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Brett Braley-Palko Brett Braley-Palko

Happy Easter! Iced Egg Cookies

In the interest of Easter weekend, with not much else on my plate today, I baked you sugar cookies, dear Reader.

For nearly 2 years, chickens have nestled their way into our daily lives. My morning coffee and nightly shower revolve around the hens. Flannel shirts and jeans and Ugg boots (don’t ask) all ruined in their muck. But they bring me joy. They lay their eggs and keep busy throughout the day.

So the cookies I made for you are inspired by them. Broken eggs as they appear splattering in the frying pan and the speckled cornflower blues and oaky browns of the Orpington and Reds and Bantams (oh my!).

Ingredients:

  • 1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened

  • 1/2 cup white sugar

  • 1 egg (of course, we used our girls' fresh eggs!)

  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

  • 1 1/4 cup AP flour

  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

  • 1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Directions:

1. Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy
2. Add egg and vanilla and mix together
3. Sift together dry ingredients and gently stir into your butter mixture
4. Turn out onto a floured work surface and pat into a disc. Wrap and chill for 1 hour
5. Preheat oven to 400*F
6. Roll out and cut dough into 3-inch rounds (I used a biscuit cutter but a drinking glass would do)
7. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 9-11 minutes, or until edges are just browned

Decorating: I mixed two batches of royal icing (1.5 cups confectioner sugar per 1 egg white, mixed vigorously with a fork until a thick paste consistency). Add a quality yellow food dye until you get the desired color to one batch. Keep the other as white for the albumen of the egg. Pour into two separate piping bags, both fitted with a coupler and a size 12 piping tip.

Pour the white on your cookies in a traditional egg pattern. Allow half an hour to dry. Top with your yellow, with the piping bag completely vertical and a small amount of pressure to create a perfect circle. Use a toothpick to fill in any gaps or arrange the icing if needed. Allow an additional hour to dry completely.

For eggs - use same method above, using an egg cutter and your desired color dye.

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Brett Braley-Palko Brett Braley-Palko

Giant Jammy Thumbprint Cookies

I’m laying in the bedroom, too excited to sleep but too tired to get up and let the chickens out. One small lamp illuminates the room, yellowing Elsa’s fur, ochre streaks on the dawn. It’s been a long month. Good, but long. So much to plan, so much to do. So much in the little details, where the Devil sometimes waits. A handful of days until the wedding. More on that later.

I’ve been trying my hand at rituals. I’ve been trying to remind myself to get off my ass and walk around the house, around the yard, around the pasture. I’ve been having a hard time with the concept of expansion. It’s much easier for someone like me, who grew up bookish and can’t handle perimeters of myself very well, to sit in one room all day. I’ve been trying my hand at rituals to make small allowances. To break into this part of myself.

So I cut back on coffee and find time to brew a cup of tea. Write some letters I’ve been holding off on. And since either don’t eat until 9 at night or snack throughout the day, I thought I’d ease back into baking with small desserts. Easy treats. Things to dunk and break and that leaves crumbs behind.

Enter these giant thumbprint cookies. Made with whatever jam I found in my fridge this week. I’ve made this recipe twice already.

Giant Thumbprint Cookies

Ingredients:

  • 1/3 cup butter, softened

  • 1/2 cup sugar

  • 1 egg

  • 1 TB lemon zest

  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

  • 1 1/4 cup AP flour

  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

  • 1/4 cup your favorite jam

Directions:

  1. Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy

  2. Add egg, zest, and vanilla and mix together

  3. Sift together dry ingredients and gently stir into your butter mixture

  4. Turn out onto a floured work surface and pat into a disc. Wrap and chill for 1 hour

  5. Preheat oven to 400*F

  6. Roll dough into 2 TB balls, press with thumb or measuring spoon to create a well in center

  7. Par-bake for 5 minutes

  8. Meanwhile, heat jam in microwave for a few seconds to loosen it up a bit

  9. Take cookies out of oven after time has elapsed, fill each well with a bit of jam

  10. Bake for an additional 8 minutes or until slightly brown (I like mine to be a bit soft, but you can bake longer)

  11. Allow to cool and enjoy

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Brett Braley-Palko Brett Braley-Palko

Bakewell Cookies: A Renaissance of Who I've Missed

The last couple weeks have been hard to pinpoint. The weather has been calm and I have not been myself. I have been dreaming; I am a dreamer by nature. I have been quiet. I have been reading. I have been baking and perfecting. I have been alone and I have been cuddled in Nolan's arms on an air mattress in Philadelphia. 

I have been discouraged. I had lost my sense of adventure when it comes to baking. I took a few months off and avoided the kitchen. I think I forgot about the fun it can be. I think I forgot how much it's become a part of me now. I think I forgot how the small motes of flour, when they hit the light, can be one of the most beautiful moments in my otherwise boring day.

I tell myself to relax and I don't take my own advice. I've told myself to wake up early and I ignore the alarm clock and the small dog paws that run on my back. I used to fill the tub up to my chin and then I'd let it drain a minute later. It gave me something to do. Any form of procrastination, if I didn't have to bake. 

But I realize the tender stupidity of that reaction. I've missed the stuck pages of a cookbook and the sink overflowing with whisks and egg shells. I've missed the dogs queuing for their taste. I've missed the purpose baking has given me.

And I thought about all this while I made these cookies. I forgot to take more pictures. I was eager to eat them outside, breaking one into thirds and parceling it into treats. And slowly, happily, I am realizing that that's the moment I missed these last five months: being able to share, to stop, to breathe, to create a moment in time I am most proud of.

Bakewell Cookies

Inspired by Mary Berry's bakewell tart, I've adapted it into a cookie form!

Ingredients:

  • 1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
  • 1 1/4 cup AP flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy
2. Add egg and vanilla and mix together
3. Sift together dry ingredients and gently stir into your butter mixture
4. Turn out onto a floured work surface and pat into a disc. Wrap and chill for 1 hour
5. Preheat oven to 400*F
6. Roll out and cut dough into desired shapes (about 3/4 inch thickness worked best for me)
7. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 9-11 minutes, or until edges are just browned

To Decorate: Mix together 2 egg whites and 3 cups confectioner's sugar. Stir with a fork vigorously until you have a stiff glue of icing. Divide, 1/3 in a small bowl and the remaining 2/3 can stay in mixing bowl. Heat 1 teaspoon raspberry jam until just runny. Whisk into the smaller apportionment of icing until it forms ribbons when lifting your fork up. Add just a tad bit of water to the undyed white icing. 

Transfer both to piping bags. The white bag can have pretty much any larger tip, while the raspberry one should have a fine tip. Fill cookie with the white icing, filling in the gaps of icing with a toothpick and dragging royal icing out. Run 4 parallel lines over top of the flooded white and drag up and down to create feathers of pink. Repeat with remaining cookies.

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