Cats Tongues Cookies recipe

Cats Tongues Cookies recipe

hello my name is Dennis and welcome to my trailer park white trash mobile home kitchen I really do live in a Mobile Home in a Trailer Park and this is my kitchen what I want to bake today is cat’s tongues Don’t Panic you’re not going to have to watch the newspaper for ads offering kittens to good homes by cats tongues I mean a French cookie these are French cookies and the French themselves at one time were concerned about the name back when I was in college I had a full collection of care cookbooks and that’s actually where I originally saw this recipe and he mentioned in his cookbooks that the French had tried to change the name maybe they were concerned about animal lovers or animal rights activists or something they had to they wanted to change the name to to elves tongues the name never caught on they are still known today as cat’s tongues they’re an unusual cookie they’re very thin almost paper thin and if you store them properly they’re very crisp and there’s a lot lot you can do with cat’s tongues rather than just eat them with coffee or tea so having mentioned that they’re cookies let’s get into the ingredients what these are made with for this recipe you will need five egg whites at room temperature these are from grated large eggs that’s important because the amount of liquid you have will determine how much flour you need I I measured this it came to about 2/3 of a cup and I weighted on a scale and it came to 58 o or 164 G I was trying to be as precise as possible because the flour and the liquid has to be really accurate then I have one teaspoon of vanilla extract 5/8 of a cup of butter also at room temperature 5/8 of a cup of sugar I have 1/4 teaspoon salt and I have about 3/4 of a cup of flour I weighed this and it came in at 3.1 Oz or 108 G that’s what I came up with as far as a formula to get the consistency that I need so that these cookies will bake correctly so those are the ingredients for our recipe this is relatively easy to mix up you can use a wire whisk or you can use an electric beater put the egg whites in first with the vanilla and combine those I have this on a little rubber mat so it won’t make so much noise and then I can just set that in there then we’re going to put the butter in and this is why you need everything at room temperature if the eggs were really cold from the refrigerator or the butter was cold this would just kind of congeal up into a mass I want to break the butter up in this step and what I’m looking for is to break this butter up into small beads again if this was really really cold this wouldn’t break up easily okay so you can see how that big Mass butter now is all broken up into small beads that’s what I’m looking for those beads in there and then I can add my sugar it’ll break up more when I add the sugar and the salt get that all mixed together and then start adding the flour the consistency I’m looking for here is kind of hard to describe it’s kind of like halfway between a liquid and a soft solid I’m not going to add all the flour but I did measure in advance so I’m pretty sure that flour is going to be exactly what I need and I want to get that all broken up cuz this is this will really finish breaking that butter up now you can see how that’s pretty smooth but that’s a little bit too runny there so I’m going to put the last of my flour in and that should give me exactly the consistency I want I want it to just slowly run out of the Whisk it shouldn’t stay up in the Whisk but it shouldn’t pour out either let’s see so you can see how it’s just dropping out of the Whisk that’s exactly what I want I don’t want it runny but I don’t want the whole Mass to stay up inside the Whisk either okay so that’s the consistency I’m looking for again that balance of the liquid ingredients and the dry ingredients gives me the consistency that I want we you’re going to be piping this batter onto a baking sheet rather than using a Piping Bag I just use a Ziploc bag you can use either um if you’re going to use a Piping Bag you want a small tip about a quarter inch tip but as I said I just use a a Ziploc bag I’m just going to put the batter there into our bag I really really like the consistency of this I can tell this is going to be just a perfect batter all right that’s good enough and then you just I put it in a bowl because it’s easier to hold it together that way seal it up get some of the air out and then that then becomes our Piping Bag and what I do is I just clip off the corner about A4 of an inch and that becomes our Piping Bag it’s that simple I have here two greased baking sheets these baking sheets have a non-stick coating on them I still grease them because it the the cookies will stick if you have plain aluminum uncoated baking sheets you’re going to have to do something to to help the cookies to lift off I tried making these cookies one time on an uncoated aluminum baking sheet and no matter how much I greased the baking sheet I couldn’t get the cookies off so a couple of things you can do is you can use baking parchment parchment paper I’ve done that the only problem I have with that is the the paper can crinkle after a while and then the cookies kind of get all squiggly but it works and then another thing that I like is these the silicone baking liner I’ve used this as well in baking it just has to bake longer because the cookies aren’t on the hot metal they’re on this sheet and it takes them longer to Brown but for my purposes because I have good baking sheets I’m just going to use these what I’m looking to do here is I call them 4in pencils about 4 in Long three or 4 Ines long if you go it up do it up high it’s going to squiggle on you so you don’t want to do that you want to get the point down close to the surface of the baking sheet and then you’ll get straight pencils this goes as you can see relatively quickly okay so there’s our baking sheet ready for the oven the oven I’m going to heat to 400° and I’m going to bake these between 6 and 7 minutes at about 6 minutes you have to start watching them closely because with the butter in there and the heat they’re going to melt and get very thin and then they’re going to Brown very quickly around the edges when they start Browning they Brown very quickly so you do have to watch them closely so I want to get these off the cookie sheet while they’re still hot and they are hot because if they cool on there they could stick and then what I need to do is as soon as these have cooled down I need to get them into an airtight container because if I don’t the air will get to them very quickly and what they’ll end up looking like is like this they’ll just be very rubbery these I made earlier and I put too much flour in them this is when I was experimenting with the amount of flour to use and these as you can see they didn’t come out as thin and they didn’t crisp as much but today happens to be a very damp day because of the weather they absorb moisture very quickly and if you want crisp cookies you have to get them into an airtight container very quickly this baking sheet has been through the oven once already so it’s very warm right after I piped the batter onto the sheet it started melting the butter started melting immediately so when this goes into the oven because they’ve already spread out these will cook much faster so whereas the first batch took exactly 7 minutes to be browned the way they were these are probably going to be fully done in 6 minutes couple of the things I would like you to see about these cookies is first of all look at how thin these are they’re practically paper thin very crisp very delicate and you can eat them as is if you’d like something that I like to do is using Nutella I like to spread the cookie with Nutella then Place another cookie on on top and make a sandwich cookie if you wanted to you could put melted chocolate on the inside you could dip part of these into chocolate but I think that makes these make very nice cookies so there’s a lot you can do with these you if you’ve got like a Charlotte mold you could put the cookies on the inside of a Charlotte mold and fill it with mousse these work fine as far far as being on the side as far as a plate of custard there’s a lot of ways you can use these cookies this is a very simple plain cookie to to start with you could even put something like jelly on the inside just keep in mind you don’t want to put something that’s got a lot of water in it because right away it’ll it’ll lose the uh crispness so those are some ideas of things you can do with cat’s tongues so my cookies are set and ready to go I’m just going to taste one here they’re crisp they’re delicate they’re sweet there’s a lot of different ways you can eat these I would have these with coffee or tea I can even imagine having this with something like a fine lure so we’re ready to go let’s go eat our cookies got Don’t Panic you’re not going to have to watch the newspaper for ads offering what’s that deer do those slacks make you look fat well turn around and let me see no you look just fine dear you’re welcome

