tray magnifique
...if i do say so myself.
not shown: holiday cookies #googolplex and #goodgodijustburnedmyselfout (same as previous years).
December 17, 2005
December 16, 2005
holiday cookies #umpteen and #infinity
to round out the pack, we have a winner and a loser.
citrus cookies, from an old recipe mom made yeeeears ago. i've added the innovation of rolling the dough log in colored sparkling sugar before slicing. it adds a lovely crunch and makes them even more realistic looking. the orange are better than the lemon, and they look better, too — it was easy to tint the orange dough just enough to differentiate it from the rind but not so much that it looks fluorescent; the yellow was harder to work with.
the loser are these peppermint cheesecake squares from a grocery store magazine. they taste very good, although peppermint and cheesecake is kind of a weird combination and you don't want more than one or two, but they look horrible: the black cookie crumbs from the crust got all over everything as i sliced them, and the red is just too vivid. these are the closest thing to a failure i made this year, but i'm including them anyway because, as this year's motto proclaims, it's only cookies, for crying out loud.
December 03, 2005
holiday cookies #11 and #12
first up, cranberry pecan tassies. it's a cream cheese dough mashed down into mini muffin cups, filled with brown sugar, egg, pecans, chopped fresh cranberries, and orange extract.
yum.
every year i wish i'd made more of them, so this year i doubled the recipe. it might be the most labor intensive cookie i make, more so even than the linzers, which pack a greater visual punch. with one thing and another, this ended up being a two-day batch. so please eat them slowly.
(last night i was packing up cookie tins to take to the nice ladies who ran the preemie playgroup. paul helpfully brought in the cookies from the freezer, "but not," he said, "the tassies or the pretzels." "why not?" i asked. "because more for me." i told him i'd give the ladies my portion, not his. he grudgingly agreed: "okay. but then i fully intend to put a sign on the tray saying, NONE FOR JULIE.")
we also have these funky chocolate/mint bars. i shouldn't say this in front of people who might eventually be eating them, but this is the only batch so far that's been a disappointment. year before last i got these nice andes mint chips — andes candies cut into tiny bits for baking. because my grocery store doesn't carry them, i tried to replicate them by chopping the regular mints into flinders. but they were still too big for this recipe, which calls for mini chocolate chips, so the dough tore in spots, revealing the filling.
speaking of the filling, it's a white chocolate concoction flavored with mint extract. the recipe called for two to three drops of food coloring "to tint it a faint pastel green." since i am no fool, i added one drop, which turned the whole batch this unfortunate neon color.
look, they taste good, i promise. just close your eyes and pretend they're lovely.
November 20, 2005
holiday cookie #10
these come from regan daley's in the sweet kitchen, the brownie version of her chocolate cherry toffee cookies.
instead of using chocolate chunks, on a suggestion from terry i used nestle's chocolate/caramel morsels. i colored white chocolate with powdered food coloring to festive up the tops. and all i have to say is this:
do not eat them. they are poison. please, i beg of you, leave them untouched on the platter. then return them to me for safe and proper disposal.
remember: poison! do not eat!
this has been a public service announcement.
holiday cookie #9
behold the mighty pretzel! these are made from a recipe for light spice cookies in the king arthur flour cookie companion. the dough rolled and cut beautifully, and if my pretzel cookie cutter clung a little bit too stubbornly to the interior scraps where there should have been holes, i was in a forgiving mood. (i'm pretty sure i was high as a kite from the stupefying waft of anise and cinnamon.)
i brushed each pretzel with egg white, then sprinkled them all with coarse white sanding sugar. i wanted them to have the look of real pretzels. unfortunately, the sugar wasn't as opaque and white after baking as pretzel salt would have been. maybe i'll use that next time instead.
special bonus cookie: after rolling and cutting four dozen pretzels, i was pretty sure i had enough, so i used the remaining dough to make animal cutouts. i doubt they'll get decorated any more than this, but what's not to like about a giraffe with a necklace?
November 13, 2005
holiday cookie #8
all hail martha stewart! but all hail terry even harder. it was she who introduced the innovation of maple to martha's cream cheese walnut cookie recipe, an improvement that deserves some fanfare.
you replace some of the sugar with maple sugar in a straight 1:1 ratio, and add maple flavoring instead of vanilla. in addition, with a generous assist from paul, who built a mold, i sliced the cookies into rectangles instead of the usual rounds, since i needed a different shape in the mix. i did not, as martha suggests, roll the dough in chopped walnuts before baking, since cookie #5 had already had that treatment. but i am toying with the idea of adding a drizzle of maple glaze (as seen here) to punch up the maple flavor a bit, as it's currently pretty subtle.
