Stained Glass Shortbread Hearts

I used INDIA TREE Sparkling Sugar--Confetti "color."

I have a group of favorite Christmas cookies and I make most of them every year.  Not all.  Some years there's just no time for the cranberry bars and the candy canes do only make it into the round up every so often.  I'm not sure what gives one cookie a spot at the top of the favorites' team or what makes another a relief pitcher, but I'm thinking it's which little crispy piece of sweetness draws the most desirable oooos and ahhs from family and friends versus those that are still in the freezer at Easter.

To say I love my grandson's help in the Christmas kitchen is not an understatement.

That I love to make cookies is undeniable.  That I must, absolutely must, make a new recipe or two every year is something I know.  If only there were more days for baking, more mouths for chewing, more mugs of cocoa that needed a sidecar, more glasses of Vin Santo calling out for biscotti.

In fact, since my kids have left home, I schedule a  cookie party of some kind so that I have a reason to bake.  And bake.

An ornament I bought in Taos--it stays in my front window year-round.

Early in the season, I often place a cookie book or two next to my reading chair.   I put sticky notes at the recipes that appear promising and assure myself I'll try this one or the other -- and sometimes I do. Sometimes I'll see something online or in the newspaper that will call me.  My sister will send a recipe and those are treasures to tempt and attempt.

This uses the add the sugar to the dough method. (See *)

Inevitably, I drag out the old recipe box and find the tried and true blue friends of years past, and make those first, second, third….  Ginger Cookies, Chocolate Snowballs, 7-Layer Bars, Shortbread, Sugar Cookies, Pecan Bars, Date Bars…  (The list goes on.)

This is the add-the-sugar-to-the-top-of-the-hearts method described in the recipe.

And the new cookie may wait its turn patiently.  Might even have to wait until next year.

Cookies at left have sugar added at top.  At right, sugar added to the dough. (Same in next photo)

But sometime its turn at bat will arrive.

The music will start….
I bake to Peter, Paul, and Mary's Holiday Celebration  --  at least to begin with.

Double hearts.  This one just came out like this.  Ah. Sigh.

The counters are cleared of the coffee pots, salt and pepper, olive oil, crushed red pepper….

so that there's room for  a standing mixer, 3 or 4 favorite cookie sheets, and some cooling racks.

It takes a clear counter to bake a cookie.


This year's new cookie not exactly new, but it's a new version of my favorite shortbread.  And I think it's a perfect newbie.  Tender, but crisp all the way through.  Bright in affect.  Tiny.  Also a bit time-consuming, but worth it.  These meltable mouthfuls are just an inch long and hence are perfect for those who want a cookie, but don't want a cookie -- if you know what I mean.  An inch long cookie? What harm could that do?  (None if you stop at one.)  Here's how:

stained-glass window shortbread hearts

• 3/4 pound (3 sticks) unsalted butter--soft
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 1/2 cups white, unbleached flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• sparkling sugar (confetti)*

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

With an electric mixer or very strong hands, beat together the butter and sugar; add the vanilla.  

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour and the salt.  Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, mixing slowly at first to avoid a flour shower.  When dough begins to hold together, stop mixer and remove dough. 

Shape first into a ball and then flatten into a disc.  Wrap with plastic wrap or foil and refrigerate 30 minutes.  (If you refrigerate the dough longer, you may have to let it warm up a bit.  I've left it overnight or longer; it has no eggs, so keeps a bit more than most doughs.) 

Divide dough into approximately 1-cup portions and, using a rolling pin,** roll out to 1/4-inch thickness on a lightly floured board or counter.

Cut out using 1-inch heart cookie cutters and press sparkling sugar into each.*  Place on baking sheets.  Bake 6-9 minutes or until set and just beginning to color at edges. Remove to cooling racks.  Store in tightly covered containers for up to a month.

*Alternately, add sugar to dough as you roll and then cut out the hearts; the cookies will look a bit differently, but will be just as good.

**No rolling pin?  Watch this little video.  A wine bottle might work just as well!

Provenance and Truth in Lending:  The ingredients (except for the sparkling sugar) for this recipe are from Eli Zabar via Ina Garten with great appreciation.

--

Around the 'Hood

 This year's twins munching in my front yard. (above)

Their vigilant mom. (above)

The family out back. (above)

On a clear day, you can see forever.  Well, you definitely can see Pike's Peak from my front door.

