Cookie notes

This cookie season has been marked by lots of things coming out not quite right. By my (overly high?) standards, anyways. Let’s go through.

Things started off OK with the jam stars and the lebkuchen. There’re plenty of jam stars, starring in their own video and the lebkuchen are nice and chewy and you can taste the honey.

The biberli are good.

The fruit nut balls are a nice size.

The baby fruitcakes are good, but the glaze thickened in a weird way – made me think Crystal Sugar company is putting a higher ratio of cornstarch to sugar in the powdered sugar; maybe cornstarch is cheaper? I buy Crystal ‘cuz it’s not Domino.

The Pfeffernüsse are delicious but their glaze got even weirder. I haven’t photographed them except in this group shot. Oh and look you can see the lebkuchen in the back.

I had trouble getting the pinenut macaroons baked properly. Some were too light, some too dark.

I had operator error with the slice & bakes, cranberry-pistachio, crystallized ginger, world peace, slicing some too thick and some too thin so they didn’t brown evenly. King Arthur has a new product, a slice and bake cookie dough keeper that makes little marks where you should slice. I don’t really want one, because it’s just more plastic junk, but maybe it would help? And, they come in a set of two for like $35 and I usually have 6-12 logs of any given kind. It’d be a big investment in plastic junk. Maybe they’ll go on deep discount after Christmas. I actually measure the world peace, since they’re supposed to be 1/2 inch. I hold a tape measure against the dough logs and mark off 1/2 inches with the tip of my knife. And some of the crystallized ginger had kind of raggy edges. Too much butter? Too much water in the butter? And the World Peace cookies are kind of big. But I don’t think anyone will mind that.

The dough seemed too soft for the chocolate almond stars, so I chilled each tray of shaped cookies for 10 minutes in the freezer before baking them. They seem ok, although when I gave my friend Alison in Chicago her cookie box I noticed the almond star on the very top was a little crumbled around the edges. Oh, well, I enjoyed the one I sampled, easier to eat with a softer cookie base under the chocolate star. 

The real heart breaker is the spoon cookies. I made a six-times batch that’s resulted in 160ish cookies in other years. This year I got 120-something, and they’re kind of um, rustic. And too big. The dough seemed more crumbly than usual, and I know I made the spoonfuls bigger because it seemed like they needed to be thicker to not fall apart. I sure don’t  have as many as I’ve had other years. But, I had just enough jam to fill them, a blend of strained cherry, and raspberry and strawberry, so I guess the number is just what I was supposed to get.

 

I saw someone online (Zoe Bakes) making the gluten-free peanut butter cookies swirled, putting cocoa in half the dough. That looked like fun to me, way easier than the sandwiches I make some years, and maybe easier to pack than the ones with chocolate stars attached. I tried it first with melted chocolate and those cookies had a good chocolate flavor but were too soft. So I tried again with cocoa, and the chocolate taste is less pronounced but production does go fast. Note to self if I make them this way next year, it’s two double batches, one with the cocoa, and I ended up with my baby bassinet size Tupperware plus another bucket full – probably at least 12 dozen. I do kind of miss the chocolate hit of the star in the middle.

Another operator error was the Zimtsterne, cinnamon stars – I must’ve rolled some too thick, because I ended up with 127 and I should’ve had 140. A few actually blew up and cracked the glaze. I also had one tray that I let get a little too brown trying to get the too-thick ones cooked through. I didn’t take a picture, I only photographed the perfect ones, but I ate one of the blown up ones and it tasted great, moist and chewy. 

The real disaster was the linzer thumbprints. Those I actually did over. I made them late at night, and I don’t know if I put in too much flour or too much powdered sugar but the dough was rough and tough and the cookies were awful. I composted the whole batch next morning. I edited my recipe – less flour – and remade them while Jasper was napping. They’re still not quite right because of course I altered another variable, replaced some of the powdered sugar with granulated, because the Silver Palette Cookbook recipe I based on uses all granulated sugar. I didn’t photograph the disaster, just the remade. They’re a little flat. Next year, stick to my edited recipe!

On a happier note, and let’s end here, the ginger creams are really good – though their icing got quite thick as I was frosting the last ones, too. Last year I didn’t like them. I used rum in the dough instead of brandy or vanilla that I normally use, and they didn’t taste right to me. This year, all vanilla.

And continuing on the ginger theme, the gingersnaps are good, too. I tried rolling them in coarse sugar instead of regular granulated and I think they’re pretty. Also on the big side, and I thought some of them were on the too dark side coming out of the oven but they still seem to have a bit of chew so they can’t be that much overbaked, and good spice.

The baby ruggelach, nukhorns, are also just fine, though it’s not a very good picture. I’m in Chicago right now hanging out with John and his broken ankle because Megan had a long planned trip for a friend’s 40th birthday, and I brought along one dough ball to bake here for him.

And I made mincemeat tarts yesterday, with real butter in the pastry, sorry vegans!  And they’re nice too. I also made a couple of mincemeat handpies that look like Easter eggs or flying saucers. Kinda cute though.

I was going to complain about half the tarts are a little too light – you can maybe see the difference between left half of photo and right –

But really they’re all good.

Happy cookies to all!