Newbies

I love traditions so it's no surprise that my list of Christmas cookies is close to the same year in and year out, particularly because it's the only time of year that some of my cookies get made. That said, sometimes I just feel that I need to shake it up a bit (it also helps justify all those Christmas cookie mags that follow me home each year). So this year, thanks in large part to my Pinterest adventures, I found a few new recipes that seemed like they needed to be tried, and today was the day.

I had planned starting first thing this morning but I needed to pick up a few supplies so things didn't really get started til lunch time. First off the block were these Cranberry Coconut Citrus Cookies. They are chewy morsels and a lovely combination of orange, cranberry and coconut (oh, and did I mention butter?). The only change I made was to cream my butter and sugar for about 4 minutes - I find it makes all the difference. The recipe suggests that you'd get about 40 cookies. I tend to make my cookies on the small size, but even with 2 1/2" cookies I ended up with 120! Not sure if it was a typo or not but since some of these will be used for the tins that we give to friends as gifts I was thrilled.


My second adventure was Raspberry Almond Shortbreads. Nothing says Christmas baking for me as much as the smell of almond extract, and these buttery little gems have almond flavouring in the cookie and the icing that is drizzled overtop. I suspected that these would be a hit so I made two recipes, which is all well and good, but I felt like I was rolling balls of dough all day. Probably because I was! Regardless, they are worth it.

FYI, instead of sprinkling the cookies with sugar before they go into the oven I just dipped them in sugar to get a little rim around the jam.

A little icing/drizzling tip for you. If you don't have a squeeze bottle for drizzling icing or icing cookies with royal icing run out  and get one (I got mine at the Bulk Barn but you can find them wherever they sell baking/cake decorating supplies) - they are ideal. So much neater and you can just put the cap on if you want to come back it. So much less mess and frustration.

I seldom make Sugar Cookies but when I saw this recipe for Goat Cheese Sugar Cookies I was tempted (another recipe where the dough is rolled into balls!). I even took the bait and rolled them in nonpareils, both multi-coloured and white only. Darned cute. And delicious too. You can smell the cheese when you take them out of the oven but I didn't detect the flavour in the cookie.

All told, there are approximately another 35 dozen cookies now in the freezer. The Official Cookie Tester was happy to have the oven in play and launched his 'testing' season listening to Christmas carols, sipping hot chocolate and sampling the new wares. All received his stamp of approval....M