Crinkles

I don’t know why I didn’t bake crinkles often before. I actually just baked them once years ago when I was still learning how to make something edible and I couldn’t remember if it was a success or not. Ok, maybe they were not, otherwise I would have baked them over and over again or at least wrote down the recipe in my notepad.

For some reason I thought about these black and white cookies that are usually baked at Christmastime last week when I was thinking of an easy recipe to prepare with kids in our cooking class. With kids, you can never go wrong with cocoa, butter and sugar. True enough, the crinkles were a huge success this time.

And since you ride on the success while you can, I also baked them last week for my husband’s grandpa’s 87th birthday. The whole clan couldn’t get enough of them! Some even asked about the recipe, hence this blog post with the recipe in Czech that my husband emailed to my mother in law in case other family members would ask for it as well.

Note: This recipe is borrowed from allrecipes.com. I just lessened the amount of vanilla extract as I have a concentrated one from Marks and Spencer and specified the kind of flour to use since there are gazillion of flour choices here in the Czech Republic. I also came up with a trick or two in managing the stickiness of the dough.

Ingredients:

2 cups fine flour
1 cup cocoa
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
powdered sugar for coating

Instructions:

In a bowl, sift flour and cocoa together. Stir in salt and baking powder.
In a separate bowl, beat eggs and sugar. Add vegetable oil and vanilla. Mix well.
Mix step 1 and 2 together. Cover bowl and chill dough for at least 4 hours.
Roll dough into balls. Dough can be very sticky so my trick is to roll balls with wet hands. Another trick is to put dough in the freezer for about half an hour before rolling it into balls.
Coat each ball with powdered sugar before placing it onto prepared and lined baking tray.
Bake in a pre-heated 180°C oven for 10-12 minutes.
Let cool before serving.

—————————Czech version—————————

2 šálky hladké mouky
1 šálek kakaa
1 a ½ šálku cukru krystal
½ šálku rostlinného oleje
4 vejce
1 lžička vanilkového extraktu (Ne vanilkový cukr. Nejlepší je vanilkový extrakt z Marks & Spencer.)
½ lžičky soli
2 lžičky prášku do pečiva
cukr moučka na posyp

Do mísy přesijeme dohromady mouku s kakaem. Přimícháme sůl a prášek do pečiva.
V jiné míse ušleháme vejce a cukr. Přidáme rostlinný olej a vanilku. Dobře promícháme.
Smícháme obsah obou mís (vařečkou). Těsto necháme alespoň 4 hodiny vychladnout.
Z těsta uválíme kolečka vlhkýma rukama – těsto se může lepit. Každé kolečko posypeme cukrem moučkou a umístíme na plech.
Pečeme v předehřáté troubě (180 °C) 10 až 12 minut.