Butter Cookies with optics

Preface:

1. Cake flour is a flour mixture made from wheat flour and corn starch and is widely used in American pastries. You can make it very well in advance. It has the same shelf life as normal flour.
2. Regarding the respective 15 g egg, it should be said that this is egg yolk and egg white. That sounds complicated, but it can be solved simply by whipping 2-3 eggs (total amount required here = 45 g) into a bowl and stirring them thoroughly until the egg white and yolk have combined well. So you can then carefully – with a spoon as a “stopper” – slide each 15 g egg into the dough. Any leftovers can be used up elsewhere.
3. You don’t even need a technical device to make these cookies, which look so complicated. Whisk, rubber spatula and hands are completely sufficient ……….. but you don’t have to tell anyone …..;)))))

Dough light:

1. Whip soft butter and sifted powdered sugar until creamy. Add egg and flavor and beat again until the mixture is soft and fluffy. Add Cake Flour all at once and fold in with the rubber spatula until a tough, slightly greasy but non-sticky dough is formed. Shape it into a round shape, place it on a large piece of cling film and use it to plate it into a 10 x 10 cm square. Then wrap with the foil and place in the refrigerator for approx. 2 hours to harden (ideal would be overnight).

Dough dark and light brown:

1. Dark: whip soft butter and powdered sugar until creamy. Add egg and cocoa, beat again and – as with the light dough – then work in the flour. Light brown: whip the butter and powdered sugar creamy. Add egg and Nutella, beat again and work in the flour. With both doughs all further steps as with the light dough.

Completion:

1. First cut all 3 sheets of dough lengthways into 5 x 1.8 cm wide strips, then do the same again crosswise, and so you get many small cubes. Put the leftovers from the edge to one side for a moment and will be processed later. But the narrower the stripes and therefore more in number, the smaller the cookies would later be, or you could use 1 more ball of each color, then the pattern would be narrower)
2. Now roll small balls out of all the cubes. For each cookie you need two of each color. They are arranged in a circle on the work sheet as follows: light, dark, light brown, light, dark, light brown. Then you squeeze them together so that they meet in the middle to a slight point and put them – with this side down – in the slightly cupped hand. Then you put the other hand slightly hollow over it and make (with a little more pressure on the outer edge of the blank) turning movements as if you wanted to shape a dumpling. In this case, however, this should not be spherical, but rather “top-shaped”. When turning it from time to time, always check the underside to see whether the layers of dough have shifted in a spiral. Then immediately stop turning and place it further away on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. At the end of the process, include the remnants of the dough created during portioning into the rolling of the balls if the number of cubes is odd. It worked so well for me and I received 14 cookies with a diameter of approx. 8 cm.
3. Preheat the oven to 170 ° O / bottom heat. When all cookies are shaped and placed on the baking sheet, press the cones flat with your flat, but still slightly cupped hand, so that a small bulge is created in the middle, but the edges flatten. The baking time on the 2nd bar from the bottom is 15-17 minutes. They should not brown.
4. With these cookies mine has a little “eye-catcher”, which – even if it doesn’t seem so – can be made with little effort, but effectively …… and they are delicious on top of that …… ……. 😉