12 Days of Christmas Cookies - Day 10: Diamond-Edged, Melt-in-Your-Mouth Butter Cookies

Diamond-Edged, Melt-in-Your-Mouth Butter Cookies - from Bakewise by Shirley Corriher

Is it weird that the more I love something, the less often I tend to make it? There’s a reason for that. Yup, you guessed it. It’s because I would eat it. And before you scratch your head over that, remember that the only reason I don’t weigh 300 pounds is because I exercise (literally and figuratively) portion control. Everything you see on my blog, I’ve often only had a bite of: 1 cookie, a sliver of brownie, a half slice of cake. Unless I confess otherwise. I’m usually honest about my portion control transgressions and will ‘fess up when I’ve eaten five of something because it was just that good.

This falls into the 5-cookies-consumed category. At least I’m pretty sure I ate five when I first tried out this recipe awhile back. This year, so far I’ve baked off most of it and given them away but I haven’t tried this batch yet. But I’m pretty sure they tasted fine since I followed the same recipe and they looked good. 

The only thing I did differently was to roll the cookie logs into red and green sanding sugars so I could get the Christmas look for my care packages and goodie bags. I really liked how they ended up looking and it’s just as easy to roll the cookie dough logs in colored sugars as well as plain sparkle sugar.

If you want to make for Hanukkah, blue sanding sugar and silver sanding sugar works just as well as red and green for Christmas celebrants. I love the versatility of this dough. It’s easy to make, you can make it ahead of time and keep it in your freezer until you need it (thaw for 10-15 minutes beforehand just for ease of slicing but don’t let the dough get warm) and they’re delicious slices of butter goodness. Just try to stop after 5.

1 cup unsalted butter, cut into 2-tablespoon pieces

1 cup granulated sugar

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pure almond extract (I used vanilla extract)

2 large egg yolks

2 ¼ cups (9.9 ounces) bleached all-purpose flour

½ cup coarse or crystal sugar

1 large egg, beaten

1.   In a heavy-duty mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, sugar, salt and almond extract until light and creamy.  Add the yolks, one at a time, and beat with each addition, just to blend in thoroughly.

2.   On low speed, beat in the flour, scraping down the bowl twice.  Divide the dough into 4 pieces.  Roll each into a log about 1 ½ inches in diameter.

3.   Sprinkle coarse sugar evenly on wax paper, the length of the rolls and about 4 inches wide.  Brush a roll lightly with beaten egg, then roll in sugar to coat well.  Repeat with each roll.  Wrap each roll individually in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 2 hours or overnight.

4.   About 30 minutes before you are ready to bake, place a shelf in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 375⁰F.

5.   Cover a heavy baking sheet with parchment paper sprayed with nonstick cooking spray.  Slice cookies into 3/8-inch slices and arrange about 1 inch apart on the sheet.

6.   Place the baking sheet on the arranged shelf.  Bake one sheet at a time until the edges just begin to brown, about 14 minutes.  Allow to cool on the sheet for 2 minutes, and then remove to a cooling rack.

Diamond-Edged Melt-in-Your-Mouth Butter Cookies

Diamond-Edged Melt-in-Your-Mouth Butter Cookies - made May 17, 2011 from Bakewise by Shirley Corriher (book #110)

I'm still posting recipes I made last Tuesday - that was clearly a banner baking day.  Tomorrow is officially back to the working world for me.  I'm still behind by a few more blog posts of what I've made last week but I've written them up ahead of time so I can post them with a click of a button next week and hopefully it'll be enough to see me through the week.  I'd gotten used to baking and posting almost daily but once I exhaust my backlog posts, I'll have to scale back a bit until I adjust to a full-time working schedule again.  In the meantime....

Bakewise by Shirley Corriher gave me one of the best brownie recipes I've ever made.  Considering exactly how many I've made over the years (well over 150+), that's saying something.  So I had high hopes for this butter cookie.  Despite their simplicity or maybe because of their simplicity, good butter cookies are hard to find.  Some taste great but spread too much because they contain too much butter and some don't spread at all and are dry because they don't have enough butter.  I love plain butter cookies.  I'll even admit that, much as I scoff at "storebought" cookies and prefer to make my own, I love those danish butter cookies that come in the big tins every Christmas.  I can eat those like kettle corn, popping them in my mouth one after the other.  So much for portion control.

Given how good Shirley's brownie recipe is, I was willing to give this recipe as much optimism as possible.  The dough was very easy to work with, not too crumbly, not too greasy.  I only made a half recipe because I'm trying out as many recipes as possible this week so I was going for quantity of different recipes, not necessarily a lot out of each recipe.  I refrigerated it overnight and baked off what I needed for goodie bags the next day.

