MMMMM----- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.06
Title: Beer Cookies
Categories: Cookies
Yield: 1 Batch
1 3/4 c Flour; +2 tb
1/2 c Sugar
1/2 c Butter; room temperature
1 ts Caraway seeds *
1/2 c Beer; scant; added in
-increments **
Heat oven to 350 F. Line two baking sheets with parchment.
Combine all ingredients except the beer in a large bowl and mix with a
spatula until relatively smooth. (You could easily do this in a stand
mixer. I was feeling old school.) Add about half the beer and blend,
gradually adding more as needed until you have a cohesive, stiff
dough. It should be just wet enough to hold together but not so wet
that it becomes soft and sticky. If it's too wet, just add a bit more
flour.
Lightly flour your surface and rolling pin, then roll out the dough to
about 1/4? thickness. (The day I made these was pretty humid -
see: Philadelphia summertime - so I found that refrigerating the
dough for about 10 minutes before rolling it out made the process of
transferring cookies onto the baking sheets much easier.) Cut them
out in shapes of your choice. My handy 2" circle yielded 46 cookies.
Transfer to lined baking sheets and bake for 12 minutes, or until dry
to the touch and golden brown on the bottom. (Your kitchen will smell
like beer. Not at all unpleasant.) Remove to a wire rack and let cool.
* A note about "a few Seeds": Other "seeded" recipes we've made have
called for caraway seeds. I also looked at several print and
manuscript recipes for Seed Cakes, all of which use caraway. So, I
feel fairly certain that caraway seeds are accurate for the Beer
Cakes. However, you could certainly experiment - poppy? Sesame?
** A note about the beer: I didn't have any "old Beer" lurking at the
back of my fridge - just as well, because I knew exactly which beer
I wanted to use for this recipe. Philadelphia's very own Yards
Brewing Company produces three Ales of the Revolution, based on
colonial brewing recipes. I was curious about how much the flavor of
the beer would come out in the cookies, so I experimented by
splitting the batch and making half with Thomas Jefferson's Tavern
Ale and half with Poor Richard's Tavern Spruce. (I also made another
batch with a lager, for additional experimentation. Same results.) I
couldn't really taste a difference, probably because the amount of
beer in the recipe isn't that large and the caraway seeds dominate; I
definitely couldn't taste the piney-ness that characterizes the
Tavern Spruce. But I didn't mind having the leftover beer with my
cookies.
Recipe by Marissa Nicosia
Recipe FROM: <
https://rarecooking.com/2015/07/09/beer-cakes/>
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