Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The Real Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe

Lets get serious and skip the old wive's tale. Here is the recipe for the cookies they serve in the Zodiac Room in downtown Dallas

1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
half a cup of softened unsalted butter
2 large (not medium) eggs
1 teaspoon of almond extract
2 cups of flour
1 teaspoon salt (why they don't use salted butter and adjust this, I don't know)
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup of sliced and toasted almonds
3/4 cup of cranberries
1 1/2 cups of white chocolate chips

Start the oven heating to 300 degrees F. Prepare greased cookie sheets.

Cream the sugar and butter together until they are fluffy. Combine the eggs and almond extract at low speed.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt together. Beat the mix into the butter mixture on low speed, scraping down the sides as you go. Stir in the rest of the ingredients. Spoon onto the cookie sheets and flatten a little.

Makes two dozen cookies, cook them each for about 20 minutes.

Caveat (lawyerspeak for warning): 241 calories per cookie.

But that is the real recipe.

5 comments:

BrianJ said...

Different dairies add different amounts of salt to their butter, so you have more control if you add it yourself. Also, salted butter can have more water in it than unsalted.

Stephen said...

Thanks for explaining that (about the salt).

Paul S. said...

half a cup of softened unsalted sugarSo, do some people try using hard, salted sugar in baking? I wonder what that would do to my cookies ...

Stephen said...

Oops, a typo, "half a cup of softened unsalted butter"

Bookslinger said...

I once made the urban-legend cookies. I thought they were great.