Thin Butter Cookies 27/325

Mama Weber

The Relation

The ma'am, the myth, the legend, Mama Weber is my great-great-grandmother. Mad respect for this wonderful lady. I mean, she had 16 kids!!! For so many reasons that seems impossible. Firstly, carrying and giving birth sixteen times??? Holy smokes. And then actually having to raise them! Having any more than one or two kids gives me anxiety... but sixteen? I don't know how she did it. The picture to the right was colorized by Brad Weber (Anton> William> Tracy> James)

The Process

$9.00 nuts

This is another one of those recipes where some of the ingredients are hidden in the instructions paragraph, so read carefully. You may notice the recipe calls for hickory nuts. What are hickory nuts, you may ask? Hickory nuts are the fruit of the hickory tree. They are in the walnut family and taste very similar to pecans. According to Genie (Gert>Henry>m. John), you can use pecans and hickory nuts interchangeably for the most part. But what fun would that be?

I went on the hunt for hickory nuts at my grocery store to no avail. I checked every single label in the bulk nut section, but alas, no hickory nuts to be found. So, I started to search the interwebs. Amazon sells a whopping 20 grams, which is less than an ounce, of chopped hickory nuts for $9.00. These nuts were expensive! But, I sucked it up and bought the nuts, which, but the way, were not even eligible for Prime Two-Day Delivery *big sigh*.

Roll shaped?

Hickory nuts in hand, (over a week later *eye-roll*) I started these cookies. The first part of the recipe is pretty simple, just mix all the ingredients, right? Right. Now, it tells you to roll. Roll the dough out? Like, with a rolling pin? Or create a roll, as in a cylindrical shape out of the dough?? I couldn't tell you. I had enough dough, so I figured, why not both?

Half of the dough I made into a long cylinder (not unlike the Pillsbury sugar cookie dough that you can buy pre-made at the store) and tossed it in the fridge. After 30 minutes, I took the roll out and used a knife to slice little circle cookies. I tried to get them as thin as possible, but this is much harder than it looked.

or rolled out?

The other half of the dough, I balled up and put it in the fridge. 30 minutes later, I rolled it out to 1/4 inch thickness and used cookie cutters to pop out some squirrels (of course) and stars (why not?). Once cut out, I placed the squirrels on parchment-lined baking sheets and chilled them again (a trick I learned from my mom to help them keep their shape and not turn into blobs).

With all of the cookies, I coated them with the egg whites and cinnamon sugar (I do a 1:5 ratio on cinnamon to sugar). I added hickory nuts to the tops of some, pecans to others, and left a few without any nuts at all (for the nut allergy peeps in my life).

I should have timed them, but I forgot, so I think I ended up baking them for about 8 minutes? Maybe more, maybe less.

The Feedback

Mama Weber is certainly right, this recipe makes a ton of cookies. I distributed them to my office, climbing gym and kept a few for myself. They are very nice, light cookies, great for drinking a cup of coffee with. They don't snap like a hard cookie, but they aren't super chewy either. Very floury. Overall, good bake. And the hickory nuts? They were good! But honestly, just use pecans.

The Receipt

THIN BUTTER COOKIES - CC80
Mama Weber+

1 lb butter
6 cups flour
2 eggs
1 cup sugar

Cream butter and sugar. Mix well. Add eggs and flour. Roll. Chill. Cut very thin. Brush with slightly beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon mixed together. Add chopped hickory nuts to tops – press in lightly. Bake at 300° until lightly browned. Half the recipe makes a lot of cookies