Member Recipe: Lizzy Gruner

Bam! Gotta love those last minute surprises, like Lizzy's deliciously sweet and simple cookies.

Coverlet Cookies

This is a twist on an old recipe my family has been making for generations called "Checkerboard Cookies". After my first semester of weaving, I remember looking at these cookies and thinking about them as "plain weave cookies" and ran with that concept to create cookies representing other basic weaves used in traditional coverlets.

The recipe is quite simple:

Mix together:

2/3 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

Then slowly begin to add:

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Divide the dough in half. To 1/2 of dough add 1 oz. melted unsweetened baking chocolate and
mix until all one color.

The "trick" to these cookies is all in the layering process. For the basic "plain weave" cookie (the outer rim of cookies in the picture), divide each color of dough in half, giving you four equal portions. Press one portion into a bread pan, lined with plastic wrap or parchment paper. Alternate white and chocolate portions, using all four portions, and refrigerate for several hours. Once solid, remove the dough from the pan and cut 4 slices from the end of the "loaf", and flip every other slice so the colors alternate. Smush the slices together and volia, you have your checkerboard "brick" to slice your cookies from. Slice cookies about 3/4" thick and cook them for about 12-15 minutes and 350 degrees F.

To create other "weave patterns", you just have to determine the order for laying down your four portions in your "loaf"and the direction to stack them when creating your "brick" to cut from. For example, the 2/2 twill I created , I had three pans, 1 white:2 chocolate:1 white, 1 chocolate:2 white:1 chocolate, and 2 white:2 chocolate. It can get really complicated, but just remember, there is no shame in eating all the broken, ugly, and messed up experiments.