By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
The Dover and Westwood Council’s on Aging (COA) joined together once again this past Thursday, December 12th at Powisset Farm to learn how to create some festive holiday cookies. Chef Thi put together this special class that featured both hand-on experiences and demonstrations to help seniors elevate their holiday baking flare.
On the docket for this class was to create three kinds of cookies, including Neapolitan Sugar Cookies, Almond Cookies with Cherry Jam and Lavender Shortbread Cookies. Within the kitchen, three different sets of ingredients were set up for each cookie as the seniors took turns making them one by one. For each batch of cookies, Chef Thi helped the seniors create the batters from scratch and even had some already prepared and chilled.
First up was the Almond Cookie with Cherry Jam which used the ingredients of almond flour, granulated sugar, lemon zest, two egg whites, a half teaspoon of almond extract, powdered sugar, and cherry preserves. While Chef Thi explained that they could use any time of preserve that they liked, for this class they were using cherry because of how great it goes with almonds.
The next batch of cookies they made was the Lavender Shortbread Cookies which included the ingredients of softened butter, white sugar, confectioners sugar, dried lavender, mint leaves, lemon zest, all-purpose flour, cornstarch, salt and raw sugar. As COA members got busy mixing the ingredients together to make the dough, Chef Thi gave an important demonstration on how to properly measure out flour. She explained that most people use the measuring cup to scoop out the flour, when instead it is best to pour it into the measuring cup and scrape the excess off the top. By doing so, no flour is packed down and thus causes incorrect measurements.
Once those cookie dough pieces were on the baking sheet and raw sugar was sprinkled on top, it was time to place them in the oven to bake. While these were baking, the final batch of cookies they started on was the Neapolitan Sugar Cookies. For this, seniors made three batches of sugar cookie dough including a strawberry one using freeze dried strawberries, a chocolate one using cocoa powder and a vanilla one that was just left as the regular sugar cookie batter.
To assemble these cookies, Chef Thi showed them how to take little balls of each dough together and shape it into a ball. She also explained that they could always make each of the doughs in different flavors/colors depending on their preferences.
As each of these batches of cookies were either baking or cooling on the rack, Chef Thi prepared a delicious lunch for all to enjoy. COA members were able to travel back to Italy with this Italian styled meal consisting of baked ziti, meatballs, sausages, an antipasto salad and garlic knots. The room grew quiet as everyone indulged in their meals, and were left in absolute awe of how delicious everything tasted. Making sure to leave room for dessert, they then tried out each of their cookie creations.
While leaving with the recipes in hand, many were talking about making these kinds of cookies for the holidays, some even with their own twist. Both COA’s are hopeful and excited to return here again to learn how to cook more delicious meals.
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