Recipe Recommendation: Cornmeal Fennel Cookies

We were in a cookie-baking mood over the weekend, so we flipped through our cookbooks and our 3-ring binder collection of recipe printouts and magazine tear sheets. Finally we settled on a recipe we'd cut out of a back issue of Sunset magazine last year for cornmeal fennel cookies.

We chose this recipe (click here for recipe) because it looked interesting, and we had all the ingredients on hand, so it was convenient.

After we had refrigerated the dough for several hours as the recipe instructed, we tried to form cookies with it, but the dough was too dry. Not surprising, since it calls for only one egg and no liquids. The butter wasn't enough to bind it all together, and what we were going to end up with was cornmeal fennel crumbs, not cookies. So, we put the dough back in our Kitchen Aid mixer and added about 3/4 cup of milk to bind it together, and that helped a lot. The recipe says to bake the cookies for 8 minutes, but with the addition of milk, they needed to be baked 15 to 18 minutes until just lightly browned.

The resulting cookies were chewy, slightly spicy, and delicious. Highly recommended!

(Image: Kathryn Hill)

Comments (5)

Ooh, neat recipe! Would you recommend adding the milk before chilling?

posted by squidlette on May 12th 2008 at 11:34am
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I'm not sure. I added it after chilling when I realized the recipe wasn't working.

posted by Kathryn Hill on May 12th 2008 at 12:25pm
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I've made cookies that only used butter to bind before. The trick appears to be beating them to death in the mixer. If you just keep going, eventually the texture changes and they start to ball together and then it seems to work out. I might have to give these a try. Fennel is one of my favorite flavors.

posted by Tiamat_the_Red on May 12th 2008 at 12:33pm
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i'll try these, too! thanks.

posted by mrs on May 12th 2008 at 6:45pm
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I made these successfully today, adding the milk to the mixer after the dough crumbled. They turned out great. Thanks Kathryn.

posted by seric on February 13th 2009 at 10:27pm
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