holiday cookies | Stephanie's Slice Of Life

Tag: holiday cookies
- Gingerbread Cookies
  
  Posted at 9:14 am by StephMo
  
  Dec 19th
  
  This recipe for Gingerbread cookies is delicious, not overpowering with spices and a really nice soft texture. When I was a child my mother would use raisins as the buttons, does anyone else remember using raisins? I wanted to use some but my raisin hating daughter vetoed that idea before I could even get the entire thought out of my mouth. I don’t know what it is with my children and raisins. So if you like raisins, they can be a cute old school thing to use for buttons!
  
  My tip with making these cookies is to make them fairly thick. My first batch wasn’t as thick as they should have been and they were a little crispier than I like cookies to be, I prefer a nice soft cookie. I think the perfect size is somewhere around 1/4″ thick, maybe a little more.
  
  You can be as creative as you’d like with decorating. I used a simple icing recipe to decorate them, but if you don’t feel like making icing you can just buy some at the store. The icing I made was 1 cup of powdered sugar mixed with 2 tsp. of milk, then add 2 tsp. of corn syrup and 1/4 tsp. of clear vanilla.
  
  Cookie Ingredients:
  
  3 cups flour
  
  2 tsp. ginger
  
  1 tsp. cinnamon
  
  1 tsp. baking soda
  
  1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  
  1/4 tsp. salt
  
  3/4 cup butter, softened
  
  3/4 cup brown sugar
  
  1/2 cup molasses
  
  1 egg
  
  1 tsp. vanilla
  
  Sift together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg, and salt in a medium sized bowl and set aside.
  
  In a large mixing bowl beat together the butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer on medium until light and fluffy.
  
  Beat in the molasses, egg, and vanilla until well combined.
  
  Gradually beat in the flour mixture on low speed until combined.
  
  Press the dough together and wrap with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least four hours.
  
  On a floured board roll out about half the dough and start cutting out your gingerbread men. Re-flour the board and roll out the remaining scraps of dough and continue cutting out cookies.
  
  Place the cookies on an un-greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 8 – 10 minutes or until they are just starting to brown.
  
  Remove from the cookie sheets and let cool on a wire rack.
  
  Have some fun and decorate! Make sure to eat the ones that aren’t “perfect”.
  
  Posted in Cookies, Recipes | Tagged cookie recipe, cookies, food blog, food blogger, gingerbread, gingerbread cookies, gingerbread cookies recipe, gingerbread men, holiday baking, holiday cookies, stephanie's slice of life
- Pizzelles
  
  Posted at 5:53 pm by StephMo
  
  Dec 23rd
  
  For years my neighbor would give us homemade pizzelles at Christmas time. This lovely Italian gentleman would make a batch of vanilla, and a batch of anise flavored. He inspired me to purchase my own pizzelle maker a number of years ago, and since then it has been one of my favorite Holiday activities with my daughter. If you have one collecting dust somewhere in your house, I hope I am inspiring you to dust it off and make a batch. They are not only delicious, but they look so much harder to make than they actually are.
  
  If you have never made them, be forewarned that you most likely will not be a pro pizzelle baker right away. It definitely takes you a few batches to figure out exactly how much dough is the proper amount, and how long they need to cook. What’s funny with my daughter and I, is that for some reason we always feel the need to switch off right when one of us has finally gotten them right. Maybe it is our subconscious way of keeping a lot for ourselves.
  
  Here is the recipe that I use and enjoy:
  
  1 3/4 cups flour
  
  2 tsps. baking powder
  
  3 large eggs
  
  3/4 cup sugar
  
  1/2 cup butter, melted
  
  1 tbsp. vanilla extract
  
  Combine flour and baking powder in a small bowl. Place eggs and sugar in a medium bowl and beat with a hand mixer on medium speed for 1 minute until thickened.
  
  On low speed, add the melted butter and vanilla in a steady stream and mix just until combined. Add the flour mixture just until combined.
  
  Spray both sides of pizzelle mixer with cooking spray. Heat on medium setting.
  
  Scoop about a tbsp. of dough in the center of each pizzelle mold and cook until lightly brown. With my pizzelle maker set at a 3, we found that 55 seconds was the perfect amount of cooking time. It may take you a few batches to get them how you want them.
  
  Remove the pizzelles with a plastic spatula and cool on a wire rack.
  
