Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Citrus Shortbread Cookies, Variation Two, Brown Sugar

Great time at the gallery today, with a scheduled friend and then two unscheduled, very welcome, friends to guide around my exhibit and talk with.  I love to do that, so as to provide a bit of information and insight into what's going on in my art.

Then perfect weather for sitting out and reading a mad series: Poirot detective short stories, Trollope (Anthony, very good, and Joanna, turned it back, already read and forgotten), and one of the Edinburgh series by the man who writes No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, name escapes me, also finished up a suspense novel by someone else whose name escapes me.  Total transparency around here, if I forget I admit it!  

The Trollope, Anthony, that is, is Dr. Thorne, reading it since it's the next selection at a local book group I'm going to try.  A good start for me, since I do like Trollope, very funny writer as well as serious and astute. There's a different group whose selections I like but they're in permanent conflict with the stitching evenings, not working for me.  The one I'm going to is a different night, and I think is not the same one as another artist group I really should get to now and then.  If this sounds busy and confusing, I think that's because it is.

Then realized when my eyes got tired and I finished reading,  omg no cookies nor cake in the house, disaster, this can't happen. What do I have with my English breakfast tea?  so I thawed the logs left over from the Citrus Shortbread cookies, and put a dab of brown sugar on each, for a change of pace.  I never buy brown sugar, just mix granulated white with molasses, just as good.


And it turned out pretty good. The sugar makes a toffee like effect. This recipe is rich, and though the cookies are small you really don't need many of them.

In fact there still one more log left in the freezer. This recipe is turning out like the loaves and fishes.  I already made about 5 dozen and there are more to go.  Yet I did make the logs the diameter of the recipe, and I did slice them likewise, but Martha only got about three dozen.  Perhaps her kitchen helpers snaffled them when she wasn't looking. 

So now I have a sense of security, coming from having a supply of nice bites for company available. Always a Good Thing, as Martha would probably say. I recommend  the log method, since it's very easy to have it in the freezer, and bake.  And it bakes up just fine after freezing, in case you wondered.

4 comments:

  1. ill remember that, Liz: I have a shortbread cookie recipe that I use as a base for almost everything, and usually I throw a decent amount of ginger in with everything else. Cookies are wonderful, you can taste as you go =)

    these sound wonderful, as does the idea of freeze ahead and bake as needed. Anything that makes life a bit simpler at the far end.

    Ive often wondered about the number of servings that recipes tell you cookies or rolls will make; some say, 'makes three dozen" and I can only get 12 out of it, or "make two dozen" and I find myself filling up tray after tray...

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  2. I like the log method for cookies too. My mother used to make them, particularly around Christmas time - mainly with the addition of peel, which I hated. Used to pick out the peel...shhh.

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  3. I've enjoyed many, MANY hours of Alexander McCall Smith's books as audiobooks. I've even read a couple as e-books when I couldn't find an audio version, but both the Botswana series and the Edinburgh series are read by such extremely good narrators, it's almost not "worth" my reading them by eye!
    And now I am craving cookies. Guess I'll have a banana and apply my imagination!

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  4. That's the name, thank-you. Now tell me the writer of the Spenser novels and I will be in your debt.

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