COOKIES, COOKIES EVERYWHERE! (BUT NOT A CRUMB TO EAT...YET!)

Santa's favourite: White Chocolate Covered Oreos! Hand-decorated tediously lovingly with royal icing snowflakes! Take a look at that beauty. I know you'd want one.

Cakebrain's 2008 Christmas Goodies Box! Tiffany Sugar-Cookie Snowflake, Organic Cocoa Nib & Pecan Triangles, Pecan Butter Crunch, Vanilla Bean Butter Sables and White Chocolate Covered Oreo Snowflakes.

Dear Fellow Food Bloggers,
Have you ever had a furious week of baking and accumulated a ton of things to post but just didn't have the time to photograph it and post it?

Well, that's been me for the last 2 weeks. Not only that, but with that accumulation of baked goods comes the inevitable temptation of the family members. They mill around the sealed tupperware containers and linger by the kitchen counter, hoping to snatch a cookie or two before you tuck them away for gift-giving or other things...like blogging!

Sometimes, when I bake stuff, I encounter the perfect looking cookie of the batch. You know--the photogenic one. I usually don't have a problem with leaving cookies around, but this year I was a little ticked off when somebody in my household snatched the most handsome butter cookie of the bunch and ate it in 2 seconds. I had a little white plate with 5 different types of cookies. These cookies were the best lookers and made a handsome grouping even though they weren't "artistically presented". They were just minding their own business, the innocent little things, when Stomach, a devout Sweets-hater, nonchalantly grabbed one and inhaled it.

in this photo, the vanilla bean butter sables are quite fetching, i must admit...

Yes, I know, I know. I should be jumping in glee that he even ate a cookie because you know he hates to eat baked goods and has rarely had more than a sliver of any cake I made (and that, under a sort of obligatory duress) and yet my automatic reflex was to yell, "NO! not that one!"

"Fine. I won't eat any more of your cookies," he hissed.

"Well, didn't you notice how good-looking they were?" I exclaim exasperatedly. "Those were for my blog photos!" "You could have just asked and I would have given you a whole bunch of other cookies. You're only supposed to eat the ugly ones first!"

He stomped off in a huff and I muttered something about how rude he was.

Bah Humbug.

:P even a sweets-hater couldn't resist these cookies!

Should I be flattered that He-Who-Doesn't-Eat-Sweets is coveting my butter cookies? I dunno. Well, he won't be back anymore as I think I've scared him off. Perhaps I'll make a peace offering of a pile of yummy butter cookies later. How was I to know he only eats photogenic food?

organic cocoa nib pecan triangles

Last year's Christmas Boxes had some excellent cookies and this year I made two of them again: Medrich's Cocoa Nib Pecan Cookies (which I formed into triangular logs and sliced before baking) and my all-time favourite cookie in terms of ease of making, speed of completion and depth of flavour, my Vanilla Bean Butter Sables.

My Vanilla Bean Butter Sables incorporate whole ground up vanilla pods and are gorgeously crunchy with their ring of sanding sugar. The dough keeps well in the refrigerator or freezer during the holidays for those unexpected guests. All you do is slice and bake! Yummo! Your house is infused with the heady smell of vanilla and sugar and that's what the holidays are all about around here!

cakebrain's tiffany snowflake sugar cookie

In my 2008 Christmas Cookie Boxes I have made: Pecan Butter Crunch (a pecan and popcorn mix adapted from the Macadamia Butter Crunch recipe from the Martha Stewart Living site) and I also used MS's Sugar Cookie recipe. I used my favourite Tiffany Snowflake design for the Sugar Cookies and also made a few other shapes like Candy Canes, Snowmen and Stockings.

