Cookie Exchange Hop: Cookies, Stories and Giveaways!
Welcome to the Cookie Exchange Hop!!!
The Cookie Exchange Hop is finally here! Not only are you going to be entered for a chance to win gift cards and books, you also get to learn all your favorite author’s holiday cookies! 🙂 Enjoy!!
We celebrate Christmas in my house and no Christmas is complete without Kiflies. My father’s family is from Poland and this recipe has been passed down from generation to generation. In fact, the recipe is so old that when I went to make it the first time when I was in my 20’s, I looked at the recipe card my mom had Xerox’ed and sent to me and said, “What the heck is oleo?!” LOL! Now I know it’s shortening, but we just use butter.
Making Kiflies takes two days, so it’s definitely a labor of love, and it’s a full-on family affair. Kids have the most important job of all, grinding up all the walnuts. I have soooo many Christmas memories of my brother and I bickering over the nut grinder to get all the walnuts fully ground up, and now my kids do the same.
Once you get older, you can even graduate to rolling out the dough into a tube to fold into a crescent shape. My youngest has always been determined to do this even at a young age, and she does a great job of it!!
Without further ado, here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
12 eggs – yolks and whites separated
1 cup sour cream
6 cups flour
1 lb oleo (hehehe j/k – just use softened butter)
1 lb confectioners sugar
1 1/2 cups finely ground walnuts (put the kids to work!)
1 tsp vanilla extract
Cookie Sheets (at least two for easier make-and-bake rotation)
Rolling pin
Wax paper
Day 1: Making the dough
- Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Put the whites in a bowl and store in the fridge. They’ll get their turn tomorrow. 😉
- Cut the softened butter into the flour. You can arm yourself with two butter knives here and cross cut the together like you’ve got mad ninja skills. Not that I do that (j/k – I totally do!)
- Beat the egg yolks slightly, add the sour cream and blend into the flour/butter knifed-up mix.
- Get your hands in there and squeeze and knead until your palms glisten with a lovely butter sheen.
- Pinch off pieces of the new massive dough ball you’ve formed and make smaller mini-me dough balls, roughly walnut sized.
- Collect all the balls into a single bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let chill until the next day.
Day 2: Making the Kiflies
- Prep your abs and arms, cuz you’re about to get a work out!
- Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees
- Beat the 12 egg whites until they are stiff enough to stand on their own. Use a mixer for this, or your arms will hate you.
- Gently fold in the confectioners sugar, vanilla and and finely ground walnuts into the beaten egg whites.
- Tear off two pieces of wax paper, about 10 in long each or so.
- Take out several dough balls from the hoard in the fridge. If you take them all out, they soften too quickly, so you have to work in little groups at a time. Sorry. Remember: labor of love! 🙂
- Put one of those dough balls between the wax paper and roll out the ball. Your arms and abs will get a wonderful workout for this. Think of it as pre-cookie penance for all those yummy calories you’ll eat after! #WorthIt
- Once rolled out, scoop some of the egg-white filler you made into half of the rolled out dough. Don’t put too much or yours will be goopy (like mine always are 😉 )
- Taking the edge closest to you, start to roll the dough into a tube as is pictured above with my youngest smiling proudly with her first kiflie roll 🙂
- Curl the tube into a crescent as you place it on the pan. No need to grease the pan, there’s enough butter in these bad boys to grease up the world.
- Roll, repeat, until you have a full pan covered. (you’ll probably need to go through several sheets of wax paper, especially if you cook like I do!)
- Once the pan is covered, pop it in the oven and cook until straw-colored (at around 14 minutes for those of you who are Type A like me)
- Work quickly to get pan 2 filled while pan 1 cooks. You’re a kiflie-machine! You’re burning calories and making magic!
- Once your straw-colored kiflies are done, put them out to cool. Once cool, sprinkle the ones that haven’t been eaten yet with powdered sugar and enjoy!!!
These aren’t super sweet, and have a lovely rich flavor (thank you, oleo!) They go great with coffee and this particular cookie happens to be my father’s favorite breakfast food during the holidays.
So, there you go 🙂 Like I said, they’re definitely a labor of love, but they’re totally worth it!
Note that all newsletter subscribers are entered into a wonderful contest I have going on for a fantastic basket with a signed book and several luxurious body products by Handmade By TnT that I’ll be giving away to one lucky subscriber in my December 20th newsletter. Please join here http://eepurl.com/biji1j
Follow the rest of the hop and the directions below to be entered in this awesome Cookie Exchange Hop for a chance to win a $160 gift card and 32 historical romance novels:
After you have visited each site to collect the cookie recipes, e-mail the list of authors and their cookies to Heather@HeatherMcCollum.com with the subject line “Romance Authors Sure Can Bake” to be entered into the grand prize drawing. A winner will be selected randomly and announced Monday, 17 December by noon ET. Happy Holidays!