Christmas just passed and it seems like the holiday has become synonymous with cookies. Not that I'm complaining. :) My mom and I baked like crazy and made five different types of cookies that are all shown in the photo below (which is from my cell phone so it's poor quality, lol). On the left are lime meltaways from the Martha Stewart Cookie cookbook, then moving to the right are chocolate candy cane kiss cookies which I adapted slightly from
this recipe, underneath those are soft and chewy ginger cookies
recipe here, next is the vanilla bean cinnamon spritz cookies from the Martha Stewart Cookie cookbook, and finally are my mom's lemon bonbon cookies which are a delicate shortbread rolled in chopped pecans and then covered with a lemon icing. When we gave a box of these to my sister to take to work, she said that people loved the chocolate candy cane kiss cookies the best but I was completely swooning over the spritz cookies (recipe posted below) and of course the lemon bonbon cookies.
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| Our array of Christmas cookies |
Vanilla-Bean Spritz Wreaths
from
Martha Stewart's Cookies
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
3 tsp ground cinnamon
2 vanilla beans, halved lengthwise, seeds scraped and reserved
1 cup plus 4 tsp sugar
3 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
2 large egg yolks
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Whisk together flour, salt, and 1 tsp cinnamon.
2. Beat vanilla seeds and 1 cup sugar with a mixer on medium speed until incorporated, about 3 minutes (sugar will clump together slightly). Add butter, and beat until pale and fluffy. Add egg yolks, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture, and beat just until smooth.
3. Divide dough into 3 portions. Pack 1 portion into a cookie press fitted with wreath disk (cover remaining portions with an inverted bowl or refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 3 days; bring to room temperature before using), and press shapes about 2 inches apart onto baking sheets. Bake until edges are just golden, 9 to 12 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, combine remaining 2 tsp cinnamon with remaining 4 tsp sugar. Sprinkle over hot cookies. Let cool on sheets on wire racks. Repeat. Cookies can be stored in a single layer in airtight containers at room temperature up to 4 days.
Note: for our cookies, we chose not to make the cinnamon sugar to add after the cookies baked and instead sprinkled the pressed cookies with colored sanding sugar before baking. Also, this dough is very stiff and somewhat difficult to shape with a cookie press. We did test rolling them out and cutting snowflakes and they baked up nicely as well.
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| Little Christmas gifts all packaged up and ready to make people happy. |
I also made homemade vanilla extract to give away as gifts this year. It's ridiculously easy and looks very impressive. Buy vanilla beans online (I order mine from eBay) because they are much cheaper than the beans you get in the grocery store. Slice vanilla beans lengthwise and place into a bottle of vodka. Let steep for several weeks before bottling and giving as gifts. I made my labels in Mac Pages by using text boxes and different fonts and bought full page sticker sheets (not precut labels) because this gives you a greater flexibility in your label making. Simply print them up and cut around each label as needed. The bottles were bought online at
specialtybottle.com and I found the silver ribbon at Walmart. When all packaged, you get these cute little 2 oz bottles to give to all the bakers in your life.
