I have wanted to make the pressed cookies from the Betty Crocker book since forever. They look so pretty and amazing. But I lacked the vital tool, a cookie press. So when my mum asked if there was anything she could bring me back from the great land of Wisconsin, I knew the answer. Ma: bring me a cookie press.

And she did. Lookatit! Isn’t it fab? Doesn’t it look like something you’d get from a certain class of shop in SoHo?

Cookie Press

So now I have the press, time to try it out. I decided to try the Lemon Cheese Pressed Cookies, they looked fairly straight forward and I’ve not done a lemon cookie yet. Here’s the recipe and the ingredients:

Recipe

Ingredients

It’s a straight forward method. Cream together the butter and cream cheese, then stir in the sugar. Add an egg, lemon juice and zest, finally stir in the flour and baking powder. Then chill for 30 minutes.

Cookie dough

Now, it’s time to get the cookie press out. Are you ready for the excitement? Yeah baby! Pull the plunger up, unscrew the bottom, load with cookie dough, pop in your chosen disc and screw the base back on. Simple! Yeah, except trying to spoon cookie dough into a tube without dropping it everywhere isn’t that easy. I would recommend an assistant. Or, in my case, gripping the press between my thighs (steady) and hoping not to drop the dough on my jeans.

But I got there. One loaded cookie press. Stand back folks, it’s time to start pressing.

Locked n Loaded

The next bit sounds easy. Rest the cookie press on the ungreased baking sheet. Press the trigger. Lift the press. Hey presto, cookie. Let’s see how it works:

Pressed cookies

Ooooh! It worked! Pretty little flower shapes. Ok, it obviously got a bit wonky at the end there, looks like one of my petals blocked. But they look pretty darn good. At this point I’m feeling pretty happy and very excited to show off my cookies. But first we must bake them 8 minutes at 190C. Into the oven they go. And out the come 8 minutes later looking, umm, well, see for yourself:

Cookie fail

Hmmm. Now I’m a harsh critic. But I think even the nicest, fluffiest critic would have a hard time praising these. That pretty flower has turned into, well, a circle. A very thin circle. A very thin, burnt circle. Yep, what we have here is known as a Bad Cookie. What went wrong? Who knows. But my cookies spread and they died. Poor cookies. We had such high hopes for you. That’ll teach me to have pre-cooking smugness.

Not wanting to be defeated I turned to google. Oh tell me mighty google, why did my cookies fail? Google suggests that perhaps the dough was not cold enough and recommends chilling both the dough and the baking sheet. I do this. I switch press discs to try something more substantial looking. I try again. I try this time to do double clicks to make larger cookies, google tells me this is possible. Let’s see what happened:

Epic cookie fail

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. Now, people who know Betty Cooky will know that she tends to lose her temper at inanimate objects quite easily and have temper tantrums that some might suggest do not befit a woman of her age. That splodge in the middle? That was Betty Cooky having a temper tantrum. It wasn’t big and it wasn’t clever. But actually it was quite amusing shooting the dough from high above the baking sheet because NOTHING ELSE WAS WORKING DAMMIT!

Ahem. So. There we have it. The first 100% proof Cookie Fail of the blog. It had to happen sometime. Any pressed cookie geniuses who can suggest where I went wrong, please let me know. I still have a lot of lemon cheese pressed cookie dough left. Tomorrow we shall see if one can make drop cookies out of it. For now, Betty Cooky needs a glass of wine.

Here we can see the ingredients: butter, sugar, egg, buttermilk, vanilla, flour, soda, salt, sugar and cinnamon. Buttermilk can be hard to come by in the UK, mine is from Sainsburys. If you can’t find it you can substitute half milk, half plain natural yogurt.

Ingredients

Now, I’ve complained before about the quantities guide on these recipes. They never make as many cookies as they claim too so I normally double up. Well, I doubled up on this as well. And oh my. What a lot of mixture I made. I barely had room in the bowl to mix it. That is a lot of dough. A lot. Oh my. And let’s not comment on what it looks like, appetising isn’t really the word is it? Reminds me of holding my nephew after he’d just fed…

Cookie 'dough'

We’ll worry about how we’re going to use all this in a bit. First, it needs to chill before we bake. It’s very liquid at the moment, chilling turns it moussey and makes it possible to ‘drop’ the cookies onto the sheet. At the moment they’d slop all over the place.

