Topic: holiday baking

Healthy Baking: 8 Festive St. Patrick’s Day Recipes

We’re all for four-leaf clovers and lucky charms, but when it comes to our health we’re not leaving it up to luck, even on St. Patrick’s Day. All those green treats that get passed around parties are tasty, but they’re typically full of sugar, fat, and leave us feeling a lot less festive once we’ve cleaned our plates. We searched for some healthier options and came up with eight recipes for cookies, cakes, soda bread, and even jello that will even make vegan, gluten-free guests feel luckier than an Irishman 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: 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 »

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 »

Is Holiday Baking Anti-Feminist?

The first pumpkin pie to come out of the oven for Thanksgiving last week rang in the official start of holiday baking season. Those of us who love to bake are armed and ready to spread holiday cheer through butter, sugar, and seasonally-appropriate fruits, nuts, and spices, and I’d venture to guess that most of us are women. But as Steph Larsen pointed out on Grist today, some of us are uncomfortable with the implications of our favorite holiday pastime on our feminist ideals. With rolling pin in hand, we wonder if toting that tray of gingersnaps to the office will somehow betray our professional mien, putting us dangerously close to the category of “domestic” that we work so hard to avoid. More »

What We're Reading:

21 Ghoulishly Fun Halloween Cookie Ideas

Boo, Blisstree Reader. Check out these 6 new Halloween posts we just published:

Doggone It: 10 Weirdest Halloween Costumes for Pet Owners and Their Pets

Hungry and Haunted: 10 Seriously Spooky Halloween Cookie Recipes

The Horror, The Horror: 10 Worst Halloween Costumes for Couples

Halloween Horrors: 10 Natural Face Paints That Won’t Kill You

Trick or Eat: 10 Scarily Disgusting Halloween Recipes and

Trick or Treat: 10 Halloween Candies With Scary Nutrition Facts

They’re kinda spooky. More »

50 Cute and Tasty Christmas Cookie Ideas

I love baking Christmas cookies, and every year I’m on the hunt for cute new Christmas cookie ideas. I thought I’d do a little roundup of some of the best christmas cookies I’ve found this year. If you have a favorite or unique christmas cookie recipe please be sure to add it to the comment section. I’m always on the lookout to add to my collection. More »