[Cookie 010] Butter Twists

So, in my efforts to catch up on my cookie-a-week thing, I decided to make these super easy, minimal ingredient Butter Twists. "Awesome--I have all the ingredients on hand! These will be easy and adorable and fast. Perfect activity for procrastinating on all my finals!" Wrong. Well, the procrastination part was right, but everything else failed. Okay, they can't all be winners Martha, but I sort of question why you included these in the book. Maybe I'm being a little extreme, but honestly, these just don't hold a candle to most of your other recipes.

Here's the deal. In the picture next to the recipe, you show these darling little puffed-up twists, smooth and beautifully formed; very Martha-esque. Yes, I know it's your thing to make everything look perfect and precise, but I honestly do not understand how anyone is supposed to manage forming the dough into those twists! To be fair, maybe I put the wrong amount of something into the dough (too much flour?) but I highly doubt it. The dough was really dry and crumbly, so rolling it into balls and then into ropes for twisting was impossible without the dough breaking and cracking all over the place.

Case and point. Look at that "rope." Awful. And the end result? Well, I only managed to form 1 "twist," the rest I made into little spirals for the first batch...

Laughable.
Do you see the "correct" version? Martha, please!

Truly, after the first batch came out of the oven, I was sad. And the flavor is pretty boring too, just a plain butter cookie. Anyways, while they were baking, I had the genius idea to keep the dough in the refrigerator, even though the dough was already dry and crumbly! I should have left it out so it could soften, but no, I was an idiot. Result? Even more aggravation! I ended up just forming (or attempting to) little balls, or buttons as I like to call them. Butter buttons sounds cute, even though they actually aren't! Oh, and to spice things up, I tried to make them thumbprint cookies with chocolate chips, but thumbprinting the dough basically caused the balls to explode. Great.

One of my best cookies, sadly

Yeah, so in short, these were a disappointment. I think that maybe next time I could try wetting my hands when rolling the dough, but even if the cookies are formed as flawlessly as the ones Martha made, the flavor is nothing memorable. I suppose they make a good foundation cookie for one to add other ingredients to, like chocolate chips, sanding sugar, icing, whatever, but I dunno. Not really my thing, personally.

Another glamour shot of my homely cookies:

Butter Twists

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter , softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 large egg white
• 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment; mix on medium speed until creamy. Mix in vanilla and egg white. Reduce speed to low. Add salt and flour; mix until combined.
2. Roll dough into 3/4-inch balls. Roll each ball into a 6-inch log. Bend log in half, then twist. Space 1 inch apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.
3. Bake, rotating halfway through, until cookies just begin to turn golden, 13 to 15 minutes. Let cool on parchment on wire racks. Cookies can be stored in airtight containers at room temperature up to 3 days.

****

{End Results}
Baking Difficultly: 3/5
Ingredient Accessibility: 5/5
Tastiness: 2/5
Attractiveness: 0/5 (Ooh, my first zero!)
Is it worth it?: I don't think so, but they aren't gross; just boring and ugly.