After chilling, rounded teaspoons of dough are dropped on a lightly greased baking sheet and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

Sugar on top

I realise at this point that I am going to make enough cinnamon jumbles to feed an army. Enough to grow hideously bored of them. So, I decide to turn half the dough into chocolate jumbles.

Chocolate mix

I add in cocoa and some chocolate chips, hey presto a new cookie. Sprinkle these ones with vanilla sugar. Then in a moderate oven for 8 to 10 minutes.

And here’s the result:

Cinnamon Jumble

Chocolate Jumbles

Now, these cookies are interesting. The buttermilk makes them very cake like. Testers likened them to sponge fingers or cupcakes. They’re nice, but they’re definitely not a biscuit. I can’t really decide how much I like them. They’re tasty, that’s for sure. But you can’t dunk them in a cup of tea or even a glass of milk. And surely being dunked in a glass of milk is the fate of any good cookie? Hmmm. I just can’t decide on these ones.

It’s hard choosing what cookie to make from the cooky book, there are so many that look so good. I did the good old “flip the book open and see where it lands” thing and landed on these. They are the most disgusting looking things to create, and a complete pig to roll, but they did taste very good. So good that the husband’s work colleagues were begging him for the recipe. Mine remained mostly silent. Guess where the cookies are going in future?

Anyway, these cookies are made with butter, sugar, honey, peanut butter, eggs, flour, baking powder & soda, salt and peanuts.

Ingredients

First, you mix the butter, sugar, honey, peanut butter and eggs together into a really unattractive looking gloopy brown mixture. The amount of peanut butter in here is frankly amazing. I put nearly the entire huge pot in. If you’re feeling middle class you can use some of the no added fun stuff. I used proper American style, smooth and packed with sugar.

Peanut butter, lots of.

Gloop

Next all the dry ingredients and the nuts go in. And this is where it all went horribly, horribly wrong….

Oh the recipe book is straight forward and easy enough, makes it sound like a doddle. Not for me. First, you shape the dough into a strip 10×2.5×1.5″, wrap it in greaseproof paper and chill for several hours. I was rubbish at making the rolls and must not have made them thick enough. Because when I tried to chop them and bake them I ended up with this….

Bad cookies

Tiny, burnt, rubbish. I suppose they could pass as biscotti. Burnt biscotti.

Bah. My first proper cookie disaster.

Luckily, I had plenty more dough. So I rerolled it and made fatter sausages. And then I squished them after cutting to make them a good size. It was a pain and has put me right off making these kind of cookies. Drop cookies are so much eater. Or cookie cutter ones. But mostly drop, I love the laziness.

Anyway, the final cookies ended up looking quite good and were very tasty. Extremely nutty and a good honey tang. All’s well that ends well.

Good Cookie

Finished product

Cutting the cookies

Now, Betty Crocker says this recipe makes 3-4 dozen cookies. I am beginning to think that Betty either (a) makes stupidly small cookies, or (b) can’t count. I made 18 cookies. Of a standard cookie size.  I’ve noticed this overestimating of cookie production in her other recipes too. So if you’re following one of the recipes, beware.

In a deviation from the recipe, I sprinkled the cookies with a little vanilla sugar before placing them in the oven (180C) for 12 minutes. The result:

Canadian Oatmeal Cookies

Now the testing. Good crumbly texture, mixture of crunch and softness.  Nice oaty taste, not too sweet, and not at all greasy,  the vanilla sugar works really well. These are good cookies, really good. I want another.

Hang on, this reminds me of something. What is it? What have I made? I know these cookies. Wait, it’ll come to me…

YES! That’s it! Ladies & gentlement, we have made a … HobNob. Jolly good show. Only these taste even better than HobNobs. These are going to become a Betty Cooky staple.

Canadian Oatmeal Shortbread

Anyway, Canadian Oatmeal Shortbread is the subject. It’s a simple recipe requiring butter, brown sugar, vanilla, plain flour, bicarb of soda and rolled oats. This one has no eggs, so could be converted for the vegans among us. Although I’m not convinced by the idea of vegan margarine in shortbread. But then I’m of the view that all margarine is the work of the devil.

