Recipe Exchange

Nothing beats the tastes and smells of home cooking! Do you need to take a dish to an upcoming event? Perhaps you can find that special recipe you have been looking for in this section. Is there a recipe you have that everyone enjoys? Share it with your neighbors.

The recipe exchange page offers a convenient way to trade your favorite recipes and discover new ones to try. If you would like to share your recipes with others in the neighborhood, please post them here.

These cookies, French in origin, are among the most delicious of all butter cookies. They make a perfect accompaniment for eggnog or punch, as well as an elegant dessert. Just to save time, you may want to double or triple this recipe. They freeze well and have been our family favorite. Each one is scrumptious and resembles a small, delicate jewel.

Jewel-Brooch Cookies

1 cup + 2 T flour
1/3 c sugar
1/2 c softened, not whipped or runny butter
1 egg yolk
1/2 t vanilla extract

Mix flour and sugar. Add butter and mix as for piecrust until coarse crumbs are formed. Add egg yolk and vanilla and mix with pastry blender until dough holds together. Form into a ball and place in the refrigerator for 20 minutes, or until stiff enough to handle. Using about a 1/2 teaspoon measure, place pieces of dough, which have been shaped into balls with floured palms, 1 inch apart on cookie sheet. Make an indentation in the center of each ball, but do not punch all the way to the pan. Press one of the garnishes, suggested below, into the small 'dimple'.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 to 20 minutes. I divide shelf time in half. The first 5 or 6 minutes, I bake on the lowest shelf, or until the bottom of the cookies are browned. Then I transfer the pan to the top shelf until they are a light golden brown. Watch carefully, time can vary depending upon the oven.

Choose from these garnishes: grape, raspberry or blackberry jam, mint jelly, pecan halves or almonds, crystallized cherries, or candied orange or lemon peel.

from Women's Day magazine and
through the courtesy of Fran Hayden