This year's Tiffany Snowflake Sugar Cookies are easy to cut and handle, but for better flavour, I still like last year's Tiffany Snowflake Vanilla Pod Butter Cookie recipe better. With the sugar cookie dough, you don't have to repeatedly refrigerate the dough to get crisp lines; whereas the butter cookie gets soft quite quickly. With the butter cookie dough, I like to cut out a tray's worth and refrigerate it before baking. The sugar cookie dough is very resilient...very forgiving. I never use extra flour to roll out the dough. I just roll between sheets of plastic wrap. It's so clean and easy and I don't get the extra flour in the dough which then results in tougher cookies.

The White Chocolate Oreo cookie idea was not mine of course. Darn. The fine people who make Oreos decided that it would be a good idea to coat them in White Chocolate. They did a good thing. When I saw these in the aisle of my local London Drugs store, I gasped. I had seen them on one of my favourite blogs, The Decorated Cookie and remembered them from a post she had where she piped snowflakes on the white chocolate Oreos. I quickly piled a few boxes into my little shopping basket and rubbed my hands in glee at the prospect of decorating these ready-made pure-white canvases.

They were gorgeous and delicious! Trust me, you won't have many people complaining too much about how they aren't homemade. You just have to make them more Christmassy by piping royal icing on them. That's the fun part anyway.

homemade raspberry marshmallow

I wanted to add some variety to my Cookie Boxes this year, so instead of just cookies, I decided to try out a marshmallow recipe that didn't use egg whites. The last one I made with egg whites was from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. I made a chocolate variation and it was gorgeous and delicious. I had no complaints. I wanted to make it again, but as you know, there was this little voice inside me saying, "But look at all those other marshmallow recipes out there that don't use egg white...maybe they'll be even better!"

I yielded to that little OCD voice and sought out another recipe. I chose Sherry Yard's basic vanilla marshmallow recipe (from her book Desserts by the Yard) and adapted the heck out of it. I wanted Christmassy and thus I wanted red or pink at least. I felt Raspberry would do it so I incorporated seedless raspberry jam.

The marshmallows were very tasty but I still prefer the texture and appearance of marshmallows made with egg whites. The egg whites contribute a springy airy texture to the marshmallows that I like much better. An interesting problem I encountered with Yard's recipe that I didn't with Greenspan's was that the bottom of my marshmallows were kind of crusty-looking from all the icing sugar/cornstarch and cooking spray used to cover the foil-lined baking pan. The foil didn't really impart much of a pretty pattern either, I thought. I had to use a pastry brush to brush off all the excess icing sugar/cornstarch mixture.

I don't recall ever having the "crusties" with the Greenspan recipe. Ah well. It didn't look so pretty but it was rather tasty.
santa buckling under the weight of this gargantuan chunk of raspberry marshmallow

I've entered my Tiffany Snowflake Sugar Cookie into Susan's Christmas Cookie roundup. Check it out here.

VANILLA BEAN CHOCOLATE DIAMONDS

sparkling like diamonds, these vanilla bean-flecked bullseye cookies have even Frosty the Snowman rubbing his tummy in glee!

Ahh. I can smell the sugar in the air. You know it's Christmas baking season when your fridge is jam-packed with hunks of sweet butter and your pantry's shelves are sagging under the extra weight of sacks of flour, sugar, nuts and chocolate!

You may recall I made a whole whack of cookies last year and dispensed these in Christmas Cookie Boxes to my friends and colleagues last year. There were some real winners:

At the top of the list of favourites from the cookie box were the Tiffany Snowflake Butter Cookies I (laboriously) made. I'll be making them again this year, as well as the Vanilla Bean Sable Cookies rolled in sanding sugar. They were sparkly, crispy and butterly delicious.

Here's a little slideshow of last year's Christmas Cookies

Other cookies I made, in order of wow factor and yumm-o points:

• Sparkly Green Tea Christmas Trees
• Cocoa Nib and Pecan Cookies recipe here & pictures in the slideshow above
• Bah Humbug Black Sesame Sables
• World Peace Cookies recipe here and pictures here
• Almond Cocoa Nib Sticks
• Pistachio Cocoa Nib Thins
• Fruitcake Cookies

I just noticed that I hadn't made any sugar cookies last year, so this year I plan to do that. As well, I'd like to deviate a little bit from cookies and make some other confections...perhaps with pecans and I'm going to try my hand at experimenting with green, red and white marshmallows! Stay tuned for the results of my experiment!

