Kitchen

[CamilleP]

I'm looking for a little advice and I am sure someone on this forum will have the info I need. I baked some Christmas cookies today (and the world did not come to an end, surprised the heck outta me, but that's another story!) and used an online recipe for almond crescent cookies I found that used a full cup of butter. I tasked DH with looking through my Mom's recipes and he found her old almond crescent cookie recipe, which used a half cup each butter and shortening. The online recipe used a cup of almond flower and 2.5 cups of flour, my Mom's used only 2/3rds cup ground almonds and 1&2/3rds cup flour. The online cookies were dry enough that I had trouble rolling out pencil-thick rolls of dough to shape into candy canes to bake, the dough kept cracking. Do you think it was just the extra flour and other dry ingredients, or was it the all-butter versus the half butter/half shortening that contributed to a cookie dough that wouldn't stick together?

(as an aside, to make candy canes take half the dough and add enough red food coloring to tint it red, then roll out "pencils" of white and red dough, twist them together, and bend them into candy cane shapes. Easy, tasty, and very festive.)