Crystal Diamond Cookies
I don’t know if any of you read The Bakers’ Banter - King Arthur Flour’s baking blog - but you really should. The articles are filled with wonderful step-by-step photos of amazing creations. It’s good to use a keyboard cover when visiting the site because you’ll be drooling all over it when you see those photos! When I saw these Crystal Diamonds I could not wait to make them. I’ve never seen such simple cookies look so jewel-like.
The lemon oil sold through the KA website is a little pricey. I found the same oil several dollars cheaper in a local gourmet shop, so it helps to shop around. It’s well worth buying; those 2 little drops make a world of difference. These cookies are an excellent accompaniment for tea.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon whole milk
2 drops lemon oil
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
1 to 1 1/2 cups coarse white or Demerara sugar, for rolling
Directions:
Mix together the flour, milk, lemon oil, yeast and salt till well combined. Using an electric mixer, beat in the pieces of butter one at a time, beating for 1 full minute after each piece is added. The dough will be very smooth, shiny, and elastic. Remove the dough from the mixer, place it in a small bowl, cover the bowl, and refrigerate it for 2 hours, or as long as overnight.
Preheat your oven to 275°F. Sprinkle your work surface heavily with coarse sugar (white or Demerara). Divide the dough in half. Or divide it in four pieces, if your counter is a bit cramped and you don’t have a large work surface.
Working with one half at a time (and keeping the other piece or pieces refrigerated), roll the dough on the sugar-covered surface as thinly as possible; 1/16″ is ideal. Add additional sugar to the work surface if the dough starts to stick. Halfway through the rolling time, turn the dough over so that both top and bottom surfaces end up heavily coated with sugar.
Using a rolling pizza wheel, a bench knife, or a sharp knife, cut the dough into squares or diamonds. Try to cut pieces about 2 1/2″ in size; they’ll shrink a bit, and by the time they’re finished baking, they’ll be about 2 inches, a nice size for this particular cookie. Note: If you make these cookies too large, the edges brown way before the middle; the goal is an evenly browned cookie.
Transfer the cookies to parchment-lined baking sheets. Repeat with the remaining dough.
Bake the cookies for 50 to 60 minutes. They should be a deep, golden brown, almost mahogany, but not burned. The closer you get to deep brown, the better they’ll taste, and the crisper they’ll be. Remove them from the oven and transfer them to a cooling rack as soon as possible, so that they don’t stick to the parchment.
Makes about 5 dozen 2″ cookies.
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June 30th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Dawn, glad you liked the cookies. They’re very unusual, aren’t they? And yes, amazing that thhose 2 drops of lemon oil actually do make a difference. I imagine you could probably get the same effect with a tiny bit of lemon extract, too. Anyway, thanks for your kind words about the blog, and for the link - we appreciate it. Cheers! PJ Hamel, King Arthur Flour test baker.
July 8th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
These diamond cookies look just wonderful! We drink plenty of tea and coffee and I think these cookies would go well with coffee too!
We order flour from King Arthur often, but never knew they had a blog! Thank you so much for the information and we’ll be right over there checking them out!