mulberryshoots

One of our favorite cookies comes from Idylwylde Farms in Acton, MA. They’re not easily found but sit in a small cupboard near the bakery shelves. What’s special about them is that they are very large, chewy, tasty and munchy to the max! They also cost $2.25 APIECE!! I buy them for G. to have with his coffee after dinner and gently urge him to pace himself but the cookies disappear pretty quickly.

So today, rather than driving a half hour from here to buy more of those cookies, I decided to experiment with baking a batch in our kitchen. All of the online recipes I looked at were similar in ingredients but were half the size I was aiming for. The biggest ones I could find were about 3 inches across. Each one of those cookies was shaped to the size of a “walnut,” rolled in sugar and slightly flattened to bake on a cookie sheet.

I mixed the dough and observed that my “room temperature” butter was slightly more chilly than called for, but broke up when blended with an electric mixer. The butter was thus in tiny bits rather than a smooth batter. I left it that way and didn’t mind because I thought they might make the cookies more tender (like scones and pie crust.)  Here are the ingredients I used:

Wet: 3/4 cup unsalted butter at room temp; 1 cup turbinado (coarse, light brown colored and crunchy, NOT brown sugar,) 1 egg, 1/4 cup molasses – beaten together until combined.

Dry: 2 cups flour, 2 tsps. baking soda, 2 tsps. ground ginger; 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. ground cloves

Mix dry ingredients together and add in 2 batches to wet mixture. Combine well. Using your hands, make a ball the size of a small plum. Roll it in turbinado sugar and place on an ungreased cookie sheet, slightly flattening it and making sure there’s lots of room between it and the next cookie. They will SPREAD as they bake. My batter made seven very large cookies which I baked on two cookie sheets at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.

I peeked at them in the oven after baking for 12 minutes – added another 8 minutes in 2 increments and then took them out, testing one with a toothpick which came out clean. The choice I had was to bake them through but not burn the bottom of the cookies. After I took them out, I gently moved them to a cooling rack. I also sprinkled a little more turbinado sugar on the top of each warm cookie.

G. came upstairs and about fell over on the floor when he saw them. I have a very happy husband today – and so early in the day too! Haha.

Plus, 7 X $2.25 is $15.75 worth of cookies made at home. Now comes the taste test of how they compare to the boughten gold standard. We’ll see soon.