Cardamom Cookies

I recently had the pleasure to attend a potluck bridal shower. In lieu of gifts, the bride-to-be asked us to make a dish for the party and to bring copies of the recipes for all to share. Brilliant! The only problem was that I was assigned dessert and the boy is the resident cookie maker. Since I didn't think he'd make cookies for a bridal shower, I found a simple recipe for cardamom cookies in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. I love her dessert recipes because they are not fussy and not too sweet.


I made the dough at 11 PM in the evening - it took me less than 10 minutes to make the dough and to clean up. I rolled the dough into two 1" logs, wrapped them in plastic, and stuck them in the freezer. The next day, I took the dough out of the freezer as I was drinking my morning coffee. After my second cup of rocket fuel, I slice the dough in 1/4" coins, and popped them in the oven. Easy!


If I were to make these for just the boy and I (I can hear him saying "Yeah, right. You never make desserts for us!"), I would omit the powdered sugar dusting. They taste decadent straight from the oven. However, since I was trying to trick everyone at the bridal shower into thinking that I was a fancy baker, I opted for the topping the cardamom cookies with fairy dust. It worked! People thought I was some kind of baking wunderkind and I did nothing to dispel that notion.