March 15: Fancy Icebox Cookies

Last night an Icebox Cookie saved my life
Last night an Icebox Cookie saved my life, yeah
'Cause I was sittin' there feelin' like death
And in just one breath, it said
"All you gotta do is get up, you got get up, and slice me girl"

Last night I was stricken with my third migraine in the span of a week. I ran to my wonderful chiropractor (shout-out!) who treated me, and while I was sitting there in the dark room bawling my eyes out, all I could think about was cookies. As in, "Am I going to toss mine?"

Ew. TMI.

But seriously, I was worried that I'd be too useless to bake the March 15 batch, when I realized that I'd planned for just such an occasion by making a batch of Icebox Cookies a couple weekends ago.

Now I'm no masochist; I went home and took hours to recover. And when I was finally able to stand, all I had to do was slice these babies and bake 'em. I was on my feet for maybe 15 minutes total.

Slice and bake: on the cooling rack.

What's perfect about an icebox cookie is that you can do a lot with them: you can make plain vanilla or chocolate, or marble the two, or make checkerboards or bullseye cookies or WHATEVER, roll them and wrap them in plastic and refrigerate them for a week or two, or freeze them for months. When you know company's coming, pull them out, thaw them on the counter for 10 minutes, and slice them and bake. That way you'll always have fresh baked cookies around, and you spend almost no time or effort on the day you need them.

Pause for a short brainstorm: You could also make Neopolitain Icebox Cookies by making 2 vanilla doughs and 1 chocolate dough. Flavour 1 vanilla dough with strawberry extract and use red food colouring to make the dough pink. Layer all three and VOILA!

Anyway, I like a good challenge, so I tried making checkerboard cookies for the first time. It was certainly a learning experience; while the chocolate dough I made was a perfect consistency, the white dough was so weak and prone to ripping that it was almost impossible to work with. (The formula in my Professional Baking textbook called for pastry flour, but I think I'd use all-purpose next time to yield a stronger dough.) Lifting it onto the chocolate was a nightmare, so I was surprised I got anything even remotely resembling a checkerboard pattern at all.

Checkerboard...ish.

The recipe also said to roll the dough to 1/4" thickness, but I think this was too thin. I would go a full 1/2" next time to give perfect squares.

While not the perfect checkerboard pattern, these cookies still look pretty cool, and they taste great. Oh, and I got to make marble cookies out of my checkerboard scraps, and you can't mess these up!

Just don't overknead when making marble cookies or you will blend your doughs together and lose the marbling.

You can find the recipe for Fancy Icebox cookies on my Recipes Page (will appear later when I can type up the recipe).

If you'd like to order some of your own Checkerboard cookies, please sponsor me for the Daily Bread Food Bank's Spring Challenge! Simply make your donation, then email me your order!