Sometimes Bigger is Better: Orange Butter Cookies

When trying to decide what I could bake to bring to an open house yesterday afternoon, I looked for a recipe that would be quick and easy -- because I was headed to New York City later in the day on a business trip, I didn't have a lot of time to put something together.  I decided to try the recipe for Orange Butter Cookies from The Sweeter Side of Amy's Bread because the recipe was quick (you can make the batter and bake immediately, no chilling needed) and I had all of the required ingredients on hand. 

As I have mentioned before, one thing I love about this cookbook is that it provides three sets of measurements for dry ingredients: volume, metric weight, and avoirdupois weight.  Weighing out flour and sugar is more precise than measuring by volume, and it also saves you the time and hassle of having to wash a bunch of measuring cups.  The dough for these cookies is made from butter, sugar, orange, zest, an egg and two egg yolks, all-purpose flour, cake flour, baking soda, and salt.  The dough is fairly stiff and easy to handle.  The recipe says it will yield a dozen cookies if you scoop our scant 1/2 cup balls of dough that weigh 85g.  I used a #24 scoop to form 45g balls of dough, because I didn't want the cookies to be huge.  As instructed, I flattened the balls of dough with my hand (leaving parallel impressions from my fingers) and sprinkled the cookies with sugar before baking.  I ended up with 22 three-inch diameter cookies.

The baked cookies were a little puffy and in my opinion, did not look particularly appetizing.  However, they tasted good.  Basically, as you might surmise from the recipe name, these are just sugar cookies with a nice burst of orange flavor.  I thought the cookie was just a little on the cakey side, which is something I disfavor.

Yesterday evening when I arrived in New York City, I realized that my hotel in Times Square was fortuitously located just a few blocks away from the original location of Amy's Bread in Hell's Kitchen.  I stopped by the bakery this morning and bought an orange sugar cookie so that I could bring it home and compare it to my version.  As you can see from the picture below, my three-inch cookie (on the left) is much smaller than the real thing (on the right).

While I thought that the Amy's Bread version of the cookie may have had a slightly more buttery (and better) texture, the flavor of the cookies was identical.  Tom commented that if he closed his eyes and alternately ate bites of my cookie and the real one from the bakery, he would not be able to tell which was which.  I certainly think that the Amy's Bread version is more attractive, and that the larger size has something to do with it.  Although my cookies were the same height as the Amy's Bread version, they looked puffy and out of proportion since they were smaller in diameter.  Mine also literally paled in comparison to the golden color of the real thing -- perhaps they needed a little more time in the oven.

This it the first time that I've had the opportunity to make a side-by-side comparison of the real thing from a bakery and my homemade version from the bakery's cookbook.  I may have to start planning my baking schedule around my travel schedule so that I can do this more often!

Recipe: "Orange Butter Cookies" from The Sweeter Side of Amy's Bread: Cakes, Cookies, Bars, Pastries and More from New York City's Favorite Bakery by Amy Amy Scherber and Toy Dupree.  The recipe is available here on the New York Times website (as compared to this online version, the recipe in the cookbook calls for an additional 1/2 teaspoon of orange zest, instructs you to bake the cookies from 17 minutes, and does not provide a recipe for icing).

Previous Post: "The Sweeter Side is Sometimes Salty: Nutty Peanut Butter Cookies," March 16, 2011.