December 7: Swedish Butter Cookies

swedish butter cookies
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What is it that makes these cookies so good?

It could be the light texture of the cookie itself. Or the chopped pecans that give it a little crunch. Or it could be the maraschino cherry tucked ever-so-delicately into the top of the buttery orb.

Whatever it is, these delicious Christmas cookies are one of my favorites to make and eat! I haven’t made them in a few years, and now I’m wondering why.

These come from my friend Michele, who shared the recipe with me many years ago.

Swedish Butter Cookies

  • ½ lb. butter or margarine (2 sticks)
  • 1 t. vanilla
  • 2 c. flour
  • ½ c. sugar
  • 1 egg yolk (save whites to whip)
  • 1 T. half & half
  • ½ t. baking powder
  • ½ c. chopped pecans
  • 1 bottle maraschino cherries

Cream butter, add sugar; add egg yolk then vanilla and mix well.  Next, add the flour with the baking powder mixed in.  Alternate adding the flour with the half & half.  Form dough into little balls the size of a walnut.  Whip egg whites stiff.  Dip dough balls into whipped egg white and roll in pecans.  Place a half of a cherry in the center and push it down lightly.  Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 15-20 min. in a 350 degree oven.  Watch them so they don’t over brown.  Yum, yum, yum!

christmas cookies

The most interesting part of the process to me is the whipped egg whites to dip the cookie balls in. I’m sure it’s to make it stick to the dough, but I’ve always wondered what would happen if I skipped that step.

Alas, I’m not finding out this year.

December 6: Almond Pizzelles

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If you’re looking for a sign to drop $40 on a pizzelle maker, consider this your sign.

Pizzelles are simple, delicious, and gorgeous, and make a beautiful addition to a Christmas cookie platter. But in the time you spend admiring the lace-like pattern of the pizzelle, someone will swoop in and take them all.

I speak from experience.

Almond Pizzelles

  • 4 eggs
  • 1/3 c. + 1/2 c. sugar
  • 1 1/2 c. butter
  • 1 T. almond extract
  • 1 t. vanilla extract
  • 1 t. amaretto (optional)
  • 1/8 t. salt
  • 2 t. baking powder
  • 1 3/4 c. flour
  1. Beat the eggs and sugar for three minutes (at least!) and have it turn a light yellow color
  2. Melt the butter in the microwave. Put a spoonful of the egg-sugar mixture in with the butter and stir. Then pour all of that in the mixing bowl.
  3. Add extracts and amaretto. Mix until blended.
  4. Add salt and baking powder. Mix for 30 seconds.
  5. Add flour 1/2 c. at a time, blending for about 10-15 seconds between half cups. When all the flour is in, mix until just combined.
  6. Plug in your pizzelle maker and once it’s heated, spray with pam or melt a little butter in it.
  7. Scoop 1 T of batter on each bottom pizzelle plates, in the center. If you have a cookie scoop, this will come in handy.
  8. Follow the directions of the pizzelle maker–it should be about 60-90 seconds from closing the maker to your two pizzelles being ready. Remove with a spatula. Cool on wire rack.
  9. Dust with powdered sugar.

We love pizzelles around here. I buy them at the grocery store for the kids, and they disappear quickly! My fiancé is half Italian, and I asked if he thought my pizzelles could come close to his grandmother’s.

“There’s no way,” he said.

I believe him. I’m not Italian. I had no Italian Nonna making these cookies for me. I found them in a cookbook 10 years ago, and became an admirer. These weren’t my teething biscuits like they were for my fiancé. (Or so I assume they were.) And sadly, when his grandmother died years ago, he thinks her recipe went with her.

But he did say mine were pretty good, and as an Italian-adjacent, I’ll take whatever compliment I can get in this department.

December 5: Luxardo Cookies

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Sometimes, it’s 11:30 at night and you’ve accidentally had a bottle of red wine. And sometimes, you decide to create your own recipe at that time (and condition). And sometimes, it actually turns out.

That’s how these cookies were born.

(Sometimes, you want to call them Midnight Cookie and dye the batter black, and wake up and decide that perhaps that was one red wine-fueled decision too far. Hey, you can’t win them all.)

Luxardo Cookies

  • 1 c. butter
  • 1 1/2 c. sugar
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 1 t. cherry extract
  • 1/2 t. almond extract
  • 1 t. baking soda
  • 1 t. cream of tartar
  • 2 1/2 c. all purpose flour
  • 1 T. Luxardo cherry syrup (what the cherries are in)
  • 20 or so Luxardo cherries.
  • Gold sprinkles
  1. Cream butter and sugar together; add egg yolks.
  2. Add cherry and almond extracts, as well as baking soda and cream of tartar
  3. Mix together.
  4. Add flour a little at a time and mix after each addition.
  5. Add the tablespoon of Luxardo cherry syrup.
  6. Mix one last time.
  7. Refrigerate for at least an hour.
  8. Roll out and cut 1-2″ circles. (I used a cocktail jigger as my cookie cutter!)
  9. Cut Luxardo cherries in half.
  10. Top each cookie disk with half of a Luxardo cherry; top with gold sprinkles.
  11. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes until cookies are a golden color.

