Canadian Maple Leaves

Jan H.'s Note:

I make this often, I believe it came from an old Good Housekeeping magazine, judging from the cliping. Original recipe called for maple syrup or maple-flavor syrup. I've tried both. Use the real thing, the maple-flavored gives it hardly any flavor at all. Also, the cookies seem to "ripen" after a couple of days. These are very good.

• Total Time: 1 hrs 40 mins
• Prep Time: 1 hrs 30 mins
• Cook Time: 10 mins

Ingredients:

Serves: 12-16

Yield: 4.0 dozen

• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup butter or 1 cup margarine , softened
• ¾ cup packed light brown sugar
• ½ cup maple syrup (the real thing!)
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ¾ teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Into large bowl, measure all ingredients.
2. With mixer on low speed, beat ingredients until well mixed, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula.
3. Shape dough into ball; wrap with plastic wrap.
4. Refrigerate dough 1 hour or until easy to handle.
5. Preheat oven to 350*F.
6. Grease large cookie sheet.
7. On lightly floured surface, with lightly floured rolling pin, roll 1/3 of the dough at a time 1/8 inch thick, keeping remaining dough refrigerated.
8. With floured 3 1/2 inch maple leaf shaped cookie cutter, cut dough into leaves.
9. Place cookies 1 inch apart on greased cookie sheet (or use parchment lined sheets.) Bake 10 minutes or until golden.
10. With pancake turner, carefully remove to wire racks to cool.
11. Repeat until all dough is used, greasing cookie sheet each time.
12. (If not using parchment).
13. Store cookies in tightly covered container.

Reviews

[Chef #48136]

I made these cookies for Canada Day, using real maple syrup and real butter. I iced them with Sugar Cookie Icing (Sugar Cookie Icing) to which I added maple extract. They looked great and they tasted good too. Despite using real maple syrup, I didn't find the maple taste came through very strongly... it was more of a subtle maple taste. The cookies weren't terribly sweet either, but rich and buttery. I brought them to work to share with my co-workers and I got rave reviews, so I guess these Canada Day cookies were a success!

[djafishfria]

Good recipe, needed a little more flour, but turned out well. I also used maple extract instead of the real maple syrup, and it was still good. Added yellow and red dye fall leaves. The dough was easy to work with, and cut well after being in the fridge for about an hour.

[Light Matters]

I used 100% pure Grade A dark amber Vermont maple syrup but could barely taste the maple syrup in the finished product. Like another reviewer, I decided to frost the cookies with maple syrup icing to improve their flavor. I used parchment paper to roll out the dough and had no trouble with the dough sticking, but found that I had to refrigerate the dough before transferring the cookies onto the cookie sheet because the dough was so soft. It was a lot of work for an average tasting cookie.