  When cool you can sift confectioners sugar on each cookie. If you want to step it up a notch, dip one side in melted chocolate and let set on a wax paper lined cookie sheet.
  
  Buon Natale! Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Or happy eating!
  
  Posted in Cookies, Pizzelles, Recipes | Tagged christmas cookies, cookie recipe, food blog, food blogger, holiday baking, holiday cookie recipe, holiday cookies, italian cookie recipe, italian cookies, pizzelle, pizzelle recipe, pizzelles
- Childhood Candy Cane Cookies
  
  Posted at 3:34 pm by StephMo
  
  Dec 13th
  
  I can vividly remember getting so excited for these candy cane cookies as a child. My mother would make them every year out of her Betty Crocker cookbook, and they were such a treat! Years ago I decided to make my own and found a Betty Crocker recipe on-line that I assumed were the cookies of my childhood, well they weren’t. It appears that Betty has made a few versions over the years, but the ones I remember as a child are still my favorite.
  
  The original recipe calls for almond extract, which due to nut allergies I no longer use in any recipes. I have made these with just using more vanilla, and I have also made these with substituting peppermint extract for the almond. While they are both very good, my family is down the middle with which version they prefer, so I alternate the versions I make so that it is fair to everyone.
  
  Candy Cane Cookie Recipe:
  
  1/2 cup butter softened
  
  1/2 cup shortening
  
  1 cup confectioners sugar
  
  1 egg
  
  1 1/2 tsps. almond extract (I either use peppermint or vanilla)
  
  1 tsp. vanilla
  
  2 1/2 cups flour
  
  1 tsp. salt
  
  1/2 tsp. red food color
  
  1/2 cup crushed peppermint candy
  
  1/2 cup sugar
  
  Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine butter, shortening, confectioners sugar, egg, and flavoring. Blend in flour and salt. Divide dough in half and mix red food coloring into one half.
  
  Shape teaspoonfuls of dough into balls and then roll on a floured board into 4 inch ropes. Place a white and a red rope side by side and twist together.
  
  Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and curve top to form a cane. Bake for 9 minutes or until set and very light brown.
  
  Mix peppermint candy and sugar and immediately sprinkle on cookies when out of the oven. Let cool on cookie sheets for a few minutes before transferring to cooling racks.
  
  I love that my fond childhood memories have now become my children’s memories!
  
  Posted in Candy Cane Cookies, Cookies, Recipes | Tagged baking, baking blog, betty crocker candy cane cookies, candy cane cookies, christmas cookies, cookie recipe, cookies, food blog, food blogger, holiday cookies, my slice of life
- Not Every Italian Likes Anise, So Make Lemon Anginetti Cookies!
  
  Posted at 3:12 pm by StephMo
  
  Dec 9th
  
  Every year my mother along with many other Italians, make their Italian Anise Cookies around the holidays. They always looked so good, and I always wished I liked them. I really wanted to like them, and every few years I would try one to see if maybe my aversion to anise flavoring had dissipated. I do have some Italian blood in me so I should like them, right? Wrong. So years ago I decided to stop trying, and to find a similar looking Italian cookie without that awful anise taste.
  
  I tried a few different recipes before I found a fantastic recipe for Anginetti, or Italian Lemon Drop Cookies. I am not even sure where I found this recipe, but it has been a Christmas staple cookie every year since. The cookie itself has a very subtle lemon taste, and the icing looks like the regular white icing on the anise cookies, but has lemon extract. Yum.
  
  This dough gets very sticky, and I have found over the years that they look better if you roll the dough into balls in your hands as opposed to using a cookie scoop or dropping them by teaspoonfuls.
  
  Anginetti Recipe:
  
  1/2 cup sugar
  
  1/4 cup vegetable shortening
  
  3 large eggs
  
  1 1/2 tsps. lemon extract
  
  2 cups flour
  
  1 1/2 tsps. baking powder
  
  1/8 tsp. salt
  
  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together sugar and shortening. Add eggs and lemon extract and beat well. Add flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix well. Drop dough onto a slightly greased cookie sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Bake for about 12-15 minutes, or until firm and lightly brown. Allow to cool completely on wire racks.
  
  Once the cookies are cooled, I prefer to dip the cookies upside down into the icing as opposed to frosting them. The cookies look nicer this way.
  
