So over at Simply Recipes, we're already starting to gear up for the big food months of November and December. My kitchen has become a veritable Santa's workshop for assorted Christmas cookies, cakes, and so on. I have resorted to butter in bulk. I have been going to the gym as much as possible to discourage pastry fat from being absorbed into my body, through my skin, through sheer osmosis.
The reason I'm doing all this now is because by the time December rolls around, I have to start working on my final papers for class. These 20 page theoretical colossusses lumber into my life with foreboding dominion, jarring into dark, forlorn shadow any possibility of outside activities. Indeed they are, in and of particular effect, a hovering death to extracurricular baking.
Due to this apparent and dreaded lacuna in my future scheduling, I start baking for the holidays now. In September.
The looks I get from people when I inform them I have been baking Christmas cookies is akin to if I told them I caught their beloved pet listening to Bob Dylan and snorting coke in an alley - utter perplexion. I'm the culinary version of Wal-Mart, Christmas already in full swing, 4 months early.
The first of such recipes is already up, early I might add due to it's total shibby yumtasticness. I highly encourage you to try them out. I have now dozens (I think 30+) recipes there now that I always welcome feedback about.
Still, with the holidays barreling towards us, as it always is for once you look away then BAM you're up to your ass in gift wrap and candy canes and dreidels, I come to you all with a question and request. Are there any holiday cookies or treats you look forward to each year? Peppermint cake, macarons, rum balls? Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, Ramadan, Solstice, or what have you. I'm curious and eager to hear!
I'm all with you there about getting it in early. I've got to provide snacks for our October Staff meeting, and I've been inundating my office with brownies for 4 weeks, trying to find just the right recipe.
ReplyDeleteThe pistachio cookie looks YUM!
I always think of mint and cinnamon and spice for the holidays. I look forward to that mint chocolate cookie (this year I'm gonna add mint into the World Peace cookies). And Snickerdoodles can't ever be beat. And Gingerbread men--my special recipe. Christmas isn't the same without those three tastes.
Shan
I'm all about getting an early start. Totally with you there. I'm partially responsible for treats for our staff meeting in October. I've been torturing my office mates with brownie recipes for a month to find just the right taste and texture.
ReplyDeleteThe Pistachio cookies look YUM!
My favorite Christmas flavors are mint, cinnamon, and spice. I'm planning to add mint extract to World Peace Cookies this year. Can't do without Snickerdoodles, and it wouldn't be Christmas without my recipe for Gingerbread men.
Best,
Shan
I don't know, but that mention of peppermint cake has me thinking!
ReplyDeleteSo are you saying you are baking now for things you will serve in three months?
ReplyDeleteI would so enjoy hearing from you the best way to keep baked items fresh over time.
Nope, just getting posts ready now for the photos to be taken and everything written up, because come X-Mas time I won't be able to.
ReplyDeleteFavorites: My fiance has wistful memories of press cookies (known in his family as "the green Christmas tree cookies"). The recipe has been lost over time, and he tries every holiday to try to recreate them, with no luck.
ReplyDeleteI'm a slave to tradition - I make buckets of Chex Mix, and I also whip up pecan pies...
My mom made a recipe for cream-cheese sugar cookies when I was a kid, super moist and sweet with just a hint of something else. When I went to college I added to the recipe- instead of topping the cookies with icing I melt some high quality milk chocolate and frost the cookies with that. Sometimes I sprinkle a few non pariels on for color.
ReplyDeleteThe cookies are amazingly decadent and I love them.
And the dough is a good base for stained glass cookies, you cut a cut a hole in the cookie and fill it with hard candy (like jolly ranchers) and it melts into a glassy center.
They sound so good I'm tempted to go make a batch early!
What perfect timing. I'm planning on baking some cookies this weekend. I think I'll give these a try.
ReplyDeletePizzelles ... gotta have pizzells!
ReplyDeleteGarrett ...
ReplyDeleteYou rock. I tried your banana cookies the other day (using some whole wheat flour and almonds as well ... oh good lord they were awesome).
