Sunday, December 12, 2010

Making Christmas Cookies

Gift baskets full of cookies are a fun and easy gift. Here are the 8 kinds of cookies we are making this year:

"Shortbread Hearts" from the Silver Palate Cookbook

"Traditional Sugar Cookies" from the Betty Crocker Cookbook

"Filled Sugar Cookies" from the Betty Crocker Cookbook

"Lemon Sables" from the Cooks Illustrated magazine, Nov/Dec 2008

"Almond Sables" from the Cooks Illustrated magazine, Nov/Dec 2008

"Molasses Cookies" from the Silver Palate Cookbook

"Sweetmeats" from the Silver Palate Cookbook

"Butterballs" from the Silver Palate Cookbook


Shortbread cookies, and similar, such as the French Butter Cookies, are wonderful for elapsed time because they have chilling times as well as baking times.



1 comment:

Renee said...

Of these, the ones I would do again -- or would recommend if you are doing cookies with a bunch of kids -- are the Butterballs and the Almond Sables. They both require chilling. The Butterball dough is formed into balls with your hands, then rolled in powdered sugar twice after they come out of the oven. Fun! There's no laborious rolling and cutting of dough, then rechilling the remainder before rolling and cutting again. That was soooo time consuming in the classroom! It took two days. The other cookie that works well with kids is the Almond Sables. You form the dough into a log before chilling, then simply slice into 1/4 inch rounds. I mixed the egg white and water, then gave each child a plate with three cookies on it, a small bowl with the egg white/water mixture and a spoon, and a small plate with sliced almonds. Each child used the back of the spoon to rub some "glue" on the cookie, then placed the almonds in the shape of a flower. That was hands-on and fun but still easy, and the cookies turned out great!