Cookie Link Dump

Got together with some friends this weekend to bake cookies for the holidays, and other than the traditional sugar cookies sprinkled with colored sugar crystals that I make every year, I was drawing a blank on what other cookies to make. A shout-out on Twitter for cookie ideas, a peek in my on-line bookmark folder, and a poke around the internet (my cookbooks now live in Philly while I'm still in Wilmington, so couldn't look in those) proved fruitful.

Coconut Macaroon Bars, Caramel Stuffed Apple Cider Cookies (these look so interesting) , Jan Hagels (a Dutch cookie), Chocolate Thumbprints, Chocolate Chip Cookies (The NY Times 36-hour-rested-dough internet sensation) and Mandelbrot all came in as suggestions on my Twitter feed.

Baker E's fabulous cookies can be purchased at A Full Plate Cafe, Home Slice Pizzeria, and Green Aisle Grocery, but if you mine her blog, Foodaphilia, you'll stumble on a recipe for one of her favorite holiday cookies, Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies, and everyone's favorite, Coconut Almond Toffee Crunch Cookies.

Last year Gourmet rounded up their favorite cookies from seven decades of publication - quite a few of these recipes got bookmarked.

Traditional Christmas Cookie Recipes from Martha Stewart - warning: a video plays automatically.

A Gallery of Holiday Cookies over at Chow.

25 Days of Christmas Cookies over at Epicurious.

A thread on Serious Eats asks, "What kind of candy or cookies do you make for Christmas?" - Lots of good ideas here.

50 Best Cookie Recipes on the Internet - a list from a few years ago, but still a good list.

Tips for freezing holiday cookies over at the kitchn - because you really shouldn't eat them all at once.

Moravian Molasses Cookies

Pies are so last week! With Christmas around the corner, it's time to bake cookies. I thought I'd break out a cookie recipe I usually bake at Christmas, but have, for no good reason, retired for the past few years.

Coming from the culinary traditions of members of the Moravian church in Pennsylvania that settled in the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina in 1753, these spicy Moravian molasses cookies are a traditional Christmas cookie. You may be familiar with them if you've ever received a gift basket with a tube of these delicately thin cookies made by the Salem Baking Company.

Moravian molasses cookies are basically an ultra-thin and crispy, ramped up ginger bread cookie. And they're too good to be retired.Baking notes:

• Unable to find a scallop-edged cookie cutter to replicate the classic Moravian molasses cookie shape, I've been using a tee-tiny tart pan for many years now. Make any shape you wish, though.
• The thinner you roll the cookie dough (try for at least 1/8-inch), the crisper the cookie will be. The longer you bake the cookies (but don't burn them), the crisper the cookie will be. You're aiming for thin and crispy. About half of mine end up crispy on the edges, and a tad chewy in the middle. I'm not perfect. And the chewy cookies are just as tasty.
  
• It is possible to roll the dough thinner by rolling smaller portions of the dough between plastic wrap, but it is nearly impossible to transfer the cookie to the baking sheet without ripping the dough. Try it if you're fabulous.
  

Moravian Molasses Cookies
makes about 40 cookies

1 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup molasses
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

• Sift together flour, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom, and baking soda in a bowl.
  
• In a large bowl, add molasses, vegetable shortening, brown sugar, and vanilla, and mix with an electric mixer until incorporated.
• Gradually add flour mixture to molasses mixture, then knead until thoroughly incorporated.
• Wrap dough in platic wrap and refrigerate for at least three hours, or overnight.
• Remove dough from refigerator, unwrap, and roll out as thin as possible (at least 1/8-inch thickness) on a floured surface, picking up dough and adding more flour to surface to prevent sticking when needed.
• Cut cookies and place 1-inch apart on a greased baking sheet (a spatula is really going to help you lift the cookies and transfer them to the baking sheet).
  
• Bake in a preheated 300 degree oven for 6-8 minutes, one sheet at a time.
  

A Tale Of Two Cookies

It’s not Christmas if I don’t make sugar cookies exactly as I did when I was a child. This means the exact recipe, rolling pin, cookie cutters, and sprinkles my mom used. Absolutely no frosting allowed!

One of my first cooking memories is of making Christmas sugar cookies with my mom - creaming the sinful combination of sugar and shortening in a bowl; rolling blonde, soft dough with a heavy wooden rolling pin, flouring green and red plastic cookie cutters shaped like candy canes, Santa Claus, and snowmen; pressing the cookie cutters into the dough – hopefully none stick, but some do; sprinkling green and red colored sugar crystals over the cookies and into the depressed patterns left by the cookie cutters; baking until the edges hint of gold; then eating warm, sugary cookies straight from the oven.

I found myself making rugelach the same day I made sugar cookies. I have no memories to share of rugelach, but I can share my recent experience of baking rugelach for Hanukkah. Rugelach is definitely fancier than the sugar cookie and the process is much more involved.

As I chilled the dough for eight hours; divided the dough into four; rolled the dough into perfectly thin rectangles; spread the rectangles with jam, raisins, walnuts, and cinnamon sugar; tightly rolled the dough up into logs, all the while taking the softened dough in and out of the refrigerator to chill, I wondered if this cookie was too difficult for a small child to make? Do people have fond memories of making rugelach as a child like I have of sugar cookies? At first I didn’t think I would put a small child to the task of making a cookie so involved, but then I countered that children enjoy copying and participating in their parent’s activities. If your mother made rugelach, you made rugelach along side her. And, of course, you have fond memories – it’s a cookie!