Amish Buttermilk Cookies from Amish Heritage

Amish Buttermilk Cookies - made dough February 8, 2024 from Amish Heritage

1 cup butter, softened (or 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup shortening)

2 cups brown sugar

3 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup buttermilk

4 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

Glaze

1/2 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon buttermilk or milk

3/4 cup confectioners sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes.
3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating on low speed after each addition, until just combined. Add buttermilk and vanilla; beat to combine.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add to creamed mixture in 3 additions, mixing on low speed after each addition until just combined.
5. Portion into tablespoon-size dough balls and evenly space on prepared baking sheets. Bake 10-12 minutes. Let rest on baking sheets for several minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.
6. Once cookies are cool, combine glaze ingredients in a medium-sized saucepan over medium heat, whisking until completely melted and smooth. Drizzle warm glaze over cookies.

A lot of my baking experiments are driven by what ingredients I need to use up before they expire. In this case, it was buttermilk. Yes, I know I can use buttermilk powder to avoid the expiration issue but rehydrated buttermilk powder just doesn't feel like using the richness of the real thing. Because it isn't. I also know I can freeze buttermilk for later use but where’s the challenge in that?

Buttermilk is always tricky for the uses I need it for. I've tried buttermilk "brownies" but they end up so cakey, they're really cakes, not brownies. It's always dicey how well they'd survive overseas shipping in military care packages. Normally a good use of buttermilk is in pancakes. Or biscuits. Or bread. None of which I can mail either or eat all by myself. 

So I went hunting for buttermilk uses in cookies. Turns out there are a lot of Amish cookie recipes out there. How genuine they are, I don't know. But I got this recipe from someone who used to be Amish so I'm going to assume that's pretty genuine.

This dough was more like a heavy, sticky batter than actual cookie dough and past experience baking with buttermilk in cookies taught to me expect this will be a cakey cookie. And it was. It didn't spread so much as puffed up and smoothed out. This isn't the kind of cookie you want to underbake too much as it doesn't set into a "fudgy" texture so much as seem like uncooked cake batter. But if you bake it too much, it can easily get dry. I underbaked the test cookie very slightly so you can see the middle in the picture below is a little moist and sunken. The baked ones puffed up and stayed puffy.

Surprisingly, although I'm not normally a cakey cookie sort of person, I liked these cookies. The flavor was good, like a nice little vanilla cake in cookie form. But be aware that's exactly what these are - cakey cookies. Or somewhat mini cakes in cookie form. I did end up packing and shipping them for a (large) care package and hopefully they'll survive the mail. The recipe made a lot so I baked them all off and included them in a large box going to a military chaplain to distribute. Between a full batch of this recipe and several other cookie batches I made, I ended up shipping 12 lbs of cookies. Hope they make it okay.