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This is from my Aunt Mary who lived in Cleveland until she passed away. She would bake from 20 to 30 different cookies every Christmas season, starting the day after Thanksgiving. My uncle would deliver them to relatives and friends around the city before Christmas Eve. Before my aunt’s death, her daughter sent the rest of the family a cookbook of these treasured recipes, many from her Polish heritage. 2 cups sifted flour 1 egg white, beaten until frothy 1 ⁄3 cup finely chopped walnuts
Cream butter and 1⁄4 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Add almond extract. Stir in flour. Refrigerate until firm. Roll out dough on a lightly-floured surface to 1⁄8-inch thickness. Using a crimped roller, cut into angled rectangles, about 11⁄2-inches-by-1-inch. Transfer to baking sheets. Brush cookies with egg white. Combine remaining 1 tablespoon sugar with walnuts. Sprinkle over cookies. Bake until golden brown, about 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer cookies to racks to cool. — Chris Killoran, Canal Winchester
to the finer points of recipes By Robin Davis THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
oliday baking is a festive activity, but it can also present frustrations. ¶ For example: What makes cookies crumble when they should be crisp? And what makes them puffy when they should be chewy? ¶ The answers might lie in the recipes — or in how the baker interprets them. ¶ Before beginning to bake, then, you should first read through a recipe — from start to finish. As you do, make sure you have all the ingredients and equipment required.
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Also, be sure to follow a recipe exactly. Unlike cooking a stew or soup, baking is formulaic. When you start swapping ingredients (margarine for butter, Egg Beaters for eggs) or pan sizes, you’re likely to end up with mixed results. To help you excel at baking, here are other guidelines as well as a glossary of terms you should know:
Do’s and don’ts
Strawberries-and-Cream Cookies MAKES ABOUT 3 DOZEN This is a fairly recent addition to my holiday baking. My daughter loves these so much, she insisted they be part of the 2,500 cookies we baked for her wedding this year. ⁄4 cup sugar 1 cup unsalted butter, softened 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon vanilla 3
1 tablespoon whipping cream 1 ⁄4 teaspoon salt 1 ⁄2 cup finely chopped white chocolate 3 ⁄4 cup dried strawberries, chopped (see Note)
In a mixing bowl, cream the sugar and butter on low speed until well-blended. Add flour, vanilla, cream and salt. Blend well. Stir in white chocolate and strawberries by hand. (Dough will be firm.) Refrigerate dough 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Scoop dough, using 2 teaspoons per cookie, onto prepared sheets. Bake until light brown around the edges, about 16 to 17 minutes. Cool on sheets before transferring to racks. Note: Strawberries can be found at natural-foods stores or ordered from www.nutsonline.com. — Debie Damato, Grove City
Softened butter should be between 65 and 70 degrees — not room temperature, even when the recipe calls for it. Take the butter out of the refrigerator about an hour before using it. If you forget to take it out, grating the butter on a box grater can soften it quickly. Measure flour by the “scoop-andswift” method. Unlike brown sugar, flour shouldn’t be packed into a measuring cup. Fluff the flour in the bag or container with a fork. Scoop the flour into the measuring cup (or spoon it in). Overfill the cup, then use the flat edge of a knife to level the ingredients. Check the date of leavening. Most cookies get their “lift” from baking powder or baking soda. If those ingredients have expired, the cookies will be flat. It’s best to buy such ingredients at the beginning of each holiday season. To keep cookies from sticking, line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone liners (available at specialty cookware stores). Even when the recipe doesn’t call for greasing the pan, doing so guarantees that cookies won’t stick. Don’t place dough on hot baking sheets. The cookies will cook too quickly on the bottom before the top is done. Between each batch, rinse the baking sheets under cold water. Bake on the middle rack of the oven (unless the recipe specifies elsewhere). If you don’t have
