Pearls Make a Gem of a Cookie: Vanilla Polka Dots

My husband Tom thoughtfully bought me a copy of Dorie's Cookies by Dorie Greenspan and once it arrived I couldn't wait to start baking my way through it. I decided to start with a simple recipe for "Vanilla Polka Dots" --  a vanilla butter cookie rolled in Swedish pearl sugar. The base batter for these cookies is Dorie's "Do-Almost-Anything Vanilla Cookie Dough," which can be scooped or rolled, and serves as the foundation for several cookies in the book.

The cookie dough is a mixture of butter creamed with sugar and salt, egg whites, vanilla, and flour. You scoop out the dough (I used a #40 scoop), roll the cookies in Swedish pearl sugar, flatten them slightly, and bake. I used the entire batch of the base vanilla cookie dough and got 39 cookies.

The recipe instructs you to bake the cookies until they are golden brown around the edges. I baked mine for 20 minutes, when my cookies had developed a very distinct dark brown circle around the edges. It was only after I was halfway through baking the cookies that I realized that the lowball glass I was using to flatten the cookies had a concave bottom, so the edges of my cookies were much thinner than the centers. I think that's why the golden ring around the edges was so well demarcated, and I really liked the visual effect.

These cookies were crisp, buttery, and delicious. The pearl sugar is definitely what makes them stand out, giving them a marvelous sweet crunch. Although the cookies are quite simple, they are delicate and lovely. They definitely highlight how pearl sugar can make a plain cookie special.

Recipes: "Vanilla Polka Dots" and "Do-Almost-Anything Vanilla Cookie Dough" from Dorie's Cookies by Dorie Greenspan, recipes available here from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.