We're Sweet on Maple
Maple Oatmeal Lace Cookies, an entry in our local dessert competition
The "We Love Local" dessert competition is heading into the final stage – we’re making and sampling the four winning recipes at this Saturday’s Burlington Winter Farmer’s Market, February 26th from 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. at Memorial Auditorium.
25 recipes were submitted, ranging from crisps and cakes to cookies and bars. We had planned on choosing 3 recipe finalists, but the entries were so intriguing that we had to choose 4. Even narrowing down those four was challenging. You can read about our criteria and peruse the 4 recipe finalists here.
Baking up these 4 desserts has filled our kitchens with wonderful and in as at least one case, unusual, aromas: Janet Hicks submitted a recipe she calls “Maple’snips Mousse.” Even if it doesn’t win top prize in the competition, it definitely tops the Best Creative Use of a Root Vegetable category – the mousse has a creamy parsnip base into which you fold whipped cream and Butterworks lemon yogurt. We can’t wait to try the final version.
Meg says: “I also spent yesterday afternoon baking up hundreds of little Chewy Maple Cookies from a recipe submitted by Jamie Seiffer. After boiling down maple syrup for a few hours, even my eyebrows smelled like maple syrup!”
We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try out one of the recipes that didn’t get selected as a finalist, the "Localvore Oatmeal Maple Lace Cookies," submitted by Robin Berger (you can read her food blog at Hippo Flambe). We loved that this recipe was chock-full of whole-grain oats and promised a lacey texture. The flavor is buttery with a hint of maple, and the cookies are a wonderful combination of crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside.
Voting will take place tomorrow at 10 a.m. until the samples are gone, and the winner of the competition gets to take home 4 gallons of maple syrup!
Stop by the Burlington Winter Farmer’s Market and see what all the sweet buzz is about.
Localvore Oatmeal Maple Lace Cookies
Submitted by Robin Berger
1 cup (2 sticks) Vermont butter
¾ cup plus 1 Tbs. Vermont maple sugar
1 Tbs. vanilla extract
½ tsp. salt
2 ½ cups Quebec oats
¼ cup Gleason Grains whole wheat pastry flour
1 large egg
Preheat oven to 350. Melt the butter, maple sugar, vanilla, and salt in a medium pot over low heat. The sugar will still look a little grainy, which is fine, just make sure the butter is fully melted.
Turn off the heat and add the flour and oats to the butter maple sugar mixture in the pot and mix well. Add the egg and stir well to combine.
Prepare baking sheets either by spraying with cooking spray or lining with parchment paper or a silpat. Drop 1.5-2 teaspoons of batter 2 inches apart on prepared cookie sheets. This goes much faster if you use a cookie scoop. Use the back of a spatula to flatten each cookie out to a diameter of approximately 2 inches. (Flattening the cookies is very important if you want true lace cookies. There is less maple sugar in them than traditional lace cookies so they need your help to spread out and thin).
Bake for 10-18 minutes (8-15 minutes when we tested them), rotating tray positions midway through baking, until the cookies are golden brown and look set. Allow cookies to cool completely on the cookie sheets.