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Sand Tarts
1/2 cup butter 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 cup sugar White 1 egg 1 egg Blanched almonds 1 3/4 cups flour 1 tablespoon sugar 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, and egg well beaten; then add flour mixed and sifted with baking powder. Chill, toss one-half mixture on a floured board, and roll one-eight inch thick. Shape with a doughnut cutter. Brush over with white of egg, and sprinkle with sugar mixed with cinnamon. Split almonds, and arrange three halves on each at equal distances. Place on a buttered sheet, and bake eight minutes in a slow oven.
A plain rolled butter cookie of the Fannie Farmer school, thin enough that the oven work is measured in single minutes. The hinge is thickness: at an eighth of an inch these bake through in the stated time, and anything thicker will still be doughy when the edges color.
- The ingredient list, sortedHalf a cup butter, one cup sugar, one whole egg, one and three-quarter cups flour, two teaspoons baking powder. Separately, for finishing: the white of one egg, one tablespoon sugar, a quarter teaspoon cinnamon and blanched almonds.
- A slow ovenThat means 300-325F. Eight minutes at that heat sets and lightly colors a cookie rolled to an eighth of an inch; if yours are thicker, they need longer rather than hotter, or the sugar topping scorches before the center is done.
- Doughnut cutterThe cutter gives a ring, which is why three almond halves sit at equal distances around it. A plain two-inch round cutter works if you prefer a solid cookie, and the almonds can go in a triangle.
- Blanched almondsWhole blanched almonds split lengthwise along their natural seam; buy them whole rather than slivered. If you are blanching your own, do it while they are still warm and damp or the skins grip.
- ChillingThe dough is soft and must be genuinely cold before rolling, an hour at least. Working half at a time, as directed, keeps the reserve firm; return scraps to the refrigerator before rerolling.
- Egg white washBeat the white just to break it up rather than to a froth, and brush thinly. Too much wash pools in the cut edge and makes the cinnamon sugar clump.
- YieldSeveral dozen small rings, depending on the cutter and how many times the scraps are rerolled. They keep about a week in a tin and crisp up again in a low oven.
Sand tarts are usually described as a Pennsylvania German inheritance -- Sandtorte in name, though the American version is a thin rolled sugar cookie rather than a cake -- and the name is generally taken to describe the dry, sandy crumb that comes of a high proportion of butter and sugar to flour. Cinnamon sugar and almond halves are a common finish in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American cookbooks, though the details vary from book to book.