A thank you shaped as a bunch of cookies: cornmeal lemon snaps, lavender cookies, and dried fruit squares.

(In Portuguese)

Well yes, I even could have made up a longer a title for the post, but I thought this one was ok. :)

I baked three kinds of cookies at once to send to a friend in Florianopolis, who I have much to thank to.
Before someone frowns up: I swear you can make these squares with another filling.
The recipe came from here.

In this post, the dried fruit squares. Soon I'll be posting the two others.

1 ¾ cups (245g) all purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (100g) unsalted butter, room temperature
¾ cup (150g) granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind

1 cup (110g) finely chopped dried fruit
¼ cup (50g) demerara sugar, to sprinkle

(Cup measure: 240ml)

At this time, I started off doing something silly... the butter was cold, so I melted it in a small pan instead of waiting. Then I added the sugar, egg, vanilla and lemon rind to it and stirred until smooth, but without whipping.

Next, I added the flour, baking powder, and salt, kneading with my hands.
Since the batter wasn't very uniform, I added some cold water, one teaspoon at a time, until I could shape the batter as a ball.
So I divided it in two, and formed a rectangle with each half, letting it rest in the fridge for 2 hours, covered in plastic. Patricia said you can leave it there up to one day.

15 minutes before rolling out the batter, I took it out of the fridge.
I didn't get to roll it out as thin as it should be, but the right would be to achieve a 20x40cm rectangle. This batter is tricky, because when it it's cold, it's stiff, and it warms up pretty fast, becoming sticky.

I recommend opening it between two sheets of parchment paper, so it won't stick to the rolling pin. Well, when you have the rectangle with the right size, spread half of the fruits over half of it. Using the paper a guide, I folded the batter without fruit over the batter with fruit. I peeled the paper away, sprinkled half the sugar (which should be demerara, but I used granulated) and pressed lightly to make it stick to the batter.
I left it for 10 minutes in the freezer before cutting the squares with a sharp flat knife.


I baked them for 15 minutes at 180oC in preheated oven, in parchment paper lined sheets.
This batter takes effort to make, but comes out delicious. I feel some demerara sugar on top and a thinner crust would make them infinitely prettier.


Yields 30 cookies.