Spritz

 

Cookies.  Cookies aren't always just cookies.  Sometimes they are time machines.  These spritz cookies have been a Christmas family tradition ever since I can remember.  They are also one of my favorites.  The first bite of spritz I take every Christmas season takes me back to my childhood; my tiny hand full of Christmas tree cookies, sitting down to watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  It really does.  Every time.

 

Maybe the nostalgia is why it's one of my favorites, but I don't think so.  These cookies are light, buttery, simply sweet with a hint of almost extract.  Oh, the almond extract!  I love it.  Plus, I get to put sprinkles on them, and who can resist sprinkles?

 

I started making these cookies myself probably when I was about sixteen. Some of my first pictures with Valerie are of us making these cookies.  I used a cookie press with a twist top to extract the cookies. A couple years later I got a cookie press with a trigger mechanism that uniformly extracted the cookies with a single click. My cookie production increased dramatically with that tool in my arsenal. 

 

Over the years, we have branched out and started making spritz cookies for other seasons and holidays.  This year, we made them for Easter, and the results were very pretty.

 

 

It's nice because a single batch makes so many cookies.  What I have started to do is make a batch of dough and then split it up between the kids to let them pick which color to make them and which shape of the cookie press to use for their cookies.  Ahh, even more memories made with spritz.  More destinations for our sweet, buttery little time machine.

 

Spritz

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups butter

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg

3/4 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

5 or 6 drops of food coloring

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Beat butter and sugar until combined. Add sugar and baking powder. Beat in egg, almond extract, vanilla extract.  Add the flour and food coloring and mix until thoroughly integrated.

Place the dough into a cookie press and extract cookies into an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake for 8 minutes and cool on a wire rack.

Peanut Butter Blossoms

If peanut butter and chocolate got married, this would be their baby.  That's weird.....and probably wrong.  A chocolate peanut butter cup would probably be a better baby analogy.  Then again, you can't see the peanut butter until you take a bite of the chocolate peanut butter cup, so maybe the peanut butter blossom would make a better baby.  Does it really matter?  No.  What does matter is that these cookies are soooooo goooooooooood!!!!!

I know we've all probably seen these before, especially around Christmas, so I know I'm not breaking new ground in any way whatsoever.  Not that I ever really do.  But these cookies are a cinch to make and once batch makes a lot of cookies, so they are really good for a crowd.  I have also frozen the dough after I shape it into balls so I can make as little or as many as I would like at one time.

Peanut Butter Blossoms

Ingredients
48 Milk Chocolate Hershey's Kisses (wrappers removed)
1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup Creamy Peanut Butter
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup additional granulated sugar for rolling

Directions
Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the shortening and peanut butter until well blended. Add 1/3 cup of granulated sugar and brown sugar, and continue to beat until fluffy.  Then, add the egg, milk and vanilla and mix to combine.
Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt.  Gradually add it to peanut butter mixture, while continuing to stir until thoroughly combined.

Shape the dough into 1-inch balls and roll in granulated sugar.  Place the dough balls on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. Once the cookies are out of the oven, immediately press a chocolate kiss into center of each cookie.  The cookie will crack around edges. Transfer the cookies to a wire rack and cool completely.

Alton Brown's Chocolate Chip Cookies

The Chewy.  This could be my favorite Alton Brown recipe.  I know it is my most requested.  The Good Eats episode had three versions of chocolate chip cookie recipes, but only this one made it into the Good Eats book.  For good reason, these cookies are superior than any I have ever baked, or even eaten.  These cookies could build an empire.

I like my cookies soft and chewy, so this is the recipe for me. The slightly browned crispy edges leading into warm, chewy, melt-in-your-mouth center is exactly what I want in a cookie, and the chewy delivers.  This recipe is also what caused me to buy a digital scale, and I now prefer measuring by weight instead of volume in all my recipes.

The dough also freezes incredibly well.  So much so, that when I make them, I usually freeze them for an hour instead of putting them in the refrigerator.  By freezing them, the cookies don't flatten out as much, and the middle is just a little bit gooier. 

