Striped Icebox Cookies

The recipe that I made today was Striped Icebox Cookies (page 227). These are a beautiful shortbread tea cookie with stripes of jam running through them. We get a weekly bag of fresh, locally produced goodies from our farmer's market, and this was a chance to use some of those wonderful organic ingredients from local vendors. The dried cherries, cherry jam and yellow cornmeal were all products that I got from the Greener Grocer at the North Market in Columbus.

Making this cookie involves several steps: preparing the jam filling on the stovetop, mixing the dough, freezing the dough, assembling the cookie layers and freezing again, then baking in the oven. Each step was fairly quick, however, and it did not seem like an overwhelming or labor-intensive process.

I will say, though, that working with shortbread dough is quite difficult. I thought maybe it was just the last recipe that I did, but now I'm starting to think it's just the nature of shortbread dough. It is very sticky and hard to roll out. I think in the future, I would refrigerate the dough before I began rolling it out to see if that helps. Rolling it between two sheets of parchment paper was helpful as well.

When baking this recipe, I was able to use my silpat mat for the first time (pictured above). This is a specialized baking mat that fits on a typical baking sheet (they come in different sizes) and is the best non-stick surface available. It worked perfectly - nothing stuck to it at all. The cookies were fairly delicate when they came out of the oven. I let them cool off for a full minute before removing them from the pan, which I did very gently with a long offset spatula.

The cookies are delicious - the sweet/sour taste of the jam filling balances nicely with the crunch from the cornmeal shortbread. Plus, they look interesting which is always good too. They would be a great treat to bring to a party.

Coconut Macadamia Shortbread

So this is the first cookie from Martha that I do not love, even though it has all the components that would normally make it a favorite - coconut and macadamia nuts. I chose this recipe - Coconut Macadamia Shortbread (page 148) to use the macadamia nuts I had in the pantry. This recipe calls for a couple of ingredients that I consider somewhat obscure - cream of coconut (not to be confused with coconut milk) and coconut extract. While imitation coconut extract can be found in most neighborhood grocery stores, I of course sought out the pure extract which I had to order online, along with the cream of coconut (which might be able to be found in a Mexican grocery store). Strike one.

Following the recipe was not complicated, but involved several steps and was quite time-consuming. Toast the macadamias, grind them in the food processor, grind the coconut, mix the dough, various steps of refrigeration. When I got the dough out of the refrigerator to roll out, it was quick crumbly and difficult to work with (appropriately, this recipe can be found in the "crumbly & sandy" section of the cookbook). Strike two.

Finally, the suggested cooking time (20-25 minutes) is definitely on the long side. My first batch of cookies came out a little too brown (baked at 20 minutes), but the second batch looked better at 18 minutes. The crumbly nature of the dough made it hard to roll it out to an even 1/4" inch thickness, and therefore the cookies baked unevenly as well. Strike three.

The cookies tasted all right, a little caramel-y and sweet, but not sure they were worth the effort.

Addendum:
My husband loved the cookies and says they taste wonderful, and suggests that they be paired with ice cream.