Snowflakes

A miracle!! Another cookie cutter recipe that is easy to roll out and transfer to the tray without using tons of flour! It called for using a small star cookie cutter which I didn't have but a quick trip to Compleat Kitchen solved the problem. It was the perfect size since this is a sandwich cookie and two large stars would be too much cookie. The halves are joined using melted sweet chocolate and then topped with a dollop of chocolate with pistachio pieces sprinkled on top. I think the nuts were used for the green color...don't think they added too much to the taste. In fact, it would be great with coconut or even powdered sugar sprinkled on top of the chocolate. No matter what is on top, these are tasty. Guido, Alex and Matt gave them a "thumbs up" already! Also, a huge congratulations to Trish who finished 41st in the Honolulu Marathon on Sunday. I would like to think all the cookies had something to do with it....haha!

Toffee Squares

Looking at the recipe I thought it would be more like a caramel cut or butterscotch brownie with chocolate icing but it not as caramel as I thought. It was very good, and easy, but not the caramel I was expecting. Putting chocolate candies on the warm toffee base and then spreading them as frosting when they melted was a very easy way to frost a bar cookie. These would be very good served with ice cream as a dessert. Also, good luck to Trish on her Honolulu Marathon run on Sunday!!!!

cooky-candies

This recipe is one of the great ones!!! It is easy and fun to make, looks great and is very tasty! It is an oatmeal shortbread that you make into shapes by hand (and it was very easy to do). After baking, they are dipped into melted chocolate and then are to be dipped again into chopped pecans or coconut. I found it was easier to put the cookie on a plate after dipping and then sprinkle the nuts or coconut on top instead of a second dipping. You could get very imaginative with things to sprinkle on top of the chocolate such as candy cane pieces or other xmas candy. It seems as if it has been a while since there has been a recipe hit!!!!

Sorry!

We got home late and I did not get to the store to get items for the next recipes so there are no cookies for tomorrow...so sorry!

Candy Cane Cookies

Very "Christmasy" looking but I would have liked them to have more peppermint flavor. Actually, any peppermint flavor! The recipe for the dough was an almond flavored sugar cookie dough that seemed to be pretty standard. It called for both almond and vanilla flavoring and quite a bit of salt compared to what was used in any other recipe. I could taste the salt in the final product but Guido thought it was fine so I will see what other tasters say. The different component of these cookies is that after baking you sprinkle them with a mixture of ground-up candy canes and sugar. The first batch I followed the directions exactly and spooned it on while the cookies were warm. However, the majority of the mixture did not stick to the cookies. So, on the next batch I put the topping on before baking which was a real mess. The candy cane pieces melted and then hardened after removing the tray from the oven so that there was no time to get the cookies off the tray. They were basically glued to the pan with candy cane! I have a whole bunch of cookies pieces, needless to say! The last batch was done the original way but it meant that the cookies do not have much peppermint taste.

Wonderland Cookies

Another cookie cutter recipe with dough that is hard to cut out and transfer to the pan. That is why some of the cookies look more like starfish instead of Xmas stars and the snowmen need to be on diets. Oh well! They taste like the standard sugar cookie but more "cakey" than crispy. I don't know what makes this recipe different than other sugar cookie recipes but it was as diffucult to handle in Hawaiian humidity as previous ones.

To put you in the Xmas spirit!!!

We spent the day putting up Xmas decorations around the house so I thought a picture would put all blog readers in the holiday spirit! The cookies I made tonight are called Wonderland cookies and we are trying to make the house look like a wonderland!!!! I know that was a reach but I wanted to show-off the house!

Christmas Bells

These are supposed to be bells. I did my best but they look more like hats on wheels....sorry! This is a slice and bake cookie but the main part of the "bell" needed to be shaped after the dough roll had been refrigerated for several hours. Then, an un-tinted section of dough was rolled into a rectangle and formed around the bell-shaped log. The final unit was refrigerated overnight and then I sliced and baked the cookies tonight. Oh, a small bit of dough was reserved to make into tiny balls that were put at the bottom of the bell to make the clapper before baking. Well, Betty, a few too many steps for my taste for cookies that are just average in taste and presentation.

Merry Christmas Cookies

Thanksgiving is over, hope you all had a good one, and so now I am going to start the chapter on Christmas cookies. These cookies are shaped using cookie cutters after rolling out the dough. I have not had great success with this type of cookie in the past but tonight it was cooler so I had great expectations. Whether it was the weather or the huge amount of flour in the dough, it was actually easy to roll, cut and transfer the shapes to the tray. They cooked much faster then the directions called for (about 5 1/2 minutes as opposed to the 8 to 10 called for) so the first batch was a bit too brown. The final step was to ice the cooled cookies and decorate with colored sugar. I used the easy icing recipe called for but I realized that I don't like the taste of this type of icing. I think the plain cookie would be better. Over all, not my favorite cookie but they look festive!