A glossary of terms Most cookie recipes call for butter, flour and sugar, along with other ingredients. But there are several types of each. What’s what? Here’s a guide: Brown sugar: Dark-brown sugar has a deeper flavor and color. You can use light or dark-brown sugar interchangeably. Butter: It’s best to use unsalted butter in baking because it has a lower water content and, of course, less salt. If you have only salted butter (often called sweet butter), you might want to cut the salt in the recipe. European-style butter, such as Plugra, has a higher fat content. Using it in baking recipes might yield different — but possibly more delicious — results. Chocolate: Use what the recipe calls for. Unsweetened chocolate has no sugar. Bittersweet and semisweet have a minimum of 35 percent cocoa solids but usually much higher. Milk chocolate has a minimum of 10 percent chocolate plus the addition of milk and sugar. White chocolate, technically, is not chocolate because it contains no cocoa solids. Confectioners’ sugar: This is a finer grain of sugar mixed with a small amount of an anticaking agent. It is also called powdered sugar. It cannot be used interchangeably with granulated sugar. Eggs: Use large eggs, unless otherwise specified. Flour: Unless otherwise specified, an ingredient list that calls for flour means all-purpose flour. Unbleached all-purpose flour means simply that it is not bleached and will be slightly darker. It can be used interchangeably with all-purpose flour. Salt: Use table salt if another type is not specified. If all you have is kosher salt, use twice the amount. If all you have is table salt and the recipe calls for kosher or coarse salt, use half the amount. Shortening: This refers to vegetable shortening. It doesn’t have the flavor of butter, but it typically makes cookies softer. Sugar: Unless otherwise stated, “sugar” means granulated — or what some people call white sugar. Vanilla: Use pure vanilla extract when possible; it has the best flavor. If the vanilla you use is double-strength, use half the amount called for in the recipe. robin.davis@dispatch.com
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Holly-Jolly Cutouts MAKES 3 TO 4 DOZEN This recipe is a versatile all-purpose cookie dough. It can also be formed into a log, chilled and sliced or rolled into balls and rolled in sugar, then gently flattened on a baking sheet. 2 cups flour ⁄2 teaspoon baking powder 1 ⁄2 teaspoon salt 3 ⁄4 cup unsalted butter, softened 1
1 cup sugar 1 large egg 1 ⁄2 teaspoon vanilla Decorating frosting, colored sugar, sprinkles
Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. Beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Reduce speed and beat in dry ingredients, just until combined. Divide dough in half. Form each half into a 6-inch disk. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour or up to 3 days. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Working with one disk at a time and keeping the remainder in the refrigerator, roll to 1 ⁄4-inch thickness on a lightly floured surface. Cut out cookies. Transfer to baking sheets. Refrigerate baking sheets with cookies 20 to 30 minutes. Gather scraps. Chill until firm enough to reroll. Bake 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer to racks to cool completely. Make additional cookies with remaining disk and scraps but do not reroll more than once or cookies will be tough. Decorate cooled cookies as desired.
Molasses Cookies MAKES ABOUT 2 DOZEN This is a recipe from Betty Rosbottom. In the original, she used the cookies to sandwich vanilla ice cream. But they’re delicious on their own, and the rich spicing makes them appropriate for the holidays. 21⁄2 cups all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons baking soda 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 ⁄2 teaspoon salt 1 ⁄2 teaspoon ground ginger 1 ⁄2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 ⁄4 teaspoon nutmeg 1 cup plus 1⁄4 cup sugar 3 ⁄4 cup (11⁄2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened 1 ⁄4 cup molasses 1 large egg
Arrange rack at center position. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, ginger, cloves and nutmeg. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream together 1 cup sugar, butter, molasses and egg until well-blended and the mixture is light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes. Reduce speed to low. Add the dry ingredients. Beat until well-blended, 1 to 2 minutes. Spread remaining 1⁄4 cup sugar on a dinner plate. Take a tablespoon of dough, shape into a ball, and roll in the sugar. Place on prepared sheets. Flatten with the bottom of a glass. Continue, leaving at least 2 inches around each cookie, until the sheets are full. Bake one sheet at a time until cookies are golden brown and have spread and flattened, 10 to 12 minutes. Cool cookies on baking sheet 5 minutes. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
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⁄4 cup butter ⁄4 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar 1 teaspoon almond extract 3
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Most successful bakers adhere
time to do this, switch trays of cookies between top and bottom halfway through cooking to ensure even baking. Turn the sheets halfway through baking time. Give the baking sheets a 180-degree turn in the oven. Even the best ovens have hot spots; this helps with more even baking.
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MAKES 5 DOZEN
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