Orange Cream-Filled Honey Snaps

Can you believe its December already?  With all of my crazy work travel this year the months have just flown by.  After a particularly intense week of travel, yesterday I decided to slow things down a bit and put myself in more of a festive mood by baking some holiday cookies.   I’m not sure if it was the sugar rush or just the joy of being home with all my cooking equipment, but I certainly felt much better after baking up some treats!

The recipe for the honey snaps that I made came from the December 2009 edition of Sunset Magazine.   In the magazine they give 4 different “twists” to the original recipe.  Three of the twists are pretty simple and just involve sprinkling some nuts or salt on top of the flat cookies.  Since I am a glutton for punishment, I chose the fourth and most difficult twist—the one where you have to roll the cookies into cylinders when they are neither too hot nor too cold and then fill the center of the cookies with an orange cream filling.

After a little trial and error in the kitchen (I burned a few pans of cookies and wrecked a few cylinders), I made some beautifully-filled and delicious honey snaps. Graham and I decided it would probably be best to share our tasty treats, so we took them with us to dinner at a friend’s house (who’s probably reading this!).  However, if I had fully read the recipe directions, I would have know that doing this was probably not the best idea…

By the time we got to dessert, my crispy little honey snaps had basically turned to mush.  Instead of picking the cookies up to eat, we spooned them on to a plate.   While everyone reassured me that the flavor of the cookies was still good, I was a little embarrassed.  A few of the cookies were also slightly burned, to which my friend politely said reminded her of crème brulee.

Now that I’ve made them once, I’m pretty confident that I can master them next time.   I’m also certain that you all can make them too.   Just remember to carefully watch them as them bake (they can burn fast!), move quickly to form them into cylinders when they are at the right temperature (see directions below), and finally make sure to serve them immediately after filling them with the orange cream.

Orange Cream-Filled Honey Snaps

Sunset, December 2009

The original recipe calls for baking the cookies for 10-12 minutes.  In my oven this was way too long, especially when the cookies were on the bottom rack.   Depending on your oven, it might take as little as 5 minutes for the cookies to fully bake.  I also recommend baking just one cookie sheet of cookies (5-6 cookies) at a time.  This makes the process of shaping them into cylinders much more manageable.

Cookies

• ¼ cup unsalted butter (½ stick)
• ¼ cup honey
• ½ cup powdered sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons flour

Orange cream filling

• 2 cups of heavy cream
• ¼ cup sugar
• zest of 1 small orange

Preheat the oven to 350° and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.   In a small pan, melt the butter and honey over medium heat.  Add the salt and the sugar and mix with a whisk until well combined.  Slowly whisk in the flour and stir until it is fully incorporated and there are no lumps.  Remove from heat and allow to cool for a few minutes.

Spoon small amounts (3/4 of a teaspoon or so) of the mixture on to the parchment lined baking sheet.   Make sure that there is a lot of space between the circles of batter, as they will spread out quite a bit when they bake (I put only 5-6 circles of batter on one tray).   If the batter gets too hard between trays, heat it over medium heat until it softens (stirring constantly).

Bake the cookies for 5-10 minutes (making sure to watch them carefully).  The cookies are ready to come out when they are a dark golden color and have small holes throughout.

Allow the cookies to cool for about 2 minutes on the cookie sheets.  During this time use a knife to separate any cookies that have run together.   Carefully lift the edge of one of the cookies and fold it loosely around the handle of a wooden spoon.  Quickly press the edge of the cookie onto its self and removed it from the spoon when it has firmed up enough to hold its shape.  Move quickly to form the rest of the cookies into cylinders (if they get too hard on the tray, you can put them back in the oven for a minute).

For the orange cream, whisk together the cream, sugar and orange zest, by hand or with a stand mixer, until it forms firm peaks.  Fill a large sealable plastic bag with the cream and snip a small hold in 1 corner of the bag.  Pipe the cream into the cooled cookie cylinders from both ends (be carefully not to break the delicate edges of the cookies).  Once filled SERVE IMMEDIATELY.

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