Lemon Thyme Shortbread Cookies

To watch the premier of Downton Abbey, Season 3, we are gathering at Foodie's house...in our pajamas!  We’ll sip tea and hot toddies and what is a proper cup of English tea without a sweet little treat to enjoy with it.  So I made Lemon Thyme Shortbread Cookies for everyone to nibble on.

The basic shortbread recipe was contributed by a co-worker for my workplace Cookie Exchange but I gussied it up with Lemon Thyme that is – amazingly – still growing in my herb garden.  Regular thyme will work just as nicely, or rosemary.

Lemon Thyme Shortbread Cookies

Ingredients
 

1 cup of butter (I used Irish butter because Branson, the Irish Driver, now Sybil’s husband, is one of my favorite characters)
2 cups of flour
¾ cup of powdered sugar
½ teaspoon of sea salt
2 Tablespoons of chopped Lemon Thyme

Directions

• Cream the butter together with the powdered sugar using your hands.
• Add 1 cup of flour to the butter/sugar mixture and incorporate with your hands.
  
• Add the remaining flour, salt, lemon thyme and mix with your hand until a dough ball forms.



 

• Press the dough into an ungreased pan.  I used my 10x15 Pampered Chef pan.
• Prick dough with fork throughout.
• Put the dough in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
• Bake at 325° for 25-30 minutes.

 

• As soon as you take the shortbread out of the oven, cut into squares with a sharp knife.
• Leave in the pan for at least 30-45 minutes before removing with a small spatula.

These are so good!

The Cookie Exchange

A few Mondays ago, Architect and I were driving to Yoga class with the best instructor ever – Dot – and she said “Hey, I have a great blog post idea for you…the history of the cookie!”  She went on to say that unsweetened wafer versions of the cookie originated in Persia because they were easy for dessert wanderings to transport in their sacks and for centuries sailors stowed hard cracker-like discs to sustain them during long voyages at sea.  Later on, courtesy of the Spanish Conquest, trading routes opened and sugar and spices were introduced to Europe.  The Europeans brought the wafer to new heights enriching them with butter, eggs and cream to form biscuits, commonly served with tea.  The term cookie is a derivative of the Dutch word koekje that means little cake.

Although I listened very intently, I’m sure I do not record the story verbatim here, but you get the idea.  I liked her suggestion and, since we were having a Cookie Exchange Event at work, I had the perfect opportunity to write a post!

So below is the list of the delicious cookies my co-workers contributed…

I made the Mint Chocolate Chip cookies. We were instructed to  bring packages containing six cookies in each.  We were also encouraged to bring copies of our recipes and a few extras goodies for the sampling tray. All of the selections were delicious but I had a few favorites.  One was a savory/sweet confection that I’m still thinking about, Anise Seed Cookies, and below is the recipe. 

 

Merry Christmas, dear readers.    

Anise Seed Cookies
2 cups + 4 Tablespoons of all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
3 teaspoons of anise seed
Plastic bag with some powdered sugar, about 2 cups

Preheat oven to 375.  In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.  In a large bowl, combine the butter, sugars, and vanilla extract and beat until creamy.  Beat in eggs.  Gradually add hte flour mixture and incorporate well.  Stir in 3 teaspoons of anise seed.  Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes.  Cool on a rack.  Once the cookies are completely cooled, shake several cookies at a time in the bag of powdered sugar.  Makes 4 dozen.

The cookie exchange was a lot of fun and hopefully we can add it to some other favorite work place traditions!

Shake and Bake

We had an earthquake in the northeast yesterday…you may have heard. It was a little scary. Our friends in California are probably laughing at us since the earth shaking is pretty common there. This, however, was not my first earthquake. When I was teenager, there was an earthquake in Reading, PA, which is not that far from the Philadelphia row house in which I grew up. This earthquake occurred in the middle of the night and when the shaking woke me up, the first thing I saw was the statute of the BVM on my nightstand rattling…I thought I was being visited. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized it was nature speaking and not divine intervention.

That was a relief.

Anyway, I remember learning about faults, energy releases, etc… in school and I thought that a quick tectonic refresher would be helpful. The website UPSeis explains that “Earthquakes are usually caused when rock underground suddenly breaks along a fault. This sudden release of energy causes the seismic waves that make the ground shake. When two blocks of rock or two plates are rubbing against each other, they don’t slide smoothly because the surfaces are not smooth. The rocks are still pushing against each other, but not moving. After a while, the rocks break because of all the pressure that's built up. When the rocks break, the earthquake occurs.”

Hopefully, I'm not the only one that forgets stuff taught in grade school!

How long ago was that?

I baked Rocky Road cookies in honor of our seismic event. I will file these under “More-or-Less Homemade” since I used a Betty Crocker Chocolate Chunk cookie mix and added chopped walnuts and marshmallows.



Earthquake area image from Google images.

Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

No Tuesday night dinners for the next two weeks so I used the time to make an amazing cookie recipe I found on the Betty Crocker website. I could not find crème de menthe baking chips (anyone?) so I doubled the semisweet chocolate chips and added a 1/4 teaspoon more mint extract.

Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies
INGREDIENTS
1 pouch (1 lb 1.5 oz) Betty Crocker® sugar cookie mix
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/2 teaspoon mint extract
8 drops green food color
1 egg
1 cup creme de menthe baking chips
1 cup semisweet chocolate chunks

Heat oven to 350°F. In large bowl, stir cookie mix, butter, extract, food color and egg until soft dough forms. Stir in chocolate chips.

Using small cookie scoop or teaspoon, drop dough 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. I used my trusty, well-seasoned pizza stone. I like using stoneware because it bakes more evenly producing a more consistent result.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until set. Cool 3 minutes; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Serve warm or cool completely. Store tightly covered at room temperature.

These are amazing and so pretty! The house smelled heavenly while they were baking. I’ll include this on my More-or-Less Homemade page since they’re not totally made from scratch.