On the 5th day of Cookiemas…

Caramel Bars! To give credit where credit is due, my mom made these (the baking thing’s genetic, you know), and dear deity, were they good! Full of sugar, dulce de leche, and Milky Way bars (yep, you read that right), these things are sweet enough to put you into a diabetic coma, so be careful! And I love the swirly top:

Moving on… on the 6th day of Cookiemas:

Candy Cane Macaroons! Come on, even a Jewish chick can get into the holiday spirit, right? These puppies are getting their own post soon enough, because making them was pretty fun. I got a little too into crushing the candy canes.

Come back for the other half dozen cookies tomorrow! (Oh, who am I kidding? I’ll see you on Monday, readers. Everyone should be spending time with their family instead of looking at cookie porn, don’t you think?)

Chocolate Pistachio Biscotti!

I admittedly screwed these up, because they didn’t come out the texture biscotti should be, but it’s only a level 2 fail because they still taste good, and probably just need to be dunked in some milk. They have a really deep cocoa flavor balanced out by one of my favorite nuts. Here are some pics of the making of these semi-failed Italian delights:

You like that Jan van Eyck, Arnolfini Wedding thing I got goin' on back there?

It’s amazing how the dough goes from this:

to this:

in just a few minutes. The only problem is that it looks like crap. No, literally, it looks like a big turd, but it’s delicious.

I think my problem was that these were too big. I’ll have to try this recipe again with smaller logs so they don’t fall apart.

Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures of the cutting and re-baking, but I did take pictures of the rejects!

And what delicious rejects they were.

Now I want some hot cocoa to dip these into. Chocolate cookies in a chocolate drink. Too much chocolate? NEVER!

Simple, rich, excellent with a glass of milk! (Actually, these need work—I’m thinking of using a smoother peanut butter, or maybe thinning it out a bit before adding it. Also, piping some chocolate into those ridges couldn’t hurt. Peanut butter and chocolate? Gee, who would have thunk it.)

Sorry to cut this one short, but I was a little preoccupied eating these to take too many pictures of them. Have any suggestions for tomorrow’s cookies?

Sugar cookies with royal icing, hand-painted for a dear, dear, misguided friend who unfortunately roots for the wrong guys in blue.

The cookies themselves are simple enough—plain sugar cookies cut with a juice glass (improvisation FTW!) and dipped in icing, then painted. I made stencils for the teams, since I don’t have a fancy-schmancy printer to print edible dye on rice paper (not that I’m suggesting anything, but it is the gift-giving season, you know…). Oddly enough, the meticulous nature of these cookies is what makes them some of my favorite to make. I like to grab a bar stool and plop myself at the counter, painting for hours until each one is perfect, or at least perfectly presentable. And hey, I get to eat the rejects, so it’s a win-win!

Needless to say, I haven’t been baking as much as I’d hoped, but have no fear! 12 Days of Cookies is here! From now until Christmas day, new cookie pictures! These posts may not be as detailed as previous ones because let’s face it, keeping up lengthy posts isn’t exactly my forte right now, but I’ll be giving your eyes pleasure of the baked goods variety for the next 12 days.

♫ On the first day of Cookiemas, my baker baked for me… a pizzookie to share with three friends (or just one if you’re really hungry… or none if you just really like cookies and don’t want to share with anyone because this one was really delicious).

Ok, so actually, making a cookie that big out of a recipe that was created to make a bunch of smaller cookies doesn’t really come out as delicious. Because it’s so big, it takes longer to bake, and then the texture changes. We were hoping for something a little more along these lines:

Aren’t they purrrrrrdy? And they taste even better than they look. Man, I’m glad I keep a store of chocolate chips in the freezer. I’m feelin’ the need for a fix just about now…

Cookie season is approaching—yes, although it’s always a good time for cookies, there is a season for them, and it’s slightly shorter than pie season—which means my brain is working overtime on new ideas for scrumptious treats to bring to parties, offer up to family and friends, and use to make sure everyone’s New Year’s resolution to lose weight is well-deserved.

