Last month I went to New York City on a business trip and arranged to have dinner with my law school classmate Sunny and his family. Sunny's daughter is interested in baking and I gave her a macaron-making lesson the last time I saw her in DC. I wanted to bring her some baked goods and I decided to make something from Maida Heatter's Best Dessert Book Ever. When Heatter passed away a few weeks prior, I put her cookbook on top of the constantly-rotating stack of cookbooks I keep by my bedside to function as my baking option shortlist at any given point in time. I decided to go with Heatter's "Two-Tone Hazelnut Cookies," which are slice-and-bake hazelnut-cinnamon cookies topped with a strip of chocolate dough.
The recipe looked easy enough. To make the hazelnut dough, you simply beat butter until softened; add hazelnuts that have been ground in the food processor with sugar; and mix in the sifted dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon; I left out the optional espresso powder). You form the dough into a roll, wrap it in wax paper, and chill it until firm. I left the dough in the fridge overnight. The chocolate dough is a mixture of butter, vanilla, sugar, flour, and cocoa powder.
You slice the log of chilled hazelnut dough into cookies a quarter-inch thick and then you're supposed to put the chocolate dough in a pastry bag fitted with a star tip and pipe a strip of chocolate dough down the center of each cookie. The headnote says that when the cookies are baked, "the chocolate bakes into the hazelnut cookie, leaving a dark strip with just a hint of the original star shape."
The cookbook warns that the chocolate dough will be "quite stiff." When I put it into a disposable plastic pastry bag fitted with the largest star tip I had, it was too stiff to pipe. I just couldn't manage it. Then I got out a spritz cookie press that a friend gave me a while ago. It's 100% metal and I figured that it would be able to handle the dough. It couldn't. The dough was breaking off before I could squeeze out a strip the length of the hazelnut cookies. So I gave up. I decided to roll out the chocolate dough and cut it into strips with a knife. I cut the ends of each strip at an angle thinking it would make them look more interesting and just laid a strip of chocolate dough on each hazelnut cookie before baking.
The cookies spread a fair amount in the oven and came out quite thin. When I was moving the baked cookies from the pan to a cooling rack, I was surprised at how delicate they were. These are some of sandiest, most fragile cookies I have ever made. Just handling a cookie left sandy debris behind on my fingers. The cookies were so prone to breakage that I was really worried about how I could even transport them to New York with me. I carefully packed them in a small box and filled up all of the extra space with crumpled deli paper. I put the box in a paper shopping bag and gingerly hand-carried it from the time I left my house in DC until I arrived at the restaurant in NYC where I was meeting Sunny and his family. Still, when Sunny's daughter opened the box, I could see a fair number of broken cookies inside.
I didn't care for these cookies. The texture was too crumbly for my liking and the flavor was not that interesting; I think the cinnamon was a little distracting. I was expecting that I would get a buttery and substantial shortbread along the lines of something you might get from Pepperidge Farm. Instead, I got a super sandy cookie that barely held itself together. These cookies were not worth the struggle it took to make them.
Recipe: "Two-Tone Hazelnut Cookies" from Maida Heatter's Best Dessert Book Ever.
The recipe looked easy enough. To make the hazelnut dough, you simply beat butter until softened; add hazelnuts that have been ground in the food processor with sugar; and mix in the sifted dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon; I left out the optional espresso powder). You form the dough into a roll, wrap it in wax paper, and chill it until firm. I left the dough in the fridge overnight. The chocolate dough is a mixture of butter, vanilla, sugar, flour, and cocoa powder.
The cookbook warns that the chocolate dough will be "quite stiff." When I put it into a disposable plastic pastry bag fitted with the largest star tip I had, it was too stiff to pipe. I just couldn't manage it. Then I got out a spritz cookie press that a friend gave me a while ago. It's 100% metal and I figured that it would be able to handle the dough. It couldn't. The dough was breaking off before I could squeeze out a strip the length of the hazelnut cookies. So I gave up. I decided to roll out the chocolate dough and cut it into strips with a knife. I cut the ends of each strip at an angle thinking it would make them look more interesting and just laid a strip of chocolate dough on each hazelnut cookie before baking.
The cookies spread a fair amount in the oven and came out quite thin. When I was moving the baked cookies from the pan to a cooling rack, I was surprised at how delicate they were. These are some of sandiest, most fragile cookies I have ever made. Just handling a cookie left sandy debris behind on my fingers. The cookies were so prone to breakage that I was really worried about how I could even transport them to New York with me. I carefully packed them in a small box and filled up all of the extra space with crumpled deli paper. I put the box in a paper shopping bag and gingerly hand-carried it from the time I left my house in DC until I arrived at the restaurant in NYC where I was meeting Sunny and his family. Still, when Sunny's daughter opened the box, I could see a fair number of broken cookies inside.
I didn't care for these cookies. The texture was too crumbly for my liking and the flavor was not that interesting; I think the cinnamon was a little distracting. I was expecting that I would get a buttery and substantial shortbread along the lines of something you might get from Pepperidge Farm. Instead, I got a super sandy cookie that barely held itself together. These cookies were not worth the struggle it took to make them.
Recipe: "Two-Tone Hazelnut Cookies" from Maida Heatter's Best Dessert Book Ever.
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