Spiced Butter Cookies: snowflakes

 
This is the same recipe I used last November for these fall leaves.  

In fact, it's the same batch -- I saved out two thirds of the dough and froze it so that I had it to use for Christmas cookies.  That quantity of dough yielded about 3 dozen cookies.  (I actually baked only 29 cookies, but after all was said and done,  I realized I still had about 3/4 cup of dough in the refrigerator.)  The recipe is supposed to make 6 dozen, but I didn't roll either batch quite thinly enough for that.

I used a 3-inch cookie cutter and sprinkled the cookies with sparkling sugar before baking.  Based on my experience with the leaves, I watched the bake time carefully and didn't let them get too firm.  I also did not use an insulated baking pan.  They came out perfectly.

Although I still think they taste a lot like graham crackers.

Almond-Cardamom Butter Balls

These are similar to Mexican wedding cookies, not quite as buttery or rich, and not as sweet since they're not covered in sugar.  (I seen now I was supposed to sprinkle them with powdered sugar... oops. Oh well. Per the photo in Bon Appétit, they get a very light dusting.)

For a yield of 25 cookies, here's what I used:

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1¹/₃ cups powdered sugar, divided
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom*
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup finely chopped, toasted almonds

Preheat oven to 325°F. Combine all ingredients except powdered sugar in food processor. Process until mixture resembles fine meal, using on/off turns, then process continuously until dough begins to gather together. Form dough into 1-inch balls. Space 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheet; bake until just firm to touch, about 20 minutes. Transfer to rack and cool completely. Sift lightly with powdered sugar. Store in airtight container.

*I couldn't taste the cardamom, so I added another 1/2 teaspoon.  Despite grinding my cardamom from seed, it must still simply be too old to be viable, because it was still completely undetectable.

Initially, these tasted strongly of toasted almond, so I recommend toasting the almonds quite lightly so as to not add too much flavor. Curiously, these did not taste like spice cookies.  I really didn't pick up anything besides toasted almond and a little orange.

Conclusion:   Easy to make, they store well and very are Christmassy.  I'm sure they'd have been even better if the cardamom had been there.

Recipe:  "Almond-Cardamom Butter Balls" via Bon Appétit, January 1989

Brandied Fruit Bars

 

I'm never quite sure what I'm going to get with bar cookies that have some sort of gooey layer.  I took a chance with these... They might be spectacular, or they might be a dismal failure.  They were neither.  Read on.

I'm not sure how well these went over as I never got any feedback.  Perhaps that's telling in and of itself.  I'm afraid most people thought they were chocolate, in which case they would have been in for a surprise.

How many bars this actually makes depends on how well you can get your knife through them.  I originally cut them (with great difficulty) into 25, 1.5" x 1.5" squares.   But they're quite sweet and intense, almost more of a confection, so I later cut each of those squares in half, which made them a bit messy looking.  Here's what I used:

1/2 cup golden and/or dark raisins
1/3 cup dried cranberries*
1/3 cup snipped dried tart apricots
1/3 cup brandy or water
1¹/₃ cup all-purpose flour, divided
1¹/₃ cup packed brown sugar divided
1/3 cup butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt
1/3 cup chopped pecans
powdered sugar

In a small saucepan stir together dried fruit and brandy. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and let stand for 20 minutes. Drain.

Preheat oven to 350F. In a medium mixing bowl stir together one cup of the 1 cup flour and 1/3 cup of the brown sugar. Using a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Press mixture into an ungreased 8 x 8 x 2-inch baking pan. Bake about 20 minutes, or until golden.

In a medium mixing bowl, beat eggs with an electric mixture for 4 minutes. Stir in the remaining 1/3 cup flour, the remaining 1 cup brown sugar, vanilla, and salt until combined. Add drained fruit and pecans and stir to mix. Pour the filling over the hot crust, spreading evenly. Bake about 40 minutes more, or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (If necessary, cover loosely with foil for the last 10 minutes to prevent overbrowning.) Cool in pan on a wire rack. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and cut into bars.

*Presumably these are sweetened, dried cranberries-- I think that's the only kind of dried cranberries on the market.

I had a number of problems with these.  First, I pressed the crumb mixture too firmly into the pan and it ended up rock hard-- not the most pleasant bite, and very difficult to cut through.  On top of that, I might have overbaked it slightly; it was in for only 17 minutes, but the temperature has slid up to 375F.  Then I'm pretty sure I overbaked the top part as well, because it was firmly affixed to the edges of the pan and very difficult to get free and to cut through.  Even the filling in the middle of the pan was sticky and firm.  It took a LONG time to get these cut and out!  (Lining the pan with foil so the whole batch could be lifted out in one piece and then cut might be a solution.)  The resultant cookies were sticky and chewy on top, practically crunchy on the bottom.  The saving grace was that it's been raining non-stop and they became more manageable as they absorbed some of the dampness in the air.

