Jen's Favorite Cookies: Root Beer Cookies

A recipe for a cakey, root beer flavored cookie with luscious root beer icing.

Yield: 5-6 dozen

Source: A neighbor, Angela Jeo, who tells me she got it from the LDS Jordan River Temple.

I've been anxious to try this recipe since my friend Angela sent it to me over Facebook a few weeks ago. Once again, I can tell you that I have never found a cookie recipe with buttermilk in it that I didn't love, and this is no exception.

The recipe is pretty simple, but if you don't keep root beer concentrate in your pantry, you will have to plan ahead.

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups sugar

1 cup buttermilk

1 1/2 tsp. root beer concentrate

2 large eggs

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

4 cups flour

1 1/2 cups chopped nuts

Icing:

1/2 cup butter

2 tsp. root beer concentrate

3 T. water

2-3 cups powdered sugar

Mix the ingredients together into a soft dough. Drop onto cookie sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Let me share a couple pieces of advice, if I may.

First, drop the dough onto a cool cookie sheet. I made the mistake of loading up a warm sheet with dough before I was ready to bake them, and met with disaster. Well, not epic disaster, just mild disaster. When the dough melts and gets a bit liquid, then it bakes into something very crunchy, and incidentally, hard to remove from the pan. Which is no fun for anyone.

Second, baking time is key here. I forgot to set my timer, and underbaked the first pan-full. They turned out kind of gooey, and not so great. I baked the second pan-full for 12 minutes, which turned out to be a bit long. They were quite brown, and crispy around the edges. Third pan-full baked for closer to 10 minutes, which was the sweet spot, if you ask me.

Third, make them small. They just turned out better when they were small.

Fourth, don't stack the cookies until they are completely cooled. Yes, I learned this one the hard way.

The frosting, (as usual) takes the cookies from good to phenomenal. The recipe I had actually called for 3/4 cup of butter, but it sounded like it would make a lot of frosting, so I reduced it to 1/2 cup. I was glad I did, because I still had plenty of frosting, even for the nearly 70 cookies this recipe made. This icing is a touch thin, and I think that's a good thing. You'll definitely want to let them sit awhile before stacking the cookies between layers of wax paper.

UPDATE: I actually didn't have enough frosting. I never frosted the dozen and a half underbaked, gooey cookies from my first pan-full. If you want to frost them all, use 3/4 cup butter and 3 cups powdered sugar in the frosting recipe.