A Few General Baking Tips

“Baking isn’t as forgiving as cooking with meats and vegetables. Where flour, sugar, and butter are involved, you get an exact science. Here are some guidelines when following baking recipes.”

Recipe for success – The Boston Globe

“Hundreds of cookies and a few dozen biscuits later, we were surprised to find that our trusty professional half-sheet pan (it’s like a sturdy jelly roll pan) may well have some competition when it comes to turning out pristine pecan sandies.”

But I still prefer the half-sheet pans for being so versatile — I don’t need extra sheet pans lying around.

Getting beneath the surface of cookie sheets – The Boston Globe

The way the cookie (sheets) crumbled – The Boston Globe

Cookie Calendar: Chocolate Chip Cookies

You could make these famous chocolate chip cookies as a quick dessert on Christmas morning, but I doubt even the familiarity and drop-cookie-ease of this recipe is enough if you have to cook a big meal today.

Still, these would be greatly comforting to enjoy in the post-holiday season soon upon us, as you sit back, relax, and relish a job well done.

As a hint for next year, my mom often would bake these as (highly anticipated) gifts for school staff when we were in grade school. As the recipe states, she alters the standard Toll House cookie recipe by always using butter-flavored Crisco (which is fattier than butter, by the way, making these cookies darker and crisper on the outside) and by dropping them with an enormous cookie scoop. We’re talking about a scoop on the high-end of what’s sold at the kitchen store, which holds something like two or more tablespoons of dough. The cookies will end up bake-sale sized, maybe about four inches across.

Cookie Tip #24: Don’t trust what a recipe gives as its yield. I often end up with far less than what’s stated; I imagine that others always end up with more. A lot depends on the size of your scoops or slices, true, but you’ll also run into variations due to measuring differences. Flour is especially difficult to measure accurately because it compresses under its own weight. Someone who sifts and gently scoops flour with a spoon into a cup will end up putting much less flour in the bowl than someone who uses the measuring cup to shovel straight out of the canister and presses the top flat. It’s best to find recipes that measure ingredients by weight rather than volume for this reason.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
Source: Nestlé and Mom

• 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (1 stick) butter-flavored Crisco
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• ¾ cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups (12 oz. pkg.) chocolate chips

PREHEAT oven to 375° F.

COMBINE flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop by ice cream scoop onto ungreased baking sheets.

BAKE for 11 to 13 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Notes:
Mom’s way: Use the big cookie scoop to create huge, four-to-five-inch cookies. Will take a few more minutes to bake.

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Cookie Calendar: Swedish Christmas Cookies

If you’d like to have fresh-baked cookies on Christmas with a minimum of fuss, then slice-and-bake is definitely the way to go. If you’re like most (non-insane) people putting on a big party on Christmas Day, you’ll probably be spending much of today in the kitchen prepping anyway, so why not whip up some cookie logs?

Food Network accompanies this recipe now with a picture of pastel-sugar-bedecked cookie rounds, but back when the recipe was first unleashed on the 12 Days of Cookies hordes, the picture dazzled us with a red-and-green holiday theme.

What colors of sugar your roll them in is up to you, but I did the mix of red and green when I baked these. I simply sprinkled both shades on my work surface, used my fingers to mix ‘em up, and then rolled away.

Cookie Tip #23: Slice-and-bake logs in the freezer or fridge mean fast cookies with minimal effort at any time in the holiday season!

Swedish Christmas Cookies
Source: Food Network
Yield: About 3-1/2 dozen cookies

• 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons ground cardamom
• ¼ teaspoon fine salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, (2 sticks), at room temperature
• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 1 large egg, room temperature
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
• Colored sanding sugars or chopped toasted pecans

Whisk the flour, cardamom, and salt in a bowl.

Put the butter and confectioners’ sugar in a food processor, and process until smooth. Pulse in the egg, vanilla, and lemon zest until combined. Add the flour mixture and process to make a soft buttery dough. Divide dough in half onto 2 (12-inch long) sheets of plastic wrap, using the plastic, shape into rough logs. Refrigerate the dough logs for 30 minutes until just firm enough to shape into uniform logs, 8-inches long by 2-inches in diameter. Refrigerate until firm, at least 2 hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Scatter either the sanding sugars or toasted nuts on a work surface and roll the logs until completely coated. Cut into 1/4-inch thick cookies and space about 1 inch apart on parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake until golden around the edges, about 20 to 25 minutes. Cool cookies on the pan on wire racks. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.

