shire_kitchen | Mushroom-Shaped Cookies

4 Tbsp butter 1 ½ tsp baking soda
3/4 cup sugar 1 tsp. cinnamon
2 eggs ½ tsp each ground cloves, ginger, nutmeg
1 cup honey 1 tsp. ea grated lemon and orange rind.
1/4 cup sour cream
4 cups flour

Cream butter and sugar; beat in eggs, add honey and sour cream, lemon and orange rinds.
Sift together dry ingredients. Add dry ingredients to butter. This is a very soft dough. Divide dough half, wrap each half in waxed paper; refrigerate for about an hour.

Grease very well cookie sheets (I use spray like Pam.)
Take first half out of refrig. Tear off walnut-sized pieces of dough, shape into hemispheres, and WITH YOUR THUMB, make an indentation in the bottom (flat side, and place on sheet, rounded side up. You should get about 25-30 caps.

Make stems out of second half. Take walnut-sized pieces and roll them in your hand, making stems of various sizes and thickness, ranging from 1 to 1 ½ in.

Bake at 350 degrees about 10 minutes.

Let cool completely before frosting.

Frosting

2 cups sifted confectioners’s sugar 5 Tbsp. Water, 2-3 tsp. lemon juice. Mix together, adding water or sugar as you need.

There will be slight evidence of where you made the thumbprint on the flat part of the mushroom cookie top. With a small paring knife (or curved grapefruit knife) kind of scoop out a bigger hole, big enough to acccommodate the stem.

Dip stem in frosting. Stick into hole in the cap. Push in fairly hard. Set aside to set.....about 45 mins.

When set, add more lemon juice to frosting to make into the consistency of a glaze. Glaze the under side of the mushroom top and the stems. Set aside to set....about 30-45 minutes.

Add another cup confectioners sugar to frosting, and 2 tsp. unsweetened cocoa. Add lemon juice as required to make a frosting-glaze consistency.

Holding each mushroom by stem, glaze the top with the cocoa frosting.

Yeah....it’s a lot of work.....yeah..it takes all day....yeah, yeah...but it’s so coooool..

I found this recipe many (many) years ago in a Time-Life Book Series of Ethnic Cooking. According to them this is a Lithuanian cookie called Grybai

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From:

bellamonte.livejournal.com

Thank you thank you so much! What a wonderful suggestion, and it's just the time of year to make them :)

xclairedelune.livejournal.com

I do them at Easter mostly....do a very natural Easter Basket and I sometimes add in those candies which look like stones.

Then I make the handle of the basket with some natural raffia.