pine nut cookies

[zirconium]

Autobiography

Rain spits on Nashville
as I blur butter into sugar.
So much sweetness
starts out from grease and grit.

- pld

Comments

Re: YUM

[okrablossom]

That's me, above. Sorry!

Re: YUM

[zirconium]

:-) It's a mash-together of two recipes (because I realized I misread "2 T flour" as "2 C flour" only after I'd blended those two cups of flour with the pine nuts). To wit:

8 oz. pine nuts
3/4 c. sugar
8 Tbsp. unsalted butter (1 stick)
2 Tbsp. orange liqueur (I used Regan's orange bitters)
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 pinch salt
1/4 c. or so of milk

1. Preheat oven to 375 F (350 if convection oven).
2. Pulverize pine nuts and sugar together, to as fine a grind as possible.
3. Blend with the butter and liqueur.
4. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt together in a separate bowl.
5. Stir vanilla and egg into the wet mix.
6. Stir half of the flour mixture into the wet mix.
7. Add the milk, then the rest of the flour, then more milk if necessary. Batter should be soft but solid enough to form into teaspoon-size balls.
8. Place balls about an inch apart on greased or lined baking sheets. Bake for 10 minutes (edges should be slightly brown). Let sheets rest on a rack for 2 minutes; then lift cookies from the sheet and cool directly on another rack.

The original recipe for the butter drop cookies (from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything says the cookies should be stored in a covered container at room temperature for no more than a day or two. The original recipe for Greek pine nut cookies (from Susanna Hoffman's The Olive and the Caper) says the cookies improve w/age and can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 months; I'm guessing the difference in shelf life is because the Greek recipe doesn't contain egg, butter, or milk. (I made the batch as a gift, so I only know that they tasted fine right out of the oven and a few hours later. )