Searching for a specific cookie recipe
November 19, 2018 8:14 AM Subscribe
When I was a kid (late 80s/early 90s), we made a cookie from a book called something like "Cookies" that I would love to recreate. The finished cookies were decorated to look like peaches even though they did not contain peaches nor have any peach flavor. Help me indulge my cookie nostalgia?
I don't remember anything about the book other than that it had lots of photos, and my mom can't remember either. The cookies were small and ball-shaped, probably had a lot of butter and maybe no eggs. The texture was like a soft shortbread, but not crispy. They were flavored (I think) with almond extract. No other mix-ins. But the real treat about these was the decorating. You mixed some red (and maybe yellow?) food coloring with granulated sugar to make a lovely peach color. The balls were rolled in this (can't remember if this was before or after baking?). Then a whole clove was added as a stem, and a small green gummy candy as a leaf. So they looked like peaches, but didn't taste anything like peaches (so my Google searches have proved fruitless, no pun intended). Does anyone else remember these??
I don't remember anything about the book other than that it had lots of photos, and my mom can't remember either. The cookies were small and ball-shaped, probably had a lot of butter and maybe no eggs. The texture was like a soft shortbread, but not crispy. They were flavored (I think) with almond extract. No other mix-ins. But the real treat about these was the decorating. You mixed some red (and maybe yellow?) food coloring with granulated sugar to make a lovely peach color. The balls were rolled in this (can't remember if this was before or after baking?). Then a whole clove was added as a stem, and a small green gummy candy as a leaf. So they looked like peaches, but didn't taste anything like peaches (so my Google searches have proved fruitless, no pun intended). Does anyone else remember these??
I think you're looking for pesche con crema, Italian peach cookies that are traditionally filled with pastry cream. Here are a few recipes: one, two, three, four.
posted by tasseomance at 8:27 AM on November 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by tasseomance at 8:27 AM on November 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: The pesche con crema look delicious, but the cookies I'm thinking of did not have any filling. I think they were more like the marzipan cookies, though I don't recall tinting the dough at all, just the sugar coating. But that might be a good place to start!
Also, these cookies were small, even smaller than, say, a golf ball.
posted by CiaoMela at 8:41 AM on November 19, 2018
Also, these cookies were small, even smaller than, say, a golf ball.
posted by CiaoMela at 8:41 AM on November 19, 2018
This sounds like something out of The Betty Crocker Cooky Book. Alas, I haven't got a copy, but that might be a place to start hunting.
posted by halation at 8:45 AM on November 19, 2018
posted by halation at 8:45 AM on November 19, 2018
Best answer: Wow, this really sounds like 2 recipes I have, one in the Betty Crocker book, and another in a book called "Celebrating Cookies" called peach marzipan cookies. It does call for tinting the dough, but maybe you can find a recipe with sugar coating and combine the two?
The Celebrating Cookies one:
8 oz almond paste, coarsely crumbled
1 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2.5 cups all purpose flour
1/8 tsp salt
red & yellow paste food coloring
whole cloves (for stems)
green gumdrops (for leaves)
Place almond paste in a large microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high power (100%) 25 seconds to soften. Add butter and beat with an electric mixer until smooth. Add sugar and beat until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla; beat until smooth. Add flour and salt to creamed mixture; stir until a soft dough forms. Tint with red and yellow until peachish color achieved [the book looks like a reddish yellow, or a very light orange]. Divide dough in half. Cover dough and chill 1 hour.
Shape heaping teaspoons of dough into about 1 1/4 inch diameter balls. Use thumb to make a slight indentation in top of each ball. Insert a small sliver of gumdrop into indentation for stem and leaf. ** Place dough on parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees for 9 to 11 minutes or until bottoms are slightly browned. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool.
**they also recommend using something like the blunt edge of a knife to make the small seam you see on peaches at this step if you want. Also you can just use red only to make an apple version.
posted by barchan at 8:50 AM on November 19, 2018 [4 favorites]
The Celebrating Cookies one:
8 oz almond paste, coarsely crumbled
1 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2.5 cups all purpose flour
1/8 tsp salt
red & yellow paste food coloring
whole cloves (for stems)
green gumdrops (for leaves)
Place almond paste in a large microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high power (100%) 25 seconds to soften. Add butter and beat with an electric mixer until smooth. Add sugar and beat until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla; beat until smooth. Add flour and salt to creamed mixture; stir until a soft dough forms. Tint with red and yellow until peachish color achieved [the book looks like a reddish yellow, or a very light orange]. Divide dough in half. Cover dough and chill 1 hour.
Shape heaping teaspoons of dough into about 1 1/4 inch diameter balls. Use thumb to make a slight indentation in top of each ball. Insert a small sliver of gumdrop into indentation for stem and leaf. ** Place dough on parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees for 9 to 11 minutes or until bottoms are slightly browned. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool.
**they also recommend using something like the blunt edge of a knife to make the small seam you see on peaches at this step if you want. Also you can just use red only to make an apple version.
posted by barchan at 8:50 AM on November 19, 2018 [4 favorites]
Response by poster: Barchan, I think you have it! Perhaps I'm misremembering the sugar vs the dough being tinted. It makes sense that there was almond paste in the cookies, and the green gumdrops are spot on! Thanks so much for including the recipe here!
posted by CiaoMela at 9:11 AM on November 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by CiaoMela at 9:11 AM on November 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Yay! FYI: If the texture in the cookies aren't quite right and everything else is working, try a different brand of marzipan or goosing the amount in them. I bake with marzipan a lot and different brands can give you wildly different results sometimes (on the off chance you don't already know that.) And if the recipe is close but still not quite it and it's too late to update this, feel free to shoot me a MeMail. There's a few other recipes I thought of that might also work, but this seemed the closest with all the butter involved. Mmmmmm butter.
posted by barchan at 9:32 AM on November 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by barchan at 9:32 AM on November 19, 2018 [2 favorites]
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posted by Kriesa at 8:18 AM on November 19, 2018 [2 favorites]