Fat Tire Linzer Cookies

Come and listen to a tale about Minnie the Moocher. 

Ok, I really don't know the tale of Minnie the Moocher.  Not yet anyway.  If I ever see a neighbor in this place who will stop long enough to talk, I will try and get the story. 

Living in an apartment or a townhouse even a mile from the beach means lots of seasonal residents.  Lots of seasonal residents means, sadly, lots of abandoned cats.  

I am taken by one stray in particular.  I admit it.  I've been putting out food since last Saturday.  She showed up in the driveway and began talking to me in long drawn out cat syllables while I pumped my tires.  What else could I do?

And so the daily visits by Minnie the Moocher began.  Yesterday she actually came close enough for a pat.  Ribs, backbone, matted fur, and not much else.  I picked her up.  Shocking.  An adult size cat.  Maybe two pounds.  I swear.  I put her down gently, afraid she'd break.

I should have scooped Minnie up right then and there and gotten her to the vet.  Why didn't I?  You know how humans are.  I was on my way to go Christmas shopping.  Important human stuff.  I left her in the driveway with a dish of Nine Lives, and went on my way. 

This morning, no Minnie.  Oh no. 

To be continued.  (I hope.)  

She'll show up, right? 

Linzer Cookies and Bird Food.

None of the cookie experiments this year have turned out well enough for company.  Since we no longer live on the water, and didn't have our usual boat parade party, it wasn't crucial. 

I never made Lindzers before but I thought they had potential. 

As a test, we jellied up a few right away, dusted on the powdered sugar, popped them into a ziploc and left them on the counter overnight.  They were mush by morning.  

A Christmas cookie that cannot be made ahead is not a usable Christmas cookie. 

The trick is to bake the kind of cookie that can be pulled from the freezer, and go straight onto your prettiest reindeer platter.  Where it thaws attractively into a crisp, chewy, delicate, or whatever it is supposed to be, cookie, by the time the Lion Christmas Roast has finished brewing.

I will still serve the Lindzers, but jam and sugar may have to be a post dinner guest activity.  And if the guests are wearing dark colors?  Never mind, pass the chocolates.  

Lindzer Cookies are a delight, but not good candidates for my nearly always unplanned, last minute, needs.  They are seriously delicious, though.  Just eat them the same day.  And make sure any helpers are wearing white.

"A woman can never be too rich or too thin."
       Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor

"...and neither can Linzer cookies."

BikeEatSleepRepeat

Hmmm, Wallis Simpson, isn't she the one who also said shopping is more fun than eating?  Something wrong there.  Just sayin'. 

This recipe is originally from Epicurious. The hazelnuts would probably have been even better than the almonds.  But I had almonds and that seemed better than a trip to the store, no matter what Wallis might think.

Lindzer Cookies

2/3 c. hazelnuts
(or 2/3 cup blanched, slivered almonds, if that's what you've got)
1/2 c. brown sugar
2 1/2 c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
2 sticks (1 c.) butter, softened
1 large egg
1 tsp. vanilla
12 oz jam
powdered sugar



Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and toast at 350 degrees 6-10 minutes, until lightly browned.  If you used hazelnuts, rub off the skins after toasting.  Turn off the oven - you won't need it again for a while.


Pulse the nuts and 1/4 c. brown sugar in a food processor until fine.


In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.  Set aside.


In mixer bowl, beat butter and 1/4 c. brown sugar until light and fluffy.  Add nut mixture and beat in the egg.  Turn mixer to low and add flour mixture slowly until combined.


Divide dough in half, shape into disks, wrap, and chill for at least 2 hours.


Go for a nice, long bike ride.  Come back. 


Turn on your oven.   350 degrees.


Roll the dough between two sheets of waxed paper to 1/8 inch thick.


* This is where the Dutchess of Windsor knows her stuff.  If you roll to say 1/4 inch, the cookie layers will be too fat and too rich for even the biggest of shortbread fans.  The ideal Lindzer is light and delicate, with just enough fruity jam to balance the nutty, sandy cookie portion.  The contrast of the jam layer will be outweighed if the cookie portion is too fat.  

Using a round cutter, cut as close as you can, and get as many cookies as you can out of the first rolling.  (The recipe recommends re-rolling the scraps only once.) 


Bake half of the cut out circles as they are, on an ungreased cookie sheet.  These are your bottom layers.


For the other half of the circles, use a half inch cookie cutter and cut a hole in the center of each before baking.  These will be the top layers - with a little window, so you can see what kind of jam you're getting. 

* I didn't have a small cutter, or even a straw, which might have been a polka dot sort of window alternative.  Sensing an engineering problem to be solved, Popeye headed to the garage (the garage?) in search of round, hollow objects that might serve as a small cutter.  What he came back with was the lid from a bottle of Stan's tire sealant.  A new bottle, at least - made cleaner by a bout of obsessive scouring on my part.  This resulted in fat-tire looking Lindzers.  At some point I reversed it and used the pointy end for one last cookie sheet of "normal" looking skinny-tire top layers.

Bake at 350 degrees.  10-15 minutes.  Turn on your oven light.  After eight minutes, start checking.  Take them out sooner than later.  These baked for nine minutes.  Cookies very thin.  Very, very lightly browned.

Into the freezer with the thinnest lightest cookies, destined for Christmas Day activity hour. 


Throw away any thick ones.  Even if cats are starving in Florida. 


