Last Christmas I baked about 41 kinds of cookies. I have an idea this year for one. I think I will use a square cutter and make a cookies look like a
9 patch block or a Bowtie Block??? I could color the royal icing to different colors?? Also any of you that have some great recipes...pass them on to me. Last year I made from Greek to Italian Cookies. My favorite was The Fig Cookies from Giada DiLaurentis. This is the time I start stocking up on my baking supplies. I also want to buy the Breast Cancer Ribbon cookie cutter. Pami
It would be very easy to make refrigerator cookie dough and make nine square logs, put them together, and then slice into nine-patches. You could color and flavor the logs differently.
Glad to you feel up to baking! It's a lot of work, isn't it?
M> Last Christmas I baked about 41 kinds of cookies. I have an idea this year
Here's my favorite-ever-ever-ever cookie recipe, Hershey's Chewy Chocolate Cookies:
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Another cookie I've taken to quilter meet-ups: any shaped/rolled cookie dough, gingerbread, shortbread, sugar cookies, etc., cut into large circle (biscuit cutter) and then poke 2 or 4 holes around the center, looks like a button; if you really have the time put little, thin strips of icing in an X shape between the holes so it looks like thread in the buttonholes.
Ragm> Last Christmas I baked about 41 kinds of cookies. I have an idea this year
First, I am so happy for you that your chemo is over with. I am sure, that this group was right there in spirit all the time and one reason you did so well.
OK now to cookies. I bake like that every year or have until the last two, but during Dec. I have a website that has what we call An Advent of Cookies, it is a new recipe every day of Dec. well until Christmas and some years I have posted the entire month and made it kids recipes after Christmas to give the kids something to do until they go back to school. This website only gets hits in Oct. for the Halloween recipes and Dec for Christmas, but it is up all year long. If interested here is a link to last year's cookies.
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I also do one of candy and the link to it is here.
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Now I am not trying to push this website on anymore but if you are interested in recipes, I have an entire website devoted to them, but this one is not it. Now if you go to
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you will find a link to Halloween recipes also and also my private cookie collection is there. I haven't even looked at my web page in so long I Have no idea what the url to them is though.
I am happy you enjoyed it, that is why I did my websites was for fun, never dreamed they would ever make a dime but they make a little. On the other hand I never dreamed they would get as many hits as they do either. Now peppermintlane as I said doesn't get that many but my other site does and I have a couple of others in my back pocket. They just are no longer updated so I don't post them. Thinking about dumping this site after this holiday season, haven't fully decided yet.
The two cookies I make every year that get the most raves are blitz kuchen and isli. I have posted the blitz kuchen recipe before. Isli are fairly simple but a bit time consuming:
Stir 1/3-1/2 cup of ground hazelnuts into 1 cup of flour (soft wheat, cake, or pastry flour, low gluten in general is best). cut in 1/2 stick of butter like you would for pie crust. Add 2 egg yolks and stir to make a dough, add another yolk or two if needed. Chill for at least an hour (overnight is fine). Roll the dough thin and cut into small (1-2 inch) circles, and bake on an ungreased sheet at 350F until lightly browned. Allow to cool. Cover 1/2 of the circles with raspberry or apricot jam or pastry filling, and top with the bare circles making little sandwiches. Dip the tops of the sandwiches in molten chocolate and press a blanched whole almond onto the still soft chocolate.
These ones I have mentioned here, plus pfeffernusse and biscotti de regina are probably my family's first favorite cookies for christmas with makos kifli (egg pastry crescents with poppy seed filling) and spritz running closely behind.
By the by, my pfeffernusse recipe does not have pepper in it. In fact it is a bit of a standing family joke that the peppernuts have no pepper. Is that normal for pfeffernusse, or is our trad recipe aberrant?
The recipe I have for pebernodder (pfeffernusse in Danish) translates to peppernut. There is white pepper in it. I got the recipe from grandmother and copied it from the recipe her mother wrote and sent with her when she emigrated from Denmark in 1917.
I remember these from my childhood. My grandmother made them for all holidays, not just Christmas. She had a metal tin that was in the bottom cupboard and was only used to store these cookies. My grandmother always had at least 4-5 different types of cookies always on hand, since a good Danish woman will never make it to Valhalla if she can't put down a plate of assorted cookies with a fresh pot of coffee upon the arrival of a guest at time of the day ;)
When I would stop by for my twice weekly visits she would tell my son, then just a toddler, to go get a cookie and he'd hone in on the cupboard and be prying lids of the 3lb coffee cans she kept them in. He came back once with this hard pebernodder rattling around in his mouth and drooling all down the front of him. He wouldn't give it up and turned out this was always his favorite cookie. We originally thought it was because of the brightly decorated Christmas tin it was stored in. As time went by and my grandmother passed the torch of family dinners on she gave my son the fancy tin of pebernodder for the first Christmas we didn't go to her house. Sometime during the year I would get the tin, give it back to my Grandmother and she'd fill it up and once again give it to my son for his Christmas gift. Several years after my grandmother passed away I found the tin in the back of his closet. For Christmas that year (he was about 9) I made Greatgrama's pebernodder, wrapped the tin and put it under the tree. He was just thrilled!
Now we have a new tradition borne of the old. Sometime during the year I will find the tin tucked in my cupboard, for Christmas he gets the tin back, full of Greatgrama's pebernodder. He asked for the recipe but I said no, I wouldn't pass it on to him until I was too old to bake pebernodder.
Just make sure it is written down somewhere, in case something happen!
When we cleared out my grandparents flat this Spring, I found my granddads recipe for "klejner". Actually, it is not a recipe, but a list of ingredients and amounts. But I've kept it safe all the same. Unfortunately these have to be deep fried, and I am just not brave enough to try that...
Oh, I have many family recipes written down and in "the box" with other things for him. Klejner is easy as can be to make, fun too. No need to be afraid of the deep frying. I don't even have a deep fryer and have been doing this for years. If you want to know how to assemble that recipe I'd be glad to help you out.
I started out making these when I was really little, not the frying part, the cutting and "fold,tuck, pull" part. I was allowed to fry them when I was about 12, closely supervised by my grandmother. She used a large cast iron Dutch oven. I still use the same cast iron pot when I make them.
The cutest "quilt cookies" I have seen were simple square sugar cookies. Dough had been shaped into a long tube but square instead of round. Once cookie dough was cold it would slice easily. After cookies were baked they were frosted to look like different patchwork patterns. The colors were better than you would achieve with colored dough and you could have more variety. Frosting would be a fun project to do with a friend or two. Working together in the kitchen is like sitting around the quilt frame.
You can also paint the designs on unbaked cookies. There are several ways to make paint:
- Combine an egg yolk with 1/4 teaspoon water; stir until smooth. Stir in food coloring.
- Add food coloring to a small amount of evaporated milk.
- Mix dry powdered milk with water to a paint-like consistency and add food coloring.
- Mix cornstarch and water to a paint-like consistency and add food coloring.
Use a paintbrush to paint designs on unbaked cookies. The egg yolk paint gives brighter, clearer colors, with a bit of a yellow cast. The milk paint colors will be somewhat softer. I have used both the egg yolk and the powdered milk paint with regular liquid food coloring. I suppose you could get more intense colors with paste food coloring, like cake decorators use.
Julia > The cutest "quilt cookies" I have seen were simple square sugar
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