 

To do this, just dish the dough out in cookie size portions and freeze on a baking sheet. Once the cookies are frozen, transfer them to a freezer bag for storage.  This way, you can have fresh baked cookies whenever you want them without doing all the work.  

 

 

The Chewy
An Alton Brown recipe

Ingredients
8 ounces unsalted butter
12 ounces bread flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 ounces granulated sugar
8 ounces light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 ounce whole milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

Directions
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat, then into the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the sugar and brown sugar and beat with the paddle attachment on medium speed for 2 minutes.

Next, add the whole egg, the egg yolk, milk and vanilla extract.  Continue to mix on slow until thoroughly combined.

Sift together the flour, salt and baking soda.  Slowly add the dry ingredients, until all the flour is worked in.  Lower the speed to "stir" and add the chocolate chips.

Scoop the dough into 1 1/2-ounce portions onto a parchment-lined half sheet pans and refrigerate for an hour.

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Place 6 cookies per sheet and bake 2 sheets at a time for 15 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through.

Remove from the oven, slide the parchment with the cookies onto a cooling rack and wait at least 5 minutes before serving.

If not baking all the cookies, freeze the remaining cookie for later use following the same baking instructions.

Chocolate Cookies - Yum! Yum! Yum!

I'm pretty set in my ways when it comes to the cookies I bake for the holidays.  For years, our cookie boxes consisted of the chewy, snickerdoodles, and spritz.  Not a big variety, but some of tastiest cookies I make. 

Last year, Valerie found a chocolate cookie recipe that she wanted to try.  She wanted to make them for Christmas, to boot.  Skeptical, I agreed to include them, and we made a batch.  The cookies turned out delicious and they become a welcome addition to our Christmas cookie lineup.

The best way I can describe these cookies are as a chocolate snickerdoodle.  They are moist and chewy on the inside with slightly crispy edges.  We make them the same size as our snickerdoodles and roll them in sugar before baking.  They have a really nice chocolate flavor, too.  Kind of like a brownie cookie.  Yum!

Top Secret Chocolate Cookies

Printable Recipe

Ingredients
2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup Dutch process cocoa powder
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Additional sugar for garnish

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, add the butter and sugar and cream together with a hand mixer. Add the eggs and vanilla extract to the creamed mixture and mix until combined.

In a medium bowl, mix the cocoa powder, flour, baking soda, and salt. Slowly add the dry ingredients and continue mixing until incorporated. Roll the dough into walnut size balls, roll in sugar and place on wax paper lined baking sheet.  Rrefrigerate for 2 hours.

Once thoroughly chilled, place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

The No Bake

I love no bakes!  I remember my mom making them when I was a kid and they never lasted long in our house.  When I really started gaining an interest in cooking, no bakes where one of the first things on my list of things to try.  However, I could not find my mom's recipe, so I set out to find one.  As it turns out, this is one of the oldest recipes in my repertoire that is not a family recipe.

This recipe is actually from the Food Network show Cooking Live with Sara Moulton.  Talk about a blast from the past!  Cooking Live was one of the first shows I watched on the Food Network, and I can't remember whether I saw these cookies being made on the show, or if I just found it doing a recipe search online.  Either way, this is a simple recipe and produces quite delicious cookies.

No bakes are a lot of fun to make.  They are easy, quick, and a nice change from traditional 'baked' cookies.  Plus, since they don't need to be baked, they are a great idea if you need to make a sweet treat in a pinch.  The cookies are chocolaty, sweet, and rich.  Definitely fun to make with the kids, and they still don't last long in our house. 

Chocolate Peanut-Butter No Bake Cookies
Recipe courtesy Helen Ostrosky
Printable Recipe

Ingredients
2 cups sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 stick butter
1/2 cup milk
1 cup peanut butter
1 tablespoon vanilla
3 cups oatmeal
Waxed paper

Directions
In a heavy saucepan bring to a boil, the sugar, cocoa, butter and milk. Let boil for 1 minute then add peanut butter, vanilla and oatmeal. On a sheet of waxed paper, drop mixture by the teaspoonfuls, until cooled and hardened.
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