* Apricot Cream Cheese Butter-Cookies. A lesson in deliciousness.
[ Published by muffin on Mar 1st, 2007 in April 2007 with 0 Comments ]
In my house, we have a way of categorizing the foods that we make. We call them “The 10 categories of deliciousness”
(The ten categories are- Deep fried, sugar coated, butter laden, chocolate covered, peanutbutter filled, gooey in a good way, caramelly, smells as good as it tastes, drool factor, or marshmallow.)
These cookies fit under Three of these.
They’d even fit under a Fourth category if I had some white chocolate in my house with which to drizzle upon these. (And now that I’ve really had time to think about this, I’m going to have to get some and do that before I give these cookies out.)
Really though, these cookies are Butter laden (sorry diet watchers), and gooey in a good way, they DEFINATELY smell as good as they taste, and there is also a bit of a drool factor that goes along with them.
Judging them by smell alone, they’re amazing. There is just something special about the smell of a baking butter cookie. Butter in the ovneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comen is such an underrated smell. Butter and fruit. So when you combine the butter and the fruit for these cookies, You’ve got a sure fire recipe for deliciousness.
Then, after they’re baked and cooled, they’ve got a gooey cream cheese icing slathered on top. If that wasn’t enough, They’ve also got an an apricot glaze over that! (I cant even imagine how good they’ll be once I put on the white chocolate drizzle)
I’ve really got a thing for apricots. I LOVE THEM. Of all the pitted fruits, they’re definately the best. So sweet and soft. They’re not nearly as fibrous as nectarines, and they’re not hard like peaches.
When I was growing up, I always wished that the peach tree we had was an apricot tree. My wish never came true, but that didn’t stop me from wishing.
Now that I’m older and I live in the city, there really is no chance of me having my own apricot tree in the near future (also considering we don’t really have the climate for it ’round here. That peach tree died after one fruit bearing year!) So I re-live my childhood dreams every time I go to the produce department in summer, or visit the preserves aisle the rest of the year.
So far this Spring I’ve only had one real good fresh apricot. Like most fruits, they’re not really in season until mid summer, so I can’t wait to enjoy a fresh ripe Apricot!
Until then though, I’ve got these delicious cookies…
I might also add, for those of you who share in my love of the apricot, in addition to the availability of apricot oil for use as a moisturizer or massage oil (or baby oil
) Jason cosmetics has an amazingly wonderful apricot shampoo and conditioner available, as well as an apricot body wash and deodorant. I know this, because I have them ALL! hahaha.. Told you I love apricot!
Really though, apricot kernel oil smells SO GOOD, and its good for your skin (rich in vitamin A and E!)
Ok, I’m done pimping out apricots and apricot accessories, so.. Go make yourself some cookies! These ones are delicious!
Adapted from a completely different recipe for these cookies called “galaxies” that I found in an ancient pillsbury recipe book about five years ago.
You’ll need-
1/2 cup butter
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons well pureed apricots (you can use organic baby food apricots!)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
a dash of salt
1 drop orange food colouring
1-3 tablespoons milk (as needed)
So first what you’ll want to do, is mix together the powdered sugar and the butter. Once you’ve made yourself a nice paste with no lumps, add in the apricot puree, vanilla, food colour, and the dash of salt. Once you’ve got all of that mixed together, add in the flour, mixing slightly with a wooden spoon and then finishing the mixing with your hands. If the mixture is too crumbly, add a tablespoon of milk and try to gather the dough again. Do this until the dough is soft but not sticky, and you can fold the dough over (as if you were going to knead it) and it won’t crumble.
Lightly flour a sanitized counter top or other sanitized area (I use a cutting board) and roll the dough out to about 1/2 an inch, maybe a little thicker. If you’ve ever seen Lorna Doone, or Walkers shortbread, you want it to be about that thick. (if you havent seen either of those, then just go with about 1/2 an inch)
Use your choice of cookie cutter. I used a small heart, and I would recommend going with smaller sized cookie cutters, probably nothing bigger than 2″ diameter. I don’t know how well the dough will cook in that sort of circumstance.
Anyways, for my small heart cookies, I got about 3 dozen. So you’ll end up with somewhere between 2 and 4 dozen cookies, depending on how you cut ‘em and how you roll out the dough and everything.
Once you’ve cut out your dough, place them on a lightly greased cookie sheet about an inch apart, and bake for 10-15 minutes at 350, or until the bottom edges are just starting to turn golden brown.
Allow the cookies to cool.
For the cream cheese icing, mix together a half cup softened cream cheese and a 1/4 cup powdered sugar. Spread thinly on cookies. Glaze tops with warmed apricot preserves. Let cookies set about 10 minutes before arranging on a plate. The tops will be slightly sticky.
If you want the cookies to be stackable, or you want to add a little extra something- Melt some white chocolate and drizzle it over the cookies. I didn’t do this, but I can imagine they’d look and taste beautiful!
So go make some cookies!
-A.
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