Thanks
Sunflower

Mexican Wedding Cookies

2 1/4 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp water
1 cup pecans, chopped fine

In a large bowl, beat the butter for 30 seconds. Beat in sugar, half of flour, vanilla and water until well blended. Beat in rest of flour. Stir in nuts. Form 1-inch balls and set on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 20-25 minutes at 325 until bottoms are golden brown. Remove cookies from cookie sheet and cool on rack. Roll in powdered sugar.

Thanks again
Sunflower

This past Christmas, I baked over 600 cookies, of 11 different kinds for my 24 cookie platters that I gave as gifts. 95% of these were tasty morsels..ones you could really sink your teeth in to. I also made cut out cookies in holiday shapes,then froze them until 3 days before giving. I then defrosted & iced with the packaged 'coating icing' (at Michaels), then added a thicker royal icing to do detail work-like garland & ornaments of the trees, glittery sugar on the stars, etc. Which cookies do you suppose everyone reached for first? Yep! The less tasty decorated ones! There's a kid in all of us. You could make wedding bells, ice in white, then just before the wedding-outline in the wedding color & add the bride & groom's names on them or their last initial.

Becky
Windsor, CA

* Exported from MasterCook *

LYDIA'S AUSTRIAN RASPBERRY SHORTBREAD

Recipe By :
Serving Size : 0 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories : Cookies

Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
1 pound unsalted butter -- (4 sticks) slightly softened
4 egg yolks
2 cups granulated sugar
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup raspberry jam -- at room temperature
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar

Cream the butter in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (or using
a hand mixer) until soft and fluffy. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

Mix the granulated sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt together. Add
to the butter and egg yolk mixture and mix just until incorporated and
the dough starts to come together. Turn the dough out onto a floured
work surface and form into two balls. Wrap each ball in plastic wrap
and freeze at least 2 hours or overnight (or as long as a month, if
you like).

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Remove one ball of dough from the freezer and coarsely grate it by
hand or with the grating disk in a food processor into the bottom of a
9x13-inch baking pan or a 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom.
Make sure the surface is covered evenly with shreds of dough.

With the back of a spoon or a flexible spatula, spread the jam over
the surface, to within 1/2 inch of the edge all the way around. Remove
the remaining dough from the freezer and coarsely grate it over the
entire surface.

Bake until lightly golden brown, 30 to 40 minutes. As soon as the
shortbread comes out of the oven, dust with confectioners' sugar. Cool
on a wire rack, then cut in the pan with a serrated knife.

Makes 12 to 16 large bars. (I cut them into 2x2" squares and got way
more than 12, they are really rich!)
This recipe came from a book called:

Butter Sugar Flour Eggs, by Gale Gand, Rick Tramonto, and Julia Moskin

Posted to Frozen Assets on 10-27-02 by ceri.mccarron@nara.gov

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NOTES : When we were taking our baby steps as chefs, one of our favorite
teachers was Lydia, queen of the soup pots at the Strathallen Hotel in
Rochester, New York. She grew up in Austria, so, of course, she knew
plenty about baking. When we got to work in the morning, we'd taste
that day's "zoop" (as she'd say in her strong accent), then watch as
she demonstrated family baking recipes like this one. Grating the
frozen shortbread dough into the baking pan gives it a lighter, more
open texture; adding a middle layer of raspberry jam makes it
stunningly delicious. For a chocoalte-raspberry shortbead, substitute
1 cup cocoa for 1 cup of the flour.

I made these the first time a few weeks ago and made them again this
past weekend. They are soooo good. Not only can you freeze the dough
and bake fresh when you need them, I would think you could bake and
freeze the finished product as well. I got the recipe from
epicurious.com, and there are some good reviews of the recipe there,
but in short: use the food processor to grate, let it sit out a few
minutes befor you put it in the oven, and go by color, not by baking
time, since both times I made it it took a lot longer than the recipe
called for. I also did not shape it into balls for freezing, but
rather into long cylinders (figured this out after the first time),
since the ball was so hard to cut into pieces small enough to fit into
the feeding tube of the food processor. Enjoy!