Spumoni Cookies
Date Completed: 4/16/2021
A special evening called for a special cookie. The Rolled, Shaped, and Pressed chapter of America’s Test Kitchen The Perfect Cookie delivered with these Spumoni Bars. I hosted my first cocktail party in over a year, and these gems played a starring role on my table!
I knew I wanted something with color that felt unique. I always trust ATK for a high-quality result, so I started perusing The Perfect Cookie. These jumped out at me because of the bold colors and the fun concept!
I have not always liked spumoni, and I would never have picked these if not for a key recent event. We took Garrett out for an Italian lunch last month to celebrate his birthday with his parents. The restaurant offered a bowl of spumoni ice cream as a birthday treat. I ended up “helping” with a few bites of that and surprised myself with how much I enjoyed it.
I must have quite the sophisticated palate these days. At least compared to the last time I tried and hated spumoni as a child. I still say it’s not fair to present green ice cream a mint-chocolate-chip loving child. When I took a bit of that ice cream full of nuts - game over!
Another key driver behind selecting a cookie recipe: I recently purchased a KitchenAid stand mixer! You’ll see it in the photos below. I loved using it for this recipe, and I can’t wait to do even more!
Before I could break out the stand mixer, though, I prepared the fillings for two of the spumoni layers. I chopped up 12 maraschino cherries. I also toasted my walnuts before chopping them up fine.
Next came quickly sifting together my dry ingredients. Then the big moment! I set my butter and sugar in my stand mixer bowl and let them cream for several minutes while I separated the eggs for the following step. Awesome multi-tasking! The yolks went in with a splash of vanilla before adding the flour mixture.
I finished incorporating the last bit of flour by hand. Then I broke out my handy kitchen scale to divide the dough into three equal portions. Each one went into a separate bowl to get mixed with one of the spumoni ingredients!
At this point, I have to mention a deviation I made from the ATK recipe. It officially says nothing about food coloring in the instructions. However, their final photos definitely show the results of at least a small amount of green and red food coloring. There was just no way I was going to leave that out!
Mixing in cherries does not magically give a dough a slight pink hue. There’s even less of a chance that adding walnuts turns a dough light green without a little help from a drop of food coloring.
I mean.. look at these doughs! They would not be as pretty without that little hint of color.
Now for the part where patience plays a starring role. Each dough-disk get divided in half and rolled into a 12 inch rope. I found that the chocolate dough was much dryer than the other two doughs and had a tendency to break apart as I rolled it out. Adding a few drops of water definitely helped!
You then lay the ropes of dough next to each other and use a bit of water to help them stick together. Then you using a rolling pin to flatten out the dough. The goal is to double it in length to 24 inches without making it any wider than you started. This took quite a bit of coaxing and re-forming as I went.
I made quick work out of cutting the dough into 1-inch wide strips. It also was not too difficult to transfer the dough from the counter over to the cookie sheets. For any pieces that fell apart during the move, I just used a tiny amount of water to glue them back together. I love a forgiving roll-out cookie!
The cookies baked for about 10 minutes, and I rotated the pans halfway through the cooking time. They set up on the hot pans for another 5 minutes and then cooled all the way on a wire rack.
All-in-all not too difficult to make a very pretty cookie!
Taste Report:
Now the big question: are they as delicious as they are eye-catching? I really thought so! The three flavors together worked so well!
As a chocolate-lover, I always started eating at the cherry end to set up my last bite to come from the chocolate end!
I was not sure if I should expect a crunchy cookie or a soft cookie just by looking at the ATK photos. They turned out to be on the softer side which I enjoyed.
One thing that I may change next time is to chop the cherries a little finer. I felt like I made pretty small pieces, but after trying these cookies I think they’d be even better with the smaller cherry pieces more evenly distributed throughout.
I would definitely make these again! They are such a fun party cookie!
Mess Report:
Oh, hello, dirty dishes. No surprise here: a cookie with three different fillings made my kitchen a big mess! Not pictured are the flour-covered countertops that come along with any rollout cookie.
Let’s not end this post with that image, though. We’ll focus on the delicious result that makes a temporarily messy kitchen all worth it.
