Friday, August 6, 2010

A treat just like Grandma (or Grandpa) used to
make: Mint-Glazed Butter Thins

As much as I like recipes for new-fangled foods and tastes, I also like ones that hark back to earlier times.
   Mint-Glazed Butter Thins (click here for the recipe on the epicurious.com website) is just such a recipe.
   When I bit into one, I thought of grandmothers' (or grandfathers') kitchens everywhere, maybe about 50 years ago, with excited grandchildren waiting for a bite of the treat still baking in the oven.
   These old-fashioned cookies are delicious.
   The mint glaze perfectly enhances the flavor of the buttery cookie.
   They are easy to make, but do take a little extra time and care when putting them on the cookie sheets before they are baked.
   Sugar, butter, an egg, vanilla extract, pure peppermint extract and flour are beaten together.
   The resulting dough is shaped into balls, one level tablespoon at a time, rolled in powdered sugar, placed on a cookie sheet and pressed lightly with the bottom of a flat-bottomed cup or glass.
   Each cookie is then sprinkled with more powdered sugar, and pressed again into thin rounds. The recipe says the rounds should be 3¼ inches in diameter, but mine were about three inches wide and they turned out fine.
   While the cookies are baking, powdered sugar, peppermint extract and whipping cream are mixed together in a small bowl until smooth, with extra cream being added if glaze is too thick to spread.
   I needed to add just ½ tsp more cream than the suggested two tablespoons to make the glaze spreadable.
   You don’t want the glaze watery, as it melts a bit on the warm cookies; it just needs to be easily spreadable, about the consistency of peanut butter.
   The glaze is spread on the cookies when they come out of the oven.
   Yum!

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