November 12, 2005
holiday cookie #7
these beauties come from martha stewart's jaw-dropping holiday cookie magazine — not only is it bursting with dozens of recipes i wish i had time to try, it's gorgeous to look at. its finest asset is its two indexes, one sorted by cookie category and one alphabetical, both of which feature pictures of the cookies so you can decide at a glance which look most appetizing.
these cookies. oh, these cookies. they're made by pulverizing roasted, salted cashews with oil, then doing the whole butter/sugar/flour thing, mixing in some additional chopped nuts, and baking. you flatten the cookies halfway through their bake time, and finally drizzle the cooled cookies with a mixture of melted caramels and cream.
yum.
i was initially worried that they'd taste like nothing more than glorified peanut butter cookies, but they're unspeakably delicious.
wait a minute, so are peanut butter cookies. but you get the idea, anyway.
i didn't do a very good job with my drizzle. the recipe called for letting the caramel cool after melting, and i let it cool too long. i was going for a thin stripe like in martha's picture; while my results aren't as pretty, they might taste even richer with the extra payload of goo. the only drawback is that the caramel is fairly soft even after it sets. to store the cookies, i froze them on cookie sheets to harden the caramel, then packed them between layers of parchment. as i packed, i worked in the garage where it was cold, hence the dark green hood of our car visible in the photo.
never let it be said that i am not a world-class baker with access to state-of-the-art facilities and technology.
November 06, 2005
holiday cookies #5 and #6
both of these cookies come from carole walter's master icebox cookie recipe in great cookies. the first are cinnamon nut swirls. you knead cinnamon sugar into a plug of dough, being careful not to overmix. then you form the dough into a cylinder, chill, brush it with egg white, roll it in finely-chopped toasted walnuts, chill again, then slice and bake.
because i am a dork, i didn't notice that this variation, which uses only one-sixth of the yield of the master recipe, makes only two dozen cookies. so it ended up being a fair amount of work for only a handful of cookies. they're very pretty, but i didn't taste one because, hey, i've only got 24 to begin with.
these are simply the master dough rolled, chilled, brushed, rolled in red and white nonpareils, chilled, sliced, and baked. i did taste one of these because i baked the lumpy ends from the cylinders along with the pristine rounds.
one of my goals this year is to incorporate more plain old cookies into my assortment — not fancy, not elegant, but homey, familiar, and, well, soothing rather than challenging. these fill the bill perfectly. they're a very good plain old cookie: not too sweet, golden-tasting, and tender. call it a good eatin' cookie. and ignore the fact that my fingertips are now stained red from the nonpareils.
November 05, 2005
holiday cookie #4
when mom made these a few years ago, i enjoyed them so much that i asked for the recipe. the name of the cookie, according to the recipe? mrs. claus's cookies, "rumored to be one of santa's favorites." i happen to know that the santa of my childhood strongly prefers oreos, so i have unilaterally renamed them — the candied fruit and rum in them coupled with their chewy texture make fruitcake cookies a much more accurate name.
October 30, 2005
holiday cookies #2 and #3
cookie #2 (not pictured) is a spice/toffee/pecan affair, good enough to be background but nothing of particular note. if i have time at the end of the baking, i may replace it with something closer to scrumptious.
but cookie #3! ah, cookie #3. cookie #3 is an almond shortbread, which past recipients might remember from last year. this year it's back and it's better, with almonds that are impeccably fresh and a hit of almond extract just for good measure. i don't know yet whether i'll add a chocolate drizzle; i may just leave them plain and pristine to allow the butter and almond to shine through. so it'll be a bit different this time around. the shape, however, was too good not to duplicate.
October 16, 2005
holiday cookie #1
it has begun.
the holiday baking started this year with chocolate snowdrops from carole walter's great cookies: secrets to sensational sweets. instead of the pure white nonpareils walter used, i used colorful ones from lake champlain chocolates — festive and, fresh out of the oven, marvelous.
these cookies are fairly labor intensive, as they require the dough to be:
- shaped into a rectangle before chilling;
- divided into 48 equal squares;
- rolled into balls by hand;
- flattened with the bottom of a drinking glass; and
- crowned with a jam-smeared nonpareil.
i think they're absolutely worth it.
