Lemon Cardamom Cookies
Well, after last week’s post, you all knew it was only a matter of time. And I did it. I found a bunch of Hairy Biker’s recipes on the BBC-Food website.
It is a slight problem. I love this show!
I chose the Cardamom and Lemon Stamped Cookies to make from the Bakeation series trip to Norway. Plus they are delicious, flavorful, and dead easy. While I don’t get to make them at a UNESCO World Heritage site like on the show, they did come out really delicious. Would have been better with a waterfall, though.
Lemon Cardamon Cookies
From The Hairy Biker’s Bakeation (Episode 1 Norway)
1 stick butter
a scant one cup of sugar
1 lemon zest
2 cups flour
1 heaping cup ground almonds
3 tsp ground cardamon
5-8 tbsp of milk to bring the dough together
I have converted the measurements into US measurements as best I could. If you would prefer the British measurements, please feel free to click on the link above.
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.
Beat the butter, sugar, and lemon zest until light and fluffy.
Add in the flour, almonds, and cardamom. (I could not find ground almonds in the store, so we used a food processor and pulverized those suckers)
Mix well.
Slowly add one tablespoon of milk at a time, just until you can form a stiff dough.
Roll the dough into roughly 24 balls (I got 30 out of mine but a few could have been made bigger) and place on either a parchment-lined cookie tray or a lightly greased cookie tray.
Press a cookie stamp into the dough. If you have one. I went to both Target and Bed Bath and Beyond and could not find one today and so, because of my lack of forethought, used a cup to just make them flat. It worked fine, though I also found some cookie stamps pretty cheap on Amazon, so I might pick one up the next time I have an order.
Bake at 375 degrees for 12 - 14 minutes (mine took all 14 minutes) until cookies are a nice light golden brown.
Put them on a cooling rack to crisp up.
Make a pot of tea, enjoy the cookies. (Wish you were in Norway looking at magnificent waterfalls.)
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Chocolate Chip Shortbread cookies
Every year for the Academy Awards my brother and sister have a knock down, drag out, no holds barred contest for who can guess the most winners. The prize for this yearly battle? The winner gives the loser a smug look.
Even if they are miles and miles away - it can be sent over e-mail.
Over the years this contest has led to quite the epic Oscar party. Shrimp and buffalo wings and pizza and chips and cookies and cup cakes. It has become quite the party.
This year, I decided to make chocolate chip shortbread cookies for the event. I am a long time tea addict and as such am always looking for cookies to have with my tea. Let the others eat buffalo wings, I will be sipping my tea and eating one of these buttery and oh-so-chocolatey cookies.
Chocolate Chip Shortbread
From Purplefoodie.com who in turn adapted it from Dorie Greenspan
2 sticks (1 cup) of butter (softened)
1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
3/4 cup mini chocolate chips (but you know that I just poured the whole bag in there)
Beat the butter and sugars together until very smooth and creamy.
Add in the vanilla and beat well.
Slowly add in the flour, being careful not to over-mix. Once you don’t see any flour - stop.
Fold in the chocolate chips.
Now this is the fun part: transfer the very soft dough to a gallon bag. Leaving the bag top open, lay that thing out and go at it with a rolling pin.
This will make your cookies nice and square and evenly thick. Seal the bag and pop it into the refrigerator for 2 hours to overnight.
Once you are ready to bake, preheat your oven to 325 degrees and cut away the bag.
Using a knife, cut the now solid dough into squares and bake for 15 - 17 minutes ( I was firmly at the 17-minute mark).
Allow the cookies to cool for a good 20 minutes.
Then pop them back into the oven for an additional 4 minutes. This gives them a good crunch, and takes the buttery crisp to a great extreme. It also gives them a nice golden bottom.
Pour your tea and enjoy.
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Moving Here Cookies (Dutch Cocoa Cookies)
I grew up a United Methodist preacher’s kid. And that means we moved around more than average. My mother also was a preacher’s kid and this recipe comes originally from her stories. When they would move, they would get a package of Dutch Cocoa Cookies. And really: only when they moved. Thus the cookies became Moving Here Cookies.
