Cookie Friday: Citrus sandwich cookies

Happy Cookie Friday, everyone!  Sorry this post is so late.  And sorry, this post is going to be short.  I was on the road until late last night, worked a 15-hour day, then woke up early for work this morning.  Plus, I had to skip my lunch break today, because a person who promised to call me back at noon never did, and I didn't want to leave my desk in case she did call.  Urrgh!  So frustrating!

Anyhow, I'm super tired tonight. So excuse my typos.  I recently squeezed in some time to bake up a new cookie recipe, Citrus Sandwich Cookies from the Summer 2010 edition of King Arthur Flour's Baking Sheet.  (Such a great source for baking inspiration.)

These cookies were so much fun to bake, and so easy!  I didn't need to refrigerate the dough overnight, so I could get my sugar fix immediately.  I had to substitute quite a few ingredients (such as lemon powder?) because I knew they weren't available at our small-town grocery store.

I wasn't sure if my husband would like these cookies, but he ended up eating nearly all of them himself.  He even told me I should make these again for Christmas cookie swaps, because they will stand out from the other cookies people typically bring.  I love it when my husband tells me to make a recipe again!  I always take it as a compliment.

Enjoy!

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Citrus Sandwich Cookies
Adapted from King Arthur Flour's Baking Sheet

• 1/2 C. unsalted butter, soft
• 3/4 C. sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 Tbl. grated citrus zest
• 1 Tbl. orange juice (I used lemon juice)
• 1-1/2 C. King Arthur's Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 C. sugar (for dredging)

Filling:

• 1 pkg. (3 ounces) cream cheese
• 1/4 C. vegetable shortening
• 3 C. confectioners' sugar, sifted
• 1 Tbl. citrus zest
• 1 to 2 tsp. citrus juice, as needed

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease two cookie sheets, or line with parchment. In large bowl, cream together butter and sugar; beat in egg, citrus zest of your choice and orange juice. Scrape the bowl and mix in four, baking powder and salt. Scoop by teaspoonful and roll in sugar. Place on the prepared baking sheets, and press flat with the bottom of a glass dipped in the sugar. Bake for 7 to 8 minutes, just until the edges turn light brown. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack.

For the filling: Cream the cream cheese and shortening together until fluffy. And the confectioners' sugar, 1 cup at a time. Beat in the zest. Add juice as needed until the filling is a spreadable consitency; remember to keep it pretty stiff (about the consistency of PlayDoh).

To assemble: Spread a tablespoon of filling on the bottom of one wafer cookie; press another cookie on top of the filling, bottom down. Yield: 40 wafers, enough for 20 sandwich cookies.

Mid-summer garden

Hello everyone!  Hope you had a great fourth of July.  I spent the weekend moving furniture in a U-Haul (not a really exciting holiday), but I did get to spend some quality time at home, which was wonderful.

It's been a while since I blogged about my garden.  I took a few pictures before the rains hit, again.  We've had above normal rainfall so far this summer, and it has really impacted my garden.  A lot of the vegetables I planted early (kohlrabi, banana peppers, cabbage) didn't survive the wet weather and the early-season insect pressure.

 

However, my container plants are doing very well.

The hollyhocks have never looked better.

 Yesterday, my husband and I were dropping off the U-Haul, and we found a roadside greenhouse offering all plants half off.  So we bought a couple more tomatoes and a few cucumber plants.  I know it's a little late in the year to plant them, but I don't like unused space in the garden.  Can't wait to see how they grow.

The trouble with gooseberries

Our century-old house has a gooseberry bush behind the garage.  What, you may ask, do I use the gooseberries for?  Well, I'm still trying to figure that out.

I've mentioned before that we bought our house from a couple that lived here for more than 40 years.  The woman was very, very fond of her garden.  But in her later years, she did very little to maintain it -- partly because she and her husband spent their summers at a cabin in the Lake of the Ozarks.

We moved in the house in the fall, and the next summer, our next-door neighbor asked if she could pick our gooseberries for the lady who formerly lived in the house.  I guess she really missed the little gooseberry bush.  I'm not sure what she used the berries for -- pie or jam, I suppose.  She hasn't been back since to pick the berries, probably because my neighbor scratched up her arms something fierce in the thorny bush.

But it got me thinking, what am I missing out on?  Are gooseberries a secret delicacy, just waiting to be revealed?

So I picked the berries myself (and got a few scratches in the process) and tried to make a pie.  It turned out terrible, absolutely terrible.  I figured I just found a bad recipe on the Internet; I just needed to add more sugar.

This year, my husband did the gooseberry-picking for me.  Since I had all my canning supplies out, I decided to make gooseberry jam, using a recipe from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.

Let me tell you, it took forever to get the tiny stems off the gooseberries.  Then I had a terrible time mashing down the thick-skinned berries; I couldn't even get them through my food mill!  When I finally got the berries down to a jam-like consistency, the mash looked beautiful -- a jewel green color.

But then...the jam started to boil, or rather, foam up.  And then the mash turned pale brown.  And it started to smell weird.  Not sure how to describe it, just not sweet and summery like I had hoped.

In the end, I ended up with a strange, brown glob of gooseberry goo.  I didn't like the taste at all.  It tasted more like a vegetable than a berry, and not in a good way.

So if anyone happens to read this blog, could you please tell me a good way to use up my gooseberries?  There's got to be a reason why the former homeowners loved them so much.  What's the secret?