Click here for my Ginger Cookie recipe.  It's a keeper.

Our cookie party -- "Cookies, Carols, and Champagne," is Monday night. I am, uh, a bit behind.  Think of me.

Happy December…as you sing a new song,
Alyce

Ina Fridays --Desserts and "Other" Recipes -- Eli Zabar's Shortbread Cookies Three Ways

Tiny, fluted, showered in sugar:  "Sparkly, Very Sparkly Stars"

Raspberry Sandwich Cookies

Dipped in Vahlrona chocolate and topped with fleur de sel

These cookies are always on all my cookie trays in one version or another.  Each shortbread cookie is made from the same recipe, but is simply finished differently.  The recipe is Eli Zabar's  (NYC) and I took it straight from Ina Garten, who I guess took it straight from Eli, who, it appears got it from his mother!  My cookies, however, are quite different than Ina's.  Your cookies will be something else as well.  And while these are not terribly innovative or cutting edge, they are terribly delicious.  Addictive, in fact.  Just add coffee.  Just add tea.  Just add sherry.  Just add...you.

If you watch Ina regularly, you'll know she talks about Eli Zabar quite often and even has him on the show occasionally.  Eli Zabar's is a store and catering business in the Big Apple; he's a baker; he's a gardener; well just....Check him out here.   Watch Ina cook an Eli Zabar salmon recipe here. 

    These are versatile... 

Sparkly, Very Sparkly Stars

More Time will be on vacation for a short time.  
When I've cooked a bunch more, I'll be back! 
In the meantime, make my Sparkly cookies.   Make merry, friends!

Sparkly, Very Sparkly Stars

This not-too-sweet, pie crust-like, melt in your mouth gem is actually a tiny, fluted piece of shortbread showered in white sanding sugar.  Regular old white sugar will work just as well, as would bright red cookie sugar from the grocery store.  The white sanding sugar, however, gives the cookies a sheen and a sophisticated sparkle unlike any other.  It yells, "I'm special."

While other cookies try and steal the show with great globs of frosting or hunks of high-quality chocolate, this cookie (tiny, but mighty) shows strength and endurance because after you put out a big bowl of them, folks will just keep nipping in until they're gone.  One isn't enough.  Especially with hot tea... or a little snifter of brandy. Try this:
  

Raspberry Shortbread Sandwiches and Valrhona Chocolate Shortbreads

Merry Christmas, Friends, Family and other Loved Ones

A promise is a promise and here are two more of the cookies from the tray:

 These cookies are at the right of the tray and are both shortbread cookies made from the same recipe, but finished differently.  The recipe is Eli Zabar's  (NYC) and I took it straight from Ina Garten.  Just the end results are totally different.  And while these are not terribly innovative, they are terribly delicious.  Addictive, in fact.  Go ahead; you still have time to bake.  No?  How about for New Year's?  Truthfully, the 12 days of Christmas haven't even begun yet.  Get out those trays and crank up that oven.  Take a batch to a neighbor you wish you knew better or run up to the local church for services tonight and give a batch to one of the musicians.  Like me.  I'm working tonight. 



Shortbread Cookies from Eli Zabar via Ina Garten and Alyce Morgan

3/4# soft unsalted butter
1 c white sugar
1 t vanilla extract
3 1/2 c unbleached flour
1/4 t salt (no salt if you used salted butter)


For sandwich cookies:  3/4 c seedless raspberry jam and 1T Cointreau
For chocolate dips:  3-6 oz Valrhona Chocolate melted*; 1T coarse sea salt

Instructions:

Mix together together the butter and the sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer until just combined.  Add vanilla.  Sift the flour and salt and add it to the butter an d sugar.  Mix until the dough starts to come together.  Dump on a floured board and shape into a flat disc. Refrigerate, tightly wrapped, for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Roll dough out 1/4"   thick on a floured surface and cut with 1 1/2- 2"   fluted cookie/biscuit cutter.  Bake on an ungreased sheet for about 10 minutes--until edges show the faintest signs of gold.  Let cool to room temperature.


For Raspberry Shortbread Sandwiches:


Mix jam with Cointreau and heat briefly; stir well.  Turn cookies flat side up and, holding one, place about 1/2 t jam mixture on it.  Place another cookie, flat side down into the jam mixture and press together lightly.  Place  cookies on racks as you finish them.  When all are done, dust with confectioner's sugar shaken from the shaker or through a small strainer/sieve.