…though we don’t really keep to the “only having them when you move to a new place” rule. My grandmother (whose recipe this is) makes them every year for Thanksgiving. And these are my brother’s favorite cookies. He eats them no matter what: stale, old, burned, or perfect fresh from the oven.
Moving Here Cookies
This is actually one of only two recipes I have written out from my grandmother.
2 cups sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cup butter
2 tsp vanilla
3 eggs
6 oz unsweetened chocolate (I used 18 tbsp unsweetened cocoa and 6 tbsp vegetable oil)
4 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
Sugar to roll cookie balls in
Cream the sugars and butter together.
Add the vanilla,
eggs,
and either melted chocolate or cocoa powder/oil. Mix well.
Stir in the baking soda, flour and salt.
Here the dough can be refrigerated for 1 - 2 hours, and it does help it come together, but I am an impatient soul and sometimes skip this step. Sorry, Grandma!
Roll dough into roughly 1 1/2 inch balls. Roll the balls into sugar and place about 3 inches apart on a greased cookies sheet. These will grow on you.
Bake at 350 degrees for 8 - 12 minutes. I usually find about 9 - 10 minutes is good in my oven, but check them on yours. These cookies, I have found, are a little easy to burn because of the dark color, but if you keep an eye on them and… hmm… well, don’t start reading your novel and forget to check until the timer has been going off for about 30 seconds because, well, you know, they could burn.
Cool the cookies, get a glass of milk, invite my brother over, and enjoy!
Star Cookies
This is, in my head, THE Christmas cookie. Once we have the star cookies it means people are home from school, presents are bought, and the Christmas baking is in full swing. It’s really is Christmas time.
I am not really sure why they are called star cookies. My Grandmother makes these cookies every year for Thanksgiving. Hers are always Christmas-tree shaped, perfect, and beautiful.
We have an assortment of cookie cutters that we use. But star cookies they are, and star cookies they will remain.
)
I have a lot of memories of painting these cookies as a kid every year. Yeah some years the baby’s cookies (be it my bother’s or sister’s) were bad, but they were also great fun, and each cookie always reflected the personality of the creator. You can try and guess which ones in the pictures I did.
Star Cookies
From my Grandmother
3 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup butter/margarine
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 tbsp milk
Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Cream shortening and butter. Add in the sugar. Mix in vanilla, egg and milk. Beat thoroughly.
Add the dry ingredients and mix well.
Chill the dough (but my mom always skips this step and just muscles through it; sometimes she adds a few drops of cold water to hold it together.)
In roughly fourths, roll out the dough to 1/8 inch thick circles.
Press in as many cookie cutters as you can. It’s really like Tetris.
Move the cookies carefully onto a greased cookie sheet.
Bake at 375 for 8 - 10 minutes (this year it took us about 9).
Set the cookies out to cool.
Once cool, get out about five bowls (or how many colors of food coloring you have, plus one for white) and make a quick icing out of milk and powdered sugar. This can be quite tricky as you need to get a good consistency without ending up with gallons of icing. Just keep adding small amounts of milk or powdered sugar until it is about the consistency of thick honey.
Put about 4-6 drops of food coloring in each bowl to get a variety of colors.
We have red, blue, green, yellow, and white.
Now go to town—ice the cookies however you like.
Let the icing set a few hours or overnight and your beautiful cookies are ready for the holiday season.
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Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
It is December. Very December. And for me that means cookies. Ever since I was an early teenager and my father realized I could make cookies and thus he could give the job to me, I have made cookies all through December.
Hundreds of cookies, thousands of cookies. Cookies of all shapes and sizes.
Today I made my first batch of December cookies for my mother’s church’s live nativity performance. Oatmeal raisin.
Happy December.
Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
From: Southern Living
1 cup butter (softened - but more on that later)
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice
3 cup old fashioned rolled oats - uncooked
1 cup raisins (but really who is counting??)
First boil some water. Set the raisins and a little sprinkle of sugar in a bowl and cover with the boiling water. This sweetens and plumps them. Mmmmm. Set this aside to sweeten and plump.
