Rose-Marzipan Spirals: The results of watching the discount rack

After the surprise cookies, we at A Book of Cookrye wanted to make something that would actually be good. Also, we grabbed a bunch of these out of the discount rack and wanted to make something of them.

We at A Book of Cookrye had no idea what to do with this marzipan. We are not unique in this regard; enough people don't know what to do with marzipan that they have a web address printed on the box for tutorials. Opening it up, we found it looks like beige Play-Doh, feels like beige Play-Doh, and tastes like almond extract.

Rose-Marzipan Spirals ½ c butter ¼ c sugar ½ tsp rose water* (or whatever flavoring you think goes with almond) Food coloring if desired 1¼ c flour 1 (7 oz.) box marzipan 1 tbsp. milk (approx.) Heat oven to 300°. Grease a cookie sheet well. Thoroughly beat the sugar and butter (it's easier if you leave the butter out to soften all day than if you microwave it). Stir in the extract and coloring, then mix in the flour. Roll the dough on a floured surface until it's a rectangle-oval-ish shape somewhere between ¼" - ½" thick. Roll the marzipan to the same size, also on a floured surface. Lift up the marzipan to be sure it is not stuck onto the counter. Transfer the dough on top of the marzipan (you may end up patching it on). Then-- this is the tricky part-- carefully flip it over so that when you roll it up, the cookie dough will be on the outside.† Roll it up, and slice into pieces ¼" - ½" thick. Bake about 20-30 minutes, or until they smell a little bit toasted. *This is fairly cheap in middle-Eastern stores. If there are none nearby and you have to go to a foofy upscale grocery before you find any rose water, spare yourself the expense and just use something else. †You could just put the marzipan on top of the dough. But, since the dough tends to stick to the counter and then come up in pieces anyway, I found this way actually ended up being easier. I didn't have to try to unstick it as I was rolling it up.

Tonight we are doing something with this cookie recipe and the marked-down marzipan! Also, we are going to make them pink because for some reason we have a lot of red food coloring.
Marcus' parents sent him home with this when he visited and asked if they had any food coloring for... you know, I forget what we meant to make. All I know is we're set to make three heart attacks' and a diabetic stroke's worth of red velvet cakes. Where does one buy this much food coloring?

Around 3AM when you're going nuts from homework, you can shake it at people who annoy you and say it's blood.

Having carefully dripped some drops into the dough, it was indeed pink. There may be no point in coloring late night homework sustenance, but we all have our ways of amusing ourselves. Besides, it would go well with the rose water.

It's pink!

Some people can roll things out into neat, tidy shapes. My great-grandmother could roll tortillas into perfect circles. I'm more like my sister, who once lifted the dough off the counter, held it up, and said it was Massachusetts.

I guess they're shaped like some tiny island countries somewhere.

And so, after sticking the cookie dough piecewise onto the marzipan and carefully turning it over, we had a floury beige patty with pink fluff underneath.

I don't know whether I think this looks good or like disappointment waiting to happen.

And so, to carry us through another long night of work, we have this pink and beige roll! The colors work surprisingly well.

So neat and tidy!

This may be the prettiest slice-and-bake I've made. Or maybe it's just really late.

Even the end of it looks vaguely like a flower bud. Or at least, what a flower bud might look like if you cut off the bottom half.

I almost want to make green cookie dough and make cookie-marzipan flower things.

We actually got surprisingly neat slices given how... er... free-form the roll was.

As they baked, we pondered how wrong they could go. A bit leery from the barbecue sauce brownies, we reminded ourselves there was nothing too unusual in these. The worst we had to fear was the cookies falling apart.

They expanded more than I thought.

Look at how pretty they are!

Look closer!

The only problem was that I might have left them in the oven about 5 minutes too long. The marzipan caramelized on the bottom. If you like the way a Butterfinger stays in your teeth, you wouldn't mind.

Since it was early enough for people to still be downstairs, I ended up getting several opinions on these, by which I mean people kept asking for one and I couldn't turn them down since I regularly waylay anyone with a pizza box. Everyone liked them. The only thing I might do differently aside from baking them less is maybe cut the dough slices in half. These were kinda big.

By the way, they hold up to tea dunking really well.