During one of my summers in college, I interned at a company near the school. I didn’t have a car, so a lovely friend who also interned there would drive us every day. In addition to gas money, I wanted to bake her cookies as a thank you. The only problem was, I didn’t have a hand mixer. I beat the butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon for half an hour. The cookies still turned out great, but a bad habit was born that day.
Until recently, I had no idea I wasn’t beating my butter and sugar enough. Thanks to Stella Parks from Serious Eats, I learned how important it was to beat your butter and sugar. She beats it for about 5 minutes. I always beat it until all the sugar granules disappeared into the butter (about 30-60 seconds). If you don’t beat the butter and sugar enough, you won’t build up an adequate amount of air pockets and the combo doesn’t produce the correct texture. I could sometimes get away with it for drop cookies. But when it came to cut-out cookies, they would spread into flat puddles. I noticed the streaks of butter in the dough as I was rolling it out. This is NOT good. Without the air pockets, there is no place for the carbon dioxide gas from the baking soda to release into. If the butter is in chunks it won’t incorporate with the dry mixture, thus melting easier without the flour to reinforce it.
After making a new batch of cookies with this new method, I can say it’s been a life changing success. I absolutely cannot believe how different the results are. Science is truly magical.
This is the first batch of cookies I made after figuring out the creaming technique. I wish I had a picture of this exact cookie failing so you could see a before and after. But basically imagine undercooked centers, crisp edges, and very flat unappetizing looking cookies. Somehow they still tasted good so no cookie went to waste. But now they look great and taste great!
Linzer Cookies
Ingredients
- 12 tbs unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 lemon zest of
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup 130g flour
- 3/4 cup 72g almond flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- raspberry jam for filling*
- confectioners’ sugar for dusting
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, combine flour, almond flour, and salt.
- In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add lemon zest, egg yolk, and vanilla, Beat on high until combined. Switch mixer to low speed and add flour mixture until just combined.
- Turn dough onto a lightly floured work surface. Split dough in half. Roll out each half to 1/4 inch. Stack halves on top of each other with waxed paper in between. Cover with plastic wrap or place in plastic bag or container. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
- Remove dough from fridge. Cut into circle shapes with scalloped edges. Cut another small hole in half of the cutout cookies. Place the cut dough in the fridge for another half hour.
- Preheat oven to 350 F. Place cookies on a parchment or silicone lined baking sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Let cool on pan for 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack.
- When cookies are cooled, place a dollop of jam onto the underside of the cookies without holes in the center. Lay out the cookie with holes side by side. Using a sifter, sift some powdered sugar over them. Then sandwich the donut hole cookies with the non-hole cookies.