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Emerald Cookies
1/2 cup shortening 1 cup sugar 1 egg, well beaten 1/4 cup milk 1/4 teaspoon vanilla 2 cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 cup sugar red and green fruit coloring Cream shortening and sugar, add egg, milk and flavoring. Stir in flour, mixed with baking powder. Chill in refrigerator for 2 hours. Roll out 1/4 in. thick and bake in a hot oven (400 degrees F.) until brown. Ice with sugar, mixed with red and green coloring. Makes 40 3-in. cookies.
A plain rolled sugar cookie dough, coloured only at the surface. Two details in the original need interpreting before you start.
- The "icing" is really coloured sugarThe reserved 1/2 cup sugar mixed with red and green colouring makes a damp tinted sanding sugar, not a spreadable icing. It is easiest to tint the sugar in two small bowls, rub the colour through with a fingertip or fork until evenly dyed, and dry it briefly on a plate. The recipe applies it after baking; some cooks prefer to sprinkle it over the cut shapes before they go into the oven so it fuses to the dough. If you want an icing that sets hard, that needs a confectioners' sugar glaze with a little liquid, which this ingredient list does not include.
- 400F is hot for a thin cookieA 1/4-inch rolled cookie at 400F is done in 7 to 9 minutes. "Until brown" overshoots for this dough; pull them when the edges have just taken colour and the centres look set, since they firm considerably as they cool on the sheet.
- ShorteningShortening in recipes of this kind usually meant hydrogenated vegetable fat, which keeps the cookie pale and tender and helps it hold a cut edge, though lard was also used. Butter works and tastes better, but spreads more, so chill the cut shapes on the sheet for 10 minutes before baking.
- Chilling is not optionalWith only 1/4 cup milk, the dough is stiff and greasy-warm when mixed and will tear rather than roll. The full two hours in the refrigerator is what makes it manageable; work with half at a time and keep the rest cold.
- Flour measureTwo cups measured by scooping can run to 300 g or more and gives a dry, cracking dough. Spoon the flour into the cup and level it, or weigh 240 to 250 g.
- Fruit colouring"Fruit colouring" is ordinary food colouring. Add it sparingly: a drop or two per bowl of sugar is enough, and gel colours give the deeper emerald green the name promises without wetting the sugar.
- YieldForty 3-inch cookies assumes thin, economical rolling and re-rolling of the scraps. Expect closer to 30 if you roll a shade thicker.