Peach Cookies For Rose-Anne

My daughter Christy and I made these delicious cookies in honor of my sister-in-law Rose-Anne, who passed away this past week after a valiant fight with pancreatic cancer. This isn’t Rose’s actual recipe, but one I adapted from a couple of others I found online. I was a little concerned about making these cookies initially as I thought they might be a bit fussy to decorate but they ended up to be very easy to make, and we both loved how they turned out and tasted. I asked Christy to write a short post about why we chose these cookies to make in honor of Rose-Anne.

When traveling through Umbria this past summer with my parents, we stumbled upon many decadent pasty shops. Being the foodie family we are, we had to peek into every Pasticceria (pastry shop) to see what special pastries might be tempting us behind those beautiful displays. We also like to see what is unique to the area and how the regular findings in pastry shops compare. This one particular Pasticceria showcased these beautiful peach cookies, and my mind immediately went back to my childhood days.

When I was a child, my Aunt Rose-Anne would make these gorgeous peach cookies and this was before Cake Boss, Ace of Cakes and all the fancy desserts you see today. These peach cookies of Aunt Rose-Anne’s always took my breath away and I was completely in awe of them. She would make them for special events and I believe they are particular to the region of Italy her family was from, Pescara and were traditionally served at weddings.

We made these cookies this week as a tribute to my beautiful Aunt as she passed away at the young age of 52 after a long and hard battle with pancreatic cancer. She will be deeply missed but will always hold a very special in our hearts. Aunt Rose-Anne was a beautiful wife, an adoring mother, a devoted daughter, a caring sister and a wonderful Aunt.

~ Christy Hoban ~

Pancreatic cancer is a deadly disease that takes far too many lives each year. This coming year, thousands of North Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and will be told there is little hope for survival. Please donate to SAVE LIVES by raising funds to support research that focuses on detecting pancreatic cancer at a earlier stage and improving treatment options. Unlike other cancers, the survival rate has not improved in the last 40 years and it remains the only cancer with a 5-year survival rate still in the single digits at 6%. You can help change this statistic by joining our fight!

We believe … there CAN be a future without pancreatic cancer. We need your support to reach our goal and make this dream a reality. Please consider donating in Rose-Anne’s name. My niece Jessica has started a fund in her Mother’s name where you can donate to the Canadian Pancreatic Cancer society to support research and improve treatment. Just click on the purple ribbon below!

November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month …
Join the Global Movement to Shed Light on the Deadliest Form of Cancer

Click On The Purple Ribbon To Donate!

We made our peach cookies pretty large so they would better resemble peaches, and we chose peach jam for our filling, and a clear peach liqueur to color with food coloring to decorate our peaches. Instead, you could make smaller peaches which would look great on a cookie tray, and you could fill the cookies with Nutella or pastry cream instead of the peach jam we used if you prefer.

Buon Appetito!
Deborah Mele 2011
 

Peach Cookies

Yield: Make 2 Dozen Large

Prep Time: 30 mins

Cook Time: 20 mins

These pretty peach cookies would be perfect for a holiday cookie tray.

Ingredients:

3 Large Eggs
2 Cups Sugar
1 Cup Vegetable Oil
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
4 Teaspoons Baking Powder
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 Cup Whole Milk
6 Cups All-purpose Flour
Filling:
Peach Jam
Decorating:
Peach Liqueur
Yellow & Red Food Coloring
Super Fine Sugar
Mint Leaves

Directions:

For the cookies, first preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Place the eggs and sugar in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until light, about 3 minutes.
Add the oil and beat until creamy, then mix in the milk and vanilla.
Mix the flour with the baking powder and salt, then add this to the batter and beat just until it is combined.
Take a small amount of batter in your hands, and roll into a ball about 1 1/2 inches for large, 3/4 of an inch for the small sized cookies and place these on the baking sheets.
Continue to roll out all of the batter into balls, and then bake for about 15 to 20 minutes or until very light brown on the bottom.
Cool well.
For the filling, use a sharp knife, and cut out a circle at the bottom of the cookie removing the cookie centers and placing these in a bowl.
Be careful not to cut completely through the cookies, but you need to make space for the filling.
Once you have cut the bottom of each cookie, break up the cookie pieces you have cut out into fine crumbs.
Add enough of the peach jam to the cookie crumbs until you have a sticky filling.
Carefully fill each cookie, and then matching cookies or shape and size, place two cookies together, using the peach mixture as glue to hold the cookies together.
Clean any peach jam that may ooze from the seams.
To decorate, place about 1/2 cup of the peach liqueur in two separate bowls, and color one yellow and the other red.
In a third bowl, place the suer fine sugar. (I found the cookies worked better if the colors were fairly strong.)
Carefully dip each cookie pair into the red mixture first 3/4 of the way up the cookie, then dip the other end in the yell mixture.
I found that if I then dipped the yellow end briefly in the red liquid it created a more natural looking color.
Gently blot the cookie with paper towels to remove most of the liquid, then immediately roll the cookie in the sugar.
Place the finished cookie on a sheet of waxed paper to dry and continue to color the rest of the cookies in the same manner.
Once the cookies have dried, you can insert a couple of mint leaves and a whole clove to resemble a peach.