PEACH COOKIES

Here is the recipe in Turkish

This recipe yields cookies that appear like peaches, especially popular with children. It has chocolate pudding and almonds inside. You can try different fruit forms, fillings and nuts...

Ingredients:

• 2 large eggs, kept at room temperature
• 1 cup confectioners sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla powder or vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 sticks butter, at room temperature
• 4+1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 4o pieces of half cut, emptied walnut shells
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• About 80 pieces of raw almond
• Food color ( 5 drops red, 5 drops yellow)
  

cocoa cream ingredients:

• 2 cups of milk
• 3 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 table spoon corn starch
• 2 table spoon butter
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  
• 1+1/2 table spoon cocoa
  

Directions:

1. For the cream: Mix cocoa, flour, sugar, milk, corn starch with electric mixer, heat mixture in medium heat until it boils. Add the butter to cream and mix again with electric mixer about 5 minutes. Let them cool in room temperature.
2. Knead eggs, yogurt,confectioner sugar, brown sugar,butter, vegetable oil with hands, until you get a smooth dough.
3. Mix flour, baking powder, and vanilla powder in a separate bowl, stir well.
4. Add the flour mixture into the other mixture until they are well combined. Give the dough 10 minute rest time.
5. Preheat oven 350F degrees.
6. Take small pieces from the dough, about the size of a walnut, and give sphere/ball form. Push one halved empty walnut shell to the dough ball until it covers the top of the walnut shell. The open side of the shell should not be covered. When finished, the dough and shell combination should look like a hemisphere, walnut shell inside, dough outside. You can check the pictures below.
7. Place the dough covered walnut shell in the baking pan, walnut side facing down. Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Pull out the walnut shells from the cookies and let cookies cool on wire rack for 5 minutes.
8. Put 1 tablespoon cream and 1 almond in each cookie. Push two cookies together, cream side facing each other, until they stick.
9. In two separate bowls, add 1/4 cup water each and add food colors, one red, one yellow. In a third bowl, put 1 cup of granulated sugar for the outside glazing of cookies.
10. Dip the half side of a cookie into yellow color, and then the other side into red color.
    
11. Glaze the surface of the cookie with sugar, this adds a hairy look of a peach to the cookie.
12. Place one green leaf into the junction area.
13. Repeat coloring, glazing and leafing for all the cookies.
    

Enjoy!





Notes: I used McCormick Assorted food colors, available in Walmart and possibly other retail stores. For flour, Pillsbury All-Purpose gives very good results, also available in Walmart.