Topic: christmas cookie ideas

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Brown Sugar Pecan Sandies

If you didn’t get around to all the holiday baking you’d hoped, good news: The 12 days of Christmas officially began yesterday, so you’ve still got an excuse to keep making cookies like these Pecan Sandies. The other good news is that these are extremely simple to make (you don’t even need cookie cutters), but they taste and look like you’ve labored over them over your entire holiday weekend. More »

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Raspberry-Filled Swedish Rye Cookies

I adapted these cookies from a recipe on one of my favorite cooking blogs, 101 cookbooks, and have loved them ever since. They’re completely whole grain, and though they do contain sugar, they’re not over-sweet, making them healthy and, in my opinion, delicious. My addition of raspberry jam not only complements the rye and cream-cheese flavors in the cookies, but it also makes them look particularly festive this time of year. More »

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Raspberry Involtini

Involtini is Italian for “roll-up” (or at least that’s my rough translation), and can be applied to meats, vegetables, and in this case: pastry. These roll-up cookies can be made any time of year, but they’re so good-looking and tasty that I think they make a perfect addition to the Christmas cookie plate. They take a little time to assemble, mostly because you have to keep the dough chilled throughout the process to keep things from breaking and stretching, but the resulting almond-raspberry flavors are worth the wait. Just pick a good movie and relax while you wait for the dough to chill in between steps. More »

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies

These peanut butter kiss cookies are an Egan family classic during the holidays. (At some point I suppose we stole the recipe from somewhere, but the details are fuzzy.) Problem is, they’re not the healthiest Christmas cookies in the recipe box, and they’re so good that one usually wants to eat at least a half-dozen in one sitting. (And believe me, I have.) So, in a health-conscious effort to make these classics slightly less caloric, fattening, and full of sodium, I used Special Dark Hershey’s Kisses (one kiss: 20 calories, 1 gram total fat, 2.3 grams sugars); and all-natural, organic peanut butter (no salt, additives, preservatives, or sugars). Somewhat healthy, sincerely festive, and seriously simple to make. No electric mixer required, which means more time for holiday cheer.

Check out the recipe and photos, and look for our other 12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: More »

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Spice Krinkles

Warm spices like ginger, cinnamon, and cloves are part and parcel of the holiday season; no Christmas cookie collection would be right without a spicy gingersnap or krinkle on the plate. These spice cookies, adapted from a recipe in this year’s The Essential New York Times Cookbook, call for lots of spices and a little molasses. They’re wrinkled, sugar-crusted tops give way to a chewy (but thin) interior that’s incredibly satisfying. More »

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Buckeyes

It’s a stretch to call buckeyes a “cookie,” but the combination of peanut butter and chocolate is damn good, so I think it’d be a shame to disqualify them from your holiday cookie platter. And no-bake desserts can actually be a good thing: As much as I love warming up my kitchen and filling my apartment with the smell of fresh-baked cookies, sometimes I need my oven for other stuff. More »

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12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Ginger Brownie Buttons

I love: holiday baking. I hate: holiday dishes. A lot of cookie recipes call for multiple bowls, mixers, tools, and pans, which result in lovely cookies and a very un-lovely kitchen sink. That’s why I’m a fan of these ginger brownie buttons: They require very few tools and no complicated gadgets (and the ingredients are just about as simple) but they’re no less impressive or tasty once they’re on the table. The ginger adds a spice to the chocolate that makes them way better than those chunks of plain chocolate fudge your Mom used to make, and because they’re made in miniature muffin tins, they also bake quickly and are far less messy than a traditional brownie bar. More »

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Vegan, Gluten-Free Sugarplum Cookies

I usually try to avoid wheat, but I tend to let my gluten-free goals slide this time of year. Fortunately for me, it doesn’t wreak havoc on my body the way that it does for those with Celiac disease or serious gluten intolerance, who don’t get to “cheat” for a good holiday cookie. That’s why I love Babycakes’ Erin McKenna: Her recipes are actually good, and in the case of these spicy, cake-like Sugarplum Cookies, they’re also gluten free, and vegan to boot. I made some small adjustments to the recipe from her book, BabyCakes: Vegan, (Mostly) Gluten-Free, and (Mostly) Sugar-Free Recipes from New York’s Most Talked-About Bakery, but her way or mine: these cookies are delicious. More »

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Blue Cornmeal Shortbread

Cornmeal is one of my favorite “surprise” baking ingredients – it lends great texture, and unlike a lot of other whole grain flours, the flavor isn’t so strong that it overshadows the vanillas, spices, or fruits placed alongside it. It also happens to fit perfectly with a very traditional cookie recipe’s ubiquitous this time of year: Shortbread. There are endless variations on shortbread, but blue cornmeal makes these stand out. These cookies also make me think of luminarias and eating “Christmas” enchiladas in the southwest; not bland, store-bought shortbread that begs for some kind of beverage to make it palatable. More »

12 Days of Christmas Cookie Recipes: Mint Chocolate Thumbprints

On the first day of Christmas, doesn’t everyone want their true love to just give them a really good cookie? We think so. We do a lot of nagging about all the things you should and shouldn’t eat, but this time of year, it’s time to indulge in some really awesome cookies. So for 12 days, from now until Christmas, we’ll give you one mouth-watering good cookie recipe a day. We promise they’ll be worthy of busting your diet and busting out your mixer, and we’ll give you plenty of options (from crowd-pleasers to last-minute bars).

We’re kicking it off with Chocolate Mint Thumbprints, from the new book Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. More »

Blisstree’s Baker Chick Brings You 25 Healthy Cookie Recipes

Great cookies recipes we’ve found for you to try. Antioxidant rich ingredients and no preservatives make these home made christmas cookies almost healthy. More »

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