I’m sharing the recipe for Melody Cookies but have to show off a few others as well. I’ve been really, really good about not buying new cookbooks lately, except for a handful I bought at BookOutlet.com. (Their scratch and dent section has some amazing deals periodically!) I’ve been borrowing cookbooks from the library instead, which satisfies my desire to explore new cookbooks and try out new recipes and new cuisines.
But then I borrowed Dorie’s Cookies from the library and made her Lemon Sugar Cookies, which were fantastically good.
And that recipe convinced me to buy a cookie scoop so I could make my cookies look as good and uniform as hers! Once the scoop got here, I had to make her Coffee Malted Cookies to test it out and they were just as good as the lemon cookies. Maybe bettter. I have a thing for that malted flavor.
And then I had to try the Melody Cookies, a chocolaty crispy cookie that she says make good ice cream sandwiches. I can only imagine! We, however, ate all ours without ice cream. I think the day I made these was the day my youngest stopped by after work and said “I hate your new hobby” as she ate a few cookies.
There are a few things I’ve already learned from this book that are going to up my cookie game quite a bit. First, for cutout cookies Dorie has you roll out the dough between two sheets of parchment, which made my rolling out much easier than it has been in the past.
Second, she has you freeze the rolled out dough before using cookie cutters. This makes the cookie much easier to handle and no little bits broke off on the way to the pan. (She’s also a stickler about rotating pans halfway through and given the results I’m going to keep doing that.
And the cookie scoops really do work great to make the cookies more uniform!
I returned the book to the library a little sad. I couldn’t renew it because someone else had requested it. Then I got a 20% off coupon from Barnes and Noble. And online it was on sale for $20 so for $16 I now have a lifetime of cookies to get through!
Dorie’s Melody Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 cups 306 grams all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup 28 grams unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 sticks 8 ounces butter at room temperature, cut into chunks
- 3/4 cup 150 grams sugar
- 3/4 teaspoon sea salt or a pinch less if you use salted butter rather than unsalted
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg white
- sugar for sprinkling
Instructions
- Stir the flour, cocoa powder and baking soda together in a small bowl.
- Use a mixer to cream the butter, sugar and salt together. Run it on medium speed for about 3 minutes, scraping down the bowl periodically.
- Blend in the vanilla on low speed and then add the egg white and mix 1-2 minutes.
- Turn the mixer off and add half the flour mixture and blend; then add the other half and blend just until all the dry ingredients are mixed in.
- Turn the dough onto your work surface and divide it in half.
- Roll out each half of the dough to about 1/8″, sandwiched between two sheets of parchment paper. Stack these on a cookie sheet and freeze an hour (or refrigerate for two hours).
- Preheat the oven to 350 F with the racks set so the oven is divided in thirds.
- Line the cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- Peel each piece of paper away from the dough slab and lay the slab back on one of the pieces to cut the cookies out. Place on the lined cookie sheet about an inch apart and sprinkle with sugar. (I ended up dipping them into a plate of sugar, which let me get the sugar on more uniformly.)
- Bake 15-17 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. (If you’re baking two cookie sheets at once rotate top to bottom and front to back.)
- While the first set of cookies are baking, roll the scraps back together and roll out again, chilling the dough before cutting out the rest of the cookies.
- Let the cookies cook on the cookie sheets for 2 minutes before moving them a wire rack to cool completely.
- You can freeze cut out (unbaked) cookies and bake them straight from the freezer, adding another minute or so to the baking time.
I’m not sure which I’ll be trying next. I need to start walking more, that’s for sure!
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