Happy Saturday everyone! I don't know how I do it, but I am struggling with my time management lately and I can't force myself to do neither blog related stuff nor all the stuff for law school classes. Originally, I wanted to bake something more healthy for you this week, however when my mother bought pack of Czech traditional "Koka" cookies earlier this week, I ditched the original plan and decided to recreate the cookies myself. For motivational purposes, you know... I used to love these when I was kid and I found the recipe which is pretty close to the original (if you use properly grated coconut, unlike I did, lol). Let's bake!
Ingredients:
230g all purpose flour225g unsalted butter
125g confectioner's sugar
100g grated dried coconut (the smaller pieces the better)
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract - optional
1 egg yolk
pinch of salt
The process of making the dough is quite simple. First, you need to combine all the dry ingredients very well. Then I recommend incorporating butter and working this dough base a bit because once you add the egg yolk and vanilla extract, it will get slightly harder to work the butter in properly and not having lumps of butter in your dough. The last step is adding egg yolk and vanilla extract and combining everything properly to form smooth ball of dough.
At this point it is absolutely up to you how you want to make your cookies. I got this lovely spring rabbit cookie cutter, so I decided to go with it and make some spring themed cookies which would be perfect to give out to the carollers that will pay visit to our lovely house on Easter Monday (pff, who would want regular chocolate eggs anyway, right?).
You can also make more simple and more traditional shape of these cookies that looks like the store bought version of these cookies. For this shape, go with small sized balls (mine were 1,5cm to 2cm in diameter and it was bit too big) which you transfer onto the baking sheet where you press each of the ball by the fork to flatten them and give them the typical "pattern."
As for the baking instructions, I went with approx 15 minutes on 190°C.
Note to self: Next time you cut these cookies with cookie cutter, let the damn cookies cool down completely. They always DO fall apart unless they are cool enough, no matter how hard you try to transfer them, stupid!
At this point, just take load of cookies to your workplace and enjoy this delicious coconut and cocoa motivation. It really helps, trust me! Btw, they taste their best not on the day you bake them, but on the day after. when they get bit more moist. Enjoy! ^^
