The snow-covered streets looked beautiful this morning. Snow clump plopped down quietly from the tall evergreen right in front of my apartment window. Peaceful, calm, bright, and sunny. (“Just like on the cover of Christmas cards I saw when I was little,” my mother would always say whenever she’d visit.) Such a different scene from the past two gloomy, windy, and snowy days. When I wrote this post, the AM temperature still read three degrees Fahrenheit tough… It sure has been a cold December in Michigan.
Distractions to take the mind off the bitter cold and to stay cheerful are necessary. Mine include: Netflix, good books, movies. Jeff and I also take up my friend Lindsay’s suggestion: baking! Jeff likes the idea very much that this blog post is actually about these delicious and savory cookies he made last night.
Here’s Jeff’s creation, inspired by the Dutch-influenced Indonesian holidays cookie: Kaastengels and Nutella butter cookies that we made last week:
Yield: about 100 mini cookies
Ingredients:
- 2 sticks of unsalted butter (room temperature)
- 3 egg yolks (2 for the cookie batter and 1 for the wash to brush on top of the cookies)
- 2 cups of flour
- 1 cup of Gouda cheese (shredded)
- 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
- A pinch of salt
Steps:
- Beat butter and two egg yolks with a mixer. Add vanilla extract.
- Slowly, add flour, beat
- Add cheese and salt, fold. Use both hands to mix.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
- Pick up a handful of dough and, on a clean cutting board, roll and shape into a super long and a rather skinny finger (as long as the cutting board). Then cut the long finger dough into one-inch pieces. Repeat and use up all of the dough.
- Transfer the mini pieces to two large baking sheets (layered with parchment paper)
- Brush the top of each mini finger with egg yolk wash
- Bake for 20—25 minutes
A Story Book for Tori 