Ingredients

On to the recipe. First, you mix your butter, sugar and vanilla until fluffy. I’m not sure how this is meant to go fluffy, so I setttled for creaming it and hoping for the best.  Next, mix your flour, soda and oats together and stir into the the butter mixture.  Or, if you’re me, just chuck it all in with the creamed sugar & butter separately as you can’t be bothered to wash up more than one bowl.

Cream butter & sugar

Now I’m afraid we have to wait. The mixture needs to chill for 1-2 hours. It then gets rolled out so it’s a quarter inch think on a floured board and cut into 1.5 inch squares, or ‘fancy shapes’ as Betty Crocker suggests. I do not have cookie cutters as yet, so squares might be in order. Or maybe a circle. Finally, bake on an ungreased sheet for 10-12 mins at a moderate heat.

Right now the mixture is chilling, so we’ll see how it turns out later. Happy baking!

Mix in flour & oats

Chill for 1-2hrs

Iced with chocolate or vanilla frosting, then covered in sprinkles and rose petals. And very good they were too.  Well done to R!

Cupcake

Cupcake

The book version

My version

Ok, clearly mine are nowhere near as neat as the book, but they don’t look too bad. This lot went to R’s office to be judged. The verdict? Very sweet but very tasty. They are tooth achingly sweet, there’s a lot of sugar in there. I wondered about doing  a version adding peppermint essence to the fondant. You’d end up with a homemade Viscount, which would be ace, and it might cut through the sweetness nicely. I also think the sugar in the base could be excluded and that would help as well. Some of the tasters suggested using milk chocolate rather than dark. The recipe does call for unsweetened chocolate, but you could use milk. I’d probably try and use a darkish milk though, Green & Blacks over Dairy Milk, as I personally think it needs some edge to counter the fondant.

So that’s it for the first great cooky experiment. Next week we’ll go again and this time I’ll pick something that uses the oven!

P.S. No I don’t know where the fudge comes into this recipe either. Don’t think about it.

I decided to let someone else choose the first one and passed the book to my husband.  Who, being contrary, chose a fridge bar rather than a cooky. No cooking involved, which I guess is good for a Monday night.  We start with a Fudge Meltaway.

Fudge Meltaway recipe

Ingredients: Butter, unsweetened chocolate (or 70% Green & Blacks in this case), granulated sugar, vanilla, beaten egg, graham cracker crumbs (digestive biscuits make a UK sub), dessicated coconut, chopped nuts, some more butter, milk, icing sugar, vanilla, and some more chocolate.

Ingredients

At this point I am sceptical about these cookies. But here we go.

The biscuit crumbs, a little chocolate, sugar, egg and nuts get stirred into melted butter and used to line the base of a tray. And here we do my traditional deviation from the recipe. As not only did himself choose a ‘cooky’ that isn’t a cooky, he also didn’t realise it had coconut in and hates coconut. So no coconut. Next time I’m picking the recipe.

Melting chocolate and butter

Nutty, chocolatey biscuit base

The base goes in the fridge to chill and we’re on to the topping.  In true American style this is sugar and butter and not much else.  Mmmm, health food. Butter, a tiny bit of milk, and a ton of icing sugar is mixed together with some vanilla. UK baking fans, what the Americans call confectioner’s sugar is what we call icing sugar.  At least it better be because that’s what I used.  The resulting frosting (for that is what it is) gets spread on top of the chilled biscuity base and back it goes into the fridge to cool some more.  I’ll be honest, it’s not the neatest topping you’ll ever see. If I’m going to keep up with this baking lark I’m going to need a palette knife.

Frosting

Finally, more chocolate is melted for the topping.  The recipe said 1.5ozs. I duly melted this and it looked like nothing, so I just threw the rest of the bar of Green & Blacks in.  You don’t want to skimp on the chocolatey topping surely? Pour that on top of the chilled frosting, smooth it out as best I can, and then back in the fridge to chill a little before slicing.  You’ll have to wait until later for the great unveil, I’m doing real time posting here!

Until now. Now I am on a mission to try out the cookies and I will be documenting my efforts here. Prepare for a parade of classic drop cookies, frankly insane bright green shamrock cookies, and lots more.

And if you want to see the original, it’s available from good bookshops.  Betty Crocker’s Cooky Book