Easy Cookie Recipes | Chocolate Cookies | Peanut Butter Cookies | Sugar Cookies

Product Description
Do you have a favorite Christmas cookie? Is it made of chocolate or spice? Is it an iced and decorated sugar cookie or a molasses ginger round? Or maybe it's a crisp, chocolate-covered toffee bar or a jam-filled Linzer sandwich cookie. There are so many choices!

Christmas cookies are loved for their special shapes, cheery colors, and seasonal flavors. They bring joy to our gatherings, help preserve the magic and tradition of the holiday season, and make heart-warming gifts. Christmas Cookies offers fifty wonderful recipes for holiday treats, such as light-as-air Cocoa Meringue Kisses, Chocolate Peppermint Cookies that perfectly complement a mug of hot chocolate, sweet-tart Iced Lemon Rounds, the much-beloved classic Pecan Sandies, Ginger Coins with the right amount of snap, and many, many more.

Avid holiday baker Lisa Zwirn baked hundreds of cookies to come up with these fabulous fifty recipes. There is something for everyone: treats for chocoholics, holiday shapes that children will love (that can be baked and decorated by the little ones, too), luxurious sandwich cookies, and plenty of spiced rounds, buttery wafers, and decadent bars.

Christmas Cookies will also show you how to make the most of your time in the kitchen with these useful tips and ideas:

Cookie baking guidelines for successful baking
Options for freezing dough so you can bake cookies when the mood strikes
Storage suggestions to help keep treats fresh for as long as possible
Child-friendly recipes, such as Peanut Butter Chocolate Kisses, Chocolate Caramel Thumbprints, Gingerbread People, and Molasses Ginger Cookies, which are easy and fun for beginners
The best cookies to mail and how to wrap them
How to host a holiday cookie swap and cookie-decorating party

Whether you've baked Christmas cookies for years or are just starting a tradition of holiday baking, you'll find all the recipes you need right here. Christmas Cookies is an essential collection for the cookie baker, featuring color photographs, clear, detailed recipes, and irrepressible Christmas spirit.

About the Author
A food writer and recipe developer, Lisa Zwirn is a regular contributor to the Boston Globe and has written for a number of publications, including Cooking Pleasures, Intermezzo, Fine Cooking, Cooking Light, and Pastry Art & Design. She lives in Massachusetts.

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Image : One Perfect Bite
Ingredients :-

1/2 cup ground almonds (about 2-oz.)
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup firmly-packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preparation Instructions :-

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Position two oven racks in the middle and upper third of oven. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
In a food processor, grind almonds finely; measure out 1/2 cup and set aside.It is also possible to buy ground almonds for use in this recipe.
In a medium saucepan over low heat, heat the butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, and corn syrup until the butter melts and the sugar dissolves, stirring often.
Increase the heat to medium high and, stirring constantly, bring mixture JUST to a boil. Immediately remove pan from the heat and stir in flour and salt until incorporated. Stir in ground almonds and vanilla extract.
Drop batter using a teaspoon, 3-inches apart, on prepared cookie sheets (about 1/2 dozen cookies per cookie sheet). Prepare all your pans of cookies at this time even though you are only going to bake 1 or 2 sheets at a time.
Bake cookies until evenly light brown, approximately 8 to 10 minutes until cookies spread, become thin, and take on a deep golden color. If you are using 2 cookie sheets switch top to bottom and back to front at 5 minute mark to promote even baking. Cookies will begin to spread 6 minutes into baking time.
Line wire cooling racks with plastic wrap. When cookies are done baking, remove cookies from oven and, as soon as they're firm enough to lift off baking sheet (which will take just a few minutes), use a wide spatula to transfer them to prepared cooling racks to cool completely. Allowing cookies to cool slightly on cookie sheets will also cause them to flatten out more.
NOTE: If cookies become too cold and hard to remove from baking sheet without shattering them, replace pan in the oven to soften the cookies again. Bake remaining cookies; batter will have firmed up a bit, but that is fine. Store flat cookies between sheets of parchment paper in a tin or plastic container with a tight-fitting lid.
Yield: 25 to 30 cookies.

Source : Designs By Gollum - Foodie Friday

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Posted in Christmas Cookies , Cookie Recipes , Holiday Cookies

Easy Cookie Baking Tips

> Use soft butter

> Cream butter and sugar well

> Check expiration date on your leavening agents

> Flour should be measured properly

> Sift all the dry ingredients

> Pre-crack eggs into a separate bowl

> Mix eggs one at a time, mixing well in between

> Add dry ingredients slowly

> Mix in dry ingredients just until blended

> Hand mix in the chocolate chips and nuts

> Use a cookie or ice cream scoop to make cookies the same size

> Use parchment paper

> Bake just until cookie edges are brown

> Let cookies sit on cookie sheet

> Start over on cool cookie sheet

> Scoop cookie dough BEFORE freezing

> Buy a good oven thermometer

5 Essential Rules to Making Good Cookies:

1) Do not overbake. For those of you who have read my blog for a while you know this is a pet peeve of mine. I have a hard time leaving any cookie alone but if it's overbaked I can easily leave it. It ruins everything about the cookie when it's overbaked...the texture, the color, the taste...

2) Always use real butter. Some of you may argue with me on that but these are my rules so real butter it is. If it says to have your butter at room temperature, make sure it is. That makes a huge difference too when you have to cream the ingredients together.

3) Use parchment paper. I never make cookies without it. I've done tests, one batch with it and one without parchment paper and the ones with parchment paper always win. You can reuse it too most of the time.

4) Always use real pure vanilla...not extract. I can tell the difference in taste when extract is used so splurge a little and buy the good stuff.

5) Use large or x-large eggs. Most recipes don't specify but in general when they call for eggs in the recipe they assume you are going to use large or x-large eggs.