From the Kitchen of Anne Elisabeth: My First Cookie Invention

I love to bake. Especially now that I am married and I can guarantee that whatever I bake will be eaten by a willing husband. But I usually depend upon a recipe.

I have gotten more daring with cooking. I'll vary up and experiment all over the place when it comes to meats and sauces, casseroles and stir fries, spices etc. But baking I have always considered a much more precise art (which it is), and I cling to my recipes for guidance (and after the fiasco of the lemon poppy seed cake as seen here, you may understand why).

This last weekend, however, I invented my very first cookie recipe:

An Anne Elisabeth Original:

Butter-crumble Almond Chocolate Drizzle Cookies

These were a valiant attempt to recreate my husband's childhood. Or at least, a small part of it. He told me that he particularly enjoyed Sunday school at one of the churches he attended as a little'un because they always served Almond-Chocolate Shortbread. I thought, "Hey, I can do that!"

Turns out I couldn't. These don't taste anything like what Rohan remembers from childhood Sunday school. Nevertheless, he has declared them "Inspired!" and they are his new favorite.

I thought, since this is the first time I have invented my own cookie recipe, that I would share it with all of you! If you make, let me know how it turns out.

Here are the ingredients you'll need:

3 cups flour
6 tablespoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter (room temperature)
3 egg yolks
6 tablespoons ice water
1 1/2 cups sliced almonds

For chocolate glaze:
16 oz bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate
2-3 Tablespoons butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

First, combine your flour, sugar, and salt. With two forks, cut in your room temperature butter until it looks like corn meal. (Basically, I cut until it looks about right, and then cut a little bit more! It's important that all of your flour is coated with butter so that it will bind properly.)

When you've finished cutting in the butter, mix your egg yolks and ice water in a small bowl. Add to your flour/butter mixture and stir until dough forms a ball.

Press your dough into your bar pan. (I don't actually own a bar pan, so I put wax paper on a cookie sheet and used that instead.) Press flat. (Too get it as flat as I wanted, I put a sheet of wax paper over the dough and rolled it out with my rolling pin. Didn't flour the pin or the dough because you don't want to add more flour at this point.)

Once your dough is nice and flat, press the almonds down on the surface until they stick properly.

Bake at 400 degrees for approximately 20-25 minutes until dough is golden brown around the edges. (I have a gas oven which heats up very fast, so keep that in mind. If you have electric, you might need to let it go a bit longer.) Let cool completely.

While cookies are cooling, melt chocolate and 2-3 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan, stirring until smooth. Start with two tablespoons. If your chocolate starts to look "grainy," add the third. (I used 8 oz. Ghirardelli bittersweet baking bars, but realized it wasn't enough and added another 8 oz. of semi-sweet chocolate morsels I had on hand. The result was very yummy.)

Pour chocolate over cooled cookie bars. Let set for at least fifteen minutes before cutting. Chocolate will still be VERY gooey at this point! Wait until chocolate hardens before serving. I cut them into little squares and then refrigerated them for a couple of hours.

I liked them particularly well cold, but they are awesome at room temperature as well. Too rich while the chocolate is still hot, I thought.

Another variation I plan to try will be substituting craisins for the almonds and maybe adding a dash of cranberry juice to the chocolate mix!

Let me know if you end up trying this recipe! This is our current favorite cookie recipe, and I hope you'll enjoy it too!