The Christmas Cookie series continues! The rest of the posts aren’t in order of favorites because it’s just too hard for me to decide. This post contains a favorite from the annual “Christmas Cookie Extravaganza” with my friend Sara Beth. We went a little overboard the first year (2007, I believe) and baked from 9am until the evening. We scaled it back a little the next two years. The Cream Wafers make it on the menu each year though! We use the recipe from Sara Beth’s vintage Betty Crocker Cooky Book.
We make them small, because they look cuter (and you can eat a few without feeling guilty!). Although I’m not always a huge fan of making cut-out cookie because they can be somewhat labor-intensive, this recipe is great because it calls for just a few ingredients and they taste so good!
For Cookies:
2 cups flour
1 cup butter
1/3 cup heavy whipping cream
Sugar
Mix flour, butter and the whipping cream together. Cover and refrigerate about 1 hour or until firm. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Roll dough 1/8 inch thick on lightly floured surface. Cut into desired shapes with small round cookie cutters. Put sugar in a shallow bowl. Turn each cutout in sugar to coat both sides. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Prick each cutout with fork about 4 times. Bake 7 to 9 minutes or just until set but not brown. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely, about 1 hour. Meanwhile, make the filling.
For Filling:
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon of flavor extract of your choice (we use vanilla or almond, but you could do lemon, peppermint, or whatever you want!)
Food coloring, if desired (we use green and red)
Mix all ingredients together. If the frosting is too thick, you can add a bit of milk or water. If it’s too thin, add more powdered sugar. Spread the frosting onto the backside of a cutout cookie, then sandwich together with another cutout cookie. Tip: we put the frosting into a piping bag to frost the cookies. It’s really easy and looks a lot neater.
My third favorite new cookie this year is not actually a cookie, but a candy bar. This recipe comes courtesy of my friend Christina’s grandmother. Christina and I made these together (along with the caramels) when she was inspired after seeing these bars at Yum! Kitchen and Bakery in St. Louis Park (I highly recommend the place). I enjoyed one of these bars pretty much every day after work while making dinner or waiting for John to get home from work. Needless to say, I’m spending lots of time on the treadmill these days.
Nut Goodie Bars Cut them small – they are very sweet!
Butter a half-sheet sized jellyroll pan. Melt chocolate and butterscotch chips in a large bowl in the microwave, stirring after 30-second intervals until melted. Stir in peanut butter. Mix well. Spread 1/2 of the mix onto pan. Place in refrigerator to set. Stir peanuts into remaining mix and set aside. In a large saucepan over low heat, melt butter then slowly add evaporated milk. Stir in pudding mix. Stir constantly until thickened slightly – do not boil. Remove from heat and slowly stir in powered sugar. Add vanilla. Carefully spread over chilled chocolate layer. Chill 30 minutes. Drop reserved chocolate and peanut mix over chilled pudding layer. Spread to cover. Cover and chill until firm. Cut into 1-inch squares and enjoy.
My second favorite cookie of the season was these gingerbread cookies, from Martha Stewart (of course). I slightly under-baked them (about a minute) so they’d be a little softer, and they were very good – a little spicy and not too sweet. And they kept for a few weeks in a tightly sealed bag. This batch made so many that I ended up wrapping them up in cute little plastic bags for my coworkers.
Since I tend to go a little overboard with the Christmas baking, I decided to make a few batches of dough the weekend after Thanksgiving and freeze them, knowing that I’d probably be burned out on baking by December 15 or so. Then all I had to do a few weeks later was let the dough thaw and then roll it out, cut out the cookies, and bake them off. I’d highly recommend this strategy if you, like me, tend to “bite off more than you can chew” when it comes to holiday baking! (I also made the dough for Chocolate Butter Cookies and Rugelach ahead of time and froze them – more on those later!)
Basic Gingerbread Cookies from Martha Stewart, makes a lot
6 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup dark-brown sugar, packed
4 teaspoons ground ginger
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground clove
1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 large eggs
1 cup unsulfured molasses
Mix together flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar until fluffy in a mixer. Mix in spices and salt, then eggs and molasses. Add flour mixture; combine on low speed. Divide dough in thirds; wrap in plastic. Chill for at least 1 hour (or freeze for a few weeks like I did).
Heat oven to 350 degrees. On a floured work surface, roll dough 1/8 inch thick. Cut into desired shapes. Transfer to ungreased baking sheets; refrigerate until firm, 15 minutes. Bake 8 to 10 minutes. Let cookies cool on wire racks, then decorate as desired. I used these cookie cutters from Williams Sonoma and made royal icing and put it in a piping bag to decorate.
I’m starting off the Christmas Cookie series with my favorite creation from this year – caramels! They were fairly easy to make and so delicious. I made them with my friend, Christina, and we actually cut the batch in half (then each took half the batch) so I think if you made the whole recipe, you just might be wrapping up the caramels until New Year’s Eve! You’ll need a candy thermometer and a whole lot of heavy cream for this recipe.
4 cups heavy cream
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
4 cups light corn syrup
4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 16 pieces
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Vegetable-oil cooking spray
Spray a half-sheet pan with cooking spray, then line with parchment or wax paper overlapping on two ends, and spray that with cooking spray. Set aside in a spot where it will not be moved. In a 2-quart saucepan, combine cream and sweetened condensed milk; set aside.
In a heavy 6- to 8-quart saucepan, combine corn syrup, 1 cup water, sugar, and salt. Clip on candy thermometer. Over high heat, cook until sugar is dissolved, stirring with a wooden spoon, 8 to 12 minutes. Brush down sides of pan with a pastry brush dipped in water to remove any sugar crystals.
Stop stirring, reduce heat to medium, and bring to a boil. Cook, without stirring, until temperature reaches 250 degrees (hard-ball stage), about 45 to 60 minutes (it didn’t take this long for us, but we did cut the batch in half). Meanwhile, cook cream mixture over low heat until it is just warm. Do not boil. When sugar reaches 250 degrees. slowly stir in butter and warmed cream mixture, keeping mixture boiling at all times (be careful – it bubbles up!). Stirring constantly, cook over medium heat until thermometer reaches 244 degrees (firm-ball stage), 55 to 75 minutes (again, it didn’t take ours this long to get to 244 degrees). In order to prevent burned parts from making it into the candies, you have two options: 1) make sure to scrape the bottom of the pan while you stir, or 2) make sure you don’t scrape the bottom at all. Stir in vanilla. Immediately pour into prepared pan without scraping pot. Let stand uncovered at room temperature for 24 hours without moving. Our set in less than 24 hours but I left them for that long, just to be on the safe side.
To cut, spray a large cutting board generously with cooking spray. Grasping the overhanging parchment paper, unmold caramel from pan onto sprayed surface. Cut into 1-by-1 1/4-inch pieces, or other shapes. Wrap each in cellophane or waxed paper. I used a large pizza cutter to make the initial cuts, then a metal pastry cutter to cut any pieces that didn’t get cut all the way through.
Yep, there’s a piece missing. I needed to test them out!
In the next few posts, I will write about my favorite Christmas cookie recipes that I tried this year. Here are a few pictures from my 2009 cookie spread! I hope you enjoyed the holidays and got everything you asked for (I did – a Le Creuset French oven and skillet)!
