Maple Walnut Cookies

I was desperate to bake this week, as I so often am, so I got out my trusty cookie cookbook and turned to these.  I have been planning to make these cookies for about a year and have had most of the ingredients on hand to do so.  But, as you know, there are so many cookie recipes to make and only so many mouths to inhale said cookies.  Finally, I made them and they were worth the wait.  They have maple syrup as a key ingredient along with the walnuts.  They are actually a rolled cut out cookie even though they have small bits of walnut in them.  The recipe wanted me to make them into maple leaves, but I left my maple leaf cookie cutter in my other pants, so I used this heart.  Just as good in my opinion.

 
This recipe also marked my first foray into royal icing.  I got out my egg whites and threw the ingredients all together.  I got out my hand mixer because I knew I didn't want to make this by hand.  After about five minutes of mixing I stopped and got my book, hoping it would distract me enough so that when I finally looked down, voilà! the egg whites would be stiff.  No go though.  I decided I wanted to add more powdered sugar but to my dismay, I was out (number one on my grocery list this morning).  I decided to just try out what I had and it totally worked.  I even colored some of it.

I took a survey of consumers and some said they liked the cookies with the frosting better than the cookies without the frosting and some said the opposite.  When I first tasted the frosting the only thing I tasted was powdered sugar and I was not impressed.  Luckily, it tasted better the next day.  They were approved by taste-testers everywhere (at my work).