There was no distinction of various fruits topping, just one homogeneous taste and texture.  There are similar recipes that are better, so I wouldn't be inclined to try this again.  If I did, it definitely needs fewer raisins and more tart fruits; more or chunkier nuts would add texture and help cut sweetness.  Dark chocolate chips might actually be a good addition to the fruit mixture to provide some contrast.

Conclusion:  Overlooking the texture issue from these being overbaked (and the hassle getting them out of the pan), I'm not sure I liked the flavor. The individual fruits were not distinguishable, rather they tasted like date squares, and the pecans were completely undetectable.  Since the topping was so sweet, I'd reduce the sugar in the base.  These did mellow, soften, and improve over subsequent days. (They keep well.)

Recipe:  "Brandied Cranberry-Apricot Bars" via Better Homes and Gardens "Our Best Holiday Menus", December 2005

Chocolate Peppermint Spritz

 

Spritz are a great cookie when you want a lot in a hurry, and they're dependable for being consistent, thanks to the cookie press.  Chocolate isn't really a part of my Christmas holiday, at least not as a main character, but peppermint brings a festive touch to these chocolate spritz cookies.  The recipe doesn't call for any peppermint in the cookie itself, but I wanted a little mint flavor there and not just in the topping, so I added a little extract to the dough.  While I made the full recipe of the cookie dough, I cut the drizzle quantity in half.  If you want cookies that are richer with chocolate flavor, by all means use the full quantity, but realize that your spritz pattern might get lost in the topping.  Normally I prefer cookies made with salted butter, but in this case the lack of salt might have been a better option.  They didn't taste salty, but they did taste buttery with more umami, which chocolate and peppermint lack in themselves.  Sometimes the absence of umami is okay.

Here's what I used to yield 50 cookies:

1³/₄ sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature

2/3 cup sugar

1¹/₂ teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract 

1 large egg

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

 

Drizzle (half original quantity)

2 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped

1 tablespoons heavy cream

1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter

1/8 teaspoon peppermint extract

Crushed candy canes, for decorating

Preheat the oven to 325˚. Beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl with a mixer on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in the extracts and egg until just combined. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder; reduce mixer speed to medium low and beat in the flour mixture until just combined. Fit a cookie press with a wreath disk. Press cookies 1 inch apart onto 2 unlined baking sheets. Bake one pan at a time until cookies are crisp and set around the edges, 18 to 22 minutes. Immediately remove the cookies to a rack using an offset spatula and let cool completely. 

Combine the chocolate, heavy cream and butter in a medium heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water (do not let the bowl touch the water). Stir until melted and smooth, 2 to 4 minutes. Remove the bowl from the pan and stir in the peppermint extract; let cool 5 minutes. Transfer the icing to a resealable plastic bag, snip off a corner and drizzle over the cookies. Immediately sprinkle with crushed candy canes. Let set about 30 minutes.

Usually you need only a few test presses to figure out what the best press quantity is for the dough and design you're using, but for some reason I kept getting irregular quantities. Oddly, I had trouble getting these cookies to press out evenly:  some were too fat, some were too thin.  I don't know what the issue was.  It's easy enough to scrape the defective presses back into the bowl and do it again, but it was getting frustrating.  Otherwise, the cookies came together easily and baked nicely.  (I baked them about 17-18 minutes.) 

I was nervous about the topping, feeling I had to rush it and afraid the chocolate would harden before I got the candy to stick.  I needn't have worried; the ganache stayed soft for a long time.  There's plenty of time to apply both the melted chocolate and the candy.  Sprinkling the candy, however, is easier said than done -- I ended up with a lot on the counters and floor (which I can tell because I keep sticking to it.)  It tended to collect in the hole and had to be picked out.  Again, if I'd known I had plenty of time to fuss with it, it wouldn't have been so nerve wracking.

Conclusion:  These were good, though I'd prefer them more minty; most of the peppermint comes from the candy.  A bit fussy and messy to make, though, so not a recipe that can be knocked out in short order.

Recipe:  Chocolate Peppermint Spritz via Food Network Magazine, December 2019

Ginger Rum Balls

Swedish meatballs, anyone?  Oh, wait... these are the rumball cookies.  Fooled you!  What a disappointment.  Read on...

I thought I'd be whipping these together quickly -- it was anything but quick.  Everything needed to be finely chopped, which is very time-consuming, and then all the balls rolled individually.  Could you do it in a food processor?  Probably, but you'd likely get uneven texture with some larger chunks and lots of pulverized dust.  These should have some bite to them, not be like mush, but chunks will make them fragile and not hold together.