I love these cookies - they're awesome slices of butter goodness and the rock sugar or sugar crystals you roll them in before chilling and baking are a perfect complement both texture-wise with their crunch and taste-wise with their sweetness against the butter cookie.  For once, I don't advocate underbaking - these cookies taste best when they're baked properly for the right amount of time.  The edges will be crisp-crunchy like a good butter cookie should have and you don't want the middles too soft or mushy but with a uniform "snap" to them.  Shirley Corriher scores once again, not just with a good recipe but with one of the best versions I've tried so far out of any recipe for this cookie - that makes 2 for 2 from her book.  Oh, and it goes without saying to please use fresh butter - not something that's been sitting unused in the refrigerator for weeks or months.  You want to taste the sheer butter goodness.

ETA: forgot to add but someone reminded me - I substituted vanilla extract for the almond extract in this recipe and it was just fine.  I love almonds but not almond extract so I always automatically substitute vanilla extract wherever almond extract is called for.

1 cup unsalted butter, cut into 2-tablespoon pieces

1 cup granulated sugar

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pure almond extract (I used vanilla extract)

2 large egg yolks

2 ¼ cups (9.9 ounces) bleached all-purpose flour

½ cup coarse or crystal sugar

1 large egg, beaten

1.   In a heavy-duty mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, sugar, salt and almond extract until light and creamy.  Add the yolks, one at a time, and beat with each addition, just to blend in thoroughly.

2.   On low speed, beat in the flour, scraping down the bowl twice.  Divide the dough into 4 pieces.  Roll each into a log about 1 ½ inches in diameter.

3.   Sprinkle coarse sugar evenly on wax paper, the length of the rolls and about 4 inches wide.  Brush a roll lightly with beaten egg, then roll in sugar to coat well.  Repeat with each roll.  Wrap each roll individually in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 2 hours or overnight.

4.   About 30 minutes before you are ready to bake, place a shelf in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 375⁰F.

5.   Cover a heavy baking sheet with parchment paper sprayed with nonstick cooking spray.  Slice cookies into 3/8-inch slices and arrange about 1 inch apart on the sheet.

6.   Place the baking sheet on the arranged shelf.  Bake one sheet at a time until the edges just begin to brown, about 14 minutes.  Allow to cool on the sheet for 2 minutes, and then remove to a cooling rack.

Marathon Baking Session - tips and tricks

Ready, Set....Turn on the Oven!

We're hurtling towards Christmas in a few days and I'm wrapping up the last of my baking gifts for pre-Christmas giving.  There'll be post-Christmas, pre-New Year's Eve baked-goods giving but I'll worry about that next week.  Last Saturday, I had a mini-marathon baking session.  I love those days and it's one of the reasons I do a lot of holiday stuff like decorating, sending out cards, shopping, and gift wrapping early - so I have time to bake during the holiday season itself and can get together with friends without worrying about how to "get it all done".

If you've still got massive baking to do for the holidays, here are some tips to manage the baking load.  The name of the game when you do a marathon baking session is to plan what you're making and once you turn that oven on, you want your products in and out in the least amount of time.  I don't believe in wasting energy and turning the oven off and on, depending on what you have to bake and how soon something is ready to go in.  Instead, I plan it so once the oven is turned on, it's always got something in it and there's never any downtime for it.  As soon as one thing is done, get the next thing in the oven until the last dessert is baked and the oven can be shut off for the day.

But before you even get started on baking, have a clean kitchen.  It'll clutter up soon enough once you start baking but start out with a clean work area.  While you should always clean as you go, you don't want to waste time cleaning it up in the first place.  Wash all the pans, cookie sheets, measuring cups, spoons, utensils and mixing bowls you need and have them ready.

Once your kitchen is clean, get out all the ingredients you need and group them by recipe.  This gives them time to come to room temperature if needed and also ensures you have all the ingredients you need for everything you're going to bake before you even crack the first egg.  This is your mise en place. If you need to make a quick trip to the grocery store because you're missing something, you'll know exactly what you need for all that you're baking that day and you won't have to interrupt your baking session later on when it'll be more inconvenient.

After you have your mise en place, prep the baking pans first.  It's the easiest thing to do and gives you some structure on the order things go into the oven.  If you have a lot of cookies to bake, get all your cookie sheets ready.  I like to line mine with parchment paper so they're easy to clean afterwards and the cookies don't stick to the pan.  I line square cake pans and brownie pans with foil, lightly sprayed with nonstick cooking spray, no matter what the recipe says.  It not only guarantees easier cleanup but you can lift your brownies or bar cookies right out of the pan, using the ends of the foil as handles.  This way you can cut them on the cutting board rather than in the baking pan.  Muffin tins get lined with cupcake liners ahead of time if I'm making cupcakes or mini panettone paper molds are lined up on a baking sheet if I'm using those.

