Date Tart Cookies Food

DATE BAR COOKIES

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
• In a nonreactive medium saucepan over low heat, combine dates, granulated sugar, and water. Cook, stirring constantly, until thickened, about 15 minutes. Cool completely. In a large bowl or bowl of an electric mixer, place brown sugar, flour, baking soda, salt, and oats. Mix on low speed until combined. While mixer is running, add butter, 1 piece or 2 at a time. Mix until crumb like, with some lumps of butter no larger than pea size.
• Using your hands, press and flatten half of crumb mixture into a greased 9 by 13-inch pan. Spread cooled filling over crust. Cover with remaining crumb mixture, patting lightly. Bake until lightly browned, 25 to 35 minutes. Cool slightly and cut into bars while still in the pan. Gently remove cut bars from pan. Serve warm or at room temperature. Date bars, stored in an airtight container, refrigerate and freeze well.

OATMEAL-DATE COOKIES

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, beat butter and shortening with a wooden spoon or electric mixer until smooth. Add both sugars, and beat until smooth. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until incorporated. Beat in vanilla.
• Combine the remaining ingredients in a separate bowl. Gradually add dry ingredients to the butter mixture, mixing until just combined.
• Drop batter by the tablespoon about 1 1/2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake until golden brown, about 12 to 14 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool.

DATE AND NUT COOKIES

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees, with racks in upper third and middle. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour and baking powder. Add dates, pecans, and raisins, and stir with a wooden spoon until fruit and nuts are coated. In a small bowl, whisk together eggs, 1/2 cup sugar, oil, lemon juice, vanilla, and salt. Add to flour mixture and stir until combined.
• In another small bowl, stir together 2 tablespoons sugar and cinnamon. Drop dough by rounded tablespoons, 1 inch apart, onto parchment-lined baking sheets. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Bake until cookies are golden at edges, about 15 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Transfer cookies to wire racks and let cool completely.

DATE NUT COOKIE PIES

Steps:

• To prepare the pastry, combine the flour, confectioners' sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the egg yolks and 3 tablespoons of the cream and pulse just until the dough starts to come together. Add more cream if necessary but stop before the dough is too wet. Tip half of the dough out onto a piece of plastic wrap and form it into a disk. Repeat with the remaining dough. Chill the disks for at least 2 hours.
• To prepare the filling, bring the dates and the water to a simmer over medium heat in a small saucepan. Cook until the dates are very soft, about 5 minutes. Transfer the dates and the water to the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade and add the pecans, walnuts, honey, orange zest, cardamom, cloves, and salt and pulse until you have a chunky paste. Let cool completely.
• Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
• Working with one disk at a time, roll the dough out to a thickness of 1/8 inch on a very lightly floured surface. (Less flour means a more tender cookie.) Using a 2-inch cookie cutter, cut out circles of dough and set them about 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheets. Repeat with the remaining disk. You can reroll the dough once if you like.
• Scoop about a rounded 1/2 teaspoon of filling onto half of the dough circles. Brush the edges of the filling-topped circles with a bit of cream and top with another dough circle, gently pressing the edges to seal. Once you've sandwiched all of the cookies, use a fork to crimp all of the edges.
• Chill the cookies until firm, about 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
• Brush the top of each cookie with cream and sprinkle with a bit of sanding sugar. Bake until the cookies are golden and crisp, 25 to 30 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through. Let the cookies cool completely on a rack.
• Store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.

DATE BUTTER TART

Steps:

