I had this cookie a few years ago — a sort of cross between a sable and a Scottish shortbread. It had a butter pecan sort of flavor to it, but no discernable pieces of nut in the cookie. Maybe they were ground up fine, I dunno, but the flavor was subtle and yet discernable

This is my favorite cookie of all time, and it sounds very close to the one you describe:


Brown Sugar-Pecan Shortbread
( recipe taken from The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook)

2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 cup pecan pieces
pinch salt 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup packed, dark brown sugar
Grind the flour, pecans, and salt in a food processor fitted with a steel blade, to a fine powder. Set aside.

Using an electric mixer or a wooden spoon, cream the butter and sugar. When the mixture is very smooth and creamy, mix in the pecan mixture.

Gather the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least 3 hours or overnight. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Roll out dough 1/4 inch thick on a lightly-floured surface. Cut into shapes with 1-inch cookie cutters. Gather up the scraps, reroll, and cut into as many cookies as possible.

Place on the prepared cookie sheets and bake until lightly coloured, 20 to 25 minutes.
Makes about 50 cookies.

I, too, love to bake.
And I really, really love to bake cookies.

I have about a hundred recipes I got from epicurious. If you’re looking for a shortbread/butter cookie recipe try the one on their website from December 1995.

But the favorite in our house is a cookie recipe that’s rich and easy is hard to find on their website. It’s from March 1994 and it’s for DOUBLE-PEANUT DOUBLE-CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES . My kids love love love it.

The peanut butter in this dough creates a crumbly cookie.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup chunky or creamy peanut butter
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup (6 ounces) peanut-butter chips

Preheat oven to 350F.
In a bowl whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and baking powder. In another bowl with an electric mixer cream butter, peanut butter, and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in flour mixture and stir in chocolate chips and peanut-butter chips.
Drop dough by level tablespoons 2 inches apart onto buttered baking sheets and bake cookies in batches in middle of oven 10 minutes. Cool cookies on racks.
Cookies keep in airtight containers 5 days.

Makes about 60 cookies.

(1) Meaning sweet (as in unsalted) butter. Please. Margarine is an affront to the chocolate.
(2) “Why must I grate the chocolate?” you inquire plaintively. “Why can’t I just melt it and combine it with the molasses and butter mixture?” Reason 1: it changes the consistency of the dough, making it impossibly sticky, and it’s plenty sticky as it is. Reason 2: the point of these cookies is that you get tiny little microscopic flecks of chocolate throughout the molasses cookie matrix, not an undifferentiated molasses-chocolate glob. Reason 3: because the good folk at Brer Rabbit Molasses (who put this recipe in an ad back in the Kennedy Administration) say so. Who are we to argue with the Way of Brer Rabbit?
(3) Finely? Yup. Hie thee to a cookware store and acquire a Microplane zester/grater, of the fine rather than coarse persuasion. They are the Platonic ideal of graters. They also make box and rotary versions. (And no, I don’t have a stake in the company. Pity.) Food processors seem to go straight from chocolate boulders to chocolate sauce, which, as you know from note 2, is not allowed.
(4) A word which here means “unsalted butter,” as prescribed in note 1.
(5) Easy for them to say. This dough is dense, kids. Be prepared for your mixer to throw a hissy fit, and require you to finish incorporating the flour by hand. Or switch to a dough hook, which works with my quite wimpy mixer. The only food processor I’ve ever tried this with is too underpowered to be a useful test.
(6) Now they’re just taunting us. See note 5. I combine the grated chocolate with the last cup or so of flour, and then add it to the dough, again, employing a dough hook rather than beaters.
(7) Did I mention that the dough is sticky? (Why, yes – note 2.) Here’s where that becomes an issue. Try and limit the amount of flour used on the board, or the cookies will emerge rather rocklike. I’ve tried a zillion rolling pins on this dough (wood, glass, stainless steel, aluminum, ceramic, Tupperware, Etruscan terracotta, the kind you fill with ice water, the ones with little sleeves, even silicone) and it sticks to all of them. I’ve never tried a marble pin; if you have one and it works, please let me know.
(8) Alternatively, one can form the dough into logs (or bricks) and cut it like refrigerator cookies. Use a sharp, fine-bladed knife, make thin slices, and keep the dough chilled. I’ve done this, and it’s faster, yet oddly unsatisfying. Also, putting a sliced surface on a cookie sheet seems to disable the encapsulation of the chocolate flecks, and the cookies burn more easily. They’re still really good.
(9) What twisted, soulless person makes nothing but 2-inch cookies? They lie – you won’t get 14 dozen.
(10) Disgusting though it may sound, this stuff is really good raw. And since it contains no eggs, hey, go wild. Just be prepared to not have any actual cookies at the end of the day.