Anyway, I think I should chime in to tell you my favorite holiday cookies are Maple Lace Cookies. They are basically sugar, maple extract and sugar. They bake to a delicious lace consistency (though ensuring that they do not burn or come out undercooked is an exact science!).
Garret, those cookies look incredible!
ReplyDeleteI don't actually have any holiday cookies that I look forward to each year. I am currently obsessed with a (gf) pistachio chickpea cookie. Otherwise, the old standby of flourless peanut butter or cinammon walnut biscotti serve me well throughout the year.
Here are my Christmas favorites:
ReplyDeletehttp://bakingaway.blogspot.com/search/label/Christmas
Good luck with all the baking trials! I look forward to the following during the holidays: anything pumpkin, molasses-spice cookies, and gingerbread. Anything but fruitcake. Whoever likes that stuff should be relegated to writing your 20-pager.
ReplyDeleteI start baking the freezable cookies in October, no other way to keep up with it. Right now my freezer is full of pumpkin and zucchini muffins, so as we eat those then the cookies go in. Favorites in our house are Chocolate Cherries-candied cherries w/stem covered in chocolate cookie and topped with fudge icing; mocha crinkles; chocolate mint cookie bars; ginger hearts and sugar cookies, which the kids decorate. Christmas is a big time in our house, we also share with neighbours, schools, family and friends.
ReplyDeleteGod how I love Christmas cookies especially sugar cookies with frosting.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE the Christmas cookie season. My husband and I have taken on the tradition that his family had in making Poppyseed and Walnut rolls. It's an entire day event filled with my bad music blasting in the background, carefully getting that HUGE mound of dough to rise, and chopping nuts!! It's my job to make the dough and my husband's job to make and fill the rolls. The result?...15 - 18 rolls or pure heaven!! (if you want the recipe, would be my pleasure!) It just wouldn't be Christmas in our house without them.
ReplyDeleteI'm just getting excited about Halloween. :)
ReplyDeleteBut I DO look forward to peppermint and gingersnaps. mmmmmmmmmm
I love starting early too. I've been trying different kind of bars for the upcoming Holidays. Now I should try this cookie recipe. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteChocolate Shortbread with a gold powder dusting. A fav from ages ago featured in F&W (circa 1990something) - I'm going to go pull it out now!
ReplyDeleteI understand getting a early start in the kitchen. Like you said, there could be an influx of wrapping paper in places you don't need. But was floored to see the Christmas cards next to the skeletons in Target today! There is something just not right about that. Nice post, funny!
There's a recipe called Tipsy Turtle Bark on epicurious that has become our Christmas tradition--I have to make huge batches because it's eaten so quickly. Maybe you can make your version?
ReplyDeleteNothing like being organised. I always like baking spiced oat and orange cookies with pistachios and cranberries around chirstmas, as I think all those flavours are so festive. I also look forward to sweetened chestnut puree which starts to appear from November - it makes the most amazing chocolate truffles and tortes. I also bake individual moist chirstmas cakes in washed out baked bean cans as gifts. Ohh you've got me feeling all festive now.
ReplyDeleteFor Kami, Joy of Cooking has a good recipe for Spritz Cookies (the ones from the cookie press) that my grandmother and mother made, and now I do too. They are very buttery, so they taste great and freeze well. For extra delight, add a tiny bit of almond extract to the dough.
ReplyDeleteOh baby. Just made the white chocolate pistachio cookies and mmmmmm.
ReplyDeleteI was going to take them to work, but forget it!! MINE!!
Thanks!!
K, so I know this post is as old as the hills, but Christmas is my favorite time of year, and that is due in large part to the multitude of cookies I bake each year. Sugar cookies with frosting, of course...my brothers and I have done this together since we were in grade school, complete with eight different kinds of sprinkles, decorator tips, and at least 7 colors of frosting. I'm not kidding. I also love white cookies with peppermint extract and mini chocolate chips, peppermint bark, fudge (although I don't really have a stellar go-to recipe for that), and my Grandma Veehoff's date-nut pinwheel cookies that look like shit but taste like heaven. MMM. Can't wait for your recipes!
ReplyDelete