Cream the butter and sugar together. But, I hear you asking, my life is busy and hectic (it is December after all) and I forgot to get the butter out of the fridge to thaw this morning. Well… so did I this time. So what I did was cut the butter into as small pieces as I could (and then my water boiled and I forgot that it was cold so I dumped the sugar on as well - really not my best).
Take the whole bowl and just nuke it for ten seconds. Give it a stir and keep going in ten second intervals until it is a workable consistency. But do be very careful not to melt it. Two or three zaps should do it.
After you have creamed the butter and sugar, add in the egg and mix well.
Then add in the vanilla and water. This will not want to come together. It will fight you. You will think you have messed it up. But it will be ok. Just keep stirring.
Add in the flour, salt, and spices, sprinkling evenly over the butter mixture.
Mix well.
Dump in your oats and again… mix well.
Finally, drain the raisins. Try to get these drained really well because you don’t want any extra water in your dough. Add in the raisins and throughly combine. (Bet you thought I was gonna say mix well again, didn’t ya?)
Drop the dough in about 2 teaspoon-ish balls onto a lightly greased cookie sheet.
Bake for 10 - 12 minutes at 350 degrees. Mine were good right at 10.
They should be lightly brown and delicious-looking.
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Jam cookies (Slavic Cookies)
A friend requested a recipe like this ages ago (actually the request was more a suggestion for a Christmas cookie). It is a little late but I do take requests and I thought with the red of the raspberry and a handy-dandy heart-shaped cookie cutter these would make a great Valentines Day entry (and something different from all the chocolate).
Happy Valentines Day everyone!
The recipe comes from my father. I have it handwritten on a piece of notebook paper. It is not my father’s handwriting but he liked these cookies and I often made them for him so, even though I know they come form someone else (there is no name on the paper), I attribute them to my father.
I also don’t know why they are called Slavic Cookies.
Slavic Cookies
1 cup butter (and it really must be real butter here)
2 cups flour
2 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
a few splashes of milk to make the dough come together
small jar of preserves (I am using raspberry but apricot, strawberry, peach use what you like)
nuts (optional)
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the egg yolks.
Add the flour and splash of milk to form a soft dough. Really you are making a shortbread cookie here. Divide the dough in half.
Grease an 8x10 pan and pat half the dough mixture into the bottom of the pan. Cover that with the jam and (if you like) chopped nuts (pecans, walnuts, whatever you prefer or, as I am doing, none at all).
Then take a deep breath because the next step is a little tricky, especially if you have added the nuts. You need carefully to spread/pat/lay the top half of dough over the jam without smearing or mixing the two together. Go slowly, you can do it!
Bake for 1 hour until bubbling and golden brown and delicious.
You can either cut then into squares or use a cookie cutter and go to town. Plus this way I get to eat the scraps after I make my little hearts! Score!
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Oatmeal Scotties
I love oatmeal raisin cookies. We were out of raisins. So I made these instead. I first ran across oatmeal cookies with butterscotch chips when I was living in Hollywood and near an Nestle Toll House cookie store. I don’t even like butterscotch but this combination is divine!
My friend Alex came over to help me bake these babies before we went to go see Beauty and the Beast. Which brings me to a side tangent, scroll down for recipe if you like. The Beast was 11 when he refused the old woman and she put the curse on him! 11! Name me an 11 year old boy who is not a brat? And anyway who tells an 11 year old boy he must find true love? He hasn’t even hit puberty yet. Speaking of puberty I wonder how that went for him in beast form?
Don’t believe me? The rose dies and the curse is permanent on his 21st birthday as described in the intro. And then in “Be Our Guest” Lumiere sings “Ten years we’ve been rusting”. Thus… he was 11! Sigh, my childhood is ruined! Haha
Anyway… Cookies!!!
The base for this recipe is taken from the Better Homes and Gardens New CookBook (which has been around forever so how new is it really?). Feel free to add chocolate chips, raisins, M&Ms, dried cranberries, really whatever you like in your oatmeal cookies in stead of butterscotch. Feel free to mix and match, I am thinking dried cranberries and white chocolate chips would be very elegant and peanut butter chips and M&M’s just fun. The base though is by far my favorite oatmeal cookie.
