White Chocolate-Macadamia Cookies, plus Christmas Roundup

Happy 2014!  I had plans to cook and bake so many things and share them with you last month, including these White Chocolate-Macadamia Cookies.  That all went out the window as the holiday season got so busy.  I love that time of year, but it's downright stressful and tires me out.  Even my vacation time was hectic since we hadn't gotten around to sending out cards, getting a tree, or shipping out the annual family cookies.  And my sister has to have her cookies -- it was our birthday!  We're Christmas twins and my dad's birthday is in the same week, so it's always a big time of year in my family.

Another thing that kept us busy was our new family member!  Joe and I adopted Betty from the local shelter a few days before Christmas.  Her name is enormously popular among our friends and family, so we'll probably get grief for changing it, but right now we're thinking Katsu.  Yes, like the Japanese pork cutlet. but I've changed it to Dorie, after one of my favorite bakers.  We lost our second cat, Shnooky, in September, and we were ready for another furry love.  She has the prettiest green eyes and a crazy coat striped and patched with marmalade, white, grey, and black.  As you can see, she made herself right at home.  She loves playing with toy mice and the laser pointer, and has taken to drinking from the bathroom faucet.  It took Gandalf a few days to warm up to her, but now they chase each other and play daily at the crack of dawn while we're trying to sleep.  And on Christmas Day we found them snuggling together!  Gandalf, my loveybug, likes to sit under the Christmas tree like he's out in the wild.

But just because I wasn't posting doesn't mean my kitchen wasn't seeing lots of use.  This year we included Hot Chocolate on a Stick (recipe by Giver's Log) in our cookie baskets.  Who wouldn't want hot cocoa with their cookies? You stir it into a mug of hot milk, and it's instant hot chocolate!  I also made homemade Vanilla Marshmallows, and you can kind of see a snowflake-shaped one in the back piped with dark chocolate.

For my friends' British-themed Christmas party, I made Braided Lemon Bread filled with lemon curd.

I also made my Mini-Cornish Beef Pasties for the party.  These are ready to go in the oven.

This year I switched up the Christmas Butter Cookies -- Joe's dad's favorite -- by decorating them with white chocolate instead of royal icing.  White chocolate dries so much faster.

And everybody else's favorite is the Linzer Cookie.  It's labor-intensive for me, so it's reserved for Christmas and maybe Valentine's Day also.  Everybody just loves the hazelnut cookies sandwiched with jam and dusted with snowy sugar.

The new cookie this year was the White Chocolate-Macadamia.  This recipe by chocolate baking expert Alice Medrich is not overly sugary like those storebought versions, and the oats give it some hearty flavor.  The cookies come out soft and chewy with crisp, golden bottoms.  The dough needs to sit in the fridge for at least two hours, so plan ahead.  I didn't love the cookies as I'd hoped, but I should disclose that I'm not usually a fan of white chocolate.  I fall into the camp of people who find it inferior to "real" chocolate.  But if you like white chocolate, this cookie's for you.  You can also make the dough ahead of time, scoop onto parchment-lined baking sheets, freeze until hard, and bake when needed.  Store them in zip-top bags in the freezer once they've fully hardened.  They'll bake at the same temperature and time, and add a minute or two to the baking time if needed.

Here's to 2014!

Christmas Vanilla Butter Cookies

I got a late start and it took me forever, but I am finished with all things Christmas!  It has been a crazy month.  I planned a gazillion blog posts, but for almost the whole month only published one.  That doesn't mean I haven't been baking and cooking.  There was a whirlwind of parties and potlucks to go to, and that doesn't sound like much work at all -- until you're up at ungodly hours making hand pies or decorating cookies with royal icing.  But you still haven't made the family cookies or mailed them out.  And your twin sister keeps asking you where her annual cookie shipment is.

But I did have fun at all the parties!  Especially this one -- doesn't my book club know how to do a party?

These are the Linzer Cookies my sister must have every year, slaved over by yours truly.  Hazelnut cookies are sandwiched with raspberry jam, and dusted with snowy sugar.

And I included Eggnog Marshmallows in the cookie baskets this year.  I didn't even like this picture, so I made another batch and saved a few.  I tried to think quickly (while I was rushed) of a place they would be safe from the cats until I had time to photograph them.  I put them in the toaster oven, and took care of some other tasks.  You can guess how this ends, right?  Joe went to preheat the toaster oven for something, and I ended up with toasted marshmallows.  I guess it's a funny story (if you're not me).

And every year I attempt fancy decorated cookies with royal icing, trying to make them look like the showpieces you see in catalogs.  Well, I failed once again, but here are the best and the simplest of the bunch, decorated by Joe and I.  The hour was late, one of the cats somehow had edible glitter on his coat, and I was laughing deliriously at some of our attempted designs.  At least they taste good.  I'm not a fan of sugar cookies; I find them too sugary and not very flavorful.  These are simple but tasty: buttery with a hint of vanilla, a bit of salt tempering the sweet.

Now it's time to sit back and celebrate.  Especially since it's my (and my twin sister's) birthday tomorrow!  (No way am I baking a cake.)  Merry Christmas, everyone.

Photo added Dec. 2013

Update December 2013: These cookies are made using the same recipe, but decorated with melted white chocolate. Apply white chocolate using squeeze bottles or an offset spatula, then sprinkle with colored sanding sugar, nonpareils, or edible glitter.

