I present to you, Thumbelinas!

Thumbelina, Thumbelina, tiny little thing.
Thumbelina dance, Thumbelina sing.
Very few of you will know what the heck I'm singing about. Back in the day, in my weird childhood, I was obsessed with the late, great Danny Kaye. In his movie, Hans Christian Andersen, he sings a song about Thumbelina, and it was awesome - or it was for a 10 year old me.
Karli blogged about these thumbprint cookies about a month ago. I had to try them out too, but with a different secret ingredient. We named them Thumbelinas.

These little beauties are pink peppercorns. They are a strange ingredient for cookies, but a fancy one, adding a tiny kick at the end of every bite. FYI - Pink peppercorns aren't even of the pepper family, but somehow they have a peppery taste.

Look at the pretty pink specks, very cute and dainty.

Sometimes the dough likes to stick to the spoon when you're making the little holes where the jam/jelly goes. I just dip the spoon in the jam/jelly juice and then press on. Hole after hole after hole after hole...

Plopping in the filling. We are making these for our shop with made-in-Indiana raspberry jam. But I didn't have any of that good stuff on hand, so plain 'ol grape jelly went on top of these.

Ready for the oven.

Thumbelina, you never looked so tasty. PS - Our shop will have these with a nice drizzle of icing on top, but I was lazy this evening. Cry.

Thumbelinas a plenty. Yums! These cookies have been roommate approved.

Gluten Free Cornmeal Cookies

I've had a few requests for gluten free cookies, so I'm going to try out a few recipes. My gluten free cookies will be just as tasty as my regular ones. I will not let taste and texture slide just so that they can be gluten free. Taste and texture will prevail!

I had to get rid of the wheat flour to make this batch gluten free. I decided to use brown rice flour instead. This recipe is called Cornmeal Cookies, so the cornmeal is ultra present.

Here are some salvaged eggs. The bagboy at the grocery store decided to put my brand new carton of eggs in the same bag as two liters of juice. Awesome.

I do love the color and fluffiness of creamed sugar, butter, and eggs.

Zee dry ingredients: the colored flecks are freshly grated nutmeg and cinnamon.

I had to break the shell of the nutmeg with a hammer to get to the center. This may be my favorite spice. It's so cool!

These are refrigerator cookies, so they must be chilled.

I rolled them into a log shape and put them in the freezer. I think the refrigerator would have been better though. Next time.

After a sufficient amount of chilling, slice, slice, slice.

These will spread quite a bit because they have LOTS of butter.

So here they are. They look good enough, but what about the taste?! The verdict: crisp, sweet, gritty. I will use a finer grind of cornmeal next time - easier on the teeth.

The "Log" Method

Karli and I were very busy today baking cookies for our first market: The Binford Farmer's Market. We were doubling batches and scooping away when...

...our scoop pooped out on us. Many a swear words were shouted. I began "eye balling" the correct amount of dough and started making each ball by hand. And after losing loads of precious time, I only had a few dough balls made.I had to come up with a solution so...

...the log method ensued. The log method: roll out some dough into a log shape.

Slice the log into small pieces.

Roll the pieces into a ball form.

Yay, mostly-same-sized dough balls!
Come and check out our booth at the Binford Farmer's Market from 8-12 on Saturday (the 4th). The market is located in the Fellowship Hall at the Divine Savior Lutheran Church, 7315 East 75th Street, just East of the fire station. Hope to see you there!