That wasn't the only problem with this recipe.  Shockingly, I couldn't find gingersnaps (seriously???), so I had to improvise with graham crackers and extra powdered ginger.  (I could have used Nilla wafers, but I don't like them and they're too sweet.  Then again, I don't like graham crackers either.)  It "worked" in that they came together, but I didn't care for the results at all.  You have to start with a base you like-- all the additives aren't going to fix it if it's not tasty to start with. 

Here's what I used, which yielded 25 approximately 1-inch balls:

2 cups gingersnap crumbs, about 56 cookies 12 graham crackers (1¹/₃ packages)

1 cup walnuts, toasted

1/2 cup dark raisins, finely chopped

1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk

2 tablespoons dark rum

1 tablespoon grated orange peel

1/2 teaspoon 1 tablespoon ground ginger 

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 cup powdered sugar (used, but shouldn't have)

2 tablespoons VERY finely chopped, crystallized ginger

 

Spread 1/2 cup gingersnap crumbs in shallow dish; set aside. In large bowl, combine remaining 1½ cups gingersnap crumbs, walnuts, raisins, milk, rum, orange peel, ground ginger, and nutmeg; stir until thoroughly blended. Shape mixture by level tablespoons into balls. Toss reserved gingersnap crumbs with crystallized ginger; roll balls in mixture to coat thoroughly. Store in tightly covered containers in cool, dry place at least 24 hours and up to two weeks.

 

My recollection of rum balls is that they're almost always far too sweet.  They start with a sweet cookie, then add even more sugary ingredients, resulting in something more like a confection than a cookie.  My aim was to keep the sugar content in check.  So imagine my surprise when I tasted the dough and thought, "It could use more sugar."  Besides, it seemed a little wet.  So I added a little powdered sugar.  However, these firmed and dried quite a bit over the following days and didn't need the added powdered sugar, either for flavor or texture.

Mixing them was a bit of a disaster.  When I tried to roll the balls in the coating, all the crystallized ginger fell off.  The balls were too dry!  I finally threw all the balls back into the bowl, dumped in the coating mixture and blended it all together.  (This would have contributed to the cookies firming up considerably, even though I threw in a hearty splash of rum.)  I would not attempt again trying to keep the crystallized ginger on the outside, but would just mix it in to start with.

In the end, they tasted like a commercial cookie, slightly lemony.  (I have a flavoring called "Princess Cake" that is slightly lemony and reminds me of the flavor of commercial baked goods.  It's probably what the graham crackers had been flavored with.)  And the ginger flavor kept changing:  at first it was just a sensation of heat; after a few days it became somewhat floral, almost soapy; after two weeks it had mellowed and practically disappeared, leaving just a trace of heat behind.  The raisins shined through everything, but not so much the orange or other spices, and the rum disappeared in short order.

Conclusion:  Sorely disappointed.  Not distinctly gingery, only mildly rummy.  Mostly they tasted like store-bought raisin cookies.  And they were ugly!!  (I don't have a photo of the magazine's product, but everything about them is brown.)  But I'm hesitant to toss the recipe because I messed up on the main ingredient.  Then again, there are a lot of other recipes out there.  This one was a fail.

Recipe:  "Ginger-rum Balls" recipe card from women's magazine

Fruit and Spice Bread

There are a lot of similar spiced fruit bread recipes that come out this time of year.  This was a new one for me to try.

To make a smaller, individual loaf, I halved the original recipe, which would have been shaped into a ring after being twisted, and adjusted the baking times.  Here's what I used:

1/2 cup warm water
2¹/₄ teaspoons active dry yeast

1/2 teaspoon sugar 

1/4 cup buttermilk, room temperature

1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 

3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 + 1/8 teaspoon aniseed, chopped

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1³/₄ cups all-purpose flour 

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 cup old-fashioned oats 

1/2 cup mixed diced dried fruit (I used apricots, tart cherries, and golden raisins)

 

Proof yeast in 1/4 cup water with the sugar. In mixing bowl, add yeast mixture, remaining 1/4 cup water, buttermilk, honey, cinnamon, salt, aniseed, and allspice; stir to combine. Add 1 cup all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, and oats and beat 3 minutes. Gradually beat in 1/2 cup all-purpose flour. Continue beating until dough cleans sides of bowl. Turn out dough onto floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, adding up to 1/4 cup all-purpose flour if very sticky, about 10 minutes. Place dough in oiled bowl and turn to coat. Allow to rise at room temperature until tripled in volume, about 6 hours. 

