Here is my list for holiday stuff this year. It seems a little lacking, but also, four things are plenty. Peanut peanut butter cookies, from The Good Cookie by Tish Boyle, which are already made and waiting in the freezer. Chocolate pecan thumbprints, also from The Good Cookie, because I’ve never made them before and shouldn’t you make something totally new so there’s possibility for disaster but also for happy surprise? Or, actually, it’s just because I get bored and want something different and new to try. And also because they sounded amazing. Meringues, because I love love love them, they are so easy (especially with a pastry bag) and because somehow in the last two weeks I’ve made several things that call for egg yolks, so now I have about six egg whites waiting to be made into meringues (6 egg whites = approx. seven zillion meringues, so that should be fun). And the gingerbread from King Arthur that we made before, because it was amazing, and also because I like to have something non-cookie in the cookie bin.
Any more suggestions? I do have two nut things going on, but you know, nuts are supposed to be so good for you, so maybe we can call this a healthy assortment? And I know I’m supposed to have things like spritz cookies or decorated butter cookies in there, but you know what? I don’t actually like those that much. And the making of them makes me kind of edgy. I like a pretty cookie, but I prefer a tasty cookie. Maybe when the kids are older* and I don’t have to chisel frosting off the table (and walls, and floor) when it’s all over. But still, it’s not like I’m ever going to be the kind of person who uses tweezers for precise dragée placement when making her cookies.
Last year I made hot fudge sauce and people liked that, but this year I’m feeling feh about it. I could make granola? (Ack! No! Never mind that! I’m sure granola would be appreciated but what a pain! Never mind. Sometimes I get swept up in all the “Handsome Homemade Gifts” features in magazines this time of year.) Any other thoughts?
*ok, is this a ridiculous thing to say? like, is the best time to make decorator cookies when they are 5 and 2? and if I wait until they’re 12 they’re not going to want anything to do with me, and they’ll be sneaking off with their friends to smoke on the Greenbelt path while I stand on the stoop with royal icing and food coloring paste yelling, “But now! Now is when you might make neat cookies!”
I remember a woman (who lived in Joel’s apartment) who each year would make cookies for an open house and visibly gain 10 lbs.
I always liked (but no longer make cookies at Christmas) the Cream Cheese Roll Ups that Nana made – a cream cheese dough wrapped around a date.
I make these excellent chocolate gingerbread cookies every year. This year, it’s all I’m making.
http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/chewy-chocolate-gingerbread-cookies
I used to make those Cream Cheese Roll Ups and also the Russian Tea Cakes and then one year Dave sat me down and said he thought I made too many “grandma cookies.” I had to say, “Well, that’s because the recipes are from my Nana!” I asked him what would constitute an un-grandma cookie and the only thing he could come up with was Candy Cane Cookies, which are pretty but taste like exactly nothing. But we have hit a happy compromise with the list above. I have also added Mint Chocolate Wafers from “The Good Cookie” because they are homemade thin mints. Eli and I made the dough for those this morning. I think I am also going to make Alsatian Christmas Stars (from the same cookbook, again) because they sound great — cinnamon almond dough — and because they will be festive looking.
I perhaps went a little too nuts at A.C. Moore this morning buying cookie receptacles and thus had to make a few more kinds of cookies to fill everything up.
Wait a minute! In defense of the candycane cookie: In our recipe they are made with an almond flavoring, then have crushed candycane and sugar sprinkled on top, which makes, not that predictably, a combination like crack: we cannot stop eating them, they are buttery and minty and something else that must be almond but normally I HATE almond flavoring so it’s become something just oh my god wonderful by alchemy…I mean really, I don’t like almond so much that it doesn’t make sense that I reach for these over even the chocolate crinkles (these are the two kinds of cookie I make for xmas, if I get around to making cookies for xmas. I like the visual: pink-and-white canes and the rich chocolate under white sugar round crinkles)…but I DO!
A note: one year I made candycane cookies with whole wheat flour, the only flour I had in a year that I’d failed to bring in christmas due to grading and was hellishly mad about it, enough to make cookies at 10 after the stores had closed so I couldn’t get white flour….I don’t recommend this. They were both terrible tasting and terrible looking, sort of like corrugated cardboard, yeeks.
The only candy cane cookies I’ve ever had have been pasty and gummy and taste like just spooning flour into your mouth. Maybe they’ve all been made with whole wheat flour.
Julie – check out my cookie blog!