Your cookie selections look fantastic, and I’m sure taste it too.
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Scads of eye-popping cookie decorating ideas in this video. For anyone who may not know, the settings icon on a Youtube video will take you to your choice of playback speed, so you can slow it down for the steps that appeal to you.
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Some of those are MAJORLY time-intensive! But I can see a couple early on in the video being easily done. Very fun watch!
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Yup, reminds me of a long-ago Martha Stewart holiday special featuring Martha and Miss Piggy making cookies and a gingerbread house. Piggy’s sarcastic commentary was memorable. As Martha tweezered silver dragees around the edges of a large, star-shaped cookie, Piggy muttered “500 man-hours later…”. As to the gingerbread house, “Everything to code!”
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every year i send my sister a chunk from a local shop that makes their own.
reading this thread, i think i may take the plunge and make my own this year. just checked the cupboard and have dried cherries, cranberries, and apricots on hand, all of which should work together.
thanks for the reminder and links.
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I hope you will report back with your results and any comments on the recipe you chose. I’m interested in trying other combinations of fruit in future. I was really happy with the batch I made, and plan to make two more batches this year for gifting.
planning on a test run for my thansgiving test subject.
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Thanks for the photos. I’m planning a one-dough, many shapes/decorations set of cookies this year, and really like the looks of those triangular roll-ups / crescent-roll-like ones in your pictures.
In a cookie exchange, I like to get biscotti. We have a couple of favorite flavors of our own, so I don’t experiment with new ones any more. But I really appreciate being able to try them.
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Those roll-ups are rugelach! I forgot I made them for one cookie exchange. Some recipes call for cream cheese in the cookie dough.
I had made a version with canned poppyseed filling that can be found at Polish stores.
Haven’t tried this recipe yet:
Here is another
@buttertart would like these
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I just drafted my plan for 2022 - baking to send gift boxes to family and cookie plates for local friends. I have a family member who can’t eat pecans and a friend who can’t eat walnuts, but fortunately each has a spouse who happily eats an extra cookie or two – I just am careful to label what kind of nut is in a cookie.
Pecan Tassies - When gifting at Christmas need 6 batches
Cream wafers –Tiny frosted sandwich cookies that are labor-intensive and I’ll need to make 3 batches to send some to all – mix one day, bake next, frost next
Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin – 6 batches family favorite - each person gets their own bag of a dozen
Ranger Cookies
Cranberry Spirals
Apricot Foldovers
Molasses “crater” cookies
One dough or Rich Sugar Cookie dough, many decorations – like photos of cookie plates / video up-thread
For just us I’ll make Crispex Mix and Cardamom Toasts biscotti
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Nice plan!
my 2022 holiday list:
because i live in a studio without a lot of storage space, i do my cookies in rolls i keep in the freezer and bakeoff as needed:
chocolate shortbread
salted chocolate chunk shortbread
cultured salted butter shortbread
black cocoa cookies (closest i’ve gotten to nabisco famous chocolate wafers)
chewy gingerbread cookies
gluten free:
almond flour cookies
chocolate espresso snowballs
also trying out panforte — probably in cupcake tins.
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Is the cardamom biscotti recipe online by any chance?
The rugelach dough with cream cheese is the same as the dough used for classic pecan tassies, which I know @MidwesternerTT makes. It’s very easy to handle.
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Yum… the chocolate espresso snowballs sounds great! Could you share the recipe?
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Sharis Kitchen Swedish Cardamom Toast Biscotti
Delicious and easy
Baking time about 1 hour total - 35 min first bake, 26 min second bake 350 degrees
- 1 c Butter
- 1 1/2 c Sugar
- 2 Eggs
- 1 c Sour cream
- 3 3/4 c Flour
- 1 tsp Baking soda
- 2 tsp. crushed cardamom seed or ground cardamom (MTT – ground works fine for me)
(from 2- 4 T pods, place in non-terry kitchen towel & use meat tenderizer to open paper-like pods, then hands to remove husks and get seeds, use electric coffee grinder, tenderizer or wooden potato masher to crush seeds)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 9 x 13 or jelly roll pan. Get out an additional pan to have ready for second baking, line with parchment paper or lightly grease.
Mix all ingredients in order listed. [MTT note - makes a sticky dough, but don’t add more flour, just use spoon and light touches of hand to spread] Spread on lightly greased 9x13" (or jelly roll) pan in 2 long strips.
Bake in 350-degree oven for 30 - 35 minutes, or until golden brown. [MTT note - loaves expand and may slightly bake together, just use knife to cut along seam.]
Use a large sharp knife (or tableknife works just fine) to cut each strip into half-inch to 1-inch wide pieces (about width of thumb).