Because of the time of night and…other…situations, I don’t have many pictures of the dough. (I did put it on TikTok, which I’m amazed I did.) I needed a dough to use the six egg yolks that were left over from my meringue fails earlier. I looked online and didn’t see any recipes that looked good, but I saw one that had a similar base, so I gave it a shot.

After I baked them, I knew the flavors were all there, but the presentation needed work.

I tried many different ideas. Whole cherries inside the cookie. Half cherries inside the cookie. Chopped cherries inside the cookie. A frosting made of Luxardo cherry syrup and powdered sugar on top of a cherry-stuffed cookie. And finally, I settled on half a cherry on the cookie, no second dough disk on top, with gold sprinkles.

Honestly, this was the wow factor I was looking for with these Christmas cookies. Or cocktail Christmas cookies, as the only time I use Luxardo cherries are with cocktails.

Luxardo cherries are a pricey indulgence, for sure. But I wanted this to be a bougie cookie. I also tried it with regular maraschino cherries, and it worked just fine, but I use maraschino cherries in many of my Christmas cookies. I wanted to try something different.

I love the way these turned out! I feel like I need to have a glass of champagne with this as it eat it! The dark purple with the gold sprinkles really makes this pop; it’s a shimmery and fun addition to my Christmas cookie platter.

December 4: Peppermint Meringues

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I will start off by saying, no one’s perfect.

I made the Peppermint Meringues from the current Food Network magazine, and had a lot of trouble with them. Actually, nine times out of ten when I’ve made cookies from Food Network magazine, I’ve had trouble.

I’m not a baking novice by any stretch of the imagination, and if I were, this recipe would discourage me and make me think I just wasn’t cut out for baking cookies.

Again, no one is perfect. I certainly screw up. Even with cookies. At least once a year while I do my 24 days of cookies, one batch doesn’t work.

This is that batch.

I make meringue cookies every year band have been doing so since Britney rocked a belly chain and low-rise jeans. I know the concept. So when my meringue didn’t set up (using the directions exactly as written), I was perplexed.

And then I started over. This time, I used powdered sugar instead of granular. While it wasn’t as bad as the first batch, it definitely wasn’t up to my meringue standards. That was the first problem.

My second problem came when trying to paint the red stripes in the pastry bag. It’s tough to do, and I ended up using an unused paint brush from my arts and crafts collection. I tried a pastry brush before this, and it looked like a crime scene. It was too big, and the plastic pastry bag isn’t exactly the easiest surface to paint on.

Novice bakers aren’t going to necessarily know to try something else. Heck, I really didn’t know what to do. I totally winged it.

I piped the shapes on the parchment, and because it was a limp and runny meringue, the consistency was off. But I figured I’d try and see what happened. The red stripes did come through, but as I piped more, the color wasn’t as strong. This makes sense to me, but the photo editors at Food Network magazine didn’t get the memo that their picture was to actually look like the cookies their readers would be creating.

After the hour in the oven, I turned off the oven and had them sit in the oven for another 2 hours. As the directions state.

When I took them out, I was again not pleased.

Brown. My white runny meringues spent too long in the tanning bed before prom, and didn’t look like what they were supposed to look like. That was the final problem with this recipe.

Did anyone else make this recipe and have it turn out well? Because at this point, I’m not actually convinced anyone at the magazine tested this recipe.

December 3: Italian Sand Cookies

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As I was saying yesterday, I felt the need to get to the bottom of the difference between Italian Sand Cookies and Italian Butter Cookies.

But first–the ever popular Italian Sand Cookies recipe.

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 c flour
  • 1/2 c cornstarch
  • 1/2 c shortening
  • 1/2 c butter
  • 3/4 c. confectioners sugar
  • 1/4 c. granulated sugar
  • 1 1/2 t. vanilla extract
  • 2 eggs
  • melted chocolate
  • jimmies or other sprinkles

Directions:

  1. Cream together butter, shortening, sugars, vanilla, and eggs.
  2. Add cornstarch and mix again
  3. Add flour and mix again. The consistency should be like cake batter
  4. Put batter through a pastry bag with a large start tip
  5. Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes. Edges should just start to be golden brown when you take them out.
  6. Melt chocolate and dip or spoon the melted chocolate on half of the cooled cookie. Decorate with sprinkles or jimmies.

Yeah. None of that happened. (But can you imagine an International Journal of Cookie Pathology?! My scholar’s heart fills with happiness imagining such a scholarly source!)

