Favorite holiday delights include pretty
Linzer, sugar and gingerbread cookies. |
Christmas Cookies
Use plenty of butter and spice to make the best bite-size
holiday treats
When I was a kid, no one could escape from our house during the holiday season without at least having a cup of coffee and some cookies made by my mother and those made by my Aunt Sandy. There were giuggiuleni (little footballs covered with sesame seeds), corral islands (our term for the jelly-filled thumbprint cookies), butterballs (a stubbier version of Mexican wedding cakes), triangles (thin, crisp wafers with walnuts and a hint of cinnamon) and mochas (nut crescents filled with cocoa and coffee). And if you didn't come to us, we came to you with plates covered in colorful plastic wrap and tied with both red and green ribbons.
Only the stoniest of hearts can resist a Christmas cookie. In fact, the allure of Christmas cookies is so pervasive it even seduces people for whom Christmas has no religious significance. "Christmas cookies are like turkey with Thanksgiving. It's what we think about for a holiday which is as much cultural as it is religious," says Rose Levy Beranbaum, who so loves Christmas cookies she authored Rose's Christmas Cookies (Morrow Cookbooks), despite the fact she is Jewish. "Nothing represents the spirit of loving, nurturing and giving more than a homemade cookie," Beranbaum writes.
Beranbaum's ecumenical approach to Christmas cookies allows her to list rugalach as her favorite. This crescent-shaped cookie made with cream-cheese dough and a fruit-and-nut filling is a traditional Hanukkah cookie. Hanukkah? Christmas? Close enough. But rugalach isn't exactly bursting with the color and pizzazz we associate with Christmas cookies. "Some people think Christmas cookies have to have spangles and all that kind of stuff," she says. "But most people think of Christmas cookies as their best cookies, when they want to offer something special."
Although Nick Malgieri, author of Cookies Unlimited (Morrow Cookbooks), agrees with this untraditional view, he feels that certain spices (such as allspice, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg) are still strongly associated with the season. "When we smell something baking with those spices, we say, 'It smells like Christmas,'" he notes. His family hails from southern Italy, as his cookie memories will attest. "A lot of the cookies we had, like biscotti, came from leftover dough used for pies like pizza rustica. Nobody had recipes written down. They just made cookies the way they were shown," he says.
Nuts and candied fruit are in the Christmas cookie pantry for obvious reasons: Nuts are in season and candied fruit magically (and for many, thankfully) tends to be abundant only in late fall. Dried fruits such as figs, dates and raisins are traditionally on the ingredients list, too. Cucciddati are Sicilian date-and-fig cookies that are my family's holiday favorite. Mom would pass figs and dates through a hand-cranked meat grinder clamped to the kitchen table. As if the filling, which includes walnuts, wasn't rich enough, the dough contains eggs and lard.
The egalitarian nature of Christmas cookies is also part of their appeal. "People who say they've never baked a pie or that the only cake they ever made collapsed, aren't intimidated by cookies," Malgieri says.
Chef Scott Campbell, of @SQC restaurant in New York, says his favorite cookie is the classic German pfeffernusse, made with spices, almonds and lemon peel. "That crisp texture and nutty inside evokes lots of memories," he says. "We'd come home from school, and the whole house smelled of cookies being baked for the open house we had on Christmas Eve. And, of course, I got to lick the batter off the spoons and beaters." In addition to pfeffernusse, Campbell creates a number of other cookies, many of which are variations of a basic sugar-cookie recipe (see below).
Santa Claus never gets cookies this
good on Christmas Eve. |
Countering the anyone-can-do-it philosophy, Maida Heatter, author of Maida Heatter's Brand-New Book of Great Cookies (Random House) thinks great cookies require attention. "Don't put the cookies into the oven and walk away. Keep an eye on them," says Heatter, who painstakingly fashions Christmas fortune-cookies stuffed with greetings printed on red or green paper. Malgieri says the way you measure flour is particularly important. "Spoon the flour into a dry measuring cup [not one meant for liquids] and level it off with a knife," he says. "Don't scoop the measuring cup into the flour, because you can get up to 20 percent more that way."
Even experienced bakers would do well to follow this tip from Flo Braker, author of The Simple Art of Perfect Baking (Chronicle Books): "So many times people will inadvertently double a recipe or leave out an ingredient. So roll out, form and bake just one cookie first. In eight minutes you'll know if you made a mistake," says Braker, whose favorite cookie is a simple strawberry jam-filled "little gem" topped with a pecan half, which she remembers from her childhood in Evansville, Ind.
For a beverage, milk fits the Rockwellian image. But adults need something more bracing to drink with cookies. Campbell serves hot chocolate made with French Valrhona chocolate. Beranbaum likes eiswein or Sauternes with nonchocolate cookies and Moscato di Pantelleria for chocolate ones. Heatter's favorite afternoon snack is cookies and Chardonnay. And why not? Malgieri says, "Nobody has codified cookies yet, so you can pretty much do what you want."
Sugar Cookies
• 8 ounces butter
• Pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 4 1/2 tablespoons ice water
• Turbinado sugar for dusting
• 6 ounces hazelnuts
• 6 ounces toasted almonds
• 2 ounces melted chocolate for drizzle
• 4 tablespoons lemon zest
• 1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons brandy
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• Powdered sugar for dusting
• 12 teaspoons Raspberry jam
A topping of coarse turbinado sugar gives the cookies a wonderful
crystalline texture. For easy cleanup, use a food processor to mix the
dough and then roll it out on floured plastic wrap.
Put 8 ounces butter, a pinch of salt, 1/2 cup sugar and 1 1/2 cups flour in a food processor. Pulse 3 times and add 4 1/2 tablespoons ice water. Pulse until a ball forms. Refrigerate for 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 425° F. Roll out dough between two pieces of plastic wrap dusted with flour, until dough is about 1/4-inch thick. Remove plastic wrap and cut dough into 1-inch disks, with a round cookie-cutter. Brush the top of each cookie with water and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown. Makes 20 to 24 cookies.
Variations
Hazelnut cookies: Reduce butter to 4 1/2 ounces, add 6 ounces of finely ground, toasted and peeled hazelnuts to the dough. Lightly push a whole toasted and peeled hazelnut into each cookie before baking. Drizzle baked cookies with 2 ounces of melted chocolate.
Lemon pepper cookies: Add 3 tablespoons grated lemon zest and 1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper to the dough.
Linzer cookies: Replace hazelnuts in the dough with blanched and toasted almonds and substitute 2 tablespoons of the ice water with 2 tablespoons brandy. Also add 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon each allspice and nutmeg, and 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest. Bake half the cookies. Before baking, cut a 1/4-inch hole (the small tip of a pastry bag is helpful) in the middle of each cookie from the second half of the batch. Put a small amount of raspberry jam (1/2 teaspoon or less) on the cookie halves without holes. Top with the other halves. If desired, dust with powdered sugar.