Honeymoon Cookies
Photo Credit : Michael PiazzaIn 1960, reader Jane Goyer of West Boylston, Massachusetts, sent us this recipe for her grandmother’s soft sugar cookies, filled with minced apples, nuts, spices, and raisins (we substituted dried cranberries). They’re like tiny apple pies. Don’t be intimidated by the long list of ingredients; these honeymoon cookies are very simple to make.
In her introduction to the recipe, Jane wrote, “Grandma’s big black wood-burning stove was a wonder to behold. Its coil pipe, reaching almost to the ceiling, looked like a huge black cobra to the eyes of a little child. It was Grandpa’s wedding gift to his bride. He carried her over the threshold and set her down before it. She embraced it, then cried tears of joy for the love of it. That afternoon—yes, on her wedding day—she cooked beef stew and dumplings and a batch of cookies to test the oven. Can you imagine a bride today cooking on her honeymoon?”
Find more recipes for “Cookies Through the Decades.”
Yield:
about 4 dozen cookiesFor the filling:
Ingredients
1-1/4 cups whole dried sweetened cranberries
1 cup walnut halves
1 large firm-tart apple, such as Granny Smith, Baldwin, or Northern Spy, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon firmly packed light-brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Instructions
First, make the filling: Put the cranberries, walnuts, apple, lemon juice, brown sugar, and spices in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Set aside.
For the dough:
Ingredients
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened, plus more for pans
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
3-3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon table salt
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 350° and set two racks to the middle, with space in between. Grease two baking sheets or line with parchment paper.
Using a standing or hand-held mixer, beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each.
In a medium-size bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients, and stir to combine. Dust the counter generously with flour, and roll out half the dough to a 1/8-inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters, and arrange on the prepared baking sheets about 1 inch apart. Gather and reroll dough as needed.
Spoon a heaping teaspoon of filling into the center of each cookie. Now roll out the second batch as above; then cut into shapes, and lay each one on top of a filled cookie, lightly pressing edges to seal.
Bake until golden around the edges, 15 to 18 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through. Transfer to wire racks to cool.
For the glaze:
Ingredients
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
1–2 tablespoons heavy cream
Instructions
Now make the glaze: Drizzle 1 tablespoon of cream into 3/4 cup of confectioners’ sugar, and stir with a fork until it forms a smooth paste with the consistency of honey. Add more cream as needed. Set the wire racks over waxed paper, and drizzle each cookie with a teaspoonful of the glaze, spreading with the back of a spoon.
These cookies will keep in an airtight container for up to 1 week; they also freeze well.
Amy Traverso
Amy Traverso is the senior food editor at Yankee magazine and co-host of the public television series Weekends with Yankee, a coproduction with WGBH. Previously, she was food editor at Boston magazine and an associate food editor at Sunset magazine. Her work has also been published in The Boston Globe, Saveur, and Travel & Leisure, and she has appeared on Hallmark Home & Family, The Martha Stewart Show, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Amy is the author of The Apple Lover’s Cookbook, which was a finalist for the Julia Child Award for best first-time author and won an IACP Cookbook Award in the “American” category.
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