  Icing Recipe:
  
  3 cups confectioners sugar
  
  1/4 cup water
  
  1 tsp. lemon extract
  
  Combine all ingredients and mix until smooth. If too loose, add more confectioners sugar. If too stiff, add more water in tiny increments.
  
  Before the icing sets completely, I add some holiday sprinkles on top.
  
  Your fellow anise hating cookie lovers will thank you. #saynotoanise 😉
  
  Posted in Cookies, Holiday Treats, Lemon Anginetti Cookies, Recipes | Tagged anginetti, anginetti recipe, cookie recipe, food blog, food blogger, holiday baking, holiday cookies, italian lemon cookie recipe, lemon drop cookies
- I’m Melting! Adorable Melted Snowmen Cookies
  
  Posted at 12:47 pm by StephMo
  
  Dec 6th
  
  These melting snowmen cookies bring instant smiles to children and adults. They actually make me giggle, but I am easily amused. I am not going to lie though, they are a pain in the neck to make, but the reaction you get from them is worth it. When you are about to make these cookies set yourself out a chunk of time, put on some music, and pour yourself a large cup of coffee because you are in it for the long haul. I’m exaggerating slightly, but they are time consuming.
  
  I found this recipe on-line years ago, but after many different attempts at making these I have settled on a slightly different version. If you look you on-line you will see that people do these all different ways. However, I think mine are the best 😉
  
  I know I have said before that I always make my cookies from scratch, but these are my one exception. If this recipe was the only cookie I was making I may be tempted to make a homemade sugar cookie, but I make so many different varieties around the holidays that I just cut corners on this one. They take so long to put together and they are more about the cuteness than about the taste anyway.
  
  So the first thing I do is cut open the roll of Pillsbury Sugar Cookie dough and bake the cookies. Once they are done they need to cool completely before decorating. The good thing about this recipe is that you can bake the cookies hours or even a day before and decorate them when you are ready.
  
  You will need a bag of large marshmallows for the heads. They look better if you cut off one end of the marshmallow. Since I hate to waste food, I usually munch on the ends that aren’t needed. Or you could save them and put them in hot chocolate? I prefer to just eat them.
  
  Once those are done you will need orange sprinkles long enough to be the carrot nose. If you can’t find just orange sprinkles, you will need to fish through a container of colored sprinkles which is what I typically end up doing. Even though I have seen multicolored carrots before, I haven’t yet gotten to the point where my snowmen have had purple and yellow noses. All you need to do is push the orange sprinkle into the marshmallow far enough until it stays.
  
  When I first tried making these cookies I used black decorator’s gel for the eyes and mouth. Personally I find that it is not only easier to use a food marker, but I think it looks better. By food marker I do not mean a Sharpie, they sell edible markers at craft stores. I like to make a circle for the mouth to give it a “oh no I’m melting” look. You could make a smiley face, but I’m pretty sure that snowmen would not be too happy about melting. Frosty never seemed to be anyway.
  
  Now it’s time to make the melting snow. The first year I made these cookies I used a store bought icing. The next year I purchased a different icing that didn’t work well, and instead of running out to the store I decided to just make my own icing instead. That is what I have continued to do since then.
  
  Icing Recipe:
  
  Mix together 1 cup of confectioners sugar and 2 tsps. milk until smooth. Beat in 2 tsps. of corn syrup until it looks smooth and glossy. If it is too thick, add a little more corn syrup.
  
  I use a spoon to drop some icing onto one side of the cookie, and then tilt the cookie while turning it so that it looks like melted snow. I also like to let a little run off of the sides. Make sure to stick on the marshmallow heads before the icing sets, the icing acts as a glue to hold the heads in place. Make sure the icing really sets before you finish decorating.
  
  Originally I also tried using black gel for the arms but had difficulty with those as well, and decided to just use the food markers. I am not really sure why I seem to have so much difficulty with such things, maybe it’s just me. If you are more skilled than I am with decorator’s frosting or gel, you may decide to use that instead. If you decide to use the food markers, you have to use a very light touch because it cracks through the icing.
  
  The last step is using gel to make a scarf. Then let the smiles and giggles begin!
  
  Posted in Cookies, Holiday Treats, Melted Snowmen Cookies, Recipes | Tagged blog, blogger, cookie recipe, food blog, food blogger, holiday cookies, melting snowmen cookie recipe, melting snowmen cookies, snowman cookie, snowmen cookies
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