I recently had the immense pleasure of receiving another new cookbook. This gift was from my friends J & M. They know I love chocolate and they know I love baking. You can't go wrong with that combination in my opinion. The new cookbook is Jacques Torres' A Year in Chocolate. All I can say is "Wow!" The illustrations and recipes are mouth-watering and I have bookmarked a whole bunch of recipes for more intense scrutiny and perhaps experimenting in the very near future.

A recipe that caught my eye was for "Chocolate Diamonds". The picture reveals a cinnamon-spiked vanilla centre and a chocolate cookie ring glistening with sparkly sugar. They looked like a perfect Christmas Cookie. I had to make some!

Torres calls for cake flour instead of all-purpose flour to ensure a tender cookie.

Never to leave a recipe alone, I adapted it and instead of cinnamon, I threw in two whole vanilla pods into a double-batch of the recipe. I cut up the fresh beans and tossed them into my Bullet and whizzed them with some of the sugar until I had a fine powder. I added this to the creaming mixture and was happy with the flavour in the finished product.

VANILLA BEAN CHOCOLATE DIAMONDS

adapted from Jacques Torres' A Year in Chocolate

• 1 pound (4 sticks) plus 3 1/2 T unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 3 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 vanilla bean [I used the whole bean and ground it into a powder with some of the sugar]
• 6 cups cake flour
• 1/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon [I omitted this]

1. Place the butter and 2 1/2 cups of the sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle. Cut the vanilla bean crosswise into thirds. Split one-third in half lengthwise and, using the edge of a small, sharp knife, scrape the seeds into the butter and sugar. Reserve the remaining 2 pieces.
2. Begin beating the mixture on low speed, then raise the speed to medium-high as the sugar begins to incorporate into the butter. Continue beating for about 4 minutes, or until the mixture is very pale in colour and fluffy.
3. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the sides of the bowl and divide the mixture in half. Transfer one-half of the mixture to another bowl.
4. To the half remaining in the mixer bowl, add a scant 3 cups of the flour, the cocoa powder, and the seeds of 1 of the remaining pieces of vanilla bean. Beat on medium speed until well combined. Scrape the dough from the bowl into a clean bowl, cover, and refrigerate for 1 hour. Wipe the bowl clean with a paper towel.
5. Transfer the other half of the dough to the cleaned mixer bowl. Add the remaining 3 cups flour, the cinnamon, and the seeds of the remaining piece of vanilla bean. Beat on medium speed until well combined. Scrape the dough from the mixer bowl into a clean bowl, cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.
6. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment
7. Remove both doughs from the refrigerator. Transfer the cinnamon dough to a clean, flat work surface and, using the palms of your hands, form it into a rope about 3/4 inch in diameter.
8. Lightly flour a clean, flat work surface. Place the chocolate dough in the centre of the floured surface. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough about 2 inches wide and the same length as the cinnamon rope. Using a paring knife, trim one of the long sides of the chocolate dough to make a neat, straight edge. Using a pastry brush, lightly coat the top surface of the chocolate dough with water to help the two doughs stick together. Place the cinnamon rope on the trimmed edge of the chocolate dough and begin rolling the chocolate dough up and over the cinnamon rope to enclose it completely. Trim the other long side to make a neat, straight edge to finish the roll, and press together to seal securely. If necessary, brush a little water on the seam edge to ensure that it stays closed. If the dough is very soft, place the roll in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
9. Place the remaining 1 cup sugar on a clean surface. Lightly brush the entire exterior of the roll with water. Lay the roll in the sugar and then roll it back and forth to coat it generously. If necessary, add more sugar, as you want a thick coating.
10. Using a sharp chef's knife, cut the roll crosswise into 1/2-inch thick slices. Place the cookies, cut side down, on the prepared cookie sheets, spacing them at least 1/2 inch apart.
11. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until just lightly coloured. Remove from the oven, transfer to wire racks, and let cool completely.
12. Store, in an airtight container, for up to 1 week.

