Sprinkle Cookie Sticks
Makes about 70 small sticks
Ingredients
4 eggs
1 cup oil
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
5 1/2 cups flour (you may need a bit more if the dough is too sticky)
Method
Preheat the oven to 350° F/180° C.
In your mixer, beat together eggs, oil, sugar, vanilla, baking powder and the tiny bit of salt. Mix well. Add in the flour gradually until you have a smooth cookie dough. Pluck off a small piece of dough and roll it on your palm. If it sticks to your hands, add in a bit more flour, perhaps 2 more tablespoons, until the dough is smooth. This dough is almost always smooth just the way it is and you don’t need to add more flour.
Now start shaping cookies. Pull off pieces of dough and gently roll each piece into a thin log with your hands. Cut the logs into equal lengths so that your finished cookies will look the same. If you make the pieces too thick or too long, you will wind up with fewer cookies and they will not be attractive.
Line the sticks up on your baking paper-lined tray. You should be able to place a lot of cookie sticks on the tray at once because although they do puff up, it’s not by much.
Slide the trays into the preheated oven and bake the cookies until they are slightly browned, about 10- minutes, sometimes even less than 10 minutes. (Overbaking will net you a too-crunchy, not-as-tasty cookie, so time it right.) Remove the trays in turn and allow the cookies to cool.
Now you can decorate them. Another time saver that I do is when I’m pressed for time and can’t bake and decorate on the same day, I first bake all the cookies and then freeze them away. Then, a different day when I can sit still for an hour, that is when I will take them out to do the next step. In fact, the decorating can even be done while they are still frozen, so there’ no waiting time involved.
Melt some plain, semi-sweet pareve chocolate in a bowl via your microwave or in a double-boiler. Pour some sprinkles into a small bowl and have it nearby. Layer a tray with baking parchment and now you are ready to begin.
Dip the end of each cookie stick into the melted chocolate. Let the chocolate drip off a bit, but while it is still wet, roll it quickly into the sprinkles so that the sprinkles stick to the chocolate. Lay each finished cookie down on the clean baking parchment to dry and continue with the next cookie until all are done. Freeze on the tray until the chocolate has hardened. Now you can place them in freezer bags or Ziplocs until you need them.