3/4 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice (original recipe calls for cloves instead)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cup flour
2 cups rolled oats
1 bag butterscotch chips (or chocolate chips, or peanut butter, or… etc.) or 1 1/2 cups raisins
Beat butter till creamy and then beat in the sugars. Add the baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and allspice. These cookies are different from the average because of the early addition of the baking powder and spices. Beat all of this together and be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Add in the eggs and vanilla. Mix well then add in the flour. Finally, stirring by hand, add in the rolled oats and any other mix-ins you desire.
I chill my dough for a few hours but you can feel free to go straight to the baking part if you like.
Preheat over to 375. Drop rounded teaspoons of dough onto a greased (yes the recipe says ungreased - mine always stick, I love my Pam) cookie sheet not too close together - they will spread - and bake 8 - 10 minutes until edges are light brown.
Allow to cool and enjoy. Weirdly I find I much prefer these cookies cooled to warm from the oven. I think it is something to do with the fact that I just don’t really like the heavy butterscotch taste.
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Happy Chanukah/Merry Christmas!!!!
Its nice that the two holidays are coinciding this year so I can actually attend my fiancé’s family Chanukah get together instead of hearing about it while I am sitting for an exam.
The crazy thing about the two holidays coinciding… all the cooking!!! So this weekend in honor of the two holidays we have two recipes. A Kugel (though not really a traditional Jewish Kugel, we heard) from Andrew and Chocolate Slide cookies from my family’s traditional Christmas cookies.
The Kugel
(Andrew’s mother couldn’t find her cookbook so Andrew went to his one-true-culinary-love Alton Brown for the recipe.
All pictures are courtesy of Andrew’s favorite uncle, Jeff Diamond.
8 ounces lasagna noodles (9-10 noodles - hmmm…we used 11 because I wanted the pretty pieces)
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted, cooled and divided
8 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
8 ounces sour cream at room temperature
4 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp kosher salt
6 ounces dried apricots coarsely chopped
4 ounces raisins
For topping
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp nutmeg
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Grease an 8 by 8 inch baking dish and set aside. Mix together the sugar and nutmeg for the topping and also set aside.
Cook the noodles according to the package directions and drain. Cut the noodles into 1 inch wide strips (we used a pizza cutter but I think a good pair of kitchen scissors might have been easier).
Toss the noodles with 1 tbsp of melted butter.
Beat the remaining butter, cream cheese, sour cream, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt until thoroughly combined.
Mix together the cream cheese mixture, the buttered noodles, and the dried fruit.
Transfer the noodle mixture to the prepared pan and sprinkle with the sugar/nutmeg mixture.
Cover with foil and bake for 35 minutes. Uncover and bake for an additional 15 - 20 minutes until the pudding is set, golden around the edges, and slightly puffed.
Cool for about 15 minutes before serving.
Chocolate Slides
Ok warning: these cookies make me crazy! I will only make them once a year. Not because they aren’t delicious—they really, really are!-but because they are a frustrating dough to work with. But they are really, really good. Great special occasion cookies.
3 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking powder (yeah, it’s baking soda in the picture… I grabbed the wrong one… ignore that)
1/4 tsp salt
Filling
2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
6 ounces of chocolate chips (I tend to add a few ounces more… chocolate is good!)
Chopped walnuts or pecans (optional and I leave them out)
lots of confectioners sugar
Start by mixing your dry ingredients, the flour, baking powder and salt, in a bowl and set aside.
This recipe is a cream cheese instead of butter base so you are creaming the sugar and cream cheese exactly like you would cream butter.
My friend Melissa pointed out that I have never actually explained how to cream butter here and its kinda the name of the blog. Have your butter (here cream cheese) at room temperature and place in a bowl with the sugar. Using a good wooden spoon or a mixer, beat the butter and the sugar together until they are completely incorporated and the mixture is kinda fluffy looking.
After creaming the cream cheese and the sugars, add in the egg and vanilla and beat well. 
