Cooking with Asia

Makes 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup (100 grams) white granulated sugar

1 large egg

3/4 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups (175 grams) all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/3 (75 ml) candied red cherries, chopped

Directions:

1. In the bowl of your mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (3-4 minutes).

2. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until incorporated.

3. In a separate bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt and then add to the butter and egg mixture. Mix just until a dough forms.

4. Stir in the cherries until evenly distributed throughout the dough.

5. Place dough on a large piece of parchment or wax paper. Smooth and shape the dough into an evenly shaped cylinder that is about 10 inches long. Then thoroughly wrap the shaped logs in the parchment or wax paper, twists the ends of the paper to seal the logs, and place in the refrigerator to chill for at least three hours, or up to three days. The logs can also be frozen for about one month. If freezing, it is best to let the logs stand at room temperature about 15-20 minutes before slicing.

6. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F with the rack in the center of the oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

7. Using a thin bladed knife, slice the logs into 1/4 inch (5 mm) thick slices. Place the cookies on the prepared baking sheets, spacing about 2 inches (5 cm) apart. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and cool completely on a wire rack. Store at room temperature for about five days or baked cookies can be frozen for a couple of weeks.

When I went to have a cookie I was skeptical on how it would taste because all the guys said of how bad they tasted but when I did have one I enjoyed it. They were really sugary but overall I think they were pretty good. When we were making these it was really hard to roll the cookies into a cylinder shape. Whenever we'd get it to ten inches then I'd accidently roll it more to get it perfect and it got too long. Also another thing that didn’t go too well was that when we came back the next day to bake the cookies they were flattened on one side. So it was no longer a cylinder shape, so we just cut them and left them as that. We weren't sure if we needed to shape them into a circle because even the substitute didn’t know. They turned out as like half circles but they were still nice. When we were making these I think we did really good because we took them out at the perfect time. They came out with a light golden brown color and they weren't burnt so that’s good. When we were taking the cookies out of the oven they barely had a brown color to them but since I learned about carry over cooking we took them out early. Since they cooked after we took them out of the oven more they became a better golden brown color which was nice. I think these cookies were okay but I wouldn’t make them at home because I don’t think my mom would like these because they seemed a little dry. At least the ones I tried tasted were dry. If I were to make these at home I would roll them into balls and maybe they would come out as a circle cookie rather than a half circle cookie.