How to make Cats Tongues (Langues de Chats). Don’t panic. These are French cookies.

Makes about 7 dozen.
By Dennis W. Viau; seen in a Galloping Gourmet cookbook.

At one time the French (where this cookie originates) thought the name might offend animal lovers. So, they changed it to elves’ tongues. The name never caught on.

Ingredients:

5 egg whites; room temperature (2/3 cup/150ml) by volume or 5.8 oz (164g) by weight)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5/8 cup (125g) butter; room temperature
5/8 cup (216g) sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup flour, approximately (see below), 3.1 ounces (108g) by weight

Directions:

Using a wire whisk or electric mixer, combine the egg whites and vanilla in a large bowl. Add the butter and whisk to break the butter into small beads. Add the sugar and salt and combine. Start adding the flour, a little at a time, and combine until the batter has a slightly runny consistency. This is the difficult part because if too much flour is added the cookies will be thick rather than thin. The amount of flour needed will depend on the size of your eggs. Larger egg whites will require more flour. When lifting the whisk from the bowl the batter should not stay in the whisk. It should gently and slowly run out of the whisk without being so much like a liquid that it runs like syrup. The ideal is halfway between a liquid and a soft solid. Think slightly runny frosting. I think “gloopy.” I find that weighing the egg whites and the flour gives me the best results. For 5 egg whites weighing 5.8 ounces (164g), 3.1 ounces (108g) of flour works best for me. With humidity and altitude, your kitchen might vary.

Place the batter in a one-gallon ziplock bag (or you can use a standard piping bag). Seal the bag and snip the corner to make an opening about ¼ inch (0.6cm) wide. Use a well greased cookie sheet with a non-stick coating (or line with parchment paper or silicone baking sheet). Pipe “pencils” about 4 inches (10cm) long and ½ inch (1.25cm) thick, with plenty of room between the cookies (they’ll melt and spread a lot), about 12 cookies per large baking sheet (the sheet I use is typically called a “half-sheet” and measures about 13×18 inches (33x46cm)). I tried making these cookies on baking sheets that were bare aluminum without a non-stick surface. No matter how I greased the sheet, the cookies stuck like glue.

Bake at 400°F for 6 to 7 minutes, watching closely. They should be brown around the edges and a golden yellow in the center. There is good reason to watch closely: They burn quickly.

Remove from the oven and quickly remove the cookies from the baking sheet with a spatula and place on a wire rack to cool. If they cool on the baking sheet they might stick and be impossible to remove.

When cool, store in an air-tight container to maintain crispness. These cookies can be decorated with chocolate, or use chocolate between two to make sandwich cookies. They are versatile. Be creative.