Add in the flour mix and stir until a soft dough forms. This dough manages to be both crumbly and sticky (told you: frustrating cookies!) so it will need to be chilled.
Break the dough into four pieces.
Wrap each piece in plastic wrap, and chill for at least an hour.
After the hour is up make your filling by melting the sweetened condensed milk and chocolate chips. Keep it warm so that you can handle it easily, but not so warm that it will melt though the dough.
Carefully roll out one of the sections of the dough to form a rough rectangle.
Pour 1/4 of the filling in the middle of the dough.
Fold the two sides up to make a sealed envelope. Mine always sticks and rips here. Dip the spatula you are using to powdered sugar to help. And don’t worry if they aren’t beautiful, you can cover up all the less-than- perfect spots after the cookies are baked.
Carefully move the filled cookie log to a greased baking pan and repeat with the other pieces of dough.
Bake the cookies at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, until just golden brown around the edges.
Allow to cool on the pans for 5 minutes and then transfer to wire racks. While still warm, cover the entire bar with powdered sugar, being sure to get the bottom and sides. This is where you get to cover up any tears or problems from the forming stage.
Let the bars cool completely. Slice into about 1 in cookies and consume.
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Gingersnaps
(Sorry a little late guys, been having technical difficulties here at home.)
I packed up, got in a rental car, and moved out to California in 2007. It was not my best planned move ever. I had a school to attend, but had neglected to secure housing when I showed up in Hollywood. And I was a little overwhelmed.
I have an aunt and uncle on my father’s side who live in California. They took me in for those first few weeks while I looked for a place to live. Before this they only knew me vaguely, but still they took me in. They are wonderful people and I owe them the success of that crazy move.
As ultimate comfort food my aunt would give me hot tea and gingersnaps. And to this day I still associate green tea with lemon and gingersnap cookies with the warm and comforting presence of my aunt’s house.
Ok: true confession time. These cookies weren’t bad, but were not my favorite. I want my gingersnaps to be STRONG ginger and these, while extremely delicious and very good with hot tea (Green tea with lemon grass from Good Earth!), they just were.. milder ginger flavor than I hoped for. Ah well, I eat straight candied ginger as candy - maybe anything less will be too mild for me!
Gingersnaps
From Smitten Kitchen
2 1/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp table salt
3 teaspoons ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp pepper
2 sticks (1 cup) softened butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup unsulphured molasses
1/2 cup finely minced candied ginger
Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, spices, and candied ginger, then set aside. Cream the butter and sugars. Add in the egg and molasses and beat until well combined. Add in dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
This is an extremely soft dough so you really do need to chill it in the refrigerator for a few hours (I know, I usually skip that step too - no patience. When I want my fresh hot-from-the-oven cookies I want them!).
Preheat the over to 350 degrees. Roll the dough into roughly 1 in balls and then roll them in some sugar. Space on a greased baking sheet and bake for 10 - 15 minutes. The longer you bake them the crunchier-more snappy-they become.
And while they are baking… your kitchen will smell amazing!
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Snickerdoodles
My grandmother always makes snickerdoodles for thanksgiving. To me they scream fall and leaves and cold wind and all those fall things.
So here in New Orleans it is still getting up to the 80’s so those fall things are kinda missing but I still was in the mood for the cookies. Plus they are my brother’s favorite and I am nothing if not a good sister. Right Jamie? Right?
Snickerdoodles
From Brown Eyed Baker
2 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3 tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp cinnamon to roll the cookies into.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put the cookie sheets you plan to use into the refrigerator to chill. This will help keep the cookies chewy.
Whisk together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time and then the vanilla. Beat well after each addition. Stir in the flour mixture just until it is blended, careful not to over mix. The dough will be sticky.
Chill it for at least 30 minutes (I chilled mine over night but that was more for my own convenience.)
When you are ready to bake, mix together the cinnamon and sugar in a bowl or on a small plate. Roll the dough into 1-inch balls and then roll in the cinnamon and sugar. Place on the chilled cookie sheets and bake for 10 - 12 minutes.
Be sure to chill the dough and cookie sheets between batches.
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