Oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies are great. Kids and adults love them. Nonetheless, sometimes you want something a little different. Different, though, doesn't mean weird-tasting or made with hard-to-find, expensive ingredients. Hence these Orange Rosemary Cornmeal Cookies. They're a little out of the ordinary, easy to do, economical, and quite good. The cookies are slightly sweet with a nubby texture from the cornmeal. The orange and rosemary combination is unusual in a cookie, but tasty! Do try to use fresh rosemary. The fresher and more tender your rosemary, the better the result. The cookies make wonderful additions to an Advent table or a Labor Day spread. Try them as an accompaniment to fresh strawberries or, if you’d prefer, a bowl of orange sherbet to continue the orange theme. Of course, the cookies are great on their own with a cup of tea.
Orange Rosemary Cornmeal Cookies – Makes About 24
1 ½ cups of flour
½ cup of cornmeal (yellow)
1 teaspoon of baking powder
¼ teaspoon of salt
½ cup of sugar
½ cup of canola oil
½ teaspoon of butter flavoring
2 eggs
Grated zest of a medium orange
1-2 teaspoons of fresh rosemary, chopped
½ cup of confectioners’ sugar
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and coat cookie sheets with non-stick cooking spray or line them with parchment paper. In a large bowl, whisk the sugar, oil, butter flavoring, eggs, orange zest, and rosemary together well. Combine the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt and add them to the sugar mixture with a wooden spoon just until thoroughly mixed (you don’t want to beat the batter). Let the batter sit for about 5 minutes then scoop tablespoons of the batter out and place the portions on the cookie sheets about 2 inches apart. Bake the cookies 10-15 minutes or until puffed and slightly golden. Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheets for about 5 minutes before trying to remove them. Place the cookies, while just a little warm, in a plastic bag and add about half of the confectioners’ sugar, shaking the bag very gently to coat the cookies. Add the rest of the confectioners’ sugar and shake the bag again gently until the cookies are coated with the sugar. If, you’d prefer less sweet cookies, just put some on a plate and sift a little of the confectioners’ sugar over them to decorate them but not coat them thoroughly.