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| Ok now, DO NOT give up. This is going to take some time. Work with the dough some more. |
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| Keep going, Work it! Push it hard with the base of your palms, then fold it over and push again. Push hard! |
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| ...Come on, put your back into it! |
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| Wheeeew! Whalla! We have a nice cookie dough ball. You should have worked with the dough for at least 15 minutes. If not, go back and work with the dough some more. Come on! Grandma did it so can you :-) |
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| While your working with the dough, feel free to throw the dough up into the air. Bounce it off the cabinet, go ahead, no one is looking :-) Have fun with it. |
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| Alright, alright, stop playing with the dough ball now. After you have the dough into a nice elastic consistency, flatten it out on the counter to about 1" think. Spread it out. Kind of like a pizza. |
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| If you look closely, you should see that I am sweating at this point. Really, if you have not broken a sweat by now you are not working hard enough. This is serious work here! I mean we are talking about authentic Italian cookies! |
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| Ok, all the fun and games are over now. Get the dough back on the counter and pull off a piece of dough that will be enough to make about a 1" round ball. |
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| Start to work with this dough ball like you would a meatball. Roll in around in the palm of your hands. Squeeze it hard while your rolling so there is no air pockets. |
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| Now start to roll it between you hands so as to make a ling rope about 1/2" in diameter and about 6" long. |
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| Once you have done this, you will want to place them on a cookie sheet crossing them kind of like a "Q" like you see here in the photo. Make sure the cookie sheet is a double wall baking cookie sheet. |
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| This is a great place in the process to have your kids help out. Great fun! |
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| Oh look, now there are two kids helping out :-) One at a time. This part takes a while. Take your time rolling out each piece of dough rope so its all nice and even, Then you cookie shapes will come out better. |
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| Auh, we did it! Here we have a complete cookie sheet ready to go in the oven. |
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| In they go for 25 minutes at 350 degrees. |
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| While they are cooking you will want to get some egg whites ready in a bowl. Crack the egg and go back and forth between the two eggshell halves letting out the egg white while keeping the yoke in the shell. Do this with two eggs. |
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| Then mix the egg white well with a fork and set aside. |
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| After 25 minutes of cooking, open the oven and quickly take out the cookies while shutting the door fast so as not to loose any heat. Quickly brush the egg whites over the cookies then put them back in the oven for another 20 minutes. |
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| Here they are in the oven all finished. Looking good and smelling good! |
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| When done, place the cookies on a cookie cooling rack and let the cookies cool off. Leave them there like this for 24 hours, just out in the open like this. This is supposed to be a nice hard cookie. It's a cookie just made for coffee dunking :-) |
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| ....Just imagine the cup of coffee shown here is a nice cup of espresso with a little lemon rind on the side, this is what goes best with this cookie. I'm not blessed with a kitchen equipped with an espresso machine. |
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But wait! There's More! Click here to launch a new browser window with a 100+ photo gallery of this recipe in progress!!!! With much larger photos! Be patient and let the 100 photos load. |
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