Sand Tarts (Pg 127)

I guess I underestimate myself and I tend to think I don't have a lot of patience. I guess the fact is I choose what I have patience for. For baking, I have patience, and it's when I make recipes like this that I realize how much patience I actually have.

Rolling this dough took an enormous amount of patience. The dough was very dry and crumbly and it had to be rolled very thin. And the cookie cutter was big, so it required rolling a piece of dough smooth and even enough to cut out one or two 3-inch circles. Rolling is always tricky - getting the pressure just right, having just the right amount of flour so the rolling pin doesn't stick but not too much flour that it makes the dough dry, on and on. So this was quite the challenge, but I do love a good baking challenge.

When something like this is very challenging and as I'm working on it I'm wondering why I'm bothering, I always think about how pretty it'll look when it's done. I guess it's the artist in me. I have the patience simply because I keep telling myself it'll look pretty when it's done so it's worth the effort.

These did look awfully pretty. The almonds were another challenge because I'm allergic, and I had these sliced almonds but do you know how many of them are pretty and perfect? Not many. So I had to sift through to find nice ones and my hands got a little itchy. That's why I made the last couple batches without any almonds. Plus these are meant to look like sand dollars, and I looked at some pictures online and I decided the cookies would look more like sand dollars without almonds. So I made all the sand dollars different - because in nature they are all different.

Of course I ate some of the ones that didn't have almonds. It is a very nice cookie. It's crisp and it has a little bit of lemon zest and I always love that tartness in the sweetness of a nice sugar cookie. That's pretty much what it is, a sugar cookie with almonds on it and cinammon sugar sprinkled on top. Very tasty, and very pretty, but a whole lot of work that I'm not inclined to do again anytime soon.

Yield:
Recipe predicts: 2 dozen.

Actual: 34 cookies, almost 3 dozen.

42 recipes down, 133 to go.