Eid Mubarak!

Every Eid I make sugar cookies and hand them out after salah. I use this simple recipe from Epicurious: 

Ingredients:

2 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions: 

Beat together butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes in a stand mixer or 6 minutes with a handheld. Beat in egg and vanilla. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture, mixing until just combined.

Form dough into 2 balls and flatten each into a 6-inch disk. Chill disks, wrapped in plastic wrap, until firm, at least 1 hour.

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F.

Roll out dough about a 1/4 inch thick on a well-floured surface with a well-floured rolling pin. Using a cookie cutter, cut out as many cookies as possible from dough with cutters and transfer to an ungreased baking sheet, arranging cookies about a 1/2 inch apart.

Bake cookies, 1 sheet at a time, until edges are golden, 10 to 12 minutes, then transfer to racks to cool completely.

Meanwhile, gather scraps and chill until dough is firm enough to reroll, 10 to 15 minutes. Make more cookies with remaining dough and scraps and bake on cooled baking sheets.

For the icing:

Ingredients:

1 cup powdered sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Combine all ingredients. Stir until smooth.

Using a spoon, scoop some icing onto a cookie and spread evenly. Let cool.

Use black icing mixed with water to decorate. 

The Skillet Cookie

Ingredients: 

1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 egg

2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

Chocolate chips/chunks, however many you want

Walnuts perhaps??

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Melt butter in an ~8 inch cast iron skillet set over medium-low heat. Stir in sugars and vanilla and remove from heat. Allow to cool for ~5 minutes.

2. Crack an egg onto the butter and sugar mixture, and use a fork to whisk it well into the mixture. Place flour, baking soda, and salt on top, and very carefully stir into the mixture until smooth and well-mixed. Stir in chocolate chunks and perhaps some walnuts.

3. Place skillet in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until starting to turn golden on the top and around the edges, but soft in the center.

NOTE that the dough won't be typical yummy, edible cookie dough. I mean it will be yummy, but it's going to be really oily. All that oil is what's going to make the cookie nice and crispy, while the butter will keep the inside slightly chewy...yummmms.

Skillet! I actually don't have a cast iron skillet, so I used the Teflon one that we usually use to make parathas (filled flat bread) in.  

Tray Joe's semi sweet chocolate is the real deal...excellent for baking!

Sugar Cookies with Strawberry Butter

Millions of people suffer from chai addiction. For them, it's chai before and after breakfast, for brunch, after lunch, in the late afternoon, even after dinner right before going to sleep. I'm not quite as addicted, but I'm on the downhill track.

Kidding!! But seriously Pakistanis drink too much chai and we should probably cut down or at least switch to green tea. In the mean time we will gladly drink our yummy Danedar or Tetley steeped boiling water with oodles of cream and sugar. And what better to have with chai than a delicious biscuit. And by biscuit I mean what Pakistanis call cookies. The sugar cookies I talked about in my last post are so incredibly delicious with chai. Since my cousin and her babies are in town, I decided to make a large batch of sugar cookie dough and freeze it, thawing a little chunk at time to bake and eat with chai. The first batch I baked were simple with sprinkles. Then I made strawberry filling for a cake, but it was a failure. I ended up with some weird strawberry mess. Then I had an idea. For the second batch of sugar cookies, I would use that strawberry mess to replicate those yummy Pepperidge Farm Verona cookies. They were so cute looking and yummy. I had to share :)

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

Strawberry Butter
Ingredients:
1/2 cup strawberry jam
2 tablespoons butter, melted

Directions:
Whisk together flour and salt in a small bowl. In a separate large bowl, beat together butter and sugar with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Add flour mixture, mixing until just combined. Place dough in plastic bag and freeze for at least one hour.

Meanwhile, take out any old strawberry jam. Heat it in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Stir in melted butter. Let cool.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to  350°F. Let dough thaw enough to be able to mold into 1 inch round balls. Place balls on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. With a finger, poke a small hole in the cookie ball then lightly press down/flatten surface of cookie (it should be about 2 inches round now). With a spoon, fill holes of cookies with ~1/2 teaspoon of strawberry butter.

Bake cookies, until edges are golden, 10 to 12 minutes, then transfer to racks to cool completely. 

Makes 20-30 cookies.

Just a little snapshot of the past week with the babes :)

Cookie recipe via Epicurious.