So, I poured over research. I went to the International Journal of Cookie Pathology to find out what the difference between sand and butter cookies were. I contacted the head of culinary baking studies at the University of Rome. I put in my Freedom of Information request to Congress to open the sealed Italian Butter Cookies – Sand Cookies inquiry from the 70s.

There’s not a lot of research out there on this.

So I did my own. It was a taste test between the Butter Cookies and the Sand Cookies, and here are my scientific results:

  • The Italian Butter Cookies have more butter in them, and no cornstarch like the Italian Sand Cookies. And with that, the Butter Cookies are thicker and the Sand Cookies are lighter and spread out more.

As to why they are Italian? My best guess is based also on personal research: most of the best bakeries I’ve ever been to are Italian.

(I once helped plan, and then participate in, a cannoli tour in the North End of Boston. I think we went to 6 bakeries to determine which had the best cannoli. It was some of my best work.)

Thus concludes my research into this important matter.

Oh, and I also replaced my supply of my jimmies for my Christmas cookies. The line at Joann’s was astronomical, especially for a weekday! Be nice to those retail workers–they showed up!

sprinkles

December 2: Italian Butter Cookies

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Do you know what the #1 search term is that brings you to this site? I was a little shocked to find this out.

It’s “Italian Sand Cookies.”

It’s one of my favorites, and I make them nearly every year. But that got me thinking: is there a difference between Italian Sand Cookies and Italian Butter Cookies? Because Italian Sand Cookies isn’t exactly a popular term, and I’m such a word nerd that I wanted to investigate this. This would be where the Christmas cookie baker side of me and the writer side of me intersects.

Long story short: I have to do more research. And I love research.

More on that tomorrow.

Italian Butter Cookies

  • 1 c. butter at room temperature
  • 2/3 c. sugar
  • 1/4 t. salt
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 1 t. vanilla
  • 2 c. all-purpose flour
  • milk
  • 6 oz. milk chocolate
  • raspberry jam
  • sprinkles
  1. Pre-heat oven to 350 and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
  2. Cream together butter, sugar, and salt with a hand mixer (it’s easier to control).
  3. Add egg yolks and vanilla extract, mixing well afterwards. Add flour and mix.
  4. Dough will be crumbly. Add milk a tablespoon at a time and mix until dough is the consistency of thick cake batter or buttercream. It should not form a ball in the bowl.
  5. Load your pastry bag with the dough, making sure to have a large open star tip on the bag.
  6. Pipe 2 inch ovals with inner edges touching on the pan.
  7. Bake for 10-12 minutes, being sure not to over bake. Cookies are done when edges are golden brown.
  8. Once cooled, find matching pairs of cookies and turn them over. Spread a small amount of raspberry jam on the bottom of one of the cookies in the pair and place the other cookie on top. You won’t need a lot of jam; way less than you think.
  9. Melt 6 oz of milk chocolate in a bowl and either dip the end of the cookie sandwich in the melted chocolate or use a spoon to drizzle chocolate on the end.
  10. Top with jimmies.

I filmed a TikTok of this recipe today, and it’s amazing how 1 minute of footage takes over an hour to create. Or maybe it’s not supposed to. Yeah, it’s probably not, and here’s why:

On TikTok, everything is supposed to look great. And I think today it did, for the most part.

But in real life, things are messy. Things don’t go according to plan. Large open star piping tips can look a lot like other kinds of large star piping tips.

And once you figure this out, it takes some time for your hand to return to normal. And then, it takes a pan and a half of piped cookie dough to figure out the best way to pipe the dough out. So you take the previously piped and ugly almost-cookies off the parchment paper, and throw it back into the pastry bag.

And let’s just say you do this twice, because of the whole issue with the kinds of tips you were using to begin with.

TikTok did not see this side of things.

Consider yourselves fortunate.

But on the upside, it makes the dough in the pastry bag warmer than it was to start, which makes it easier to force through a large open star tip.

I’m all about the silver linings.

Tomorrow though, I finish my research into the Sand/Butter Cookie, and what exactly the Italians know about the controversy. My dissertation will be through. And delicious.

December 1: Brown Eyed Susans

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I have no idea why these are called Brown Eyed Susans. Maybe they look like eyeballs? But I don’t want to think about that for too long, nor do I want to think about why they are Susan’s eyeballs.

Brown Eyed Susans

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup butter
  • 3 T sugar
  • 1 t almond extract
  • 1/4 t salt
  • 2 c all purpose flour

Cream the butter with a mixer and add sugar, almond extract, and salt. Add flour. Place on to parchment papered cookie sheet in rounded tablespoons, then flatten either with a glass or your fingers. Bake at 400 for 10-12 minutes. Cool on rack. Frost and top with sliced or chopped almonds.

