Lemony Snickets (magazine link)
I didn't mean to do it. Honest. It's just so hectic leaving the pediatrician's office that sometimes I unwittingly walk out with one of their waiting-room magazines. Which is how I ended up with one December/January 2008 issue of Parenting.
Normally I have little use for these magazines, but often their food sections have creative and very useful ideas. This one had a simple recipe with a tempting photo for a lemon-ball sort of cookie, with an intriguing ingredient: ricotta cheese. I was hooked.
The recipe was easy to make, though it has a silly anomaly. The first step says to preheat the oven, but the third step says to chill the dough for an hour! I wish recipe-writers would get out of the habit of always calling for preheating first thing.
I actually had to chill the dough overnight, instead of an hour, and in retrospect, this caused some problems. The first balls I rolled were uneven and had lots of contours and even folds, but the second batch of balls I rolled had a much more even surface. The extra warmup time made the dough more compliant and easier to roll. The cookies that were smoother were a lot easier to spread glaze onto, also.
For glazing and sprinkling, I put the cookies on a wire cooling rack, and put the rack over a jelly-roll pan. This worked perfectly to let the excess glaze drip down without forming pools at the bottom of the cookies, and the pan handily caught all the extra sprinkles too.
As usual, I underestimated how fast the glaze hardens and waited too long to put sprinkles on some cookies.
As usual, I overestimated how fast the glaze hardens and was barely able to stack the cookies by the time it was time to take them to a party.
It probably would have been fun for the kids to put the sprinkles on, but too many sprinkle bottles have such big holes that sprinkles just pour out like water. I need bottle tops with a little more resistance, that have to be shaken, instead of held just so and skillfully tapped to eject a smattering of sprinkles. So I did the sprinkling. My son was easily consoled with a few preview cookies.
I love little twists on otherwise standard formulas. The ricotta cheese made for a chewy, not-quite-cakey texture, and the balls held their shape well. The glaze and the sprinkles made them attractive and festive. And there was no mistaking the lemon-ness about them, mmm!
And who can resist cookies with such a cute name? These will be a cookie-exchange staple.
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