A Recipe For Biologists - Sand Dollar Cookies!

Today I have a guest post from the lovely Sofia and Sofia from The Daily Miacis. These girls are biologists and also love to cook so this recipe for Sand Dollar cookies seems perfect for them. Hope you enjoy it! Jen x

Hi everyone! We are the two girls from the blog "The Daily Miacis". We love a lot of things, so a lot is on our blog. But we are crazy for sweeties and we love to cook. So here is a recipes that joins two of our interest: cooking and biology!

The other day we made these cookies for two reasons - because they have cinnamon and because they look like Sand Dollars, cousins of the starfish. They have this name because when they die and drift to the coast, without spines and tissues, they look like a big silver coin like the American and Spanish old ones. Some believe that a long time ago people used them as an exchange coin.

Ingredients:

- 300 g softened butter

- 350 g powdered sugar

- 2 eggs whole

- 2 egg yolks

- 2 egg whites

- 2 tsp vanilla extract

- 500 gr flour

- 1/2 tsp baking powder

- a mixture of equals parts of cinnamon and sugar

- sliced almonds

1 - In a bowl, mixed together the butter and the powdered sugar until it reaches a creamy texture.

2 - Add the 2 wholes eggs and the 2 yolks. Beat until well combined.

3 - Add the vanilla extract.

3 - Add the flour and the baking powder. Mix until the dough is soft.

4 - Make a ball with the dough, wrap plastic wrap around the ball and let it refrigerate for at least two hours. If you want you can let it overnight.

5 - When ready, pre-heat the oven to 180 ºC

6 - In a floured surface roll out the dough about 5 mm thick. Cut out circles using whatever diameter you wish. I use the glass you see on the photo. Of course, a big cookie will be harder to make look like a Sand Dollar!

A little invention of ours!

7 - Put baking sheets on the tray oven
8 - Put the circles on the baking sheets and brush them well with the egg whites

9 - Sprinkle each circle with cinnamon sugar mixture.

10 - Press 5 almond slices in the center of each circle like in the photo. That way it will look like a sand dollar.

11 - Bake for about 3 minutes then take the tray from the oven and press the almonds slices again. If you think that the circles look a little bit pale, or if you want more cinnamon, you can sprinkle the circles again. Put them in the oven again and let bake another 10 minutes or until they reach a golden brown color.

12 - Remove from the oven and from the baking sheets and let them cool a little bit.

13 -  After 2 minutes you can eat your sand dollar cookies :)

Hope you like it and make them sometime. They are really tasty, good to eat while drinking some tea, or even coffee!

Enjoy!