Monday: Cursed for Cookies?, or Laura tries to make Cranberry Cheddar Biscuity Cookies

I know Monday isn’t cookie day, but I thought I could get away with it, because these aren’t really cookies, exactly, technically. They seemed more like a cross between biscuits and shortbread. Lex Culinaria posted them back in November, and they looked inspired. And delicious. But I think I may have done something wrong…

The problem might lay in my lack of an electric mixer. And here I’d been, priding myself on my crazy butter- beating strength all month. This time, the arm just might not have been enough. I couldn’t get the dough to stick together! It insisted on remaining crumby and crumbly. My initial thought was that there wasn’t enough liquid and/or butter in the recipe, but I should probably accept that it’s more likely a problem on my end.

They do taste pretty good, so you might as well give it a shot. Here is what I did. If you make any alterations that result in better dough formation, let me know!

Cranberry Cheddar Biscuit Cookies

• 1/2 c. butter
• 1 1/2 c. aged cheddar (the recipe says finely grated–I grated it coarsely. Might this be the problem? I wonder…)
• 1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. sea salt
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 c. chopped pecans
• 1/2 c. dried cranberries

Cream together the butter and cheese. The original recipe says to do this at high speed in a stand mixer, but lacking one of those, I did it at arm speed. I don’t think this is a problem, though–at least, it’s never been a problem in the past.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt, and add (in two or three batches) to the butter mixture. This is where I had problems. It just refused to stick together. It seemed more like pie crust before you add the water. Should I have added water? Milk? An egg? I don’t know, it just didn’t like to be doing what I was wanting it to do. So I went ahead and added the pecans and cranberries, anyway, and tried to proceed.

Lay out a sheet of wax paper, and roll the dough into a log. Wrap it up in the wax paper, and twist the ends tightly. Refrigerate for at least 45 minutes (you can freeze it, too, if you want to).

When the dough is ready, preheat the oven to 375 F. The recipe says to unwrap the dough log and slice it into 1/2-inch slices, but that was not happening. I pretty much just had to form them by hand into flat rounds, trying to keep all the escaping crumbs smooshed into the dough. It’s supposed to make something like 30 cookies, and I ended up with about 10.

Bake them for about 10-15 minutes, until the edges are brown, and let them cool before removing them from the cookie tray.

Despite my dough problems, that do taste pretty fantastic. They’re very light and crispy, with a great cheddar tangy-ness. But I just feel that I won’t be satisfied until I can figure out why my dough refused to be properly dough-y.