Monday, September 30, 2013

TWD X Cookies


I'm not going to sugar-coat this (no pun intended!).  These cookies were a total pain.  First, I couldn't find candied orange peel at the grocery store and didn't have time to mail-order or try another store.  Luckily, David Lebovitz has a recipe for candied citrus that's pretty easy to follow, although it probably still took almost 30 minutes of hands-on time plus additional time waiting for things to boil.  Once that was made, the dough and filling came together pretty easily in the food processor.  I did run out of ground cinnamon and had to grate cinnamon sticks myself, but that's my own mistake.  But then the shaping started.  I know I'm slow, but it took me two hours to shape all of these cookies!  It was kind of relaxing, and I got to watch the Redskins win while I worked (although if I'm honest it was a terrible football game), but there definitely were more important things I should have been doing while Charlotte napped.  After all that, I  really wanted to love these cookies.  I love Fig Newtons and thought these would be a better, more complex version, but I was under-whelmed.  I actually really liked the bites of filling I ate straight from the food processor (everybody does this, right?), but I thought the flavor got lost in the finished cookie.  The combination of the dough and baking the cookies muted the flavor, at least for me.  The most fun part of this experience for me was probably making the candied citrus peel.  I ran out of white sugar and had to substitute sucanat so these are darker and not as pretty as they should have been, but I really like the flavor and I have a lot left.  I'm looking forward to thinking of ways to use them up.

11 comments:

  1. I could not find candied orange peel either so I was going to use candied pineapple and orange zest. I hope I like my version more than you liked yours. I hate spending time on something that is not worth it. I guess we'll see soon...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with wholeheartedly on everything! (including eating the filling ;)) I too ended up making my own candied peel. I love the citrus peels covered in dark chocolate - this gifted to us from our daughter one Christmas. Dangerously addicting. You can top ice cream, yougurt, mix it in granola, add it to breads...

    ReplyDelete
  3. I made my own candied peel to. It's not very easyto get arund here. I thought this is a real holiday cookie and liked it a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Your review made me glad I skipped this one. I bought all the ingredients, but knew no one except me would eat them. They are pretty, though!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sorry these did not work out for you. I did like the finished product though I did find that the filling by itself was great too.

    ReplyDelete
  6. ditto! Ah well, on to the next.

    ReplyDelete
  7. You are a good woman! There was no way I was chasing down the orange peel, so I used dried apricots. Hey, at least the color matched :-)
    Yes - these were a total PITA - I can't believe you were able to pull these off during nap time!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wow, you made your own orange peel just for this recipe? I had some in the fridge otherwise there was no way... We really liked the flavours, though partly because I iced the cookies (having seen iced ones in Sicily).

    ReplyDelete
  9. I've never made candied citrus peel; I'd like to try it someday. I had some on hand because it is a fairly common ingredient in British baking. I made a half batch so it wasn't so time consuming.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I could only find candied mixed citrus peel. I the candied orange is more popular around Christmas. Good for you making your own!

    ReplyDelete
  11. I knew where I could go to buy the ready made orange peel, but totes didn't feel like making the effort to hike over to the store, so I just subbed gran marnier for the rum. good on ya for going the extra mile and making homemade!

    ReplyDelete