cookie carnival, april

my last attempt at a cookie carnival challenge was pretty dismal!

this month kate, from the clean plate club issued us with vanilla bean thins:

ingredients
1 vanilla pod, split and steeped in 3/4 cup icing sugar for at least 24 hours (i left mine a week)
1 3/4 cups plain flour
1/2 tspn salt
1/2s tspn baking powder
1 stick plus 5 tblspn butter (or 200g if you go metric!)
1 large egg yolk

method
remove the vanilla bean and place sugar in a food processor with the flour, salt and baking powder and combine. add butter and pulse until it forms small lumps. add the yolk and pulse until it forms a firm dough. divide into two balls, flatted to 12cm discs, wrap in plastic and chill for an hour

(aside: i don't' have a food processor. mostly i'm a hard core yia yia and i just make cakes, bread etc on the bench top. i did use a bowl for this. it's a very crumbly, buttery mix)

Roll out the first disk on a lightly floured surface. cut out shapes and re-chill scraps to use again. repeat with the second ball of dough. only collect and re-use scraps once.

(aside: my dough was waaaaayyy to crumbly to roll out. maybe i mis-calculated the butter conversions. it's ok, my cookie cutters are all really boring. what i did do was break off pieces, roll then into a ball and flatten them out in the palm of my hand. i know i'd just chilled it, but once the butter warmed up a bit this was much easier).

place 2cm apart on a lined baking tray and back at 180 degrees until golden brown (about 15 minutes). transfer to a rack to cool. if your rack is busy, use the iron maiden.

these biscuits look much less freaky than my last ones. they almost look like they're supposed to i think. as for taste? well, they taste basically like butter short bread. they're nice. i had some at work with my 11 o'clock cup of tea. but they're not great. if i were forking out the $4.50 for the vanilla pod again, i'd probably be making pana cotta (mmmmmm... pana cotta). but i couldn't really taste it properly in these.

but my biscuit baking is definitely getting better! roll on may. by december i'll have this game licked!!!