It has been cool outside, and I just found my cookie press, so I made up some rainbow spritz cookies for Easter.
Ingredients :
3 sticks of butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
3 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon aluminum free baking powder
food coloring
I divided the dough into five sections, and colored them each a pastel color: pink, yellow, green, blue, purple. For yellow and green i also added some butternut flavoring because it is a nice yellow and is yummy.
Those are very festive! (And they no doubt taste fabulous. Three sticks of butter and almond extract? NOM NOM NOM)
Mom never made Easter cookies. We usually had a big buffet dinner for the extended family, and the dessert was always these fabulous little cake eggs from the Duchess Bakery. They fit in a cupcake paper and were iced with something like a a cross between glaze and buttercream that had been poured over the cakes. Each one was decorated with a little piped icing flower.
Of course, I’m not sure anything can measure up to my memory of these delicacies. I’m thinking maybe I should try making some, though. I’m looking at recipes for poured petits fours icing. That might be the ticket.
I think you could do them as refrigerator cookies – roll the dough into a log (you could still use multiple colors), chill, and slice. They might take a few more minutes to bake than cookies formed with a press, since the dough is cold going into the oven.
Now, if you really wanted to go all out, you could look up some patterns for polymer clay canes and use those to make the log. Here’s a simple checkerboard cane that would certainly work with dough.
I formed a bit of the dough into a ball and flattened that and baked it and it was fine, so yes, you don’t have to have a press. The dough is very soft, so the checkerboard pattern would be hard to do unless you chilled the dough.
The die I used worked well, but the heart die tended to muddy the colors. If you are going to use a die like that, using fewer more compatible colors would look better, say pink and red.
These are candy not cookies but still my favorite. We always had Hot Cross Buns or “Easter Bread”. Someone would usually bring a plate of fudge.
Coconut Nests
Makes about 1 pound
1 pound chocolate
1 7-ounce package flaked or shredded coconut
water
multi-colored small jelly beans
In the top of a double boiler, melt chocolate over hot water. Add green food coloring if necessary and mix well. Add coconut and mix together well. Add very small amounts of water to coconut mixture until it thickens enough to hold shapes. Form into small nests by making mounds and then hollowing them out with the bowl of a spoon. Fill nests with jelly beans.
I make them small, about the size that each nest can fit in 3-4 small jelly beans.
