Cookies with Cornmeal (with photo)

[farfallina]

Hi again with my 3rd recipe. Very soon I won’t consider myself as a newbie anymore

I had seen this recipe in a Turkish magazine and recently I’ve adapted it to Thermomix. I got many compliments whenever I made these cookies. I highly recommend them.

Before you try this recipe, you should know that there is a discussion going on about cornflour and cornmeal. You can see the comments below.
Apparently cornflour refers to cornstarch in some countries.
I live in Italy and what I used in this recipe is yellow cornmeal for polenta which is called as "Farina di granoturco/Farina di mais". In Turkish it is called as "Misir Unu"


Cookies with Cornmeal:
Ingredients:
200g margarine or butter (room temperature)
170g sugar
2 eggs
140g yellow cornmeal (not cornstarch!!!)
200g plain flour
1 pack of vanillin sugar (2 tsp)
1 pinch of salt

150g bitter chocolate


Preparation:
Put margarine and sugar in the TM bowl, proceed 3 minutes on Speed 4. (From the 2nd minute add the eggs one by one)
Use spatula to clean down the sides of the TM bowl. Add plain flour and cornflour by sifting. Add also vanillin and salt. Mix for 1.5 minutes on Speed 3-4 and at the same time use also the spatula through the hole of TM lid.
Cover the bake tray with wax paper (oven paper). Put the mixture in a pastry bag. And form the cookies by squeezing them onto the wax paper with the desired shape.
Bake them in 175ºC preheated oven for 15-20 minutes.

Make use of the bain-marie method to melt the chocolate.
When the cookies are cooled down, immerse half the cookies in the chocolate sauce and place them on alluminium foil. Let them rest until the chocolate cools down and sticks nicely on the cookies.

Enjoy!


Photos: Photo is here: http://thermomixtarifdefterim.blogspot.com/2010/04/cikolatal-msr-unlu-kurabiye_29.html

members' comments
Trudy - I thought that you would like to know that the other day after reading your recipe I thought I would have a go at making them. Didn't know then that you should use cornmeal so I used Cornflour (white Wings brand for the Aussies).  They turned out fine, not too sweet and my husband loved them.  They do need to be dipped into the chocolate though.
Thanks for the recipe.  I now need to try them using cornmeal!!!!

Thermomixer - With the cornmeal in Australia, it is sometimes called polenta.  I think the Tasty brand has Polenta in fine and coarser varieties, so beware, the finer one would be best.

[Very Happy Jan]

Yum. Think I'll give these a go tomorrow.

[judydawn]

Thanks farfallina, they look really nice.  You are very welcome on this forum after these recipes.

[farfallina]

Thank you

I hope you like the taste of them too 

[achookwoman]

Thanks for these interesting recipes farfallina.  I'm glad you have joined the Forum

[trudy]

The biscuits look and sound great. Can't wait to try them.

[judydawn]

I must ask regarding the comment of using cornflour and not cornstarch farfallina.  I googled to see if I could come up with the difference and became more confused because it seems cornstarch is what you use for thickening things and that is exactly what we use cornflour here in Australia for.  Is there some clarification you could give us on this one please and if we use the wrong one will it make much difference to the end product. 

[farfallina]

Thank you for the feedback and giving me the chance to clear this up

You are right. I checked it out on internet and there is a bit of confusion about it.
I guess the exact translation would be CORNMEAL.
I quote from Wikipedia: "Cornmeal is flour ground from dried corn. It is a common staple food, and is ground to fine, medium, and coarse consistencies. In the United States, the finely ground cornmeal is also referred to as cornflour. However, the word cornflour denotes cornstarch in recipes from the United Kingdom."

In Turkey it is yellow and used to make some kind of bread, cakes, cookies... etc
In Italy they often use it to make Polenta.

It looks yellow like in this photo: http://www.delallo.com/files/images/PolentaA.jpg

I believe that what you should use is "stone-ground yellow cornmeal"

I hope this works. I will change the name of this recipe not to let any misunderstandings. Because cornstarch and cornmeal are completely different!

[judydawn]

Thanks farfallina, that clears it up nicely.  We all have cornflour in our pantry but most would probably not have cornmeal.  I have polenta but it seems as if that is not the correct thing to use here.

[farfallina]

Hi again judydawn

As a matter of fact I used cornmeal for polenta since I live in Italy and it was just great. Here its called as Farina di granoturco or farina di mais. It shouldnt be parboiled kind though!

[farfallina]

I saw in an Australian web site cornmeal I am talking about is referred as "Finely milled cornmeal (maize flour – polenta)"

The link is http://www.vegeta.com.au/recipes/chicken-crumbed-with-polenta

[trudy]

Hi Farfallina,

I thought that you would like to know that the other day after reading your recipe I thought I would have a go at making them. Didn't know then that you should use cornmeal so I used Cornflour (white Wings brand for the Aussies).  They turned out fine, not too sweet and my husband loved them.  They do need to be dipped into the chocolate though.

Thanks for the recipe.  I now need to try them using cornmeal!!!!

[CreamPuff63]

i have been trying to get cornmeal at the shops, so I might try the polenta

[judydawn]

Am I right in thinking there are 5gms in those little packets of vanillin sugar Farfallina? I buy it in 100g jars. Guess you could substitute it with a teaspoon of vanilla paste or pure vanilla extract if you didn't have the vanillin sugar?

[Thermomixer]

JD - you could substitute with vanilla for sure, but probably 2 teaspoons in each packet?

With the cornmeal in Australia, it is sometimes called polenta.  I think the Tasty brand has Polenta in fine and coarser varieties, so beware, the finer one would be best

You may see these in the supermarket


You can get Italian polenta from Moretti ? easily too.