Showing posts with label Christmas cookies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas cookies. Show all posts

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Gingerbread Cookie Cups

Gingerbread Cookie Cups - A Fun Holiday Treat Gingerbread Cookie CupsEvery year starting December 1st, I prepare daily Advent boxes for the kids. I bought a little box from the dollar store for each of them and glued a small piece of chalkboard paper to the top to countdown the days. I fill their boxes each day with a little treat, usually a piece of candy like a lollypop or a chocolate. My youngest reminds me everyday about the Advent boxes, and today as I was writing "4" on the top of each box, I was amazed at how close Christmas is and how quickly this time goes by.

Lately, I've been enamored with little edible liqueur or candy cups. I even found some peppermint candy cane cups this year. When I was making gingerbread cookies earlier this week, I thought I'd try turning some of the dough into cups for holding eggnog or Baileys. So instead of dipping your cookie in milk, you can pour some milk into your cookie!

Tip: You must make the bottom of the shot glass cookie thick so that the beverage doesn't seep out. Of course, the cookie will disintegrate the longer the drink sits in the cookie so it's best to serve the cookie from frozen and drink it soon after pouring.

Recipe: Gingerbread Cookie Cups

From Epicurious

Makes: about 50

Ingredients for Gingerbread Cookie Cups

Ingredients:

6 cups (about) flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1½ teaspoons ground cloves
¾ teaspoon salt
11 tablespoons (1 stick plus 3 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup solid vegetable shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup mild-flavored (light) molasses
1½ teaspoons grated lemon peel
1 large egg
¼ cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons water
1 teaspoon soda

Instructions:

Whisk 5¼ cups flour, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and salt in a bowl.

Using a stand mixer, blend the butter and shortening. Add sugar, molasses, and lemon peel and beat until smooth. Beat in egg and buttermilk.

Blend 2 teaspoons water with soda. Beat into butter mixture. In two additions, beat in the flour mixture. Add more flour, ¼ cup at a time, until the dough feels slightly firm.

Divide the dough into three equal disks. Wrap them and chill until firm enough to roll at least 2 hours. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Keep refrigerated. Soften slightly before rolling out.)

Roll out one disk of dough at a time, between sheets of waxed.
Either cut the dough using boy and girl gingerbread cookie cutters (or another shape) or press the dough into a heat-resistant shot glass or silicon shot glasses. Chill the dough again before baking. (Cutout cookies can be made 1 day ahead. Cover; keep chilled.)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes, turning the pan halfway through the baking time.

If you made shot glasses, once the cookies have cooled, put them in the freezer. After they have frozen, remove them from the shot glasses. You may have to trim the bottom so that it sits level. Store them in the freezer until ready to fill with your beverage of choice.

Gingerbread Cookie CupsOther ideas for filling the cups:
Spiked White Chocolate Cappuccino
Holiday Irish Coffee Eggnog from Lori at RecipeGirl.com




Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Tuesdays with Dorie—Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies

Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies - Classic Cutout Cookie Recipe Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar CookiesMore cutout cookies this week. This time we're making sugar cookies. I find the hardest part about sugar cookies is decorating them!

A video
Here's a video that gives lots of ideas for decorating sugar cookies.

Or, just sprinkle some colored sugar on top (like I did)!

A book
In my reading this week, I found a new book to add to my Christmas list: Dirty Sugar Cookies: Culinary Observations, Questionable Taste. From the author's blog, I found her recipe for Sugar Cookies. It has the same ingredients as Dorie's, but in slightly different quantities.

A television show
I also watched Alton Brown's "The Cookie Clause" episode. 

Recipe: Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies


Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies

Dorie's

2 cups flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 stick plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Dirty Sugar Cookies

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup of shortening (or 2 sticks of butter)
1¼ cup sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

You can find the recipe for Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) by Dorie Greenspan or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Ulrike of Küchenlatein who chose the recipe for this week and will post the recipe.

Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar CookiesTasting Notes
Mine were crunchy, which is how I like them. Not doughy. If you like them nice and soft, roll them thicker or bake them less. Sugar cookies on their own are dull, so a sprinkle of sugar or some Caramelized Butter Frosting helps. A sprinkle of "toast dope" (cinnamon sugar) is nice too and transforms them into a cookie more similar to snickerdoodles.

Recipe for Next Week (December 16)
Buttery Jam Cookies on page 80.

Other Christmas cookie ideas:
Linzer Sablés
Brown Sugar-Pecan Shortbread Cookies
Lenox Almond Biscotti
Rugelach




Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Tuesdays with Dorie—Linzer Sablés

Linzer Sablé Cookies - Classic Christmas Cookie Recipe Linzer Sablé Cookies
Unlike the pumpkin-pecan pie from last week that was next to impossible to make look pretty, Linzer Sablé cookies are off-the-baking-rack pretty. Marye from Baking Delights listed Dorie's Linzer Sablés as one of the 50 best recipes for Christmas on the internet.

Linzer Sablés are the cookie version of the Linzertorte. Made with ground nuts (in my case ground almonds) and a filling of preserves. I used some homemade strawberry-rhubarb jam from my pantry to fill the middle. Sablés are a French butter cookie. Sablés means "sand" in French and refers to the sandy texture of this delicate and crumbly shortbread-like cookie.

Tips for Cutout Cookies
Cutout cookies are definitely more fussy and time-consuming, but the best tip for making cutout cookies comes from Dorie: use a freezer bag to roll the dough in. This tip is in the directions of her brown sugar-pecan shortbread cookies on page 127. I used to use a Silpat, but I've made some cuts in the Silpat in the process. For this recipe, I used two freezer bags. After I cut the bag open, I just rolled the remaining dough between the two sides of the bag.

Linzer Sablé Cookies in freezer bagsI rolled the cookies pretty thin, so they didn't need to be in the oven as long (9-10 minutes for mine). I like them crunchy, but if you prefer them softer, you could roll them thicker or bake them for less time.

Another important tip is to refrigerate the dough before rolling, and optionally after cutting out so that they don't spread too much when baking.

Recipe: Linzer Sablés

Ingredients for Linzer Sablé Cookies

Ingredients:

1½ cups finely ground almonds, hazelnuts or walnuts (I used almonds)
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons freshly grated cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground cloves
1 large egg
2 teaspoons water
1 stick unsalted butter at room temperature
½ cup of sugar
½ cup jam

You can find the recipe for Linzer Sablés in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) by Dorie Greenspan or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Noskos of Living the Life who chose the recipe for this week and will post the recipe.

Linzer Sablé CookiesTasting Notes
I loved these cookies and one of my daughters gave them a thumbs up too. The hint of cinnamon and cloves make them extra tasty. This recipe is definitely being added to my yearly Christmas cookie list.

Recipe for Next Week (December 9)
Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies on pages 146-147 chosen by Ulrike of Küchenlatein.

Linzer Sablé CookiesOther Christmas cookie ideas:
Brown Sugar-Pecan Shortbread Cookies
Lenox Almond Biscotti
Rugelach

More to Explore: