Hi, all! Happy mid-winter! It’s finally time for a new recipe to share. This recipe comes from my friend’s great-grandma. She calls them “refrigerator butter cookies”, but when I first saw these cookies I said “oh, teeny tiny cookies!” so that name stuck. These cookies are versatile and irresistible (I says as I sit next to a bag of them, munching away), and are really easy to make.  Here’s the recipe, from my friend’s Great Grandma Patch:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cup sifted confectioner’s sugar, sifted*
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cream of tartar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Toppings/mixers as desired- I used Sugar in the Raw and chopped chocolate chips, but chopped nuts, sugar syrups, and other fun toppings would work well, too.

*Hint: If you don’t own a sifter, you can put the sugar and the other dry ingredients through a fine mesh strainer.

Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add unbeaten egg and vanilla, and mix well. Sift the dry ingredients together and blend into creamed mixture. Then, divide the dough into three sections.

Here’s where you can get creative. The recipe calls for us to leave one section plain, to mix one section with chopped walnuts, and one section with chopped chocolate. I stuck with the recipe and used the chocolate chips and only went off the path slightly by sprinkling raw sugar over the plain ones. However, I have absolutely no doubt these cookies would go well with almost any mixer or topping. You could use chopped nuts as a mixer and brown sugar topping to get a pecan roll flavor, finely chopped dried fruit, or even a dollop of jelly over the top after baking.

After you’ve mixed whatever ingredients you wanted into your mixes, roll each section into a log, about a half-dollar size across.

Roll each log up in wax paper, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. (Hint: You can also freeze the dough; if you’re planning on that, make sure to wrap the dough log in aluminum foil, too.) You definitely want this dough to be cold, because you’ll need to cut it up and cold dough is a lot easier to cut!

When the dough is nice and cold, cut the logs into 1/4 inch pieces. Place each dough piece on an ungreased cookie sheet. You don’t need to leave a ton of space between them because they don’t spread out much, but it’s still a good idea to leave about an inch between each cookie just in case.

After you’re done cutting the dough and putting it on a cookie sheet, you can sprinkle toppings on the cookies if you want. As you can see, I sprinkled raw sugar over the top of the plain ones. This would also be a good time to sprinkle brown sugar over the ones with the nuts, or whatever other topping you want.

Bake the cookies for ~6 minutes at 400°F. When they’re done, transfer them to a wire cooling rack .

And that’s it! You now have delicious teeny tiny cookies. I thought it was interesting how the plain and the chocolate chip ones tasted so different, yet they were the exact same base. That’s what makes them fun- one recipe makes a ton of cookies, so you can mix it up with different toppings and mixers, and get totally different cookies, and everyone can have their favorite. Don’t let the amount of cookies that one recipe makes fool you, though… these disappear quickly!

PS- these cookies, especially the plain ones, go really well with tea. My 91-year old aunt was a big fan of her tea with teeny tiny cookies!

I hope you enjoy this recipe and these cookies, as I know I did! Happy baking!