For Valrhona Chocolate Shortbreads:


Chop or grate chocolate into a small sauce pan.  Place sauce pan over  another with an inch or so of simmering water.  Let chocolate melt slowly.  When melted, take each cookie and dip halfway.  Place each dipped cookie onto a wax paper lined tray to dry.  Place a piece or two of sea salt, if desired, on the chocolate side before the chocolate dries.  

*Depending on how much of the dough you commit to the chocolate variation.


Store these cookies in tight containers after they are very dry.  Place wax paper between layers.

Merry, Merry Christmas and may all your New Year's dreams come true,
Alyce

Drop in and Decorate Monday December 20, 2010

 

Thanks to all involved, particularly Lydia Walshin of Perfect Pantry--(check out her blog) Drop in and Decorate is her brainchild and is now a nationwide cookie-baking and decorating effort to help wonderful things happen in our local communities.  It's a tremendous way of doing a little bit of good and having a great time while you're doing it.  Who doesn't like cookies?  And why shouldn't they bring us together?  You can host your own event (not just in December, either)...check out the info on Lydia's blog.

Our cookies are on their way to The Bridge, Assisted Living Center in Colorado Springs.

Ah, nuts or Go Nuts! or Alyce and Helen's Spicy Nuts

 It's snowing here.  I've been waiting forever.. or it seems like.
This week, it's been one thing after another; do you have weeks like that?
When you have an agenda only to have it thwarted by work, illness, spouses traveling, or whatever?
Promises, however, are promises.  And the promise to  give you the recipes from this tray:

Go Nuts!  Today's recipe is at center.

is being kept.

Today's entry is one I may have posted before, but it's worth repeating if I have.   Surely it's gone into the Holiday Cookbook  for 2010 on examiner.com.   This is a spiced nut recipe that I originally received from my sister Helen.  I have since called it Go Nuts!  But, having changed it from her recipe to mine, I've also called it Alyce and Helen's Spicy Nuts.  I'm baking five kinds of cookies today and, while looking at an old Betty Crocker Cookbook from the early '70s, I saw a very similar recipe there!  I'm big on provenance.  If something is original (or I have every reason to believe it is), I want the credit.  If it's a riff on something, I want the other cook to have the credit; I want to be a honest recipe person.  Sometimes I know there's nothing new under the sun and, when I really think I've done something new (for instance, I grilled pizza in the '80s) I wish I'd put it somewhere.

They really taste this good.

Well, here's your recipe for the day.  People adore this stuff.  It does store ok, but is best during the first day or so.

P.S.  I know how pedestrian this post is...   See bottom.

Go Nuts!  Or whatever you want to call it----------------

Ingredients:

• 3 egg whites, beaten well
• 1.5 pounds nuts (pecans, cashews and almonds are a good mix; just pecans are scrumptious)
• 3/4 c white, granulated sugar
• 1/2 t kosher salt
• 1 t cinnamon (I like Vietnamese)
• 1/4 t ground cayenne pepper (or more to taste)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.
2. Mix together all ingredients well in a large bowl.
3. On a well-greased half-sheet cake pan (or a large, rimmed baking sheet), spread out nuts evenly.
4. Bake for an hour.  Check for crispy brown doneness.  If just chewy, separate out nuts a bit with a fork or fingers (careful!), and bake five minutes longer.
5. When nuts are crispy, remove pan from oven, cool briefly and break nuts apart.  Remove to another pan for cooling or nuts may stick. (If they do, reheat them for 5 minutes and then remove to another pan.)  For crispiest nuts, let sit at room temperature for several hours.
6. Store, cooled,  in gallon plastic bags or well-sealing containers at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.  For longer storage, refrigerate. 

In Memoriam

Our share cat Skippy Jon Jones had to be euthanized today.  Miss him already.  No words.

Skippy--Luvya!  See you later.

Ginger Repeat

Don't forget DROP IN AND DECORATE

MONDAY, DECEMBER 20; 4-8PM

I'll bake the cookies; you come and decorate them!

On Tuesday, we'll take them to The Bridge, Assisted Living Center

Ah yes, I promised the recipes for all of the cookies on this tray:

And, even though I've blogged the ginger cookies (to the far left) before, they're worth repeating.  In fact, I'm repeating that blog.  Why not? 

It starts here...

