Monday, December 22, 2008

Christmas Cookies

With a flip of a whisk and a spin of a spoon, my Christmas cookies are baked, wrapped, and ready to share. Here are three more that I tried for the first time this year. First are these jewel-toned trios from Gourmet magazine. They appeared in Gourmet’s December 2007 issue and again in their list of best cookies from 1941 – 2008. Simple thumb-print cookies are made a bit smaller than usual and grouped in threes to showcase apricot, strawberry, and black currant preserves. A melon baller was just the right size to scoop up dough for each round.

Cookie number two is a chocolate pretzel from Martha Stewart's Cookies. I have to admit, working with this dough could have been easier. Rolling the ropes to be twisted into pretzels took a little longer than I would have imagined, but they're cute. They were baked until crunchy with sparkling, sanding sugar to complete the pretzel look.

Last, but certainly not least, is the caramel crumb cookie from The Modern Baker. A simple pat in the pan dough is mixed and chilled while the caramel filling cooks. The caramel is layered on top of the dough, and the crumb topping is applied. Bake until golden and cut to the size of your choice. These cookie bars are simple and delicious.

Which will Santa prefer?



7 comments:

  1. All look delicious!

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  2. Oh my, they are all so beautiful, especially the first one. Happy Holidays! ^o^

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  3. well i, for one, was totally fooled by the pretzel cookies. what a pleasant surprise it'd be to pop one in your mouth and taste chocolate instead! :)
    happy holidays!

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  4. How lovely. Everything you have posted from The Modern Baker has been so tempting. When I was growing up, we made a caramel cookie that was delicious but used a boxed cake mix and a jar of caramel sauce, and I never made the effort to recreate it from scratch. Time to look into getting a copy of that book.

    Happy holidays!

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  5. All of those cookies are so pretty! I love those little chocolate pretzels. :)

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  6. Nice set of cookies.. The small pretzels are especially cute. Are those trio cookies called drei augen (three eyes)?

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  7. Thanks everyone, and Happy Holidays!

    Jude-- I haven't heard the trios called drei augen, but I've only seen them in Gourmet magazine. Interesting. Thanks for mentioning it.

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