Recipe from the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook. This was my first time eating Mexican Wedding Cookies so I have no idea what they are “supposed” to taste like, but I thought these were pretty darn good. I love the flavors of the pecans and almond extract as well as the light and airy texture. This recipe has made my Favorite Cookie List as I can’t seem to eat just one! Photo taken by Hubby.
My mother-in-law has a tradition of gifting assorted homemade cookies at Christmas. By far, our favorite cookie is this fudge-y tasting one. I finally remembered to ask her for the recipe, which came from the Betty Crocker cookbook she received as a wedding present in the mid 1970s. I was rather surprised to discover the “secret” ingredient: devil’s food cake mix.
I found the gist of the recipe online here. The original recipe calls for either yellow cake mix or devil’s food cake mix, although obviously your results would be different if you use the former. I used reduced fat cream cheese. Also, if you make petite cookies the yield is more like six or seven dozen instead of three…which is a lot of cookies, so we gave most of them away!
One thing I learned while baking Hazelnut Nutella Sandwich Cookies is that I could definitely use some practice at rolling out dough evenly. After refrigerating it for two hours as directed, it was so hard that I couldn’t roll it out at all. So I let it rest at room temp for a few minutes until it was more malleable. But by the time I got it rolled out and cut, the dough was much too soft and the cookies wouldn’t hold their shape when I transferred them to the baking sheet! On my third attempt, I finally had a lightbulb moment: roll out the dough to the desired thickness, refrigerate for 10 minutes, then cut and bake. This was the only way I could roll to 1/16″-ish successfully. What are some of your tips and tricks for rolling out cookie dough?
These cookies were quite yummy and were the perfect excuse for me to buy my very first jar of Nutella. I would certainly make them again!
One great thing about reading food blogs is that I get inspired to try recipes I would otherwise overlook. Deb of Smitten Kitchen posted about the Espresso-Chocolate Shortbread Cookies from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours, and three days later I made them myself.
When perusing Dorie’s book, I never really looked at the shortbread recipes because I didn’t think I liked shortbread. Well, I was wrong. I love these shortbread cookies — they have an excellent coffee flavor and are surprisingly light in texture.
I can’t eat too many of these — they contain a fair amount of butter so I gave half the batch away — but even one of these cookies after dinner is such a treat! In case you couldn’t tell, I am a huge fan of Dorie. If you would like to try the recipe, you can find it in the Smitten Kitchen link I provided above.
Recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours. As you may have noticed, I am a tad addicted to her book right now!
This very chocolate-y biscotti reminds me of a brownie, except harder. My initial reaction was slight disappointment. There wasn’t anything wrong with the biscotti, but it didn’t make me swoon and exclaim that it was delicious. However, after a couple of days the flavor grew on me, so perhaps this is one of those items that tastes better overnight.
I baked the original recipe in the book, but I came across a few very talented and inspiring food bloggers who modified it with success. You can find them at Cream Puffs in Venice, Tartelette, Veronica’s Test Kitchen, Jumbo Empanadas, Culinary Concoctions by Peabody, and La Mia Cucina.
