Off-cut Icebox Cookies

Off-Cut Slice and Bake Cookies

After one batch of icebox cookies with a design, I realized there would always be ragged edges and  off-cuts. This quickly became my solution. They wind up pretty. Ultimately extending to

Ingredients

off-cuts from an icebox cookie design
eggwash
sprinkles
powdered sugar for rolling out

Instructions

Step 1: Let the leftover dough soften for a couple minutes then mash it all together and knead it a few times. The goal is to just get it a bit combined. You don't want to mix, you just want a single ball of dough.

Step 2: Roll out the dough on a work surface. Use the powdered sugar to stop it from sticking. If the dough is too soft to work with, ball it up, throw it back in the fridge and watch a couple Monty Python sketches. Then roll it out.

Step 3: After you have you dough rolled out, roll up into a log. Mash each end smooth and get your log nice and even.

Step 4: Lay out parchment and put the log on there. Paint the log in egg wash. Pour liberally with sprinkles. Go in two sections. Do the top then when that's completely covered do the bottom. Roll the log back and forth to cover.

Step 5: Wrap, then wrap in another layer of parchment. Don't bother dumping off the excess sprinkles, just trap them. Freeze the log.

Step 6: Bake as you would any other icebox cookie. My normal settings are about 375 with about 10 to 15 minutes. I watch them very carefully because then I can pull as soon as they're good.

Cookie Monster Icebox Cookies

Cookie Monster Slice and Bake Cookies

I wondered why I couldn't find where anyone had made Cookie Monster Icebox cookies. I know now. It's really, really, really hard.

Ingredients

1 stick butter (1/2 cup)
1 stick margarine (1/2 cup)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 lemon's worth of zest
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 egg
3 1/2 cups flour
food coloring: blue and black

1 extra egg to glue the dough
Powdered sugar in case the dough starts sticking.

Optional: a second batch of white dough

Note: I made a second batch of dough the same day with coconut oil and egg whites. I used this for the whites of the eyes. It's not essentially necessary. It's just something that happened in the course of baking. I decided to try to make the second dough as white as possible for the eyes. It turned out.

Short Instructions 

Creaming method, color the dough, assemble Cookie Monster, freeze

Long Instructions

Step 1: Beat butter, margarine and sugar until light.

Step 2: Beat in baking powder, salt and lemon zest.

Note: I had lemons left from another recipe. So lemon it was.

Step 3: Juice the lemon. Measure out one tablespoon. Beat juice and egg in.

Step 4: Beat in flour.

Color the Dough

Step 1: Separate white dough.

Step 2: Add smurf's blood to rest of the dough.

Step 3: Split in about half and add black to one half.

Assembly

Step 1: Refrigerate the dough.

Step 2: Roll black into two snakes. These will tell you the maximum length of your resulting log. Refrigerate.

Step 3: Wrap the black log in white dough. Use your egg glue liberally. Use it to glue the dough to the black and use it to seal the seam. The seam can be sealed by rubbing the dough with egg. Refrigerate.

Step 4: Shape his mouth. Roll out a thicker log of the black. This can be the remainder of the black because you don't need it for anything else and you can trim the ends later. The log should be fairly thick. At least a couple inches. Estimate based on the size of the cookie you want to make. Shape it into the smile. Gravity will make the bottom flatten a bit naturally. Refrigerate.

Step 5: Roll out a thin section of blue and trim. The goal is the cover the bottom of his mouth. Use the egg glue. Fill in the gaps as best you can. Refrigerate.

Step 6: Fill in the top of his smile with a log of blue. Use the egg glue. Fill in any gaps with blue dough and egg glue. Refrigerate.

Step 7: Trim off the ends of the head log and the eye logs.

Step 8: Glue the eye logs to the top with a lot of egg glue. These will be a bit harder and they will want to come off. So really paint the glue on. Freeze the Cookie Monster.

Cooking

Step 1: Preheat oven.