Chewy Chocolate Ginger-Molasses Cookies

Add this cookie to your holiday cookie basket or plan it for your cookie swap. These are simple to make, and the sugar coating gives the cookies a festive shimmer. They are chewy bordering on crisp with an occasional chunk of chocolate. Even my chocolate-hater friend Dorothy loved them, especially the ginger -- they have both ground ginger and freshly grated ginger, but the flavor isn't overwhelming in the least.

On the left, 2¼-inch scoop cookies; on the right, "tablespoon" scoop cookies.
The scoops of dough then get rolled in sugar and baked.

Use good chocolate and good cocoa powder. I used Ghirardelli 60% chocolate chips (I didn't bother cutting up any chocolate like the recipe instructs) and Guittard cocoa powder. I actually don't have the size of scoop the recipe calls for, but I discovered that both your "tablespoon" scoop and a 2¼-inch scoop work just as well. The baking times are the same, but the small cookies come out a little crisper and the larger a little chewier. I preferred the chewy, while Joe could barely keep his hands off the crispy until I'd photographed them. Will you go for chewy or crisper?

Cookie Mania, and Brown Butter Crispy Rice Treats!

Nothing spells holiday love like these wrapped baskets of cookies.  This year Plum Cherry Crumb Bars, Brown Butter Crispy Rice Treats, and Stained Glass Cookies and Sugared Cookies were added to the Linzer Cookies my sister demands I make every year.  Unlike past years when I stressed and swore over torn and cracked dough or runny royal icing, these were fairly easy-going and fun.  And luckily I finished them and shipped them off before I got hit with this nasty cold.

To make the Plum Cherry Crumb Bars, follow the Raspberry Crumb Bar recipe I made in October and substitute with Sarabeth's Plum Cherry Jam.  Yes, it's pricey, but like we said, "Mmm... No time like the holidays to splurge on $10 jam."  To make the Linzers, follow the Linzer recipe I used last year.  I'll share the recipe and technique next time for the Stained Glass Cookies.  For now, let's talk about Brown Butter Crispy Rice Treats.

These are like your childhood favorites, but browned butter, real vanilla bean, and salt give them subtle grown-up touches.  I thought this was a gluten-free treat, but discovered that Rice Krispies have malt in them!  And a wheat-free cereal I found also had malt, so that means it's wheat-free but not gluten-free.  I intended them as a treat for Joe's sis, but I'll have to continue my hunt for gluten-free cereal.  Also, although I'm a chocolate lover, I don't advocate for the use of chocolate here because it overwhelmed the other flavors.

These are made much like the way you made them as a kid with mom.  The butter is just cooked on low heat a little longer to brown it, and a scraped vanilla bean is added.  Can you see the vanilla specks in the melted marshmallow?  The cereal is added, then the mixture is poured into a pan and smoothed out.  They're more moist than the back-of-the-cereal-box recipe, so I let them sit out overnight.

Has Anyone Seen My Linzer Cookies?

Photo updated December 2012

I can finally publish this post now that my sister knows I sent her a package of linzer cookies.  Bad news is, she still hasn't received them, and I sent them by priority shipping over a week ago!  I told her that some neighbor has to be chewing on them now.  At least I have this photo here, so she can see what her batch looked like.  (I don't think she'll find that funny.)  Hazelnuts give the linzer cookie its great flavor, sweetened by raspberry jam, and cutout centers make them fun.  I bake them for her every year, but they can be a pain to make.  But this year, I have a recipe resulting in less swearing and other language not in the spirit of the holidays.

This King Arthur Flour version calls for hazelnut flour (essentially smushed-up nuts), eliminating the need the grind up my own nuts.  Never mind cracking them, like the first time I made these cookies.  Not fun.  It also doesn't call for repeatedly freezing the dough like my old Martha Stewart recipe.  Really, who has freezer space to devote to sheets of cookie dough, anyway?  As for the taste and texture, they're really so similar I might not be able to tell the two recipes apart in a taste test.  My vote is for this simpler one!  Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christmas Cookies, Take 2

My second try with royal icing came out a zillion times better!  It dried up hard and shiny in about an hour, unlike that goopy mess from the first batch.  The keys to my success: a new recipe and gel food coloring.

The liquid food coloring just thins out the icing so much that it takes forever to dry.  And when it did dry, the icing became separated and grainy.  These gels worked out great, along with the squeeze bottle with piping tip.

I let the base coats dry before piping decorations on top.

The green set.

This time, I went to Baking911's page on Royal Icing and used the recipe for Outline Consistency.  Here's how I adapted it:

2½ tbs meringue powder (in the baking aisle, or at party or craft stores)

8 oz. confectioners sugar

¼ cup lukewarm water

Mix for 10 minutes on high speed with the paddle attachment.  Spoon out a third of the mixture into an airtight container -- this will be your portion for piping.  Turn the mixer back on and add 2 tbs water.  Scrape that into other airtight containers and stir in colorings.  If it's too stiff for your needs, add a tiny amount of water; if it's too runny, add confectioners sugar until it gets to the right consistency.

Decorated Christmas Cookies

To kick-start the spirit of the season at home, we made these decorated butter cookies in ornament shapes.  The dough was easy to make and we took turns rolling it and cutting out the shapes, assembly-line style.  I like it more than the standard sugar cookie, which often has no flavor except plain old sugar.  These have a sweetness offset by just a hint of saltiness and a nice buttery flavor.  Decorating them was a pain.  If you use royal icing, set aside a lot of time to dry, and know that colors darken as they sit.  Using half a bottle of red coloring was an error!  And use powdered or gel coloring if you can -- I have a feeling the liquid coloring added lots of hours to the drying time.  More on that later.  I had planned to mail these out to someone, but 24 hours later some still were not dry.  Oh well, more cookies for us!