I do not have a Christmas cookie tradition. (Maybe something as overwhelming and reckless as my cookie love can't be expected to conform to tradition's mold?) Yes, I made palmiers a few years ago, and two years before that I hosted a cookie party, but I’ve never done large-scale decorating and delivering. It seemed to me that Christmas cookies meant spritz (which I don’t own) or cutters (which I was too lazy to use). And what did crunchy little butter cookies, built to keep, have on my favorite soft and chewy monsters, like these terrific chocolate chip cookies everyone’s been buzzing about, the perfect soft sugar cookies from food52, or the quinoa raisin cookies I may or may not share someday?
This year I finally just womanned up and decided to roll out some dough, inspired by this and that. In November, Luisa mentioned the dough curing on her balcony, and Amy Karol mentioned that she was not going crazy making dough in advance this year. Something clicked, and I knew I had to make several kinds of Christmas cookies. Martha Stewart had cookie packaging at Michael’s, so it was an excuse to buy something. And then there was the tiny jar of sparkle sugar that dove into my basket during the pre-Thanksgiving Target run, and the gifts my mother brought at Thanksgiving, and, perhaps most importantly, the fact that the mysterious Bee recently figured out how to clamber over the safety gate and then moved her waking hour from a consistent 7 a.m. to somewhere between 5 and 6, a cold, dark hour at which you might as well put on the Nutcracker and dust a work surface with flour. (I made dough in the late afternoons and chilled it overnight.) Cookies! You and I were meant to be. This was the lineup.
Sugar Cookies for Decorating from The Craft of Baking
I decided to make simple sugar cookies meant for icing and decorating. I wanted to have fun with the icing, but only if the underlying cookie was outstanding all on its own. Since I never got around to making an icing (errant box of powdered sugar), I was well positioned to judge. These cookies were dense and hard but not what I would call crunchy or crispy; they exhibited a certain tenderness. They were best when baked a little too long, and I wish I had made them with top-notch butter instead of any-old from Trader Joe’s. With better butter, these may have been winners. They did not last long enough for me to judge how they age, which I guess says something in their favor.
Holiday Sugar Cookies from Flour
I am really enjoying this book, which is fortunate since we’ll soon have to wean ourselves from Tartine and rely on the talents of Joanne Chang at Flour in Boston (a couple of recon trips in the summer of 2009 suggest that we will survive, perhaps even happily). These cookies were airier and crunchier than Karen DeMasco’s, less like shortbread and more of a straight-up sugar cookie. It wasn’t love at first bite with either sugar cookie, but these are the ones I will definitely make again to try with icing. To be fair, both cookies grew on me and are not going uneaten. After a few days at room temperature (in a box, not a tin), these cookies had softened pleasingly, just a smidge, and were still very tasty. A final note about both sugar cookie recipes—I know it is sick and juvenile, but I could eat sugar cookie dough all day. Love it.
Gingerbread from The Gourmet Cookie Book
Since this recipe claimed to produce a cookie that improves with age, I feared that it would be dull or even cardboardy right out of the oven. The opposite, or something like it, proved true: my gingerbread stars were irresistibly chewy and spicy the first day or two, but after a few days in a box (still not a tin) they were a bit tough and slightly less pungent. I still love the recipe, since my other current ginger cookie recipes are for thin and crispy or big and soft. I added 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, and I ran out of molasses while filling the cup and so had to top it off with a few tablespoons of honey. This was the hardest dough to handle, the only one that really gave me any trouble, so instead of rerolling the scraps I rolled them into a log, chilled, and made slice-and-bake instead.
Even though I, lacking a man-shaped cutter, made stars, Bee called these “gingerbread mans,” which was a treat for me in itself. (By the way, we have had in heavy rotation a Richard Scarry book in which a porcine baker hawks gingerbread pigs. My thought the first time I saw it was, “What kind of sick creature would make a cookie in its own shape?” So that’s the level of brainpower we’re dealing with these days.)
Rosemary Shortbread from Flour
This recipe gave me an opportunity to bust out the green food coloring and to use up some of the lingering Thanksgiving rosemary, hooray! I realized before I began that this recipe was almost identical to Sally Schneider’s salty butter cookies, so I made the dough according to Schneider’s instructions (cold butter, food processor) instead of Chang’s (softened butter, mixer). Both recipes incorporate cornstarch, which, in my opinion, gives shortbread the nicest texture. The rosemary flavor here was perhaps a bit weaker than I would have liked, but maybe that’s the point; this is still a sweet, buttery, toddler-friendly cookie, not a resinous flavor bomb for grappa-sipping adults only.
Cardamom Shortbread from The Christmas Cookie Book via Remedial Eating
Molly sold these cookies well, and they did not disappoint. The flavor is amazing—strong but not at all overwhelming—and the texture may be my favorite in this bunch of cookies. I’ve made shortbread with powdered sugar before and have been disappointed in the way they turned soft and powdery in the mouth. I’ve had success only with recipes that incorporate the cornstarch separately (which I know is odd, since powdered sugar is just sugar that already has the cornstarch mixed in for you, right?). Anyway, these were shattering and almost flaky, and I loved that. A few days later, they were still crisp and delightful. Molly also shared some helpful hints for rolling out cookie dough, which I wish I had found at the beginning instead of the end of my cookie odyssey.
Benne Wafers from The Gourmet Cookie Book via the Wednesday Chef
I had considered making these before Luisa posted about them, but I worried that the tiny amount of butter (just 1.5 tablespoons) was a misprint! Then, after her rave, I worried that my wafers would stick to the parchment, or that even if they came up, they would disappoint. I worry often and usually, as in this case, needlessly. These were Andrew’s favorite cookie this year; since he is allergic to tree nuts and doesn’t usually get to enjoy good, nutty desserts, I was especially pleased to be able to offer these to him. I rolled most of mine into little tubes. These would be perfect with tea or ice cream at any time of year.
Only a few people got a box of cookies from me this year, but maybe in 2011 I’ll expand the operation. (After each batch had cooled, I froze it until it was time to pack everything up and mail. This seemed to work well enough.) Even though a hideous wheezing cough is, for the second December in a row, shaking my faith in my iron constitution, I think what I’ll remember most about this month is being up hours before the sun and liking it. I would resign myself to the fact that Bee was up, which was a little easier once the gate she had been silently hurdling was rigged up with a jingle bell alarm, pull on my hideous slipper socks, and tromp down the hall to her and the kitchen. After turning on the Christmas lights and quiet music, we drank tea and/or milk, made cookies, and talked about Santa. If there was no dough to roll, I stitched away at the quilt I started for my nephew in September while Bee decorated and undecorated and redecorated her tree like a festive little Penelope. My evenings got shorter, as, puzzlingly, did her naps, but we survived the pitch-black mornings, merrily even.
*I was going to write up Joanne Chang's holiday cookie recipe, but the Boston Herald published it earlier this month. And while I am here in an asterisk, I have to point out that Jane Lear has a blog now! (I noticed it in Molly's sidebar.) She is what I miss most about Gourmet and also the source of the cinnamon sugar palmiers that remain my proudest feat of cookying.
PO PO PO PO.....YOU ARE MY FIRE....BELIEVE WHAT I SAID....
Posted by: LV Monogram Canvas | 16 February 2011 at 01:22 AM