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A Gift in a Jar for Oatmeal Cookie Fans

. . . like my grandpa. My mom always makes sure I prepare some oatmeal raisins for him. And why not — they’re yummy.

They almost feel healthy, too, with all that whole grain and fruit. They’re a great cookie for everyone to make after swearing to those New Year’s resolutions!

Quaker Oats provides the recipe for creating the jars on their site. It’s kind of nice because it even incorporates the fat yet, like Bisquick, it doesn’t require refrigeration. That’s miracle of shortening for you.

Don’t forget to print out the cookie recipe to attach to the jars, else your recipient won’t know what to do with a jar full of floury oats.

Cookie Calendar: Famous Oatmeal Cookies

Oatmeal cookies may be your typical, everyday cookie fare, but it wouldn’t be Christmas without them making an appearance on our holiday cookie platters. It’s a special favorite of my grandpa, but I think a lot of people would be disappointed not to be able to have a few (and take some home!).

Oatmeal cookies do have a holiday flavor, too, with their molasses-like brown sugar. You can up the Christmas factor by adding in some cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice — whatever gets you in that celebratory mood.

We always add raisins to our oatmeal cookies, but at this time of year, dried cranberries or even cherries would be perfect!

Cookie Tip #22: If you’re not already planning to pre-wrap a bunch of your cookie stash as gifts, consider having pretty bags or storage containers nearby so that guests can pack up a few cookies for the road as the party breaks up. Your waistline will thank you come New Year’s.

Famous Oatmeal Cookies
Source: Quaker Oats
Yield: About 5 dozen

• 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• ¾ cup vegetable shortening
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• ¼ cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 cups Quaker® Oats (quick or old fashioned, uncooked)
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt (optional)
• ½ teaspoon baking soda

1. Heat oven to 350°F. In large bowl, beat brown sugar, shortening and granulated sugar until creamy. Add egg, water and vanilla; beat well. Add combined oats, flour, salt and baking soda; mix well.
2. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 11 to 13 minutes or until edges are golden brown. Remove to wire rack. Cool completely. Store tightly covered.

Notes:
Cook Tips and Variations

* Add 1 cup of any one or a combination of any of the following ingredients to basic cookie dough: raisins, chopped nuts, chocolate chips or shredded coconut.

LARGE COOKIES: Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 15 to 17 minutes. ABOUT 2-1/2 DOZEN

BAR COOKIES: Press dough onto bottom of ungreased 13 x 9-inch baking pan. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool completely in pan on wire rack. Cut into bars. Store tightly covered. Makes 24 BARS

* HIGH ALTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Increase flour to 1-1/4 cups and bake as directed.

Nutritional notes:
Serving Size:
1 cookie
Nutrition Information:
Calories: 70, Calories from Fat: 25, Total Fat: 3g, Saturated Fat: .5g, Cholesterol: <5mg, Sodium: 10mg, Dietary Fiber: 0g, Protein: 1g

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Cookie Calendar: Shortbread Bites

Half an inch sure makes for one teeny-weeny cookie! If you have little kids around at the holidays, I bet these would make great “tea party” fare.

The square shape is also somewhat unusual for a cookie, and the sprinkles worked into the dough make it so festive. You could use red and green nonpareils for Christmas, true, but I liked the look of the rainbow ones too much to go any other way.

They look kind of reminiscent of that confetti icing they sell at the grocery store. I always longed for that stuff on cakes, but my mom was never a canned frosting kind of person.

Nowadays, I don’t like icing much, and I’m often too impatient to wash everything up and make a batch after I’ve gone to all the trouble of baking. I do sometimes buy frosting in a can for cakes that must be frosted and aren’t for me to consume. Hmm, sometime I need to relate my adventures in seven-minute frosting from this summer!

I digress! My big tip for these cookies is to underbake them a bit. I followed the directions here, and 18 to 20 minutes is waaaaay too long for butter cookies the size of nickels. When the bottoms are so very golden brown, the cookies turn all dry and crumbly rather than luscious and buttery. Start checking these puppies, I don’t know, nine minutes in, and pull them once they look set.

Cookie Tip #21: Don’t trust a recipe. Trust your senses! If they look set, they are done, even if it hasn’t been 30 minutes. If they look dull, add sprinkles or candy bits. If they taste boring, add more vanilla or other flavoring next time. Just watch out when you start changing things such as the kind or amount of cocoa or acid used, as ingredients such as those might be balancing out another acid/alkaline ingredient that makes the cookie rise or come together.

