After a lot of baking over the last few weeks, I'm finally done and sent out my first batch of gifts today to my skating friends. I like to take the opportunity of the holidays to say thanks to everyone who's been nice to me in the past year. What's a better way to say thanks than with a batch of homemade sweets? This year I wanted variety but I went a little overboard with 14 different varieties. Every one of the recipe is vastly different (ahem, that means I didn't take any shortcut of tweaking one recipe to yield a few different cookies) so it was more work than I first anticipated. However, I'm very pleased with the final result. The picture above contains an assortment of cookies, packaged in a two-tiered Japanese "lacquer" box typically used for New Year meals. This box stores lots of cookies and I plan to give this to my boss at Salad King. Most of my typical gift sizes are considerably smaller, with about 15 cookies in each box.
Let's take a look at what I made this year:
Walnut Chocolate Chips Cookies
This is a variation of my signature cookie. I omitted the ground espresso from the recipe because I already have a mocha cookie. This is my favourite chocolate chips cookies recipe because it is so soft and cakey. I hope you'll agree with me too.
White Chocolate Chips Fudge Cookies
I love the idea of a reverse chocolate chips cookies. I've been searching for a long time for a fudgy drop cookie that's not toothachingly sweet. This recipe from Tish Boyle's "The Good Cookie" is definitely a keeper. I particularly like the cracked top. The taste is highly dependent on the quality of the cocoa powder and chocolate that you use. This recipe calls for unsweetened chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, and dutched cocoa powder to give it a complex and deep chocolate taste. It is important to use the best ingredients you can afford.
White Chocolate Chips Sour Cherries Almond Cookies
I bought some dried sour cherries at Costco a few weeks ago so I must put them to good use. The combination of white chocolate, sour cherries, and almond is really tasty though I'm not a big fan of this cookie dough. I prefer something that's more toothy.
Espresso Biscuits
This is one of my brother's favourite cookies though I haven't made them for a couple of years because I lost the recipe. Luckily, I found it recently and so of course I had to make it. This cookie has a very melt-in-your-mouth texture and deep coffee flavour. I like to shape them into simple rounds but to gild the lilies, shaping them into crescents with a drizzle of white chocolate would be very pretty too.
Pecan Brownies
Bar cookies are always easy to make and can be a big time saver in holiday baking. I like to cut rich bar cookies into tiny bite-size squares about 1 1/2" by 1 1/2", kind of like petit fours size. The pecan brownies is my go-to recipe for easy baking without any mixers because I can make it with one mixing bowl. The recipe is available here.
Peanut Butter Saskatoon Berries Square
This square is okay in my opinion. I would probably use a preserve that's a little more tart to cut the richness of the peanut butter dough. Why Saskatoon berries you ask? Well, I do not want to buy a jar of jam just for this recipe so I rummaged through my pantry. This is the only non fancy preserve that I have...all of the others are hard-to-find-in-Toronto treasures that I'm not willing to part with just yet. The recipe comes from Tish Boyle's The Good Cookie.
Lime Cornmeal Shortbread
Sad to say, this is a true dud in my opinion. The course cornmeal just doesn't go well in a shortbread cookie. I think the ingredients proportion needs to be reworked because this cookie sweated lots of grease during baking and puffed up a lot. Weird.
I made a whole whack of icebox cookies this year so that I could spread out the work load over a few weeks. Some are better than others but over all, I'm happy with the results and will use this strategy again next year.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Spirals
Delicious cookies that's an absolute nightmare to work with. I never would have guessed that the final product would look so good and be so tasty. This cookie has the melting texture typical of peanut butter cookies. From the rolling of the dough, shaping of the logs, to slicing the logs, this dough gave me lots of grief every step of the way. Will I make it again? Only if I feel like testing my patience...
Pistachio Cranberry Icebox Cookie
This is a recipe published in the December 2006 issue of Gourmet magazine. The cookie looks gorgeous as promised and that was the exact reason why I made it. Shortbread cookie is always a welcome addition to any holiday baking. The addition of cinnamon, orange zest, pistachio, and cranberries make this cookie standout from the rest.
Tweed Crisps
This cookie looks so deceptively plain but one bite and I'm sure you'll agree with me that it is good. Coconut adds crunch and lightness to this cookie. The grated chocolate adds good chocolate flavour without the bulk that prevents neat slicing of this icebox cookie. I will for sure make this cookie the rest of the year.
Hazelnut Chocolate Sables
This is quite possibly my favourite cookie of all time, courtesy of the one and only M. Herme. The use of a pate sucre with chocolate sable makes for a subtle textural contrast. The flavour of hazelnuts and almonds is good to the last crumb. It's not holiday baking without this cookie for me.
White Chocolate Lemon Cookie
Of the 14 different cookies I made this year, this is one of the few that is a little disappointing to me. I expected the addition of finely grated white chocolate, almond, and lemon zest would produce some interesting texture/flavour. Instead, this cookie was just greasy and chewy. I will not make it again.
Lemon Poppyseed Cookie
I'm not a big fan of making rolled cookies because the yield percentage is low compared to other types of cookies. After the first batch of cut-out, I can really only reroll the dough one more before it becomes over-worked (which would make for some tough cookies). However, there is something festive about cookies in cute shape so I decided to give this recipe a try.
Gingerbread Mittens
I love the slightly spiciness of gingerbread cookies and they are great canvas for decorating. I have 16 mittens waiting for me to make them colourful and pretty with royal icing...
More gift wrap ideas:
- Buttercrunch Toffee in custom cardstock box
- Candied Orange Peel in a tin
- Chocolate Hearts in a plastic sleeve
- Cookies and Candies Assortment 2012
- Candies Assortment 2011
- Flower Pot Jam Jar
- Cookie Ration Emergency Kit
- Best Shock Absorber Ever
- Buckeyes In Wooden Box
- Holiday Picnic Hamper
- Bar Cookies Assortment for mailing
- Elegant Holiday Fudge Assortment
- Panforte in a round box
