[Sca-cooks] cookie rolling question

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Dec 13, 2007, at 11:17 PM, Ang Malone wrote:

> This isn't laziness, I have rheumatoid arthritis and the last time it
> flaired it made my hands and some other joints likely to have pain
> from certain kinds of repetitive motions, so here's the real story:
>
>  I found my mother's christmas cookie recipe, and I was reading and
> thinking I wonder if rolling this out is going to be a hard
> job?  Then I walked past my shiny kitchen aid mixer and a light bulb
> went on over my head, and I thought  hmmmmmm
>
> I wonder if I can use the pasta rolling attachment to roll out the
> cookie dough, it says in the recipe to roll it out to be 1/4 inch
> thick.  So my question is has anyone ever tried this?  Does it work  
> well?

My experience with using pasta rollers for low-gluten, "short" doughs  
is that the pasta roller tends to tear it, and is essentially useless.

You might be able to pat the dough (or perhaps you know some great  
hulking brute that might help you out) between two sheets of lightly  
oiled or sprayed-with-cooking-spray parchment, maybe even use one of  
those steak bats butchers sometimes use for flattening cutlets (looks  
like a hockey puck on a stick). Don't try to do too big a ball of  
dough at once, or you'll either flow over the edges of the parchment,  
or roll it too thick...

Or, maybe the recipe can be adapted to go into one of those extrusion  
gun thingies.

> I am really just curious because I am pretty sure I am going to try
> it out anyway  I have been having dreams about her christmas cookies,
> the recipe isn't anything special, I think it's more all that tender
> loving care that went into baking and decorating the cookies I can
> see her in the kitchen with her holiday table set up in the kitchen
> and decorating the cookies using a toothpick for a paintbrush.  They
> were amazing cookies, those and the ones rolled in sesame seeds.  Yum.

I can understand. I'd give anything to be able to eat Christmas  
cookies made by my Mom even one more time, rather than use her recipe,  
and her cutters, this weekend in my own kitchen... not that that will  
be a negative experience, mind you, but it'll be quite an emotional  
one...

Adamantius