Lay each piece on its side on a lightly greased/ parchment-paper lined baking sheet. [MTT note - cookie spatula helps turn and place pieces; you can reuse the original sheet for the 2nd baking.] (You’ll need 2 lightly greased or parchment-paper lined baking sheets to hold all the cut pieces.)
Place pans on top & bottom racks in oven. Bake for 20 minutes. Rotate pans, top rack to bottom & bottom rack to top. Continue baking until slices are golden brown, about 6 - 7 minutes more. [MTT note - no need to flip each piece, bottom of each browns also.]
Remove toast from pans. Cool on racks. Makes about 30 pieces.
From recipe book “Always on Sunday”, by Eleanor Ostman, St Paul Pioneer Press food columnist. Recipe appeared in her column June 30, 1991. “Shari’s Kitchen was a small cafe in Two Harbors, MN., at Carousel Antiques on Hwy 61. Despite the “Swedish” name of these toasts, proprietor Sharon DeLeo said she got the recipe from a Finnish friend in Ely. (Paul Bergman purchased Shari’s Kitchen in 1998 and today it’s the Vanilla Bean Café.)”
Crushed vs ground cardamom - From an online site: You can make such recipes with ground cardamom, but you won’t get the same bite of flavor with the ground that you do with the crushed cardamom. You bite into the seeds and get a nice burst of flavor with the crushed cardamom.
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I’d previously posted it on Chowhound so you may find you’d seen/stored it already. Posted here just now but it has some formatting issues … I’ve asked for moderator help to resolve.
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here you go:
chocolate-espresso snowballs (adapted from bojon gourmet)
makes about 32 cookies
almond flour:
3.5 ounces / 100 grams
cocoa powder:
1.75 ounces/50 grams
tapioca flour
.5 ounces /15 grams or cornstarch, potato starch, arrowroot
espresso powder
3 tablespoon, divided
sugar:
2 ounces / 60 grams
dark brown, white, coconut all work
fine sea salt:
1/2 teaspoon
toasted, finely chopped pecans
4 ounces / 115 grams
unsalted, cold butter, in 1/2" pieces
4 ounces / 115 grams
vanilla extract:
2 teaspoons
2 tablespoons each:
powdered sugar
tablespoons cocoa
espresso powder
preheat to 350ºF. line a baking sheet with parchment paper (or grease lightly).
in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the almond flour, cocoa powder, tapioca flour, sugar, salt and 1 tablespoon espresso powder. add the pecans, scatter the butter pieces over the top, then sprinkle over the vanilla. mix on low until the butter is incorporated and the dough forms large clumps, 1-2 minutes. (a food processor works as well) transfer dough to a covered container and chill for 30 minutes (or up to several days).
sift the powdered sugar, cocoa, and remaining 2 tablespoons expresso powder into a shallow bowl. form 1-inch balls of dough and roll them in the sugar-espresso-cocoa mix, knocking off any large clumps, and place the balls on the baking sheet an inch or two apart.
bake until puffed and cracked, 18-22 minutes. the cookies will be soft at first but should crisp up when cool. (if they’re still soft when cool, return them to the oven to bake them a bit longer).
let the cookies cool, then dust with the remaining sugar-espresso-cocoa mixture.
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I know a lot of you keep track of your favorite recipes computer wise, but I’m old school and have a large handwritten recipe book. Almost 50 years old. What can I say, I started early.
Russian tea cakes - which called for walnuts and then turned into Pecan Puffs before I left New England. My husband’s favorite btw.
But onto Creme Wafers: Are you talking about this recipe by any chance:
1 c. soft butter
1/3 c. whipping cream
2 c. flour
sugar - for some reason that’s all I show in my book.
Filling:
1/4 c. soft butter
3/4 c. powdered sugar
1 egg yolk
2 tsp. vanilla
Make two rolls of dough and chill. Slice and bake for 9 minutes. Fill.
Just curious. I made these several times in my high school years. They were a huge hit. The recipe is still in my cookbook.
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My cream wafers recipe from a friend shows dough is the same as yours, filling has 1 tsp. vanilla and no egg yolk, and a drop of food coloring to make a pastel pink or pastel green colorful filling.
An online copy of the Betty Crocker recipe is here
The granulated sugar for the dough is to coat both sides of each cookie wafer. Her notes say this cookie doesn’t work as a slice & bake - dough is too soft and slicing 1/8 inch thin didn’t work- so calls for rolling out a 1/3 portion of the chilled dough to thin 1/8 inch on a flour-covered surface with a flour coated rolling pin, then cutting out small 1.5 inch rounds. Transfer each round to sheet of wax-paper that’s covered in granulated sugar, and coat both sides. Place on an ungreased rimmed baking sheet, pierce each with a fork 4 times, and bake 375 degrees 7-9 minutes until just set but not browned. Cool. Sandwich 2 wafers with the filling.
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