“Tell me lies/Tell me sweet little lies” – this is how Fleetwood Mac’s song goes. I love this song – and I also love the cookies I am going to write about today. 🙂
This is a traditional fried cookie recipe I have from my mother, and intriguingly enough, the name of these cookies can be translated as “little lies.” You can find them in the Polish cuisine too, where they are called “angel wings.” To us though, they are “little lies.” I have been wondering why they bear this name in our cuisine. Is it because the exterior fools you into thinking they are crispy like cannoli or like the angel wings (their Polish counterpart), when in fact they are soft and light as a feather? Or is it because they trick you by appearing complicated, when in fact they couldn’t be easier to make? Questions and assumptions aside, these are delicious, quick to prepare, and very economical – you’ll get a lot of cookies if you use the quantities below.
Mom’s recipe features 1/2 cup of powdered sugar, which some of you might not consider to be enough. Use a little bit more (1-2 tbsp perhaps?) if you want your cookies to be sweeter. When I make these again I’ll also add vanilla and/or cinnamon. I’ll let you know how that goes.
Ingredients
2 cups flour
4 tbsp sour cream
1 whole egg
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup powdered sugar + extra for serving
1 tbsp rum
2 cups vegetable oil (for frying)
Put the egg yolks, egg yolk and egg white (from the whole egg) and the sour cream in a bowl and mix until well combined. Add the sugar and rum. Add the flour and mix until the dough is homogeneous. I usually add the flour gradually – for instance, in this case I added the flour in 4 stages of half a cup each. I used my hands to finish mixing the dough, but you can use a stand mixer to achieve the same result.
Roll out the dough until about 1/8in thick on a flat surface which has been lightly dusted with flour. Take a knife and make various shapes in the dough, or use the cookie shapes of your choice. As you can see from the pics below, we usually cut out rectangles and make ribbon-like cookies with our hands.
Heat the oil in a pan. Put the first batch of cookies in the hot oil and fry for a few minutes (they fry fast), turning them over halfway. Take the cookies from the pan and place them on a sheet of paper towel to remove the excess oil. Repeat the process until all cookies are done.
Serve the cookies with powdered sugar sprinkled on top and accompanied by a sweet dip of your choice: chocolate sauce, fruit jam, vanilla custard etc.
These cookies keep well for several days at room temperature, and I usually store them in a covered plastic bowl on the kitchen counter. As I go about my business in the kitchen, I take one cookie after another, savor them, and the day suddenly becomes brighter – and a lot sweeter 🙂
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