Step 2: Pull the log from the freezer and immediately slice. This is easy with a bench scraper and strong downward force. But if you don't have one, make do.

Step 3: Bake. Between 10 and 15 minutes at 375. Pull as soon as the top is set and the bottom is starting to develop gold around the edge on the bottom.

Neopolitan Icebox Cookies

Neopolitan Slice and Bake Cookies

I've wanted to make Neapolitan ice cream cookies for a while. So I did.

Ingredients

600 grams all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 Chobani cup
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1/2 cup margarine (1 Stick)
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 egg
200 grams granulated sugar

1 extra egg for assembly

For the chocolate
2 Tbsp cocoa powder
dark chocolate bar
2 Tbsp milk

For the strawberry
6 Tbsp Strawberry Fruit Spread
Extra Flour
Red or Pink food coloring

For the vanilla
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Instruction

Step 1: Beat the butter, margarine, oil and sugar until light.

Step 2: Beat in the salt, baking powder and the egg. My theory about adding the baking powder very early in the recipe is it's such a small quantity of powder and I want it evenly distributed through the dough.

Step 3: Beat in the yogurt.

Step 4: Slowly add the flour (Go too fast and it will cover your counter).

Step 5: Split the dough into 3 bowls.

Step 6: Vanilla - Mix about 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract into the dough. Vanilla is such a ubiquitous flavor in baking that it can be hard to pick out. I've heard the wisdom that vanilla should be added to chocolate recipes (I don't see the purpose in this). There are other ways to bump up the vanilla flavor with other supporting flavorants like vanilla bean or vanilla sugar. This is a matter of preference. Also, I have vanilla extract in my kitchen, I don't have vanilla beans.

Step 7: Chocolate - Chop up about 8 squares of a chocolate bar into fairly small pieces. Otherwise you'll have trouble slicing your cookies later. Mix in 2 Tbsp of milk and cocoa powder.

Step 8: Strawberry - Mix in 6 Tbsp of strawberry fruit spread and a little pink or red food coloring to complete that strawberry ice cream aesthetic. Add extra flour to get the dough back to a similar texture as the vanilla and the chocolate. Doing this now will save you the trouble of rescuing your strawberry dough later.

Digression into my Learning Experience

I'm sharing this in the spirit of full disclosure. Things go weird sometimes. I gave my fridge too much credit so even after sitting in my fridge over night, the strawberry dough was too soft and sticky. So I wound up kneading in about 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup flour to get the dough to a workable texture. The flavor was exactly what I wanted it to be so it still worked. It was just sticky and messy and took a little extra effort.

Step 9: Refrigerate the doughs overnight.

Step 10: Roll out each dough and freeze them for a little bit on parchment paper. You don't want them hard. You just want them to stay as cold as possible while you work.

Step 11: Beat an egg. This is your glue and your spackle.

Step 12: Paint with egg and stack the three layers of dough. Freezer.

Step 13: Trim the edges. You're not trying to make it perfectly square. You're just trying to even up a bit. You can fill in the smaller gaps.with pieces from the off cuts and use the egg to seal the edges. Freezer.

Step 14: Using a ruler (or a T-Square. T-Squares are awesome for this.) to square the dough. Then cut it in half the long way. Paint with egg and stack. Then paint the edges with egg to further seal the edges. Freezer.

Digression

If you have a secret method of rolling out dough in a square and not an amoeba shape, please share it.

Step 15: Take the off cuts and mash them all together into a ball. Knead the ball a few times to mix everything together. Roll out evenly. Paint with egg. Roll up into a log. Roll the roll in chocolate sprinkles (Must appeal to that critical 3 and 5 year old demographic). Wrap that up and throw it in the freezer.

Step 16: Slice the logs. About a half centimeter per cookie. There will always be junk looking ends but they'll still taste good. Only slice as many cookies as you're going to bake.

Step 17: Bake in an oven at 375 degrees. This took me about 15 minutes. Just watch your cookies and pull them when the tops are set and the bottoms start to get golden.