Cornmeal Wreaths

  • Level: Easy
  • Yield: about 34 cookies
  • Total: 1 hr 3 min
  • Prep: 35 min
  • Inactive: 10 min
  • Cook: 18 min
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Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup yellow cornmeal

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon fine salt

3/4 cup unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), room temperature

2/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon anise extract, optional

2 large eggs, room temperature

Decoration:

1 cup cornflakes

1 large egg white, beaten

Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Directions

  1. Whisk the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. In another bowl, beat the butter with a handheld electric mixer until smooth. Add the sugar, vanilla, and anise to the butter and continue beating until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes more. Add the eggs 1 at a time to the butter mixture and mix until incorporated, about 30 seconds. Stir the flour-cornmeal mixture into the wet ingredients with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula.
  2. Divide the dough into 34 (1-inch) balls (3/4-ounce). Arrange the cookies on 2 parchment-lined cookie sheets about 1-inch apart. Make a hole in the center of each ball with your finger or the tip of a wooden spoon. Work each piece of dough by hand into a doughnut-like shape with a 1-inch hole and about 2 inches wide. Use scissors to snip 1/2-inch long angled cuts, about 1/2-inch apart around the outside ring of each cookie. Freeze cookies on the sheet until firm, about 10 minutes.
  3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
  4. Toss a few of the cornflakes at a time with the egg whites and arrange on the surface of the cookies in a leaf like pattern. Bake until just golden around the edges, about 14 to 18 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool. Dust with confectioners' sugar.
  5. Copyright (c) 2004 Television Food Network, G.P., All Rights Reserved.

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Paula (.

I made these first in 2004. I didn't think the corn flakes improved the cookie-- it still tasted like breakfast cereal, and it's a really tedious, fiddly exercise getting the flakes on. (You can also simply leave the egg whites out and press on the corn flakes while the dough is warm and soft.) When the cookies were fresh, the egg white made the corn flakes a bit tough, but they crisped up over a couple days. The cookies are a bit dry (be careful not to over bake them) and don't have a lot of flavor (mostly corn), so when I made them this year, I left off the cereal completely and instead doubled the vanilla in the cookie and frosted them with a strongly vanilla buttercream. Vast improvement. (Lemon would be a good alternative.) I think they also benefit from using at least half salted butter.

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