And Yes They Are Green!
This last Thursday evening was our monthly 4-H meeting. Some of you might be wondering what that sentence even means. 4-H is:
America’s largest youth development organization
This program is facilitated by county and parish extension offices across the United States. Kids that participate in 4-H complete hands-on projects, exhibit their handiwork at county fairs, complete community service projects, and learn a lot about leadership. Both of my kids are in 4-H, and their projects include raising and showing swine, cooking, and rifle. My husband is also a rifle and pistol leader. It's a pretty amazing program! For more info, check this out: 4-H
Anyway, this Thursday was our general meeting night, and of course I found out a whole four hours before the meeting that we were to bring our favorite green food to the gathering for everyone to snack on. I feel like the color scheme had something to do with both St. Patrick's Day coming up and the 4-H logo is a clover. Even though I was momentarily tempted to boil up some okra or steam some brussel sprouts; I relented and looked into my cupboards for inspiration instead.
For some reason I had a lot of Neufchatel cheese (cream cheese's lighter cousin) in my fridge. Here is how my neurons fired after that observation:
"Hmm...," I thought, "Cream cheese cookies would be cool."
I suddenly envisioned these fudge cookies I had made before that I roll in powdered sugar before they are baked, and they look like little geologically active fault lines when they come out of the oven.
"Perhaps," I mused, "I could make some cream cheese butter cookies and roll them in powdered sugar before I bake them. Yes, that would be great, and then I could put some green food color gel into the dough. Bam! Green snack."
There might have been simultaneous singing and dancing as this baked-good enlightenment occurred. Here's the recipe that emerged out of that ingredient brain storm, er, waltz.
Cream Cheese Butter Almond Cookies
1 (8 ounce) package of Neufchatel cheese (or cream cheese)
1 stick of butter (1/2 cup)
1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 large egg
1 egg yolk
2 1/4 cups of flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt of your choice
green gel food coloring-see note
1 cup powdered sugarDirections:
If you want to be precise in your baking skills, take a medium sized bowl, measure and place your dry ingredients into the bowl, and whisk them together. I am a lazy piece of rebellious refuse. I always throw the dry ingredients on top of the started dough, and give them a whisk with a fork before incorporating them into the sweet fray. So far there have been no complaints.
Using a mixer, stand or electric, cream together the cream cheese and butter. Be deliberate in this step, you want them fully married. Next, beat in the sugar, extracts, and green food coloring. Do not go gently on these ingredients, punish them! You can also scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula so that the punishment is meted out equally. After that you can add the egg and egg yolk. Beat it in well, at least for 1-2 minutes. Stop your mixer.
Add flour, baking powder, and salt. Turn your mixer on low speed. Unless you want to be antiqued, and I won't judge you for that, I'm sure that some people look cool with a patina. I usually wear half the powdered sugar that I am using to make frosting due to running my stand mixer at a higher speed than smart. Mix your dough until just combined.
The dough will be stickier than a molasses coated sow bear. It needs to chill. Ideally, that would be two hours to overnight in the fridge. Not this day! I popped it into the freezer for 30 minutes, then placed the dough into the fridge for an additional 20 minutes. It baked up just dandy.
When you are ready to bake, your oven needs to be preheated to 325 degrees. I recommend baking these cookies on parchment paper lined baking sheets.
Grab some dough with a spoon and roll your future green cookie into a 1 inch ball. It really helps to have all of your balls uniform in shape and size. Honestly though, does that even occur in nature? Get your dough uniformity as close as you are able to.
Put your powdered sugar into a bowl and roll those little cookie balls in the white dust until they are sufficiently coated. Place them 2 inches apart on your parchment lined cookie sheets.
Bake them at 325 degrees until the edges are lightly browned and the centers still look a touch gooey. In my oven, that's about 13 minutes. You do not want to over bake these cookies!!!
After the cookies come out of the oven you can transfer them to a wire rack or silicon mat for cooling. This recipe made about three dozen, and I assume that they tasted fair, as there wasn't a single green cookie left after the meeting.
Food Coloring Note: If you want your cookies to look like post winter backyard grass, then you can totally use standard liquid food coloring. Your cookies will be the faded green of your great aunt's living room couch that was manufactured in 1965. Or you can use gel coloring. It's pretty vivid!
I used Wilton Leaf Green.
And as always, all of the images in this post were taken by the author on her green food gel stained iPhone.