OLD-FASHIONED MOLASSES SLICES

Christy’s molasses cookie recipe draws me out of lurkerhood once again.

The following is my family’s old stand-by Christmas cookie for the last 45 years. Number in parentheses in the recipe proper refer to the endnotes. Endnotes, you ask? Over time as I’ve given the recipe to friends and newly acquired relatives-by-marriage, I’ve added the notes, which result from those aforementioned 45 years of Baking The Cookie. Due to the length I’ll post those separately.

Molasses Jewel Box Cookies

1 cup butter or margarine (1)
1 cup light molasses
2 cups light brown sugar, packed
4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
teaspoon cinnamon (or a touch more)
3 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, grated (2) finely (3)
(Optional) icing and decorations to your preferences

Cream shortening (4), add molasses and brown sugar. Mix/beat until light. Sift flour with baking soda and cinnamon; mix into creamed mixture and blend (5). Add chocolate and mix (6). Chill for at least four hours, or overnight.

Roll dough thinly (7) on lightly floured board. Cut (8) and place cookies on greased cookie sheet. (Or, use one of those silicone-coated baking mats that Martha so loves.)

Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. Yield (according to the original recipe) is 14 dozen 2-inch cookies (9). Decorate as your holiday preferences and patience suggest. Yield does not reflect dough pilferage (10), which in our house is often significant.

The favorite cookie in my family is oatmeal chocolate chip. (Almost enough oatmeal, nuts, and chocolate chips to actually be good for you.)

Little Raspberry Cookies

2 C flour
1/2 lb. Butter (do not substitute)
1/2 C granulated sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 C ground blanched almonds
Raspberry jelly
additional granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Cream butter, sugar and vanilla. Add flour and almonds ( do not over-mix to keep cookies tender) Roll out on lightly floured board and cut with tiny cookie cutters. Bake 10/12 minutes til set. Sandwich 2 cookies together with jelly and roll in white sugar.

Thanks for the recipe ideas, they all sound great.

12 Tablespoons butter (1 1/2 sticks)
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
1 3/4 cups unbleached flour
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. Melt butter, add sugar and molasses, and mix thoroughly. Lightly beat egg and add to butter mixture; blend well.

3. Sift flour with spices, salt and baking soda, and add to first mixture; mix. Batter will be wet.

4. Lay a sheet of foil on a cookie sheet. Drop tablespoons of cookie batter on foil, leaving 3 inches between the cookies. They will spread during the baking.

5. Bake until cookies start to darken, 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from oven while still soft. Let cool on foil.

24 very large flat cookies!

When kids were still at home, making a cookie list was a family affair. Usually a two-part list, “Absolutely Have to Make” and “If I Have Time.” The first list always includes:
Pecan Cookies (aka Russian Teacakes/Mexican Wedding Cakes)
Spritz (tint green and use tree die)
Viennese Shortbread
Thumbprint Cookies

Second list–always hard to choose, I’d make ‘em all if I had time.
Popcorn Balls
Caramels
Sugar Cookies (my mom’s recipe)
Sugar Cookies (my grandma’s recipe)
Swedish Gingersnaps
Rosettes
plus recipes I’ve clipped from various places that sound yummy)

Here’s a variation of mine, I’ve been refining for several years. I think it’s merely ok but I’ve taken it to parties and had certain people park themselves around the plate and eat til the plate is empty while muttering Best. Cookie. EVER. (I don’t much care for chocolate, but some people seem to like the stuff.)

Spumoni Spritz

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1 small egg
1 square baking chocolate
1 tsp butter
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp rum butter extract
1 1/4 cup cake flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/16 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp mace

Cream together butter and sugar. Beat egg, add to butter/sugar. Melt chocolate with 1 tsp butter, cool slightly and add to previous ingredients. Stir in extracts. In separate bowl, sift together cake flour, baking powder, and spices. Stir by hand into butter/sugar mixture (using a mixer at flour stage makes cookies less tender). If necessary, add a little more flour JUST until dough holds together without being too sticky. Put in cookie press according to press directions. Bake at 375 degrees for 8 minutes.

Happy baking everyone, and thanks to all who’ve shared recipes that I’m going to have to try.