Recipe: Andie's Great Grandmother's Cocoa Cookies (chocolate wafers)

GREAT GRANDMOTHER'S COCOA COOKIES

AndieP: "This recipe is over 200 years old. It was given me by my great-grandmother (b.1844 - d 1949). These cookies are the most intensely flavored chocolate cookies of any I have every tasted - We always had them for Christmas and on special occasions when grandma made ice cream. These cookies are excellent keepers if stored in a tightly closed tin (however the tin has to be in a locked vault or secret hidey-hole, otherwise they disappear like magic).

These wafers can be broken up and sprinkled over vanilla ice cream. Also can be rolled between sheets of baking parchment to make crumbs that can be used to coat cakes that have been smoothly frosted with buttercream or sour cream or even the old faithful 7-minute frosting."

1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted (sweet) butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder (Droste) - Please use only Dutch process cocoa the other kind doesn't work in this recipe.
1 tablespoon water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
Powdered sugar or vanilla sugar (for dusting)

Cream butter and sugar together. Add cocoa powder, 1 tablespoon water and salt.

Beat the egg and add with vanilla to the butter mixture.

Sift the flour and baking soda together twice, then gradually sift it into the batter, continue beating until flour is completely blended.

Turn out onto plastic wrap, flatten to about 1-inch thick, wrap dough tightly and refrigerate overnight.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Allow dough to come to room temperature.

Dough can be rolled out between 2 sheets of wax paper to less than 1/4-inch thickness. Cut into 2-inch rounds, dust with powdered sugar (or vanilla sugar) and place on baking parchment lined or greased baking sheets. (See other options for shaping below.)

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes but watch carefully, some ovens bake quicker than others - in my convection oven, they bake in 8 minutes-maximum. Using baking parchment is much easier - just slide the paper off the sheet and allow to cool then ease the cookies off the paper - they should be crisp as soon as they cool. Otherwise you have to be very careful removing them from the cookie sheets and the sheets have to be washed and re-greased before the next batch.

SHAPING OPTION #1:
This is the easiest for novice bakers....
Form dough into a rope 3/4 to 1-inch (Tootsie-roll size) in diameter. cut into 1-inch sections, roll into a ball, roll in powdered sugar (or vanilla sugar), place on baking parchment, flatten with bottom of a hobnail glass dipped in powdered sugar or the vanilla sugar, bake as above.

SHAPING OPTION # 2:
Roll out very thin right on baking parchment. Using a pizza cutter, pie crust cutter or crimping roller, etc. cut into strips, straight or wavy, or into squares, triangles or diamonds. Slide baking parchment onto a cookie sheet and bake as above. Slide parchment onto a cooling rack. When cookies have cooled enough to touch, roll into cylinders and dust with powdered sugar or let cool and dip one end into melted white chocolate.

From: AndieP, SoCalif., 1997