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Cookies at Christmas is a special American tradition. Cookies are are special anyway, but there are certain kinds of cookies that you only bake and eat in the month of December. We just call them Christmas cookies. Christmas cookies are the best cookies!….but there are many different kinds! Christmas cookies (for my family, anyway) can be divided up into two categories:<\/p>\n
1: Christmas sugar cookies<\/strong> So about cookies… the last few days I’ve been taking a break from the more boring part of developing a concept (i.e desk research) and I’ve been in the kitchen working on recipe selection. This just means…baking a whole bunch to see what I’d like to include in the bakebook.<\/p>\n Last week, my good friend Annemarie, and my partner in crime in many ways \ud83d\ude09 got together for a Christmas cookie baking session. Annemarie has also lived in the States and is married to an American…so she knows what’s what ;). We’d been talking for awhile about baking together…and about cookies exchanges:<\/p>\n There’s a time-honored tradition in America around Christmas time called a Cookie Exchange. This is a lovely idea…it’s basically a cookie party. Each guest brings a tin of their favorite homemade Christmas cookies (usually from category 2). Once at the party, everyone empties their cookie tins, and fills them up again with an assortment of all the other cookies brought to the party. So, cookies are ‘exchanged’. As part of research for developing my bakebook, I need to test and select recipes. I want to pick the recipes that are truly timeless and familiar ones. So, when I was baking with Annemarie, I wanted to try baking all these other traditional cookie-exchange cookies, and see if I could re-create that familiar flavors. Our baking session was actually just the beginning. I’ve been baking every day since then, and just trying out new things! Here are a few that I made (see photo):<\/p>\n These are: I also made some Russian tea cakes, and tried making these crazy rainbow stacked cookies for the first time (I’ll write about those next).<\/p>\n And of course, I made some Chocolate crinkles \ud83d\ude42 These are still my favorite.<\/p>\n Until next time…<\/p>\n Cheers! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\n– This is only one kind of cookie: Sugar cookies, where you roll the dough out and use cookie-cutters. My sister and I always made these together and decorated them with colored frosting. It’s an event in itself \ud83d\ude42 These we usually make for fun, and we eat them ALL.
\n2: <\/strong>Christmas p<\/strong>arty\/present cookies<\/strong>
\n-These are kind of fancy and very festive cookies. There are all different kinds. When you make these, you usually save a few for yourself and give most of them away.<\/p>\n
\nI remember when I was little, my mom would go to these parties. She would come home with her tin (sometimes she exchanged tins too ;)) filled with all sorts of cookies made by other people. These were cookies belonging to other people’s family traditions. These were the cookies that we never made ourselves. Our family’s faithful contribution to these parties was nearly always the Chocolate Crinkle. This was our trusty category 2 cookie. They’re delicious, and have a real wow effect…with the dark chocolate color contrasted against the powdered sugar coating. The texture is soft and brownie-like. It’s a truly proud, and festive, and not to mention very yummy cookie.<\/p>\n
\n-Date pinwheels
\n-Peppermint swirl butter cookies
\n-Apricot\/cherry almond thumbprints
\n-Powdered sugar lemon crescents<\/p>\n
\nAbby<\/p>\n