the neighborhood where they cannot even make a cup of tea properly. A strange young couple is sitting next to me and continuously making a nonsense conversation ranging from their awful jobs to adverse effects of tooth whitening products, preventing me from concentrating on my post. Anyhow, promise is promise, so I will do my best.

When I started to look for a cookie recipe more than a week before then, I wanted it to be homely but fancy enough to remind the New Year, to have a crispy texture but not too brittle, to leave some flavor on the tongue but not too spicy, and so on. It was a trial and error process to find the right combination of ingredients for a tasty recipe. After too many batches and numerous pieces of cookies, some without enough ginger, some with too much cinnamon, some overcooked, some not enough cooked, I suddenly realized that I was asking way too much from a cookie just because it was for the New Year.

I guess most of us have a tendency to attach a lot importance to New Year related stuff. Like my high expectations from these little cookies, we all look out this brand new year to bring all the goodness we long for. Probably within the group of people who read this post, seventy percent want to leave their jobs for a better opportunity in the coming year or at least to get promoted in the same place, forty percent hope to find their significant other to share their lives, thirty percent expect to find the courage to put an end to their going nowhere relationships, sixty percent aimed to lose ten pounds they gained within the stressful 2009 that made them eat more than usual (shame on 2009!), and the list goes on and on…

Putting the perfect New Year’s cookie aside, I have also a new year’s resolution about this blog. I really want it to share with more and more people in 2010 to touch their life at some point, to make them feel good with my stories and to convince them to try something new in the cozy atmosphere of their kitchens. We all can do anything, no matter how fancy or how difficult it is. It’s all about trying and retrying just like all other things in our lives.

Hoping that all of us get what we are looking for in 2010, below I wrote down the recipe of my new year cookies for those looking for one. If you start with the same amount of ingredients you will end up with too many cookies to share with your beloved ones so that the sweet taste of cookies lingers in their mouths throughout the year.

A happy new year from the Kitchen of Oz!

Ingredients (makes around 80-120 pieces depending on the cookie cutter size and cookie thickness)
For cookie dough

1 cup (227 g / 8 oz) butter
3/4 cup (160 g/ 5,6 oz)sugar
2 large eggs (at room temperature)
2 +3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup corn starch
4 teaspoons ground ginger
1+1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt

For royal icing (optional, if you do not want to decorate the cookie you may skip this part)

1+ 3/8 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 egg white
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Food coloring according to your preference

Instructions
For cookie

1.	With a stand mixer with paddle attachment beat butter and sugar until the mixture is creamy. Add two eggs and mix well.
2.	In another bowl combine flour, corn starch, ground ginger, cinnamon and salt.
3.	Gradually add combined dry ingredients into the creamy mixture you prepared and keep on mixing till you end up with a dough (if you do not have a stand mixer, knead by your hands but make sure that all the ingredients are well blended to form a dough).
4.	Wrap dough tightly with a plastic wrap, and chill for at least 2 hours or preferably overnight.
5.	Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F).
6.	Divide dough into two, and keep half in refrigerator. On a lightly floured surface, roll the remaining half into a circle with 3 mm. (1/8 inch) thickness (the thinner the dough, the crispier the cookies).
7.	Cut with a cookie cutter you like (if cookie cutter sticks to dough, dip cutters in flour)
8.	Take the cutout cookies to an ungreased baking sheet and bake in the oven for 10 minutes or until they gain a golden color. Remove, and cool cookies on a rack.
9.	Repeat the same for the other half (another hint: if dough warms up quickly while you are cutting out and shapes are not that good, you might try to divide dough into four pieces at the beginning and work on a quarter each time while you keep the rest in refrigerator)

For royal icing (optional, if you do not want to decorate the cookie you may skip this part)

1.	Beat the egg white with lemon juice with an electric mixer.
2.	Add confectioner’s sugar and keep on mixing at low speed till the texture is smooth. Consistency should be neither too stiff nor too runny. Test it on a piece of cookie and if it is too runny gradually add a little confectioner’s sugar. Instead if it is too stiff gradually add water and mix well.
3.	According to number of colors you will use for decoration, distribute the icing into different bowls. Add food coloring to each one until you obtain the color you like and mix well.
4.	Decorate your cookies with colored icings you prepared and keep in mind that it will take several hours for the icing to completely dry.

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New Year Cookie