Is there anything more Christmasy (food-wise) than a ginger cookie? I have so many foods and ideas to blog for Christmas (I'm making clam sauce today) that I don't know what to do. But things always boil down to cookies during Advent, don't they?


One year, I just had to figure out what was


THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO ME AT CHRISTMAS.........

What wouldn't it be Christmas without.

Or, what was Christmas....


You know. It's the year you decide to drop


ALL that decorating

ALL that shopping

ALL that worrying about when you'll get it wrapped...

ALL that pouting about "It's not like it was when ___________."


And you wonder,

"What is my very favorite thing about Christmas?

Do I need the tree?

Do I need the lights?

Do I need the Starbucks Peppermint Mocha?

Do I need the big party?

Do I need to go to the Nutcracker(again)?

As our priorities tumble and crumble and finally crystalize, we straighten out and fly right...

Knowing just exactly what we need at Christmas as we walk to the stable, waiting for the savior to be born in OUR hearts because we need to be new and clean and loving so very badly.

As I've walked (not run) each of the years since my priorities scrambled and came round right, I've discovered I like these things best about Christmas:


1. Spending time with my family

2. Worship--Christmas Eve especially

3. Baking Christmas cookies for my family and friends

Well, gee, I guess you couldn't figure it out.

Oh, this is a food blog--right?   Back to the cookies.

And, if I just had to name my very favorite cookie (and my children and husband each have theirs), I guess I would name

ALYCE'S GINGER COOKIES--a word or two about them:

These cookies are a cross between a cookie sold during Needlework Week at Woodlawn Plantation in Alexandria, Virginia (where I worked for several of my lovely years at the National Trust for Historic Preservation) and the cookies they sell in Coshocton, Ohio and are OH SO famous for.

These are not snaps, no, definitely not. They aren't the Gingerbread Girls of the Drop in and Decorate variety. They are cookies. Crispy and chewy at the same time. Sweet and spicy and even a tad "hot" all together. Throw out your old bottle of ginger and get a new one before you begin. These are why cookie jars were invented, my friends. Why kids come home. Why husbands raid the freezer middle of the night.

Make 'em; make 'em right. You'll always be tweaking them between the kinds of sheets and the oven temps.......... Are they done? Are they not? (Don't overbake them; they're toasty garbage.)

The recipe is a guide. You'll make them your way and they'll be your cookies. Eat them with milk. Eat them with hot tea. Eat them with coffee or hot cocoa. For capital G-Goodness sake, just make them and eat them. What else do you need? Part of Christmas is... well, it's just ginger cookies.


ALYCE'S GINGER COOKIES--A BIG BATCH --6 DOZ 2-3" COOKIES

1 1/2 c shortening ( I know, I know)

2 c sugar (plus more for rolling)

1/2 c molasses

2 t freshly ground ginger

2 eggs

4 cups unbleached white flour

4 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons cinnamon (I like Penzey's Vietnamese cinnamon)

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves

1 tsp freshly ground pepper


Preheat oven to 375 F.


Beat well the shortening, sugar, molasses, egg and fresh ginger until fluffy. Add dry ingredients and mix well. Shape into 1" balls. Roll in granulated white sugar and place on cookie sheet two inches apart. Bake until edges are quite dry, but centers are soft and still a tad gooey. If you overbake them, they're dunking cookies.


Let cookies sit on trays for 5-8 minutes. Remove from trays to cooling racks until completely cool. Store in airtight containers for 1-2 days. Freeze for up to 2 weeks if not using immediately.

Just ginger.  Again.

What I'm reading and listening to:

BOOKS-
IN THE KITCHEN WITH A GOOD APPETITE by Melissa Clark
JACQUES PEPIN:  THE APPRENTICE  by Jacques Pepin
AROUND MY FRENCH TABLE by Dorie Greenspan
THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN by Garth Stein (Book Club's at my house in January.)
THE LIGHT WILL SHINE; A STUDY FOR ADVENT

MUSIC-
John Rutter's "Gloria"
my own piano playing
"my" choir's cantata
Dave practising
Straight, No Chaser's "12 Days of Christmas"
The whipping of the trees and the scuttling of the leaves as winter weather moves in.
My daughter's voice on the telephone

VIDEO:
Oh, and my favorite food video of the year is Yeo Valley:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOHAUvbuV4o&feature=player_embedded

Sing a new carol; bake a new cookie,
Alyce