Butter cookies to be exact. This is from BakeWise by Shirley Corriher (2008). I thought I would try new cookies this year and these were described as “melt-in-your-mouth”. That sounded tasty.

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 2 large egg yolks
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

This is a basic butter cookie. Cream butter, sugar, salt, and almond extract. Add egg yolks one at at time, then the flour. This gets rolled into a log, refrigerated, sliced, and then baked at 375 degrees F for 14 minutes.

In this book she has two of these butter cookie recipes. The difference is 1/2 cup sugar in the dough. The decorating/finishing is different as well. In the above recipe the logs get brushed with egg and rolled in course sugar. The second recipe has 1/2 cup less sugar in the dough and an indentation is made and filled with jelly.

I made the above batter and did both of the finishing touches.

For the recipes in this book the author talks about the science of the baking in a “What This Recipe Shows” section.

For my “What this recipe shows” is that 1) I did not get the dough mixed very thoroughly as butter spots kind of burned the edges on some, 2) I have difficulty evenly slicing cookie dough logs, and 3) I am not that big a fan of butter cookies. These were tasty enough but not my “go to” cookie of choice.