Brown Butter Carrot Cookies with Orange Glaze

Inspired by the delicious Brown Butter Carrot Cake I made recently, I decided to give carrot cookies a whirl. Recently my grandma sent me a recipe for carrot cookies which she clipped from a Penzeys Spices catalog. I was intrigued by the recipe but wanted to make the cookies my own. So I half-ass crossed the Penzeys’ recipe with Browned Butter Snicker Doodle Cookies (meaning I didn’t actually look up the Snicker Doodle recipe; but went off memory), which resulted in a puffy and cake-like cookie.

ingredients.

½ c. browned butter
¾ c. shortening
¾ sugar
¾ c. brown sugar
2 eggs
2 heaping c. finely grated carrots
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3 ½ to 4 c. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. cream of tartar
powdered sugar
fresh squeezed orange juice

directions.

Cream together the sugars and shortening. Add the cooled brown butter, eggs, carrots and vanilla and mix well. Add the flour, baking powder and salt and mix to combine. Cover with wax paper or Saran wrap and refrigerate overnight.
When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350°.
Roll dough into balls (a bit smaller than the size of a golf ball) and drop onto greased cookie sheets. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. While the cookies bake, combine powdered sugar and orange juice to make an icing or drizzle to your desired consistency. Remove the cookies from the oven and let cool for a few minutes and then drizzle with icing while still warm.

You want these cookies to come out a bit undercooked (when you bite into one immediately after pulling from the oven) because they either a) continue to cook once pulled out of the oven or b) they appear fully cooked when they cool. (I can’t figure out which one it is.) But if you fully cook them, they seem almost dry and too cake-y when cooled. Just a little tip from me to you. Most of the cookies I made were overdone, so I wasn’t completely thrilled with this cookie. I would, however, try the recipe again to see if I could perfect it.

Also, I wasn’t thrilled with the orange flavored glaze. But I’m not a huge fan of orange flavored anything (other than a nice juicy orange, which I eat almost every day.)

Recipe rating: 