At this point, the oven's still not turned on yet.  Before you turn it on, do the most time consuming tasks first.  My baking plan for the day included lemon bars, brownies that became both the base for the Almond Joy Brownie Bombshells and Nutella Crunch Brownies, banana bread, Nutella Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies and Diamond-Edged Melt-in-Your-Mouth Butter Cookies.  Out of all of those things, I already had the cookie doughs made and ready in the freezer.  The banana bread batter is quick and easy to put together so instead, I did the shortbread base for the lemon bars first.  While the crust baked, I mixed the lemon curd layer.

If you're making anything with nuts, those should go in first so you can toast them and they have time to cool by the time you need to incorporate then into your baked goods.  If you're making sandwich cookies, those should go in next, again so they have time to cool before you sandwich them with filling.  Likewise anything that needs to be frosted so they have cooling time before you frost them.  This isn't so much about oven management but time management in general.  If you're trying to keep a certain amount of baking hours throughout, plan your baking schedule to maximize the time you have in the kitchen while also keeping the amount of that time to a manageable level.  It's a bummer if you're so busy in the kitchen that you don't get to spend time with your friends and family outside of the kitchen because you're still baking. 

I baked the lemon bars off first so they would get the longest cooling time since lemon bars are messier to cut if they're warm.  While the lemon bars had their second baking with the lemon curd layer, I worked on the brownie batter  I wasn't done filling the mini muffin pans with the brownie batter by the time the lemon bars were done so I put a cookie sheet of nutella peanut butter oatmeal cookies in next.  Cookies are great to bake in between other things since the cookie dough is ready and they can go in at a moment's notice - just plop the dough balls onto the parchment-lined cookie sheet and into the oven they go.  If you have a limited amount of cookie sheets, it's also good to bake the cookies between other items so your cookie sheets have time to cool before you use them again.  Never place cookie dough on hot cookie sheets - they'll melt part of your dough before the baking even begins and cause more spread than necessary.

So that's how my afternoon went.  While something was baking, I was already mixing up another thing.  If I wasn't ready, I baked a sheet of cookies so the oven was always in use and none of the energy went to waste.  As everything baked, more and more of my kitchen was overtaken by baked goods in various stages of completion: loaves of banana bread cooling on a wire rack (they must be taken out of the pans to cool or else they'll steam and stick inside of the loaf pans), lemon bars cooling and waiting for the sprinkling of powdered sugar on top, brownie bases waiting for the coconut topping and enrobing in chocolate, cookies cooling, etc.  By the end of the afternoon, I had what I needed to give away the next day.  Then it was just a matter of packaging everything as gifts.

Holiday Cookie Compilation

I still have a couple of new recipes to put up from what I tried out in November but for the first day of December, I thought I'd put up this compilation of holiday cookies I've blogged about in the past. They're good year round but in case you want to do a little holiday baking, these are good contenders to bring to cookie swaps, holiday gatherings and giving as gifts. Some because they're pretty, some because they look festive for the season and all because they're delicious.

Turtle Cookies

Holiday Caramel Treats

Red Velvet Cookies

Diamond-Edged Melt-in-Your-Mouth Butter Cookies

Buttery Tea Balls

Almond Nutella Fudge

Almond Joy Brownie Bombshells

Melting Moments (sandwiched with cookie butter)

Macadamia Chocolate Chip Shortbread Cookies

Red Velvet Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies

2017 Holiday Dessert Party #2

Holiday Dessert Party #2 - hosted December 17, 2017

With the holiday season winding down, my almost-final tally is over 50 dozen cookies and brownies baked this season. Normally I don't keep track but I was asked about it in an interview for a story for the Christian Science Monitor so I did a quick tally, going through what I had baked for my first dessert party for my friends, what I baked for the benefit for the domestic violence shelter, what I baked as gifts for friends, coworkers, people at church and what I baked for my second holiday dessert party, this one for family.

Apple Cobbler aka Apple Crumble Bars

You'll recognize some of what I'd done for the first dessert party because they're perennial favorites with almost everyone but I also mixed it up a little with some specific family requests and favorites. Apple cobbler is always a family favorite and this one disappeared quickly.

Bakery-Style Chocolate Chip Cookies

Two of my nephews like chocolate chip cookies so I had to bake one of my favorite recipes for them. For my other nephew, Vanilla King, it was Snickerdoodles.

Soft and Thick Snickerdoodles

My cousin Christine liked these butter cookies from her goodie bag last Christmas so I made them again for her.

Diamond-Edged Melt-in-Your-Mouth Butter Cookies

My niece always likes peanut butter cookies so I made one of my favorite peanut butter cookies.

"Best Ever" Peanut Butter Cookies

 Plus a repeat of what I made for her birthday earlier - Kahlua Cake.

Kahlua Cake

My cousin Elinor requested lemon bars. These had the added advantage of being made with lemons from her mom's lemon tree.

