White Beer Cookies

Recipe basically from Sean LaFond, Urbana, IL 

It's been a while since Team BJ has made dessert (OK January bit that was a dessert tasting and doesn't count), so we figured a nice beer desert would be in order.  Normally an easy task but a bit trickier with a light beer.  


I was leaning toward bacon beer cupcakes, but the J insists that cake is a lie so we came to a cookie conclusion instead.  


They are pretty cakey for cookies so they are almost just sweet beer biscuits with cookie icing, but hey I like cake.  We are serving them with Harpoon Brewery's UFO White (an unfiltered white Belgian style), which is what we used to make them.

Ingredients

Cookies:

• 2 bottles (12 ounces each) Belgian style white beer (we used UFO White from Harpoon Brewery)
• 5 tablespoons honey
• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 medium orange, zested
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• Icing:

• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup  powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon orange juice
• 1 tablespoon whole milk 
• 1/2 orange zested

Directions

1. Put the beer and honey to a medium saucepan and reduce over medium heat until you have about 1/3 cup of liquid. You will occasionally have to skim the foam off the top of the beer. This takes about 40 minutes.  Be careful the last 5 minutes or you will have beer caramel, which sounds better than it tastes.  Let this reduction cool to room temperature (ok I am impatient and just stuck it in the fridge till I was ready).
2. Cream the butter and sugar together.   As a side note, creaming butter with powdered sugar doesn't result in fluffy butter, just creamy butter....weird. 
3. Add the egg and blend thoroughly.  It ends up looking like cottage cheese....gross.
4. Then add the vanilla, orange zest, coriander, and beer reduction and blend again.  Now it looks king of like you used a potato ricer on small curd cottage cheese....even grosser.
5. Mix the flour and baking soda together then slowly add to the batter.  Hey it looks like dough...well really wet cookie dough, almost frosting consistency.  If I had though ahead I would have put it in the fridge a bit to make scooping easier....so if you are cooking these put the bowl in the fridge for 20-40 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
7. Scoop mounds of cookies onto an aluminum cookie sheet lined with parchment. Bake for 15 minutes.  My oven is super hot, you might need 20 minutes.
8. Let the cookies cool completely on wire racks.
9. Icing: Using the icing ingredients whisk the vanilla into the sugar. Mix the orange juice and milk together. Add milk and orange juice mixture until you reach the consistency of a thick paste. Using a butter knife put a dollop of icing on each cool cookie and spread it over the top. Put a small piece of orange zest from the grater as garnish. Let the icing harden to desired hardness and consume or store