MW Honey Lemon Pistachio Cookies

Hi friends, hope you all had a wonderful time during Christmas, spend nice and valuable time with family and friends, baked lots of goodies. I also spent wonderful time with family. As you saw. I havn't posted any baked goodies so far, the reason, I don't own a baking oven here in Singapore. But I love to bake. The day before christmas,  my daughter suddenly asked me, "Mom, can you bake some cookies for me like you baked before?" "But we don't have any oven, dear, how I'll bake cookies?", I replied. Then she was quite disappointed with my answer. I felt very bad, so I thought to bake something in Microwave, which I totally resist to do. I don't know, I think I have some kind of phobia of cooking or baking anything in MW. But that day I just forced myself and thought to surprise her with some homemade cookies.
So I chose one recipe from my baking book and planned to give it a try in MW and crossed finger for good results, as I was making cookies in MW for first time, had no idea how the outcome will be. For my surprise the result was quite good, not as good as oven baked cookies, but if you don't have any oven I'll recommend to bake in MW. It was a good crunchy cookies, didn't get the golden colour like oven-baked ones but that's ok...and it took only 5 minutes. And the best part was my daughter liked it and she was so happy. I was relieved to see happiness in her eye again.

For those who are novice or amateur in MW cooking like me, I'm posting the recipe for them to give it a try and to come out of fear of MW cooking.......................


Ingredients : (recipe will make 20-24 cookies)
Honey : 1/3 cup
Fine Sugar : 1/2 cup
Butter/margarine : 1/4 cup (room temperature)
Water : 2 tblsp.
APF/all purpose flour : 2and 1/2 cup
Egg : 1 (beaten)Baking powder : 1 tsp.
Pistachio/almonds : 1/2 cup (chopped)
Lemon peel : 1/4 cup
Lemon extract: 1 tsp.

Method :

• In a medium sized saucepan, combine honey, sugar, butter/margarine and water. Stirring constantly, cook over low heat until butter melts and sugar dissolves. Cool to room temperature. 
• In a large bowl, blend flour, baking powder, pistachios and lemon peel. 
• Stir beaten egg and lemon extract into cool honey mixture. Stir honey mixture into four mixture little by little and mix. Knead to make a soft pilable dough, not too hard. Cover with a plastic wrap and refrigerate the dough for 1 hour.

• Take out and divide the dough into 5-6 big balls. Take each ball and spread out to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into your desired shapes with cookie cutter.

• Take a microwave safe container/plate, grease it a little or place them on a waxed paper on MW glass tray.
• Microwave on medium high for 4 minutes. (My MW power is 1250 watt-time depends on the power level of your MW)
• The cookies should be just firm when done. It will be crunchy when cooled down. 

I made star shaped cookies with half of the dough and the other half I rolled into a log shape. Then cut into 1/4 inch round shaped cookies with a sharp knife.

Caution :

• Do not cut the cookies too thin. It will be burnt very fast.
• Do not bake more than 5 minutes. 
• Check every minute. You can't relax while baking in MW unlike oven. Stand infront of it and check thru the glass door.
  

So, give this a try..you won't regret............Happy holidays, everyone..................
Cookies are off to Mahimaa's Contribute your recipe : Cakes & cookies   event