Lemon Bars

Peanut Butter & Milk Chocolate Kiss Cookies

My cousin Miriam was supposed to come but she had a conflict with a birthday party her oldest son wanted to go to. Nevertheless, I baked these white chocolate macadamia cookies, her favorites.

White Chocolate Macadamia Cookies

So it ended up being something for everyone. Click on the caption under each picture for the recipes.

Baked gifts

If I blogged about everything I've baked since Thanksgiving, whether a new recipe or a previously made one, you'd see a flood of daily postings, sometimes multiple times a day, especially on the weekends.  But instead, here are some (not all) of the care packages and baked gifts I've sent out or given away to family and friends so far this holiday season.  As I've posted previously, part of the fun of giving away baked treats is packaging them up to look pretty.  I don't do a lot of fancy-looking desserts as I focus more on taste than decoration but I rely on the packaging to make a nice presentation.  Most of this stuff I got from Michaels and Target.  The labels I ordered online.

I have another marathon baking session coming up this weekend so stay tuned....

Brownies and Lemon Bars

Holiday Caramel Treats and Almond Butter & Nutella Swirl Cookies

Diamond-Edged Melt-in-Your-Mouth Butter Cookies

Buttery Tea Balls, Almond Butter & Nutella Cookies, Alton Brown CCC

Red Velvet cupcakes, Red Velvet Cookies and White Chocolate Toffee Macadamia Cookies

2017 Holiday Dessert Party #1

Holiday Dessert Party round up - hosted on December 2, 2017

I typically decorate big for Christmas every other year. Anyone who's known me for any length of time knows I'm a Christmas nut. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday but decorating for Christmas is where my freak flag lives. And flies high.

Triple Layer Chocolate Cake with Fudge Frosting

It's usually a 2-3 month-long process, starting with the first month where I clean my house from top to bottom. You can't put decorations on dusty surfaces. Plus bookshelves must be cleared, every conceivable surface swept, vacuumed, mopped or dusted, furniture cleared away, the year-round pictures on the walls tucked away to be replaced by Christmas wall hangings, extraneous "stuff" donated to charity and so on.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Kisses

Then month 2 is the structural framework. Artificial trees have to be put up, sometimes a new tree (or two *cough*) ordered, display planning needs to be done. The last month (this would be November since my goal is always to be done by Thanksgiving weekend) is about hanging the ornaments on the trees, putting up the wreaths on nearly every internal door in the house, hanging whatever needs to be hung on the walls, decorating the mantle, filling up the bookshelves with little vignettes of Christmas display pieces, lining the stairs with plush snowmen, and the list goes on.

Soft and Thick Snickerdoodles

This year, it took me a little longer since I could only work on it during weekends. I came home too late at night during the week to do it then. But I crammed a lot of decorating into those weekends so I met my goal of being done by Thanksgiving. Although, to be honest, I didn't actually finish all of my decorating plans. But I'd done enough that by Thanksgiving weekend, when it started to feel like a chore to keep putting more decorations up, I declared myself done. When I'm not enjoying it anymore, I stop. I don't believe in stressing for the holidays.

Almond Butter and Nutella Swirl Cookies

This year, I was motivated to declare myself done because I was out of time and needed to switch my energy from decorating to baking. Because I was going to hold my not-always-annual holiday dessert party this year. Several weekends before the party, I started making cookie dough to store in my freezer. What I made partially depended on who was coming as I know some of my friends' personal favorites and partially on any new recipes since the last party that I thought had turned out well and I wanted to make for them.

Ginger Krinkles

But ultimately it also depended on the practical realities of what could be made ahead of time and baked off at the last minute. Because you know I'm all about freshness and only serve baked goods that I could bake on the same day or the day before. Brownies are the only exception since they freeze well, can be made ahead of time, frozen (well wrapped) then thawed and cut right before serving.

Brownie-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

For what I was serving, I made only the toffee butter crunch shortbread and the triple layer chocolate cake the night before since both would be fine the next day. I knew the caneles would take the longest not only to bake but because I had to build in some buffer time for the canele copper molds to cool before I used them again.

Buttery Tea Balls

 

On the day of the party, I woke up at 5 am, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and turned on my oven by 5:05 am. I baked all the frozen cookie dough and canele batter steadily throughout the day. I didn't turn my oven off until 1:58 pm; the party was slated to start at 2. Made it just in the nick of time.

Cream Cheese Chocolate Brownies without the frosting

Essence of Chocolate Squares

So here's the holiday round up with links of the stuff I've made in the past. The new entrants to the holiday baking lineup will be posted later this month. Hopefully.

Caneles

Toasted Hazelnut Slice n Bake Cookies sandwiched with Nutella

Diamond-Edged, Melt-in-Your-Mouth Butter Cookies

Butter Toffee Crunch Shortbread