December 19, 2003
holiday cookie #10
these are sort of linzer cookies. "sort of" because linzers are traditionally made with hazelnuts and filled with raspberry jam. mine are made with pecans and filled with apple and plum jelly.
what can i say? i don't like raspberry and i had no hazelnuts.
last year when i made these i tinted the apple jelly green. big mistake — according to mom, she didn't even try those because she was sure they were filled with mint jelly.
holiday cookie #9
these were supposed to be pressed cookies. i printed out martha stewart's recipe, which has served me well in the past, assembled my pampered chef cookie press, and...nothing.
the dough was soft enough to be pushed through the die with no problem, but it wasn't detaching from the press worth a damn. i didn't struggle with it for long at all. instead, i took terry's suggestion and made plain old cookies instead, rolled in colored sugar and mashed into discs.
simple, sparkly, and done.
December 09, 2003
holiday cookie #8
modifications on last year's cranberry pecan tassies. this year i used walnuts and candied orange peel instead. because the tops were not so attractive (no red cranberry peeking out), i drizzled them with white chocolate. thanks for the idea, t., gleefully stolen.
the dough for these is a bitch to work with. it's a whole lot of cream cheese, a whole lot of butter, and just enough flour to hold it together. it's very sticky and melts instantly when i try to jam it into the mini-muffin tins. worth it, though, i think.
holiday cookie #7
number seven is a chocolate mint bar cookie. basic toll house dough converted to chocolate and spiked with andes mint chips — a tip of the hat to terry, who alerted me to their existence.
however, a whack on the head to terry, who also suggested their diamond shape. they look great, but there was a lot of waste incurred in cutting the diamonds. i will gain at least five pounds from eating the scraps, and it's all terry's fault.
holiday cookie #6
after a brief hiatus to, you know, have a life, i'm back, hunching over the mixer to produce another holiday cookie. this time it's cranberry/white chocolate chip.
these are very good — a tablespoon of brandy sees to that — but they're just a little sweeter than i'd like. i may be the only person in america who likes her cookies not-so-sweet. the dried cranberries add a welcome tartness, though, and you can chew them for days.
basic toll house dough, really. next time i'll add nuts, because i like to live dangerously.
December 02, 2003
holiday cookie #5
lemon poppyseed slices, a light, simple, crisp little cookie.
the recipe comes courtesy of the nice ladies on the recipe boards at work. every year they do a virtual cookie exchange — each member posts her favorite cookie recipe. this one's a winner, though if i made it again i'd add a hint less sugar and a hint more lemon.
November 25, 2003
holiday cookie #4
these dainty lovelies are a combination of nick malgieri's dark chocolate sabl�s and his french vanilla sabl�s spiked with peppermint.
if i had them to do over again, i'd make them much smaller. i didn't take the spread of the dough into account, so they're much larger than i'd intended. a good lesson to learn when monkeying with other people's recipes.
holiday cookie #3
these are the much-vaunted citrus slices. mom first made these, oh, about a century ago, and i've loved them ever since. the recipe comes from the december 1983 issue of good housekeeping, if that's any kind of clue.
i made an innovation of my own this year: i rolled the "rind" in colored sugar. another alteration i made was to this instruction from the recipe:
Into half of dough, knead orange extract, grated orange peel and enough yellow and red food color to tint a pretty orange color.
i, uh, added approximately three times as much red and yellow food coloring as i should have. the orange cookies are, how you say, vivid.
they're a nice companion, though, to the lemon cookies, which look suspiciously like slices of hard-boiled egg.
November 24, 2003
holiday cookie #2
on a whirlwind visit to terry's, i was introduced to the finest cookie in the universe.
cuccidati. buttery, tender dough wrapped around a filling of figs macerated in strong spirits, smeared with an anise-spiked glaze and sprinkled with those tiny, colorful nonpareils. magnificent.
it must be said that terry did the lion's share of the work while i sat at her kitchen table and watched. and ate the rejects.
two down, ten to go!
November 12, 2003
holiday cookie #1
last night i baked a batch of almond shortbread from fine cooking's holiday baking issue. they're delicious, if a bit less almondy than i'd hoped — that's what i get for using last year's almonds (which i had hermetically sealed and stowed in the freezer). to remedy that, i dipped each cookie in callebaut semi-sweet, then sprinkled with chopped almonds. if i'd had almond oil on hand i would have added a few drops to the chocolate.
i experimented a little bit with the dipping. i like the dipped corner better than the dipped half, but that required a very deep pool of chocolate. so the first half of the cookies got the corner, and, as the depth of chocolate in my bowl decreased, i moved to the half. (click the tiny picture to compare.)
one cookie down, eleven to go.