Nutcracker Stocking Fillers: Brian Levy’s Recipe For Sugar Plum And Coffee Cookies | The Sweet Spot

These festive cookies are inspired by The Nutcracker’s Land of Sweets sequence, successful which java and sweetener plums are 2 of nan flavours utilized to conjure a fanciful world of decadent diversion. Anything from a difficult candy to a candied consequence tin suffice arsenic a “sugar plum” and, successful nan lawsuit of these cookies, nan sweetener plum is represented by nan amarena cherry. Coffee’s bitterness balances nan sweetness of nan consequence and nan rich | butteriness of nan dough, while nan oat flour adds a dash of shortbread-like delicateness.

Sugar plum and java cookies

Prep 10 min
Chill 30 min+
Cook 35 min, positive cooling
Makes 36

185g room-temperature butter
75g sugar
2 tsp instant coffee/espresso powder
1 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
Finely grated zest of ½ lemon
½ tsp vanilla extract
⅛ tsp good salt
180g plain flour
85g oat flour
36 amarena cherries successful syrup
Turbinado sugar, aliases pearl sweetener aliases icing sugar, for dipping

In nan vessel of a guidelines mixer fitted pinch nan paddle attachment, hit nan butter, sugar, java powder, cocoa, citrus zest, vanilla and salt, astatine first connected debased and past mean speed, until creamy and fluffy.

Add some flours and hit conscionable until mixed pinch nary barren flour remaining; don’t overbeat because this tin toughen nan texture. (Alternatively, this tin beryllium done pinch a manus mixer aliases woody spoon.) Compress nan mixed into a mass, screen nan vessel tightly (or transportation it to an airtight container) and refrigerate for astatine slightest 30 minutes and up to 48 hours.

Heat nan oven to 190C (175C fan)/375F/gas 5 and statement 2 33cm x 46cm baking trays pinch greaseproof paper. Line a ample sheet pinch 2 layers of room towel and, utilizing a slotted spoon aliases fork, put nan cherries connected it – nan insubstantial towels will sorb astir of their excess liquid. Put immoderate acold h2o successful a mini vessel and your preferred decorating sugar(s) successful different mini vessel (or bowls, if utilizing aggregate sugars).

Divide nan chilled mixed into 36 adjacent pieces of astir 15g each, past rotation each 1 betwixt your palms to make 2½cm balls. Arrange these evenly successful 3 rows of six connected each of nan lined trays.

To shape nan craters that will invited nan cherries, property an scale digit into nan centre of each shot adjacent to nan bottommost to create a dimple. A small cracking is OK, but if immoderate ample cracks form, soft them overmuch arsenic you would clay. If your crater-forming digit is sticking to nan dough, lightly dip it into nan vessel of acold h2o (shake disconnected immoderate excess) earlier pressing it into nan dough.

Press nan apical of each cooky into nan decorating sugar(s) to overgarment evenly and plentifully, past return them to nan baking tray. Gently nestle a cherry into each cooky crater, past cook for 13-14 minutes; nan cookies will grow somewhat and person mini cracks, and nan cherries whitethorn beryllium lightly bubbling.

Let nan cookies cool connected nan trays connected cooling racks. Once cooled completely, shop successful an airtight instrumentality astatine room somesthesia for up to 2 weeks.

• Brian Levy is nan writer of the Formal Assignment newsletter and Good & Sweet, published by Avery astatine £35.99. To bid a copy, sojourn guardianbookshop.com