Shortbread Bites
Source: Good Housekeeping

• 1 ¼ cup(s) all-purpose flour
• 3 tablespoon(s) sugar
• ½ cup(s) (1 stick) butter (no substitutions), cold, cut into pieces
• 1 tablespoon(s) red and green nonpareils or sprinkles or 1/2 cup mini baking bits

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. In food processor with knife blade attached, pulse flour and sugar until combined. Add butter and pulse until dough begins to come together. Place dough in medium bowl. With hand, gently knead in nonpareils or baking bits until evenly blended and dough forms a ball.
3. On lightly floured waxed paper, pat dough into 8″ by 5″ rectangle; freeze 15 minutes. Cut dough into 1/2-inch squares. Place squares, 1/2 inch apart, on ungreased large cookie sheet.
4. Bake cookies 18 to 20 minutes or until lightly browned on bottom. Transfer cookies to wire rack to cool. Repeat with remaining dough. Store cookies in tightly covered container at room temperature up to 1 week, or in freezer up to 3 months.

Nutritional notes:
NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION (per serving)
Calories 40
Total Fat 3g
Saturated Fat 2g
Cholesterol –
Sodium –
Total Carbohydrate 4g
Dietary Fiber –
Sugars –
Protein –
Calcium –

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Good Housekeeping’s 30 Days of Cookies

For more cookie-recipe goodness, check out Good Housekeeping magazine’s chock-full-of-pictures cookie page.

Some look especially good:

Cinnamon Spirals

Spumoni Icebox Cookies

Fig-Filled Moons

Cookie Calendar: Booze Balls

We created these truffle-like cookies a few evenings ago while enjoying another viewing of A Christmas Carol on DVD (see? Make it festive!). Scott did have to make a chocolate run to the convenience store when we decided to make a double batch and discovered we were 40 grams short on chocolate, but otherwise this recipe went a good deal more smoothly than the Rum Balls.

It helped that I found a meat pounder to use for crushing the cookies this time around. Last time we attempted a lightweight skillet and our fingers before finally settling on the edge of a wooden cutting board. Of course, you should use your food processor and save yourself a good deal of time.

We did have to make a few substitutions. Since they don’t sell chocolate chips here as far as we can tell (though you can buy packaged chocolate-chip cookies), we used chopped-up dark chocolate bars. Thus, ours might taste a little sweeter than yours. We also used rum rather than bourbon or brandy since we didn’t want to buy yet another bottle of liquor that we will not finish in the next four and a half months.

Also, since our box of prunes was three dried plums short of the amount required, we subbed in a couple tablespoons of golden raisins. Chopped up into mush, they didn’t stand out much at all.

We used the plain granulated sugar we had on hand for decoration, which as you can see in the picture produced a sparkly coat for each ball that didn’t end up absorbed by the moisture of the balls after a couple of days of “maturation.”

As for the taste: These balls do remind me of truffles infused with liqueur, with their soft, somewhat grainy texture and chocolaty yet slightly fruity and boozy flavor. They also remind me a little of chocolate Lara Bars without the nuts.

Cookie Tip #20: Some cookies, such as gingerbread men and stained-glass cut-outs, make excellent tree decorations. When you make the string holes in your cookies before baking, make them much bigger than you expect to need to allow for puffing in the oven. Why not buy a small artificial tree for a table (one out of reach of pets!) and decorate it entirely in edible ornamentations? Think popcorn or cereal garlands, candy canes, and, of course, cookies. Just don’t expect it to last until Christmas day!

Booze Balls
Source: Food Network
Yield: 4-1/2 dozen one-inch balls

• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (12 ounces!)
• 20 chocolate wafer cookies (about 1/2 a 9-ounce box)
• ½ cup finely chopped pitted dried plums (about 15)
• ½ cup confectioners’ sugar
• ¼ cup bourbon or 1/3 to 1/2 cup brandy
• ¼ cup sweetened condensed milk
• ¼ cup granulated sugar, or colored decorating sugars, for garnish

Put chocolate in a microwave safe bowl and microwave on medium power for a minute. Stir and repeat until the chocolate melts, about 3 minutes in all depending on the power of your microwave. Alternatively, put the chocolates in a heatproof bowl. Bring a saucepan filled with 1-inch or so of water to a very slow simmer; set the bowl on the pan (without touching the water). Stir occasionally until melted and smooth.

Process the cookies in a food processor until finely ground (you should have about 1 1/2 cups ground cookies). Alternatively, put cookies inside a heavy re-sealable plastic bag and crush by moving a rolling pin over the cookies.

Stir the cookie crumbs, dried plums, confectioners’ sugar, bourbon or brandy, and condensed milk into the chocolate until evenly combined.