Frosting:

  • 1 c powdered sugar
  • 2 T cocoa
  • hot water
  • 1/2 t vanilla
  • sliced or chopped almonds

Blend sugar and cocoa, add just enough hot water to make frosting spreading consistency. Stir with whisk. Add vanilla.

I will admit, I was skeptical with these. Only 3T of sugar? Weird frosting that asks for hot water, and not even a measurement with that? What sort of Christmas cookie sorcery is this?

But it all worked out.

Oh, and hey, it turns out I haven’t gotten any better at not making a giant mess with the mixer.

24 Days, 2021 Style

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I’m back.

We all know that 2020 was a dumpster fire, and if anyone noticed I was gone from my yearly tradition, maybe they assumed it was because I just couldn’t any more with 2020.

Well, I’ll tell you, yes, that was a reason. But a bigger reason than generally 2020-ness that I didn’t do cookies last year was because I had my heart broken by a promotion I didn’t get, at a job where I was giving it my all. It sent me into a super scary depression, and cookies were about the last thing on my mind. It was bad.

But that was then. And here I am now, with a great new job (!) , a new house (!!), a fiancé (!!!), and some perspective on life, love, and of course, cookies.

I’ll be overhauling this site this year, bit by bit, so don’t be alarmed if things start to look different around here. If there’s anything I’ve learned in the last year, it’s that change isn’t always a bad thing.

Now, on with the Christmas cookies!

December 15: Almond Butter Sticks

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Note: I got behind because of illness.. Now that I can at least sit upright for more than a few hours, I am catching up. But with that, these are going to be more bare-bones than in the past.

Almond Butter Sticks

(courtesy of Saving Dessert)

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 teaspoons almond extract
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter, plus 1 tablespoon (divided)
  • 6 ounces cream cheese
  • 1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 egg, separated (white reserved for glazing)
  • 1/3 cup sliced almonds
  • 1 teaspoon coarse sugar for topping

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
  3. In a small bowl combine the sugar and almond extract; cover and set aside.
  4. In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder.
  5. In a large mixing bowl combine 8 tablespoons (1/2 cup) butter and cream cheese. Beat on low until blended. Add the egg yolk and blend until smooth. Add half the flour mixture and beat on low until combined. Add the remaining flour and blend just until the dough starts to come together.
  6. Transfer the dough to a floured work surface. Knead by hand about 25 strokes until the dough is pliable. Roll or press into a 12×12 inch square. Spread with the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter.
  7. Cut the dough in half and place one half on the prepared cookie sheet, butter side up.
  8. Spoon the sugar mixture to within 1/2-inch of the dough edges all the way around. Place the remaining dough half, butter side down, over the sugar. Press the edges tightly to seal.
  9. Brush the dough with a lightly beaten egg white. Sprinkle with almonds and coarse sugar.
  10. Bake 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. It’s best removed from the oven when you think it needs one or two more minutes.
  11. Cool at least 30 minutes.
  12. Cut the pastry in half lengthwise and then into 1/2 to 1 inch strips crosswise.
  13. Store in an airtight container.

Somewhere in the original recipe for this, it says that the author likes that these don’t immediately appeal to children, and therefore are leftover when cookies trays are passed.

I feel this in my soul.

These are my hands-down favorite fave cookie that I make. I love almond extract. I love butter and cream cheese and sugar and actual almonds, and I love making a cookie so good, it flies under the radar like a spy drone.

Here’s the link to when I made them last year, if you need the play-by-play. I doubled them last year, because I don’t like sharing. I still don’t like sharing, but I only had one brick of cream cheese left in my fridge and it’s supposed to be 10 degrees outside tonight.

No problems at all making these, as usual. Even with the rolling out and measuring going on here, these are pretty straight forward. By far, the biggest challenge with these cookies are hiding them from my kids, because they’ve caught on how awesome they are.

December 14: Meringue Cookies

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Note: I got behind because of illness.. Now that I can at least sit upright for more than a few hours, I am catching up. But with that, these are going to be more bare-bones than in the past.

Snowflake Meringue Cookies
(from The Spirit of Christmas Cookbook, Volume 4)

Ingredients:

4 egg whites
1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
1 t. almond extract
1/2 t. ground cinnamon
1/2 t. cream of tartar
decorating sugar

Directions:

1. Cover baking sheets with waxed paper.
2. In a large bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add powdered sugar, almond extract, cinnamon, and cream of tartar; beat until very stiff.
3. Spoon meringue into a pastry bag fitted with a small star tip. Make snowflake design. Add decorating sugars.
4. Let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.

I think these may be my kids’ favorites all around. They ask about them more than another cookie. When they smell the batter in the air, suddenly they are three obedient kids who get along fabulously and do any chore I ask of them.

I did something a little different this year. At the end, I put a little gold or white sprinkle pearl at the top of them, just for a little pizazz. And they stuck!

So maybe when these disappear, my kids will at least feel fancier as they snarf them down.