Once we drive to Waco to determine family, we pass the Collin Street Loaves of bread. Collin Street is really a large, white-colored building where one can get a variety of scrumptious things. You can find sandwiches and eat there (a minimum of in the Waco location I am unsure concerning the others). However , they are a loaves of bread, plus they sell various baked goodies. Cakes, pies. They are renowned for their fruitcake. And you will find cookies.
Certainly one of their popular and scrumptious cookies may be the Cherry Icebox cookie. Soft, pink, and oh so tasty with items of cherry baked in. I understood, after i began this web site, which i desired to bake a form of that cookie.
After a little Internet searching, I discovered what claimed is the Collin Street Loaves of bread recipe here. Well, really, whomever place it here authored it "seems" is the Collin Street Loaves of bread recipe. After searching it over I considered it really worth trying out.
Observe that particular website does not have pictures. Ha! Mine does! So let us enter into it.
The Components
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup butter-flavored shortening
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 10-oz jars maraschino cherries, drained and chopped
red food coloring
My first order of economic ended up being to drain and chop the 2 jars of maraschino cherries.
It was only the beginning from the cherry carnage.
I'll enable you to get, my pretties! (hack, hack)
Put on an apron with this. Really. These little suckers squirt.
Then i used many sponges to blot the cherry carnage and obtain because the moisture out when i could. I set these aside and worked out making the dough.
The recipe requires both butter and butter-flavored shortening. An initial for me personally! I have never purchased or used the butter-flavor shortening before, however I own 2 . 5 sticks from it, jeeze darn it. I better find more recipes that decision for this.
One half-cup of butter is a whole stick, . 5-cup of shortening is really a 1 / 2 of a stick.
Searching only at that photo is the very first time I have observed the instruction around the shortening stick to utilize a serrated knife to chop with the wrapper and shortening. Oops. I have never work this way.
First, the butter and shortening are mixed, and so the egg and also the extracts are added. HOWEVER. I do not own almond extract, since i avoid using almond extract, since i can't stand almond extract. And also, since this recipe was just requesting one fourth of the teaspoon from it, I opted to depart it and rather make use of a teaspoon along with a quarter from the vanilla flavoring.
Inside your trusty separate bowl, you need to sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Note, it's baking POWDER, not sodium bicarbonate. I am causeing this to be distinction as this was the 2nd week consecutively which i grabbed the soda from my kitchen first and almost destroyed my cookies before catching my mistake.
Stir your dry goods to your butter/egg/etc. mixture. At this time, you finish track of a fairly tough, thick dough. It had been somewhat tougher compared to cookie doughs I have been coping with recently.
The language "tough dough" are accurate within this context, however they sure look funny together.
Here, things obtain a little challenging because you are dirty mixing these items. You'll still gotta add individuals cherries.
My stomach just growled.
Mix these glistening little rubies in, after which you know what! You are still dirty mixing, because you're ready to then add red food coloring!
Now, the recipe does not specify just how much food coloring to include, just "enough to create light pink." For me personally, which was about six drops. However, you will see within the following pictures which i were left with a rather marbled look. There have been still some white-colored spots where my coloring did not mix completely in, however i was Comfortable with that. I did not wish to drink too much red, and my mixer was getting tired.
Here, all things have been mixed, although within this photo the dough does not look pink whatsoever. It had been, though.
After this you have to cover and refrigerate the dough for 2 hrs. Next, you shape it into two logs, wrap the logs in wax paper, and chill again not less than another hour. I chilled mine overnight, due to the fact I'd someplace to visit, and so i wound up finishing the cookies the following mid-day.
My crude dough logs.
When you are prepared to bake them, unwrap a log and slice away. The recipe requires 1/4-inch slices, however i just eyeballed it. I had been somewhere for the reason that neighborhood.
I recognized at this time that I didn't make excellent, round logs. My cookie slices were weirdly formed, type of oblong, type of flat somewhere.
Oh, plus they look at a greased cookie sheet, should you could not tell. Man, I suppose I had been just a little heavy-handed using the spray.
400-degree oven, eight to ten minutes.
My cookies wound up getting brown around the edges and bottoms. Maybe ever since they were pretty small, additionally they wound up just a little crispy. The ultimate product isn't as soft because the actual Collin Street Bakery's cherry icebox cookies.
Baked and browned
Actually, since my cookied became small, odd-formed, along with a little crispy, It seemed like these were a lot more like cherry biscuits than cherry cookies. I hereby deem these my Cherry Biscuits!
I must say, I do not think this recipe got the Collin Street Bakery's recipe right. Their cookies are soft along with a little sweeter than the others. But, they are still very good. If you cannot reach Texas, or maybe you are in Texas although not near Corsicana or Waco or their areas, and also you really want a cherry icebox cookie, you could do this worse than get this to version.
But be ready for a little bit of work. These cookies tend to be more high-maintenance than your average cookie. You need to drain and chop cherries. You need to chill dough, make it into nice logs, then chill it again. And you've got to sift your flour! I usually think that's this type of discomfort, and that i question how necessary it truly is.
Your final note: By trying this out, you'll finish track of a lot of these little guys. The recipe states it yields four dozen, however for me it had been a lot more like five . 5. I suppose the next time, I'll focus on making slightly bigger, rounder logs.