COOKIE (With Date Filling)

Ingredients :

For dough ;

3 glasses of flour (1 glass=200ml.water)
2,5 tablespoonful powdered sugar (NOT heaping)
1 pack of margarine (1 pack=250gr.)

For filling (The amounts are for approximately three parties);
1 kg. date (preferrably Iran date)
½ pack of butter (1 pack=250gr.)
¼ glass of rose-water or plain water


Instructions :

Preparation of the date filling :

1. Take the pits of the dates out.
2. Chop the dates to gain a paste texture.
3. Cook the date-paste with butter and rose-water for a couple of minutes, by constantly stirring.
4. Get it cool.

You prepared the filling.
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Preparation of cookies :

1. Put the flour, powdered sugar and margarine in a bowl and knead until you get a creamy dough.
2. Take a walnut-big piece of dough, first make a ball of it, and later flatten roughly in your hands.
3. Put this piece of dough in a cookie mold (which is gotten wet before every use, to avoid sticking).
4. Put half a dessertspoonful date filling right in the middle of it.
5. Close the filling with the dough around and press gently.
6. Turn the mold upside down to get the raw cookie out of it (and with help of your fingers “encourage” it to get out).
7. Put the raw cookie on an oven pan.
8. When the pan is full, put it in the oven heated at medium level.
9. Cook them not to fry, but to dry.
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Tips :

1. This dough is a very soft, creamy one. Don’t try to get it harder by putting more ingredient. At the beginning of kneading, you won’t easily gain a firm dough; contrarily it will be crunchy for some time. Don’t let it intimadate you, go ahead and knead more until you see that it’s turning to a soft creamy dough. This creamy texture is the reason of its high dissolvability in your mouth.

2. In mesuring the powdered sugar amount, don’t heap the table spoon with powdered sugar, as long as you don’t want to gain a fainting- sweet cookie.

3. To avoid it to stick in the cookie mold, it’s beter to wet inside of the mold before every process.

4. This is a generic cookie dough. With little adjustments you gain another dough for another cookie. For instance, instead of 2,5, if you put 3 tablespoonful powdered sugar (since you won’t use a sweet filling this time), add at least a glass of walnut crunches, and some powdered sugar and cinnamon over.. voila! now you’ve got another cookie named “Military Officer Button”.

5. If you put too much date filling, the cookie becomes too sweet. On the other hand, if you put too little, then you taste the dough more. In time you will catch the catchy taste :)

6. This cookie is not supposed to have a pinky colour. It’s cooked just to dry. But if you love it pinky, then let it be.

7. You must chop the dates well enough to gain a pasty texture.

8. During cooking the dates, the criterion is this; it should absorb all of the butter and rose-water and you shouldn’t see anything liquid in it.

9. Iran dates are the best for the filling, since its very soft and also 5 to 7 times cheaper than Madina and the likes in Turkey.

10. You can keep the rest of the date filling in your deep-freeze for next use.

11. As a rule of thumb, put your sweet works in an oven heated earlier at medium level and cook at medium level as well, and put the salty works in it heated earlier at high level, and cook at medium level.