Diamonds are a girl's...

best friend, according to Marilyn Monroe.

But does that count if it's a cookie?

It should!  Because these are totally yummy little bites of crispy sugary chewiness!  These are great just as they are, but they are a wonderful garnish for an ice cream sundae or a strawberry shortcake!  They go so well with that little bit of ice cream or whipped cream or sauce you have in mind right about now thanks to the power of suggestion.

Glad I could help.

These are another promising KAF recipe that I'd been wanting to try, and Mother's Day seemed like a great excuse!  I made one small tweak to their recipe - I used orange oil instead of lemon oil - and I went wild and used 4 drops instead of only 2.  (And next time, I may just throw all caution to the wind and use a whole 7 drops!  Scandalous!!!)

Crystal Diamonds Recipe

This cookie really couldn't be easier, but they are unusual so they make folks wonder what is in them, which is all part of the fun!  I plan to include them in a neighborhood association fund raising bake sale coming up at the end of next month as the finishing touch to freshly made strawberry shortcake.  I'm getting excited about that offering already!  Oh!  And these improve after a few days in an airtight container.  Does it get much better than that?!

Ready to see what I did?

I began with 1-1/2 cups of flour, 4 drops of orange oil, 1 t. of yeast (yes, yeast is the leavening agent in this cookie, but there's no rising time), 1/2 t. of salt and mixed all of that with 9 tablespoons of milk.

Did I need to take a picture of 9 T. of milk?  Probably not, but I love this little measuring cup that a friend gave me for my birthday a couple of years ago along with a shot glass measuring cup.  They are just perfect for this sort of measurement.  KAF says 1/2 cup of milk plus 1 T., but that's 9 T., so I used this little measuring cup and took a picture, because it made me happy.

I mixed all of that together.

The end.

No, that's not the end!  I need to still add the butter - a stick of butter (1/2 cup), added 1 T. at a time and beat for 1 minute after each addition.  This is after the first 3 T.

And this is after all 8 T.  It is smooth, shiny and elastic - similar to a bread dough in some respects.

And this is the finished dough.  Now you may be wondering where is the sugar?  Is this another one of those "cookies" that Deb is trying to convince us is a "cookie" but doesn't have any sugar in it?

Nay, my friend.  Stay tuned.  We will answer that pressing question momentarily.

The dough needs to chill 2 hours or overnight (I chose overnight) and while the recipe doesn't say to do this, when I looked at the dough in the bowl, it just looked like it needed a little blanket to help keep it moist in addition to the cover for the bowl, so I gave it a blanket.

Does this make me weird?  

Probably.

So next morning...here's the really fun part!  This dough gets rolled on coarse sugar!  See, there's sugar!  It's a REAL cookie!!!

LOTS of coarse sugar to be truthful.  I could have used only the Demerera (on the left) or the while sparkling sugar (on the right), but I chose to use a bit of both.

Spread it all out on my counter...

...and then woke up the dough from its nap and took off its blanket.  It looked a little grumpy first thing in the morning, too.  I'm not sure it was ready to wake up either.

But too bad.  We had work to do!  

I made sure both sides of the dough were COVERED in the coarse sugar by flipping it back and forth as I rolled.

Once it was as thin as I thought I could get it, I began to cut into diamonds with a pizza cutter.

And then laid them on a parchment covered cookie sheet to bake.

I don't normally bake two cookie sheets together at the same time, but since these bake at only 275 degrees for almost an hour, I decided to do both sheets together, and it worked very well.  I removed them from the cookie sheets almost immediately after taking out of the oven to keep them from sticking to the parchment and to let them cool on racks.

I also took a close up of one turned upside down so you could see the sugar on the bottoms as well as the tops.

Finally I took a shot of the sugar containers after I was done to give you an idea of just how much gets used in the rolling...about 1/5 of the Demerara container and all of one of the sparkling sugar containers. And I may have only tossed out about 3 T. of sugar from scraping the counter.  So these definitely have a lovely sugary sweetness!

And that's all there is to these!  Pack them up in airtight containers, and you will enjoy them even more if you can resist digging into them for a day or two.  I'm not saying that will be easy; I'm simply saying that you will be rewarded for your patience and delayed gratification, young grasshopper.

Hope you enjoy trying these sometime!  I'm sure I know one mother (me!) who would enjoy seeing these on a Mother's Day dessert tray or as a dessert garnish!

As always, thank you for stopping by!  And I hope you are enjoying some lovely spring weather where you are!  

Love,

D