so, i made you some really adorable and yummy cookies for this holiday season. packaged them up in sweet little boxes with tissue paper and ribbons. and then proceeded to take many, many horrible photos of them.
you are welcome!
i've been struggling to get into the holiday spirit this year. too many cocktails, not enough general cheer.
too many packages gone missing in the brown ups truck in the sky.
my gifts for my sisters-in-law may not arrive until february, but i had a pretty solid cookie strategy.
my go-to sugar cookie recipe is a cut above due to the addition of an aggressive amount of citrus zest.
i upgraded my oatmeal chocolate chip recipe with some cranberries for color and tang.
several of our nation's dairy farmers are having a fine christmas thanks to the brown-buttery deliciousness of rosemary walnut shortbread.
and because it isn't christmas without some powdered ginger and sparkle, i added dorie greenspan's speculoos buttons into the mix, but mine aren't nearly as cute as those gracing the cover of bon appetit.
extreme walnut close up. please just be grateful it isn't blurry.
these shortbread cookies will melt in your mouth. did i mention the butter? they left darling little grease spots on the tissue paper.
allow me to warn you about the speculoos buttons, however. it will be nearly impossible to tell when the little buggers are done since they are such a warm lovely brown color to start. so you must remain vigilant about over baking them, which will turn them into tiny spiced hockey pucks. you will lose a tooth. you have been warned.
but aren't their sparkly edges nice?
believe it or not, this was one of the better photos. in my next life, my kitchen will be nothing but windows. WINDOWS I SAY.
ahem.
for those of you who know my sommelier, you will enjoy the image of him on the couch on a saturday night, watching a dreadful movie involving horses and the end of my respect for steven spielberg, delicately frosting reindeer antlers with a squeeze tube of royal icing.
i think we generally ended up with a nice mix of frosted cookies that looked nearly professional, but just charmingly off key so as to seem legitimately homemade.
towards the end of the rather nice bottle of twomey 2008 napa valley merlot, the cookies looked a lot closer to what you might expect out of a kindergartner with some fine motor skills challenges.
those cookies ended up at the bottom of the box. just slightly out of frame.
not that you would even be able to tell much about the quality of our handiwork, based on my mad skills with a camera. so, with that, i will leave you with this gem and some links to cookies that you should revisit in march perhaps, when the gray sky and several months of pretend-dieting leave you in the need for something sweet.
does the filter make it seem like it was supposed to be fuzzy? good. let's go with that. it was quite the pretentious little display of cookies anyway.
- citrusy sugar cookies
- martha's royal icing
- speculoos buttons
- rosemary walnut brown butter cookies
- cranberry oatmeal chocolate chip cookies - please note that i cut down on both butter and chocolate, as recommended by the reviewers. it felt like sacriledge, but made for a very nicely balanced, chewy cookie. plus i used my cranberry technique from these muffins.
I have tried this recipe last Christmas and it turned out delicious. My family loved it!
Posted by: Austin Maid Service | 02/04/2013 at 12:15 AM
This is absolutely fun to make. I have tried it with kids and they really enjoyed.
Posted by: Garage Door Repair in Phoenix | 03/10/2013 at 10:00 PM