DO YOU LIKE 'EM SOFT OR HARD?

ah. decisions, decisions. So what do you prefer? Soft or hard?

COOKIES, that is, folks.

Get you mind out of the gutter, people.
and take the poll in the sidebar!

the MS cranberry oatmeal cookie baked to recipe specifications: large, soft and slightly chewy

I receive those newsletters from MSLO with the "Cookie of the Day" recipes. The other day when I saw a recipe for Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies, I immediately thought of the crispy chewy oatmeal chocolate chunk cookies I make all the time and I love so much. I rushed my butter out of the refrigerator to come to room temperature. I noticed the recipe called for the dough to also "rest" for at least 2 hours or preferably, overnight. Drat. The earliest I could eat the cookie would be around 10pm, I thought. Better let it rest overnight...because then the flavours meld so much better.

Soft or hard? Well, for me, it depends on the type of cookie. We're not even counting specialty cookies such as macarons and madeleines (which are really little cakes). These specialty cookies of course, I love as they are. I'm talking about good ol' after-school cookies. Cookies you have with milk and cookies you reach for when you're feeling blue. In general, I like crispy/chewy over soft and cakey cookies. The one huge exception is chocolate chip/chunk cookies. I like my chocolate chip cookies to be large and slightly underbaked and with huge chunks of chocolate--no nuts! I don't want anything distracting me from my enjoyment of the chocolate chunks!

I have found through trial and error that if I bake cookies a little more golden brown (even past recommended baking times in recipes), the flavour of the cookies is much better. This is especially true if you're using quality butter and other ingredients. I have been leaning towards using organic unbleached flours and organic evaporated cane sugar (bulk and from Costco!) Hey, I'm not made of money, you know.

With this recipe, I made a double batch as usual and upon taking the first sheet of cookies from the oven, I realized that these oatmeal cookies were not crispy and chewy at all. These cookies were large and soft...but beautiful in their own way. The cookies had a hint of cinnamon and unbeknownst to my little one, I made a healthy adaptation by adding a huge scoop (1/3 cup) of finely ground flaxseed into the cookie dough. hee hee. None the wiser. My daughter loved them and her preference is for soft cakey cookies anyway. You could not even detect any flaxseed flavour.

Feeling kind of bummed that I didn't get the satisfying crunch I was yearning for, I thought about the cookies for a minute and realized that all I had to do was use the same technique I usually use to make my oatmeal cookies crispy. I gathered up half the dough and made logs. Then I wrapped the logs in parchment and rolled them tightly to ensure the dough was round and compacted. I twisted the ends of the parchment and stuck the log in the freezer. After the log was frozen, I took my serrated bread knife and cut thin disks from the log. I lowered the temperature of the oven to 325 degrees F and baked them longer...for 20-25 minutes. The cookies were a deep golden brown (but not burnt)!
slicing the cold cookie dough logs creates crunchy oatmeal cranberry cookies with a cool mosaic effect (whew! that was an alliterative mouthful!)

Upon looking at the cookies, I smiled smugly to myself and realized that this technique yielded the type of oatmeal cookie I liked: crispy, and slightly chewy. They weren't rock hard, but light and crunchy. The toasted oats took on a more nutty aroma and the cranberries were bursts of chewy tartness.

baking cookies at a lower temperature for a longer time allows the sugars to caramelize. big yum-factor!

So now, I only need one recipe for oatmeal cookies and I can get 2 totally different tasting cookies. What a deal! You needn't compromise! Everyone gets what they want! Now how great is that?