 

Punch down dough and turn out onto work surface. Add dried fruit and knead until thoroughly combined. Divide dough in half; roll each half into a 15-inch-long rope. Place ropes side by side and twist together loosely to form one even loaf. Place on cookie sheet and cover with kitchen towel; let rise in warm area until almost doubled in volume, about 1 hour 45 minutes. 

 

Preheat oven to 400F. Transfer bread to oven, then immediately reduce temperature to 350F and bake 30 minutes. Reduce temperature to 325F and continue baking until bread sounds hollow when tapped on bottom, about 15 minutes. Transfer bread to rack and cool.  

 

The directions to allow the dough to rise for 6 hours until tripled in volume were a surprise.  It's not an enriched dough--there is no egg or butter, and not an unusually large amount of sugar (honey)--so the directions are not typical for what is a fairly standard dough recipe.  I had scheduling issues with preparing this bread, so I decided to take advantage of the long rise time and start it in the refrigerator around 2:00 in the afternoon.  I didn't remove it until the following morning, and it was barely doubled.  I left it on the counter, but it continued to rise very slowly, perhaps because the room was quite cool.  Finally, losing patience, I took it out to the warm car and left it there until I couldn't wait any longer.  It still wasn't tripled, but I was concerned about letting it go any longer.  By now, it had been 24 hours.  I punched it down, kneaded in the fruit, shaped it, and left it to rise; this time it took far less time to nearly double, but I didn't get any oven spring. (I should also mention I used fast-acting yeast, which throws another curve ball into the process.) 

Since it lacked any sort of decoration, I gave it a butter rub after it had cooled to give a little shine.

Conclusion:  The bread was dense and chewy, similar to a bagel--I'm not sure if that is the intended texture or if it didn't rise properly.  It wasn't especially spicy; the most noticeable flavor was anise, which I didn't especially care for.  I normally like anise, but this came across a little medicinal.  (Maybe I need to buy new anise seed.  It tastes more herbal than candy-like.)  It wasn't particularly "festive" tasting, but was a nice variation on raisin bread.  It might also benefit from some walnuts.

Recipe:  "Fruit and Spice Bread" via Bon Appétit, September 1992

December ABC challenge: Chocolate Gingerbread Cake

 

This month's challenge is a favorite holiday dessert.  For many years, this has been one of my trusty go-tos for a holiday gathering.  It's delicious, easy to make, usually foolproof (see explanation below), and the best part is that it's better after a couple days, so it can be made ahead.

2 1-ounce squares semisweet chocolate
2 cups all-purpose flour
2¹/₂ teaspoons ground ginger, divided
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 cup dark (unsulphured) molasses
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour (or use cocoa powder) a 9'' springform pan.   In a small heavy saucepan over very low heat, melt chocolate, stirring constantly until smooth.  Remove from heat to cool. 

Meanwhile, in a small bowl combine flour, 1½ teaspoons ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt; set aside. 

In a large mixing bowl cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in egg to blend thoroughly; beat in molasses and buttermilk.  Reduce speed to low; gradually beat in flour mixture.  Beat in melted chocolate until well blended.  Pour batter into prepared pan; bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool cake in pan on wire rack 10 minutes; remove from pan to rack to cool completely.   To decorate, in small bowl combine cocoa powder and remaining 1 teaspoon ginger; sprinkle evenly over cooled cake.

Thanks to a boyfriend who didn't know that the heavy aluminum plate the cake I made him was resting on wasn't disposable, I lost the bottom to my 9" springform pan.  No good deed..., as they say.  (Note to readers:  never turn over a cake to others that's still on the springform bottom -- you'll never see it again.)  I should have tried making this in a standard 9" cake pan -- I'm sure it would have worked fine.  But instead I used an 8" springform and it did NOT work well.  I didn't reduce the temperature (I probably should have), but I did bake it about another 15 minutes.  I also probably should have put foil around the top edges once they'd cooked.  I even have cake pan insulators that help a cake bake evenly, but I completely forgot about them.  I was hoping the center would eventually rise as it completed baking, but it actually sunk lower.  (Possibly from all my jabbing with a cake tester to see if it was done yet.)

Conclusion:  As a long-time trusted recipe, I'm disappointed in how it turned out this time.  It was still rich, moist, and delicious, but the flavor seemed a little too intense.  It's possible that was a result of the changed texture from improper baking, or perhaps my tastes have changed.  (Admittedly, it's been a while since I've made it.)  You have to be careful with the cocoa powder on top--if it's at all loose (as it was this time on the smaller cake), it can make people choke.  A light drizzle of dark chocolate ganache might be a good addition.

Recipe:  "Dreamy Chocolate Gingerbread Cake" from a magazine, circa 1980-something