Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Christmas Cookies - French Butter Cookies

Last night I made the first of my five Christmas cookie recipes. First up were French Butter Cookies from Chatelaine.

Ingredients:
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1-1/4 cups  unsalted butter, at room temperature
1-1/2 tsp vanilla



I actually didn't have unsalted butter so I just left the salt out of the recipe. I also added an extra 1/4 cup of sugar to counter the saltiness of the butter.

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375F degrees. In a small bowl, using a fork, stir flour with sugar and salt.


In a medium-size bowl, beat butter with vanilla until creamy. Then gradually stir in flour mixture, mixing with your hands, if you like.


If necessary, refrigerate dough until firm enough to roll into balls, about 30 minutes. It took some effort to get the butter creamy so, by the time I added the dry ingredients, the dough was really soft and I had to refrigerate it. I was disappointed because the prep time was supposed to be 10 minutes but having to cool the dough down added a lot of extra time.

Roll into 1-inch balls. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet, at least 1 inch apart. Flatten slightly with a fork to measure 2 inches in diameter. I sprinkled cinnamon on top for a little extra flavour.
Bake until cookies are lightly golden with darker edges, about 6 minutes. I had to bake these cookies for closer to 15 minutes before they started to turn golden. Even after 15 minutes I don't think they had baked up quite like they were supposed to.


Remove cookies from baking sheet and cool on a rack. Store in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator
for up to 3 weeks.

Verdict:
These cookies are very plain. The cinnamon helped give them some flavour but they are not the best butter cookies I've ever made. They will still make their way onto my cookies trays and I'm sure some people will love them but I felt like they were a lot of work for about 30 unexciting cookies. Better luck next time!

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