Round one: pistachio thumbprints. One of my all time favorite cookies to eat and to make, thumbprint cookies are fun and easy, and especially fun to make with little kids—I know I say a lot of things are easy, but really, these ones truly are. Simple butter cookies filled with jam, chocolate, or nutty filling of your choice… can’t really go wrong, can you?

For these, I started with a basic butter cookie recipe—butter, sugar, egg yolks, salt—and Frankensteined it by messing with the proportions and adding some vanilla and toasted, crushed pistachios. Voici les photos:

Whole pistachios—roast 'em at 375 for 8-10 minutes. Heaven!

Tip: Instead of chopping nuts, which can get really tedious really fast, put them between sheets of wax paper, get a rolling pin, and take out some aggression! Works every time. Just don’t go overboard, lest you end up with pistachio butter.

The Casino method never fails.

Mix the nuts in with the basic dough, roll into balls, press with your thumb, and—poof!—thumbprint cookies! Well, almost.

The indentations actually work a lot better if you flatten the cookies out a bit first, then make a shallower, wider dent. But just sticking your thumb right in a big pile o’ cookie dough is much more fun.

Now, for the good stuff. Thumbprint cookies, in case you didn’t know, are also a utilitarian cookie. You didn’t know cookies had political leanings? Well, they don’t, but they’re very useful for getting rid of half-used jars of jam, chocolate that’s about to go bad (sidenote: don’t believe the use by dates on chocolate—more on that later), and just about anything else you can turn into a cookie filling. I mean, really, who doesn’t have six jars of various flavors of jelly and preserves in their fridge? I have had at least four that I knew of. These cookies helped me get rid of an oldie but a goodie, apricot:

Apricot and pistachio are a fairly traditional pairing, but there's a reason for that. It's really freaking delicious.

Last, but not least, when I ran out of apricot, I used some of that ridiculously tasty fig jam from Hédiard I need to use up this month. Needless to say, if you put that stuff on a turd, it would taste good, but on a pistachio butter cookie? Um, yes please!

It’s also a really great way to make friends around the office. Open up a tin of chocolate crinkle cookies, and you’ll be amazed at how quickly that curmudgeon in Legal will offer to look over those papers of yours…

Thursday was my boss’ birthday, and seeing as how I’m lucky enough to actually like my boss, and since I know she loves chocolate, I thought I’d make some of my famous chocolate crinkles for her. Only because I also know how much she loves coffee, and how infrequently she indulges, I figured last week was as good a time as any to try mixing it up a bit and throwing some espresso in the mix. Why not just coffee? Psh… Coffee is for lightweights. Coffee also doesn’t provide as rich a flavor as espresso, and adding enough of it to the recipe to make it taste remotely like coffee would result in soupy cookies. And who wants soupy cookies?

So, the not-so-secret ingredients:

Now, normally I am vehemently anti-instant anything, except oatmeal, but for baking, you really can’t go wrong with espresso of the instant variety. In this experiment, I used it twice. Once to brew and mix in with the chocolate, and then again to throw into the batter by itself, just to give it an extra kick. And the chocolate-covered espresso beans? I’ll get to those babies in a minute.

Any good chocolate cookie recipe should start with chocolate (duh) and butter. And not that you haven’t seen that before, but because it’s such a thing of beauty, I can’t resist posting a couple of photos:

I don’t have a double-boiler (travesty, I know), so I melt chocolate over really low heat and stir it almost constantly, to make sure it melts evenly and doesn’t burn. Meanwhile, I brewed the espresso and threw in a few tablespoons, which in all honesty screwed up the consistency of the chocolate-butter mixture a bit, but it still mixed in with the eggs just fine, and the cookies eventually came out gooier than normal (in a totally good way). I have to say, I love the way chocolate and butter melt together—the silky, shiny, smooth texture as it swirls in the pot, the sheen it gives off under the kitchen lights. That’s the Eighth Wonder of the World, right there.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky. (Read: here’s where I’m a horrible food blogger and forgot to take a bagillion photos.) The eggs have to be beaten until thick to give the batter some structure and airiness; then the chocolate mixture is slowly added in, but not too quickly because it needs to distribute evenly. (Who wants a chocolate crinkle cookie that’s only half chocolate? Uh, not this cookie queen.) Gradually add the dry ingredients, and watch them swirl around, like a Milky Way of flour and cocoa:

Now, about those chocolate-covered espresso beans. I’ll be honest, I just really wanted to experiment with them. They’re delicious on their own, so why wouldn’t they be delicious all crushed up in some cookies, right? The first…issue…I encountered was how to mash them up. I discovered there are two ways: the easy way and the hard way. The easy way is to use a food processor or a hand-held immersion blender, like my good friend, Mr. Braun, here:

Dun dun dun DUUUUN! Mr. Braun to the rescue!

I, of course, didn’t realize this until after I tried to go all Casino on those babies with a rolling pin and a towel, so it took me a while to crush them up and add them to the batter along with the mini chocolate chips and espresso powder (don’t think I forgot about that). Chill the batter for a couple of hours, scoop and roll in powdered sugar, bake for 14 minutes, and—voilà!—your morning cup of coffee packaged conveniently in a delicious chocolate cookie!

The cookies lose some air when they cool, but they keep their moist, dense texture. The espresso flavor is subtle—I’ll probably add more powder next time—but noticeable. It actually adds a depth to the chocolate that you don’t get from pure chocolate crinkle cookies. Plus, with espresso, they’re a great pick-me-up, and they’re tastier than coffee! What a way to start the morning…

After much deliberation, I decided simple was the way to go. Sugar cookies seemed the obvious choice—an uncomplicated, sweet, buttery favorite no one can turn down. The thing I love about them is that they’re never out of season, it’s really hard to mess them up, and there’s so much you can do with them. Whether it’s thin and crispy cookies you’re after, or thick and chewy—sleek and elegant or sprinkled and frosted—sugar cookies have it all.

For these cookies, I used an easy recipe I found in one of my Baking Bibles, The Art & Soul of Baking from Sur la Table. My favorite thing about this recipe is how basic it is—a few ingredients, no leavening agents, really hard to screw up unless you don’t watch the oven. The dough starts out looking really dry and crumbly when mixing, but it eventually comes out rich and fluffy, like this:

Now, once the dough is made, if you’re going to do the traditional cookie cutter thing, it has to be kneaded a few times and chilled in the fridge.

There it is, just chillin’…

I decided to do two variations of sugar cookies. I do the cookie cutter thing often enough, where I’ll make festive shapes and top them with royal icing, then paint them (stick around for autumn to see what I mean), so I thought this time I’d make a little change. For the cookies in the first picture, which come out softer and chewier than your typical buttery, crispy sugar cookie, I rolled them into balls, coated them with sugar, and flattened them with the bottom of a juice glass, à la:

Mmm, so sugary and delicious. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t eat about three cookies’ worth of this dough before they were even on the sheets.

For the second kind of cookie, I thought I’d be a little more… creative. See, the Jewish high holidays were coming up, and I had these star of David cookie cutters I’d never used. Well, what do you think I did?

Why, I made window cookies! Duh. In addition to this dough, I had an amazing jar of fig jam left over from my time in Paris that I never got to use when I lived there. Turns out it expires next month, so I’m looking for every excuse I can to use it. It also turns out it goes supremely well with sugar cookies.

The finished product:

The fig jam complimented the cookies perfectly. Needless to say, they disappeared pretty quickly once they were set on the table. Guess I’ll be making more of these soon! Hurry, while supplies last!

Any suggestions on what I should attempt next? Otherwise I’m just going to pick up a book and make the first thing I flip to… Heaven help my arteries.