• Make the pâte sucrée: Whisk the cream and egg yolk together in a small bowl. In a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, combine the flour, sugar, salt and butter on medium speed until you have a coarse meal. (Or use a food processor and pulse until you have a coarse meal.) Gradually add the cream and yolk and mix until just combined. Do not overwork the dough. Transfer to a large work surface and bring it together with your hands to incorporate completely. Shape it into a 1-inch disc and put in the refrigerator for 5 to 10 minutes to firm up a little. Place it on a lightly floured work surface, sprinkle a little flour over the dough and roll it out into a ¼-inch-thick circle, flouring as necessary. Starting at one side, roll and wrap the dough around the rolling pin to pick it up. Unroll the dough over a 10-inch tart pan. Gently fit the dough loosely into the pan, lifting the edges and pressing the dough into the corners with your fingers. To remove the excess dough, roll the rolling pin lightly over the top of the tart pan for a nice, clean edge. Chill for 1 hour.
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prick the bottom of the dough with a fork and line the tart shell with a few coffee filters opened out, or with a piece of parchment paper. Fill the lined tart shell with beans or pie weights and bake 15 minutes, until set. Take the tart out of the oven and gently lift out the paper and beans. Return to the oven and bake another 10 to 15 minutes, until the crust is an even golden brown. Set aside on a rack to cool completely.
• Make a vertical slit in each date and carefully remove the pit. Use your fingers to press the dates back into their natural shape. Place the dates, slit side down, in concentric circles in the tart shell, leaving ½ inch between each date.
• Slice the vanilla bean in half lengthwise and use a paring knife to scrape the seeds and pulp onto the butter. To make sure not to lose any of the seeds, run your vanilla-coated knife through the butter. Heat a medium sauté pan over medium heat for 1 minute. Add the vanilla-streaked butter and the vanilla pod to the pan and cook 6 to 8 minutes, until the butter browns and smells nutty. Discard the vanilla pod.
• Whisk the eggs and 2/3 cup sugar together in a bowl. Whisk in the flour and salt and stir in the warm butter to incorporate.
• Pour the batter over the dates in the tart shell. Sprinkle the top with the remaining tablespoon sugar. Bake 30 minutes, until the filling puffs up, browns and is set. Cool the tart at least 20 minutes, then cut into wedges and serve with scoops of vanilla ice cream.

DATE TART COOKIES

Steps:

• COOKIE DOUGH: In a large bowl of an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until creamy; beat in eggs and vanilla.
• In another bowl, stir together flour, wheat germ, salt, nutmeg, and baking soda; gradually add to butter mixture, blending thoroughly.
• Cover dough tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until easy to handle (at least 2 hours) for up to 3 days. Meanwhile, prepare date filling.
• DATE FILLING: In a small pan, combine all the ingredients except the vanilla. Cook over medium heat, stirring and mashing with a spooon, until mixture is thick and smooth. Stir in vanilla.
• Let cool; then cover and refrigerate.
• COOKIE ASSEMBLY: Preheat oven to 350°F.
• Take out 1/3 of the dough, leaving remaining dough in the refrigerator. On a well-floured board, roll out dough to 1/16-inch thickness; cut out with a 3-inch cookie cutter. Repeat with remaining dough, rolling and cutting one portion at a time.
• Place half the cookies slightly apart on greased baking sheets; spoon a heaping teaspoonful of filling into each. Cover each with another cookie and press edges together with a floured fork. Decoratively slash top, if desired.
• Bake in a 350°F oven for 12 to 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Transfer to racks and let cool. Store airtight.

BEST DATE BARS

Steps:

• In a saucepan, combine dates, sugar and water. Cook, stirring frequently, until very thick. Stir in walnuts, if desired; cool. , Sift the flour, salt and baking soda together in a large bowl; add oats and brown sugar. Cut in butter until mixture is crumbly. Sprinkle water over mixture; stir lightly. Pat half into a greased 13x9-in. baking pan. Spread with date mixture; cover with remaining oat mixture and pat lightly. , Bake at 350° for 35-40 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack. Cut into bars.

DATE "TURNOVER" COOKIES

Steps:

• Cook the dates and water together, stirring frequently, until soft and amalgamated.
• Let cool.
• Preheat the oven to 325°F.
• Butter a large cookie sheet.
• Stir together the dry ingredients.
• Beat together the cooled melted butter and eggs, then beat in the buttermilk.
• Mix the beaten butter and egg mixture into the dry ingredients, adding a little more buttermilk if needed to make a soft dough.
• Drop half the dough by spoonfuls onto the cookie sheet.
• Space them well apart.
• Divide the filling evenly over the cookie bases.
• Spoon the remainder of the dough over the cookies.
• Bake for 20 minutes.

BAKED ALMOND & DATE TART

Steps:

• Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Lightly butter and flour a 23-25cm fluted flan dish or tin (not loose-bottomed). Crush half the digestive biscuits with a rolling pin. Cream the butter and sugar in a food processor until light and fluffy, 2-3 mins, scraping down the sides halfway through. Add the flour, baking powder, ground almonds and crushed digestive biscuits, along with the eggs, then process again just until smooth. Transfer the mix to a bowl.
• Break the remaining digestive biscuits into chunky crumbs, (see step 1, left). Stir them into the mix (step 2) along with the chopped dates and almonds. Spoon the mix into the flan dish. Bake for 25-30 mins until golden and the tart is just beginning to come away from the sides.
• Remove the tart from the oven and leave it to cool a little, before dusting over icing sugar. Serve warm with cream.