The Cookies From Saturday - And Why They Are "Special"

All right peeps. I promised on Saturday that I would break down the Honey Hazelnut Amaranth cookies, and I would NEVER, EVER leave you hanging. That's just not the kind of Beetle I am. Obviously the Saturday post was taken up by HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN (rightly so) and I had intended to write this up yesterday but:

1. It was GLORIOUS outside and we explored a new walk.
2. The cat rolled in . . . something that was probably poo . . . and it was so foul that both Mum (holding her) and I (desperately scrubbing with baby wipes) had our shirts over our faces and were almost in tears by the end of the ordeal. The cat remains totally blasé about the entire affair.
3. We went to CVS as post poo-cat therapy (the entire car journey did consist of us taking turns going OMG I CAN STILL SMELL IS IT ON ME SOMEWHERE OH GOD IT'S AWFUL WHY IS IT STILL IN MY NOSE WHY??) where I had to explain to Mum why my body butter costs $12.99 and why that is a completely reasonable price.

(FYI - accomplished by ripping the protective cover off the container in the parking lot and shoving it under her nose, whereupon she went that smells AMAZING and I went I KNOW and she went I want some too and I went when you use up the three million bottles of lotion that you said you were going to use five years ago but are still kicking around in the powder room then we'll talk.)

Long story short, there was no time for a post.

Today, however, I am all yours.

HONEY HAZELNUT AMARANTH COOKIES

Because I did veer a little spastically off course, I'm going to link to Kim Boyce's original recipe here instead of including it below. I started out ready to follow it to the letter, considering that so far she has been spot on,  but things sort of devolved halfway through and these are classic Warrior Beetle "oh jesus I hope they still taste ok maybe this will work?" cookies. Maybe you'll have better luck than I did. My version is below. 

Beetle Note: I doubled the below from the outset.

INGREDIENTS

• 1/4 cup amaranth flour
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup hazelnut meal
• 1/2 cup sugar 
• 1 1/2 tsp salt 
• 1 stick plus 2 tbs butter, room temperature
• 1/4 cup plus a bit honey, warmed

Deceptively crumbly.
But honey makes it all better. 

In a mixing bowl, combine the flours, hazelnut meal, sugar, and salt. Add in the butter and beat until combined, then add the honey. 

Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Using your hands, form dough balls and space them evenly apart. 

The dough will look crumbly, but don't worry it does come together nicely thanks to the honey, and it sticks together pretty easily. You will be ok. I got you. 

Squash the dough balls a bit with the back of a soup spoon to flatten them and create that all important "rustic cookie" look.  

Pre and post soup-spoon-flattening

Bake them at 350 degrees for 18 - 20 minutes until they are golden brown and starting to darken around the edges. Let them cool for a few minutes before transferring to a baking rack. 

BEETLE NOTES

or

WHY THESE ARE TOTALLY DIFFERENT FROM THE ORIGINAL RECIPE 

No seriously. These are NOT THE COOKIES FROM THE COOKBOOK. 

These are: 

1. not rolled and cut out cookies 

2. not uniform in shape at all, or flat at all

3. not glazed with a delicious honey/cardamom/orange mixture

I will understand if you stop reading in disgust at this point and go to someone else's, far superior, cooking blog. 

The possible John Doe, right. 

I'm not really sure what happened, you guys. I think everything might have stemmed from my use of hazelnut meal as opposed to freshly toasted then food processed hazelnuts? Which. Fine. I did the easy version. I have no one to blame but myself. And maybe hazelnut meal is just drier and grainier than freshly ground hazelnuts? I don't know. The universe of hand-ground nuts is (gasp!) completely uncharted territory for me. 

I can't imagine that hazelnut meal is that different from ground
hazelnuts, I think that's actually the definition (?)
APPARENTLY I AM WRONG ABOUT THIS.

Suffice it to say that even when Kim Boyce indicates, verbatim, that "the dough will just barely come together", even that, dear reader, even that, is optimistic to the point of ludicrousness.  

For whatever reason, unless I added something else to bind it together, I had basically made hazelnut amaranth powdered baby formula. 

Freaking slightly, I added more butter and turned the mixer on again. Still baby formula. There was clearly no way in hell that these were going to stand up to rolling out and cutting out. I mean. No. Way. And the concept of attempting to do that instantly conjured up an image of me crying quietly in the kitchen, curled, rocking, in a fetal ball, covered in hazelnut meal, to be found by Mum when she got home several hours later. What was Beetle going to do? Add more butter? But I'd already almost doubled it, and that just seemed like a bad choice. 

Then I remembered that after I had rolled out my dough and cut my perfect amaranth cookies into interesting and whimsical shapes with my cookie cutters that are in no way dented and strange (why do we have three brontosauri?) I would of course be glazing them with a honey mixture infused with whole cardamom pods and orange blossom water. 

LIKE YOU DO. 

But Beetle, I asked myself, what if you skipped the craycray glaze and added the honey to the dough? Then maybe it would come together enough to form an actual cookie? And also, obviously, you don't have orange blossom water because you realised last weekend at the health food store that it's $10.99 a bottle and nobody needs orange blossom-infused honey that badly.

SO, dear reader, I took the honey that I was saving for the glaze, which was going to be completely substandard anyway, and melted it a little bit and beat it into the dough. And do you know what? 

IT TOTALLY WORKED. 

Beetle = Warrior. 

Squishing = highly satisfying

After that (really after I gave up the idea that these were going to be by the cookbook) it was totally easy and fun to make the dough balls. I knew they weren't going to flatten in the oven and I wanted them to, so a pre-squish was in order.

The cooking time in the actual recipe said 20 - 24 minutes. 18 minutes in my oven almost burnt them (the black ones are Mum's obvi). So for the second round of pans I set the timer for 15 minutes and then sort of sat in front of the oven watching them until they were ready to come out. 

I gotta say, not too shabby. 

So the honey that was supposed to be brushed elegantly on top went into the dough instead. You're still getting the honey experience, just delivered in a different way. There is no cardamom, and there is no orange blossom water. Perhaps next time I make these I will add some cardamom for flavour (I never met a pod I didn't like, after all) but considering how far I had deviated already, I thought it was best to count my losses and get out with as much dignity as possible. The fact that I had managed to make cookies AT ALL at that point, let alone cookies that smelled, looked, and tasted amazing, seemed like achievement enough. 

I do love me some flecks of hazelnut. So pretty. 

Good Beetle daughter that I am, I met Mum at the door with one that was still warm. We were in business. They are crunchy and nutty (thank you, Amaranth) and even though the honey went into the dough with the sugar, they are not too sweet. 

The Lovely Librarians are getting these today and tomorrow (no, you guys, I didn't let her decimate them over the weekend, I love you too much) so I await their final judgement. Hopefully they will concur that these are keepers. Apologies to Kim Boyce for destroying her lovingly crafted recipe, but I hope she will take comfort in the fact that this proves that she is a professional and highly talented pastry chef, and I am a Yankee Hillbilly Warrior Beetle Who Is Too Lazy to Toast Her Own Hazelnuts And Thinks the World Can Be Held Together With Butter.