Holiday Treats 2022

question about the guidance to grease (but not line) the pan for the first bake. would it be a bad idea to use parchment paper for that bake instead of a greased pan?

ETA: i went ahead and used parchment. Hopefully I haven’t jinxed myself.

Those cookies are amazing!! That video was fascinating to watch.

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So my girlfriend and I baked off all of the crinkle cookie batter today into wonderful cookies. I rolled the ball (of dough) a lot smaller and that worked much better. “Sunshine” rolled the balls in powdered sugar and set them on baking sheet. I asked her if this process reminded her of making cookies with her mom (as a little girl). She told me she never baked cookies or anything with her mom.
I guess I just assumed every child baked cookies around the holidays with their mom. Personally, I have fond memories of my sister and I baking/decorating all kinds of treats with mom.

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@Aubergine - did you prefer the ricotta cookies aged or unaged?

Both times I made them, dough was aged in fridge. They seem to keep well (cooked) in ziplock bags.

Perfect little cookie! Very easy once you learn how to brown butter.

Does granola count? I’m about to make granola for holiday gifting

and I’m curious about two NYT recipes.

I hope to come back eith gift links, but for now

And

I like the cluster focus of the first one, and wonder how oat milk, vs coconut or almond milk, and less sugar would work.

I like the olive oil focus of the second recipe, but would like it more cluster forward

I also like this one.

I might end up trying all of them, but would really prefer the best of each.

I might use some of these too.

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I made the cardamom biscotti kindly shared upthread, but found mine a little bland, even though the majority of the cardamom I used was painstakingly extracted by hand from pods and crushed with a mortar+pestle (!) Frequently cardamom flavor develops with resting, so I’m eating one every few hours to see how they progress, and then I might consider dipping them in chocolate or something for a little more flavor…

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Did you add salt? I don’t see it in the ingredients and you’d want quite a bit of salt for that much flour. I’d also use more cardamom. Carole Walter has cardamom cornmeal biscotti in Great Cookies and she uses 1 tbsp freshly ground for 1.5 cups of flour and 1/2 cup cornmeal.

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Funny, I was thinking of you and your Salt Focus when I read the ingredients, yet I failed to add any. In any case, it’s too late for that. Unless I salt the chocolate that I dip them in, which I might do :slight_smile:

I did increase the cardamom, yes.

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Salep , also spelled sahlep or sahlab ,[note 1] is a flour made from the tubers of the orchid genus Orchis (including species Orchis mascula and Orchis militaris ). These tubers contain a nutritious, starchy polysaccharide called glucomannan. Salep flour is consumed in beverages and desserts, especially in the cuisines of the former Ottoman Empire, notably in the Levant where it is a traditional winter beverage.

Mahleb or Mahlepi is an aromatic spice made from the seeds of a species of cherry, Prunus mahaleb (the Mahaleb or St Lucie cherry). The cherry stones are cracked to extract the seed kernel, which is about 5 mm diameter, soft and chewy on extraction. The seed kernel is ground to a powder before use. Its flavour is similar to a combination of bitter almond and cherry,[1] and similar also to marzipan.[

antep fistiği tozu is apparently pistachio flour or ground pistachios.

Shelled vs. unshelled pistachios: A cost-benefit analysis

“In short, we can conclude that, far from being a luxury, buying shell-off pistachios is in fact the fiscally responsible choice. There is no scenario in which the cost savings of a bag of shell-on pistachios justifies additional indirect expenditure in labor.”

But I don’t eat as many, so…

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Nope, but I can type it out for you tomorrow!

Not sure? I use a tube pan…

Not very. It’s quite rich: a classic pound cake. That recipe as written would probably yield about 16 slices…

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Thanks- We are in a temporary kitchen/apartment during our whole house reno. I have no idea where I stashed most of my baking gear

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What a bummer! It makes a lot, but you could try to cut in half and put in a loaf pan? I wouldn’t fill more than 2/3 full.

Done


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Spurred by shame, I finally got my act together in the past 24 hours.

  1. Took the cardamom biscotti I made last night and dipped them in melted 80% chocolate. Half got a sprinkling of slivered almonds and sea salt; the other half just salt.
    These are setting up now.

  2. Double batch of the Stella Parks lacy ricotta cookies dough tonight. I’ll freeze half tomorrow and bake off the other half before the weekend. (Provided I don’t eat the dough by the spoonful inthe middle of the night.)

Next up:

Candied ginger shortbread (I recipe I stumbled across last night at 2 AM)
Basler brunsli (new-to-me cookie)
Fruity meltaways
Smitten Kitchen’s Austrian raspberry shortbread bars (someone here mentioned them and I remembered making them years ago. Gotta use the damn jam!)

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mig - I’m sure that worked fine. I’m frugal with parchment paper, even though getting it now from Costco helps with the cost. I should use it more often.

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Ten kinds of cookies shipped to family yesterday, with some of each staying here for us and for a few plates for close friends. Clockwise from the top corner: Lemony stripes, cream wafers (pink and green frosting, fluted and plain cutout), molasses ginger, cardamom toasts biscotti, oatmeal raisin, apricot foldover, Range (with chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, coconut and krispies), chocolate rugelach crescent, pecan tassie, center - cranberry pinwheel
And additional treats just for us: Bakery fruit cake, local-vendor lefse, almond-bark dipped apricots, minty cornpuff treat (cornpuffs tossed in melted almond bark then sprinkled generously with Andes mint bits), Crispix mix with twice the nuts, no pretzels.

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The published recipe for cardamom toasts biscotti does not have added salt - just what’s in the baking soda (I double-checked), and I don’t add any when I make these. YMMV - we generally prefer less salt in all food. I was surprised to read “The AHA notes that just a single teaspoon of baking soda contains about 1,000 milligrams of sodium.”

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