Icebox Cookies

It seems like most people either like to cook, or they like to bake. People who like to bake, more often than not, have a sweet tooth. Which explains why I like to bake. One of my all-time favorite recipes is one I adapted from Fannie Farmer a few years ago to make oatmeal raisin cookies.

This time, I went with a different recipe to make refrigerator cookies (ones that you put in a roll in the fridge and then slice off thin slices to bake).

I love these crumbling old pages!

Here's the recipe:

Cream:
1/2 c. butter
1 tsp. vanilla
Beat in:
2/3 c. brown sugar
1/3 c. white sugar
1 egg
Sift together & add to first mixture:
1 1/2 c. flour
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1/4 tsp. salt

Bake at 250 for 15 minutes or 400 for 5 minutes.

I'd never made these before and I wanted to experiment some. It says to vary them, add chocolate chips, nuts, raisins, coconut, spices, etc. So...I did.

I added black walnuts, 1/2 c. coconut, a handful of raisins, almond extract, and nutmeg. All this made the flavor very good. What didn't make them good...

My mom had some ground flour she needed to use up. So she told me to use it. It turned out to be a mixture of millet, quinoa, and spelt. I used 1 c. of that and 1/2 c. organic white flour. They were a very strange texture! I recommend 1 c. whole wheat instead. That gives cookies more body and flavor than plain white flour, so I usually use a mixture of whole wheat and white. I wouldn't recommend the odd mixture of flours I used! Also, these cookies are very sweet. I used only 1/2 c. xylitol in place of the 1 c. sugars, and they were still *very* sweet. I had to drink milk to calm down the sweetness.

Overall impressions: My sister said they tasted like cornbread (I blame the millet flour), my mom liked the flavor, my son said they were weird. I think I'll try again with wheat flour.

For more epic fails on my part, some by my own experimentation and some from following the recipe, see my Disaster Chef blog posts.