If you can't bear to throw them away, then throw them to the birds (for cat lunches later).  Or, if you must eat them yourself, just know you are in for a sludge attack.  Trust me on this - I don't throw away almonds and butter lightly.   

As close as possible to the hour of consumption, take the cookie halves out of the freezer. 


Go put on an apron - or a white shirt.


Spread a teaspoonful of dark, tart jam on the bottom cookie.  (I used red current.) 


Layer on a top cookie, the one with the window.  Sift powdered sugar all over.  The cookies, that is.

Then make your choice.  Fat tire or skinny?


Almost worth abdicating the throne for.  


Or, at the very least, powder coating your guests.

And I'll huff and I'll puff...

No bulldozers were used in the demolition of this house.

There was, however, a really big claw. 

No thoughts of asking to drive this monster! 

Pat, the claw artiste, started with a bang.  Maybe showing off a bit.  Or maybe just to reassure us that he knew exactly what he was doing. 

First thing he did was reach in (through the roof) and pluck out a fan I had mentioned hating, and plopped it onto the lawn.  Then he ripped up a palm tree and dropped it through the roof, just for emphasis.

Once the opening act was over, it was all business for the rest of the day.  Really, I couldn't believe how much time it took.  There's more to it than just knocking down walls.  Who knew?

Sorting out the scrap metals and the stuff the crew thought worth keeping took much more time than simply knocking down walls and scooping up the rubble.

Two men sifted relentlessly through the wreckage as the claw did it's work overhead.  No hard hats in sight.

The fan was just the start of an impressive pile of scrap metal that grew slowly but surely over the course of the day.

Separating the scrap metal.

BTW, that 50's turquoise was my favorite part of the kitchen.

Extracted intact.  Somebody else likes turquoise too, I guess.  

Pat also wanted the carport roof,

which he dropped neatly in one piece.

It will be reincarnated as a shelter for his goats.

Plucking re bar from the wreckage.

Of course the neighbors turned out for the show...

Flanked by Jose (our builder) and Popeye,

Lou and Karen, representatives from across the street...

Frank, from the house to the east...

Me, with Kathy, from the house to the west.

I lost the best picture ever, though. 

Debbie, Jose's wife brought some burgers for the crew.  It was the only moment all day the crew took a break.  Debbie, surrounded by the demolition crew, with Pat the goat herder and claw artiste wearing the biggest smile of all.  (Must be nice to love your work.)  

It was such a great picture I couldn't wait to send it to her.  

I love my IPhone, but....  the screen does a flip turn every time you move.  Flip!  The little trash can landed under where send should be and schwoop! 

There it was, gone.  (To quote Gilligan.)

Speaking of vintage words...

Look what else the crew found - wrapped around some spare jealousy glass in the tool shed.

Sept 27, 1963

Popeye would have been 2 weeks old.

Presidents actually stood by the space program.

And who needed Wal-Mart Prices?

The 1963 paper didn't fare too well once we started turning the pages.  It's still in the trash with the burger wrappers though, if someone really really wants it. 

I think it's OK to discard old stuff, as long as you can take what it has to teach along with you into the future.

I think again about the new design.  I've kept a few of those 50's ideas, and changed a lot of them too. 

The old house has taught us well.  There's no substitute for good plumbing.  The side with the view should have windows, not walls.   And turquoise kitchens rule.

All over but the terrazzo.

Not a thing in the pool but a little dust.

So, it's the end of a long, dusty day. 

And one of my oldest wishes has been granted.

(Minus the bulldozer.)

Making peace with the Christmas bulldozer.

The demolition is scheduled for tomorrow.  

8:30 start.  Come by and watch if you like. 

Twenty years is a long relationship to have with a single house.  And it hasn't always been a civil one.  Whenever asked what I wanted for Christmas, my most frequent reply was, "A bulldozer."

The other day Popeye was wondering aloud if maybe he could get the demo crew to let me drive the bulldozer - just for the first pass through the old kitchen.  As always, I am truly impressed by his thoughtfulness.   

But the thought - the reality - of the old house coming down after all these years...  somehow I don't feel the elation that I thought I would.  In fact, I feel more like I have signed someones death warrant.

We have all the same old stuff in the rental townhouse that we had in the house.  The same couch, the same rug.  The same old Christmas tree we've had since the last time in a rental townhouse, when the Chick was five.  Why does it all seem newer here?

Maybe it's the high ceiling, or the floor that's not ancient terrazzo, that doesn't look as if it were speckled with little brown roaches.  Maybe it's the kitchen with the oven that doesn't run 50 degrees too hot.  Maybe it's the lack of a thirty foot hallway to get to a bathroom.  Or the fact that the whole place is not trying to slowly slide downhill into a lake.

I need to remember it's not the house that made Christmas or any part of life easy, hard, good, or bad.  (Although stepping out of bed to an inch or two of water on the floor, or finding that the wall had moved three inches overnight, did make it a bit trying sometimes.)

It's just a house, only a structure.  And not a very good structure at that.  I remind myself that there's no reason for emotion, nostalgia, or vindictiveness. 

I appreciate how lucky I am that I get an opportunity to set right the wrongs - within budget, of course.  To make our lives, not worse or better, but more carefree and much less annoying.

In this world of litigation anxiety, I doubt I'll get to drive the bulldozer tomorrow.  But it won't be the disappointment it might once have been.  

House on Shepard Lake

1959 - 2011