Such was the situation when I saw a recipe in Midwest Living Magazine for Orange-Saffron Stamp Cookies. Here's a picture that they showed. Now doesn't that just make you want to bake?
Furthermore, they had my attention by starting the entire recipe with a little bit of information on Saffron - clearly one of the most expensive seasonings you can buy - a 1/2 tsp was about $9.00
Saffron comes from the stamen of crocuses as pictured here.
That lovely little red strand is the saffron. When you have a pile of it - it looks like this.
And when you combine it as in the recipe with 2 Tbsps of Milk - it turns everything an amazing yellow color. They actually used saffron as a dye. But I dye-gress.
So I purchased my ingredients and settled into making these wonderful cookies. The recipe has you mix up the dough and refrigerate it for ease in handling. Then you roll the dough into balls and press them down with a cookie stamp. I only had a couple of brand new craft stamps for ink and just fyi - those don't work with the cookie dough. So I just pressed my cookies down and away they went into the oven.
They came out all orangey like the above photo and looked amazing. But there was one important thing I learned. Something that I thought I had already established, but wanted to make sure because these cookies looked so amazing.
I DON'T LIKE SAFFRON.
Sigh. What a disappointment. I'd only ever used saffron before in dinner rolls - it was a Swedish recipe and I was sure I would love it - but I wasn't impressed and didn't care for the taste. I was sure, however, that cookies would be different. I really haven't met a cookie I didn't like. I suppose now I have and it was an expensive lesson to learn.
But in keeping with my mother and grandmother's advice of "You can always make something better by adding frosting" I coated those suckers with an powder sugar frosting with orange and it did improve them considerably. All of this to say - sometimes things just aren't what they appear to be and our expectations can be easily defeated. Oh well, live and learn. I saw another recipe for holiday cookies that bears some consideration so maybe I'll give that a shot next week.
However, if you've a hankering to tray this saffron recipe - here's the website:
http://www.midwestliving.com/recipe/orange-saffron-stamp-cookies/
God Bless You!
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