I must start this by saying: Forgive the plain-Jane picture. I had planned to play around with some of cookies and take pictures, but these things are so darned good that I remembered my plan the second I finished the last one. Oops.
May I introduce you to Sweet Corn Lace, straight from Alice Medrich's Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts. The other night, I wanted to extend my baking reach and try out some cookies I've never had before. Since I also wanted to be free of the allure of sugary death, I hoped to find something relatively healthy as well. Enter Sweet Corn Lace.
This delicate cookie is much simpler than it looks to make, and has a delicious, light, and sweet finish. Basically, it tastes like a sweeter, cinnamon-tinged homemade corn flake. The only problem is -- they're so light and airy, and taste so much like the cereal, that it's quite easy to eat them all. Luckily they're only 18 calories a cookie. Continue through the jump to check out the recipe, and if you try them, let me know what you think!
Sweet Corn Lace
Ingredients:
7 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
4 tsp unsalted butter cut into small pieces
3/8 tsp salt
1 cup yellow cornmeal
- To do two batches at once, place oven racks on bottom and top third of oven and preheat to 350 degrees. (If you have large, un-rimmed sheets, double-batches are less necessary.)
- Cut foil the same size as your sheets, and spray with cooking spray.
- Combine 2 tbsp sugar with the cinnamon and set aside for later.
- In a medium saucepan over medium heat, simmer 1 2/3 cup water with sugar, butter, and salt. Pull from heat, add cornmeal, and stir until the mix is smooth and thick (this will take a minute or two).
- These cookies are flattened, so appropriately space rounded teaspoons of the mix on your foil. Cover the balls with saran wrap and flatten the cookies with the heel of your hand, and then your fingers. They should be less than 1/16" thick.
- Peel off the wrap (you can use it again on the next batch) and sprinkle the cookies with the cinnamon sugar.
- Slide the foil onto your baking sheets and bake for 10-15 minutes, depending on thickness, until cookies are evenly golden brown. As they cook, they'll expand and crack. It'll look like they've broken apart like the picture above, but they'll still be in one piece.
- Keep an eye on the cookies, and if some start to look done before others, rotate your sheets left to right and top to bottom to bake evenly.
- Use a wide metal spatula to transfer the cookies to a paper towel, cool, and store. (Cookies last 3-4 days if you can refrain from eating them that long.)
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