ICEBOX COOKIES

ICEBOX COOKIES, ALSO CALLED REFRIGERATOR OR slice-and-bake cookies, are an American invention. A buttery cookie dough is rolled into a log, chilled until firm, then sliced and baked. The result is a thin, flat cookie. If you like moist, chewy cookies, look elsewhere.

When developing our master recipe for icebox cookies, we had several goals. We wanted these wafer-like cookies to have a crumbly, sandy texture that was tender, not crisp or hard. We also wanted the flavor to be as rich and buttery as possible. Finally, we did not want the dough to be sticky or temperamental. Chilling will make almost any dough firm enough to slice. However, the dough for an icebox cookie must be manipulated right from the mixer. An overly soft or tacky dough would prove problematic.

Our first goal was to make the cookie thin and flat. Some recipes contain baking powder and others do not. We found that cookies made with baking powder were either too soft or too cakey. Since an icebox cookie is by definition thin, we did not want any lift from a leavener and eliminated it from our working recipe.

Although the cookies made without leavener were thin, we found that they often had bubbles in them. We wanted an even crumb that was dense and tender. Something was still causing the cookies to rise. We tried creaming the butter less and found that reducing the beating time from our standard three minutes to just one minute was the trick. Extensive creaming of the butter beats in too much air. The result is tiny air pockets that prevent the cookies from baking up perfectly flat.

We next focused on the sugar. Granulated sugar is used in recipes where sturdiness is a must, like in rolled sugar cookies. However, we wanted cookies that were finer-textured and a bit crumbly. Confectioners' sugar is used in many cookie recipes to lend a melt-in-the-mouth texture, but we found that using all confectioners' sugar made icebox cookies with a texture that was too crumbly. After several tests, we settled on a ratio of three parts granulated sugar to two parts confectioners' sugar.

We also preferred the cleaner flavor of unbleached flour. Bleached flour gave these cookies a slight off flavor. The difference was slight, but noticeable. We wondered why we could not detect any difference in other cookies, even in our simple sugar cookie (see chapter 4). Then we realized that the other cookies have more ingredients, including leavener, which obscured the differences in the flours.

Most icebox cookie recipes rely on whole eggs, and in our testing, we found that they were often quite pale and not very attractive. Using two yolks (rather than one whole egg) solved this problem and also added some more fat. The whites make the dough sticky and should be discarded or saved for another recipe.

Finally, we tested various oven temperatures. We found that a low oven temperature of 325 degrees helps the cookies hold their shape in the oven. At the lower temperature they also brown more evenly (at higher temperatures the edges burn before the center cooks through) and the texture is more delicate and fragile.