Mae's Crescent Cookies

Another Sunday morning of baking! This week, the recipe of choice from Baked Occasions is Mae's Crescent Cookies. It might be listed under the 12 days of Christmas cookies section, but Mae's crescent cookie should absolutely be baked during every season. I adored this cookie. I'm not the biggest butter cookie fan; I love butter, but I usually prefer chocolate or citrus when it comes to dessert. Nutty, buttery, powdered sugar cookies are present in the cookie catalog of many countries - Caleb's favorite's, Mexican wedding cookies, are what I am most familiar with, but Mae's are some of the best cookies of this type I've tried. They are tender inside and delicately crispy outside, not overly sweet, with the perfect amount of nuttiness. As a bonus, they come together really quickly and don't need to rest before baking, so they are certainly among the easier cookies to make. I wound up using pine nuts instead of walnuts because those are what I had, however I am certain these cookies would be amazing with virtually any nut as the base (except maybe peanuts). I "chopped" my pine nuts in my food processor and skipped sifting the confectioner's sugar. All that's left is to beat your butter together on high-speed until creamy. (If you're me, you might need to stop a few times to hammer the pin keeping the head of your KitchenAid attached back in every 30 seconds.) Add the rest of the ingredients, mix until combined. That's it, super simple! If possible, don't use cheap, store-brand butter - spring for a nicer butter with real flavor, it will make a big difference in your cookies. Next, form tablespoons of dough into crescents....Clearly, I failed to form these into actual crescents. Since I woke up at 5am to make these, I suppose it's not so surprising that correctly forming shapes was a little beyond me (I am not a morning person). The fact that they are more like horseshoes than crescents didn't detract from the taste at all. In my morning fogginess, I thought I used a tablespoon measure, but maybe I didn't as I only got 15 cookies out of the batter rather than the prescribed 24. I wound up baking my crescents for 20-25 minutes, so a little less than the recipe suggests, until they were barely golden brown. To me, that was the perfect amount of time (and it was hard to wait longer, they smelled amazing). After waiting 5 minutes and then tossing (very gently) in more powdered sugar, I was rewarded with a perfectly buttery, slightly crispy outside, melt-in-your mouth cookie.

The only bummer about these cookies is the powdered sugar-coating gets everywhere, first all over your clean kitchen when you're dusting them, and later all over your clothing and hands, whatever household items are nearby, and obviously, your face. The taste of Mae's crescent cookies is completely worth the powdered sugar mess. I gifted most of these to a friend, who absolutely loved receiving them and said they were still delicious several days later. Make Mae's crescent cookies yourself and check out what the talented Sunday morning bakers did with these cookies.

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