It's time again for my monthly delivery of cookies to a family in my parish who won a year's worth of cookies in our church silent auction. (Perfect timing, too, because a cold front just blew through the area last night, leaving us freezing -- I needed a good excuse to use the oven, other than warming my hands on the door.) This month I wanted to do something a little different, since I've made most of my personal fave-rave recipes. I happened to have part of a jar of roasted cashew butter on hand from a recent foray to my food co-op, so I tinkered with the classic peanut butter cookie recipe and came up with:
Cashew Butter Cookies
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup roasted cashew butter
1/4 cup honey
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla (adjust to taste)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 cup flour (you may need a couple tablespoons more)
extra granulated sugar
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray cookie sheets lightly with cooking spray.
Mix flour and leavening and set aside. Cream together sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add nut butter, honey, egg and vanilla and beat until well blended.
Add flour mixture in increments, beating until well mixed. Chill for an hour, or until the dough is easy to handle.
Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in a dish of granulated sugar to coat. Place about two inches apart on cookie sheets. Flatten cookies, in a criss-cross pattern, with tines of a fork dipped in sugar. Bake 7 to 9 minutes, or until bottoms are lightly browned. Let cool on wire rack. Makes about 3 dozen cookies.
Post-baking/taste-testing notes: Because these cookies contain honey, they can brown rather quickly in the oven, so it's really important to watch them. And if I made them again, I might add maybe a half-cup of finely chopped cashews, just to intensify the cashew flavor, or maybe press a half-cashew onto each cookie before baking instead of doing the fork thing. But they're pretty good as is -- soft and slightly chewy, with a subtle nutty flavor. My dog, who gets almost as excited over the appearance of cookie sheets as he does when he hears popcorn in the microwave, shared a cookie with me and gave it a two-paws-up.
4 comments:
A year of cookies! What a lovely idea. I could see that making some money in our parish from the "eaters" (all cooks need "eaters").
Feel free to snarf any of the recipes on Love and Cooking ... the peanut butter cup cookies and the brownies are especially popular. I'm going to snarf the raspberry jam bars at some point.
Yes; I was really pleased to see the brisk bidding for this. (It was a silent auction, not a raffle as I originally typed...how soon we forget!) It was an idea borne somewhat out of desperation -- "What can I donate that people might actually want?" Now I'm going to have to learn to make pie crust;-), so I can branch out into new areas of baking ministry!
Well, it's summer fruit season, and for once I didn't eat my way silly through the whole of June so don't have to lose 5 lb now, so I will be soldiering on with the pie crust myself during stone-fruit-and-berry season. I will report in results (all to the Glory of God, of course).
I had heard that M*rth* St*w*rt had a slab pie in her current issue ... it's pate brisee so I'm not sure about it, but I like the idea of flat rectangular pie for bigger events.
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