Cover and refrigerate the mixture until firm enough to roll into balls, about 45 minutes. Scoop a tablespoon or so of the mixture into small balls with a cookie or small ice cream scoop and set onto a baking sheet or a large plate. Roll each portion by hand into a smooth ball.

Store booze balls in an air tight container at room temperature for a day to allow the flavors to come together. Store balls in the refrigerator for a week or freeze for up to 1 month.

To serve, put the sugar on a plate and roll the balls in it to coat. Serve at room temperature.

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The Whole Six Years

I’ve collected all the 12 Days of Cookies recipes on one page in the Recipe Box section of the site. You can view and download each individual recipe. Of course, should you prefer to see them in original form on the Food Network site, please visit my blog entries for each year’s links:

• The 12 Days of Cookies: 2002
• The 12 Days of Cookies: 2003
• The 12 Days of Cookies: 2004
• The 12 Days of Cookies: 2005
• The 12 Days of Cookies: 2006
• The 12 Days of Cookies: 2007

Come next year, I’ll update the collection with whatever cookies come our way. For now, though, bon appétit and happy holidays!

The 12 Days of Cookies Collection

Cookie Calendar: Rosemary-Cheese Spritz Cookies

Though these are called cookies, Rosemary-Cheese Spritz are probably best served alongside your appetizers rather than your desserts. They are savory as well as being as typically tender and buttery as the usual spritz cookies. And you get to use the cookie press!

As they are so tender, don’t put these cookies out with your crackers next to the cheese ball. They can’t handle the abuse. Instead, place them on their own festive plate or alongside other dry items not meant to be dipped or spread.

If you’re not up to speed on the varieties of cheeses available in the marketplace, know that pecorino generally refers to pecorino romano, also often just called romano cheese. As in, that stuff that many restaurants cut the more expensive grated parmesan with.

Personally, I like it even better than parm (possibly because it’s saltier) and I buy huge wedges at Costco that I grind up in the food processor for sprinkling on pasta.

By the way, if you’re the sort of person who sees “parmesan” and thinks not “Parmigiano Reggiano” but rather “Kraft,” you could always use 1-1/4 cups of their Parmesan-Romano blend here in place of measuring out two separate cheeses. We all know in our deepest souls which of us will be working the Microplane come Christmas and which will be scooping from the plastic bottle, but our guests will likely have consumed too much eggnog to judge what camp the cookies fall in.

Cookie Tip # 19: Before you start baking, make sure to clear ample space around the kitchen to set up cooling racks. There’s nothing worse than running around the house with a rocket-hot pan in one hand, a rack under your chin, and your other arm shoving the wrapping paper and gifts on the floor as you make some landing space. Your cookie bottoms could burn along with your hands if you wait to set up the racks, as cookies will continue to bake while sitting on a hot sheet.

Rosemary-Cheese Spritz Cookies
Source: Food Network
Yield: About 4 dozen

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
• 1 large egg yolk
• 6 tablespoons heavy cream
• 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
• ¾ cup finely grated Pecorino cheese
• ½ cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary leaves
• 1 teaspoons fine salt
• Pinch freshly ground nutmeg
• Special Equipment: Cookie Press

Bring all ingredients to room temperature.

Beat the butter and lemon zest with an electric mixer at medium speed until smooth, about 30 seconds. Slowly beat in the egg yolk and cream.

Whisk the flour, pecorino, 1/4 cup of the Parmesan, sugar, rosemary, salt, and nutmeg together in a bowl. Gradually add the flour mixture into the butter mixture while mixing slowly. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then beat on medium speed to make a slightly sticky dough.

Fill the cookie press with the dough. Assemble the press with the desired disk shape (see cook’s note), and press cookies onto ungreased baking sheets. Leave about one inch between cookies. Sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 cup Parmesan and refrigerate cookies for 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Bake cookies, rotating pan halfway through, until golden, the cheese browns a bit, and the cookies smell nutty, about 20 to 25 minutes. Briefly cool the cookies on the baking sheets, then transfer to racks to cool. Serve or store in a tightly sealed container for up to 1 month.

Cook’s Notes: These freeze beautifully. Press the cookies out into desired shapes on cookie sheets and freeze. Transfer frozen cookies to a plastic bag, seal, and keep frozen for up to 1 month. When ready to bake, lay out frozen cookies on cookie trays and bake from frozen for 25 minutes.

Some disk shapes work better than others. Since this is savory cookie, we liked the cutters that result in a cracker shape cookie, like the ribbon, clover. Stars and and snowflakes work, too.

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