This is Week 3 of our Saveur Holiday Cookie Challenge: Cookies We Love. I chose to bake the Vanillekipferl, that is – Vanilla Crescent – Cookies, this week. Here’s the recipe from Saveur, with my notes following:

Vanillekipferl (Vanilla Crescents)

(Yield: 4 dozen cookies)

Ingredients:

1 cup confectioners’ sugar, plus more for finishing cookies
16 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
2 tsp. vanilla extract
5 oz. walnuts, finely ground in food processor
2 1/2 cups flour, plus more for rolling

Preparation:

Heat oven to 325°. Beat together sugar, butter, and vanilla in a bowl; mix in nuts and flour. Flour and roll into a cylinder; divide into 48 pieces. Roll each into a sausage shape. Taper ends; bend into a crescent. Transfer to parchment paper-lined baking sheets, spacing cookies 1″ apart. Bake until golden, 12–15 minutes. Sift with confectioners’ sugar. Let cool.

Notes:

Of the cookies I baked from this series so far, these are by far our favorites. Crispy and tender, excellent flavor, and since you dust them with the confectioners’ sugar while they’re still hot, they don’t shed as much sugar on you when you eat them. I worry about that with powdered sugar covered cookies. That’s why I avoid doughnuts with powdered sugar on them, too.

I did find, however, that the dough was a bit more difficult to work with than I thought it would be. It kept coming apart on me when I tried to roll it into a cylinder. I found it was easier to divide the dough into 4 parts, roll those into something vaguely resembling a cylinder, then just pull off pieces of dough and roll them into balls a little smaller than a ping pong ball. I could then feel the dough melding together in the warmth of my hands, which made it much easier to then roll each piece into a small sausage, then crescent shape.

You should definitely make these cookies. They’re delicious and a very pretty addition to a holiday cookie platter. I’m going to make another batch.

Please be sure to visit my comrades in cookies to see what they chose to serve up!

Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes

Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen

Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook

Judy of No Fear Entertaining

Kelly of Sass & Veracity

Michelle of Big Black Dog

RJ of Flamingo Musings (that’s me!)

Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench

Tiffany of The Nesting Project

Courtney of Coco Cooks

I feel kind of bad that I haven’t posted anything recently for The 12 Weeks of Holiday (Christmas) Cookies. Since this is the last day of that cookie roundup, I hope they’ll let me count this one. Please visit these wonderful cookie bakers, too! Happy Holidays to All!

Week 12 Twelve Weeks of Christmas:

Yes, I said Peanut Butter Cup Bon Bon Cookies. A little bit today and a little bit yesterday.

At the moment, we’re only going up to my in-laws’ condo about once a week, picking at cleaning things out. No, we’re not making a lot of forward progress that way, but what’s the rush? It all has to go through probate court, and with the housing market the way it is, and the construction on the exterior of the building going on, no way we’re going to be able to sell it for at least a year. *Sigh*

But going slowly has its advantages, too. Mike started gathering up their books and set aside the only cookbooks they had, for me to look at: the 1967 Joy of Cooking and the 1956 and 1974 Betty Crocker Cookbooks. Flipping through them, I kept running across newspaper clippings of lamb shanks recipes. Not sure why – I don’t think they cooked anything from scratch in over 20 years.

But, lovin’ me some old-timey cookbooks (I own several going back to 1920′s), and thinking about the 12 Weeks of Holiday (Christmas) Cookies, I then turned to the cookie (or as they wrote it, cooky) chapters, and found several that I think I will share with you over the next few weeks.

First, my version of the recipe and then my notes:

Peanut Butter Cup Bon Bon Cookies
(liberally adapted from The Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook, ©1956)

Yield: About 20 cookies

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 Tbs. vanilla extract (yes, that’s one tablespoon, not a typo)
1-1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 Tbs. unsweetened cocoa
1/8 tsp. salt

5 full-sized Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, cut into quarters

Nonpareils, or decor of your choice

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350º F.

In a medium bowl, beat the butter and sugar together till well-blended and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour, cocoa, and salt. Beat on low speed till thoroughly incorporated, and you get a good, stiff dough.

For each cookie, scoop out 1 level tablespoon of dough. Flatten it out in the palm of your hand and place one of the peanut butter cup quarters in the center. Wrap the dough around the candy and roll it lightly between your hands to form a ball. Roll the cookie ball in the nonpareils and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Repeat with the rest of the dough, spacing the cookie balls about 1 inch apart. They will spread a little.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until the cookies are set, but not browned.

Notes:

The basic recipe in the cookbook did not call for cocoa powder. I added that, as I thought a chocolate cookie dough would work best with a peanut butter cup center. Alternatively, you could melt and add a one ounce square of unsweetened chocolate. But for me, why make another pan dirty? And yes, there is no egg or leavening in the recipe.

You can make them plain and use virtually anything you can think of as the center surprise. Other kinds of candy bars, drained & dried maraschino cherries, dried fruit, maybe even a whole hazelnut!

You can decorate them in so many different ways, too! There’s a recipe given for a thin icing you can dip the baked cookies into. You can even color the cookie dough and the icing with food coloring, then maybe sprinkle with colored sugars or holiday sprinkles. Or just roll the unbaked cookies in different colored sugars.

I baked these for the full 15 minutes, resulting in a crisp cookie. If you’d like a softer cookie, you might want to take them out of the oven at 12 or 13 minutes.

I loved the crispy exterior, and the peanut butter cup piece inside kind of melded with the cookie interior itself, making a soft, rich texture contrast. But what I love best about this recipe is the myriad ways you can change it up to suit your taste and the flavors of the seasons.

Go ahead – Play with your food! You’re only limited by your own imagination!

Week 8 Twelve Weeks of Christmas:

I’m a little late, but here’s my contribution to the 12 Weeks of Holiday (Christmas) Cookies roundup! I made some dulce de leche (delicious milk caramel) earlier this week, and wanted to incorporate it into a cookie. For the sandwich cookies, I chose to adapt a shortbread cookie recipe out of Marye Audet’s Everything Cookies & Brownies Cookbook, called “Petticoat Tales”, and it worked out beautifully!

Petticoat Tails
(adapted from The Everything Cookies & Brownies Cookbook & used by permission)

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2-1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt

Preparation:

Cream together the butter, confectioner’s sugar, and vanilla. Blend in the flour and salt. Wrap and refrigerate overnight (I was impatient and only chilled the dough for a couple of hours).

Preheat oven to 400º F.

Roll teaspoons of dough into balls (I used a round teaspoon measuring spoon) and place on cookie sheets. Flatten the balls with the bottom of a glass, dipped in sugar, to 1/8″ thickness.

Bake for 8 – 10 minutes, or until lightly browned.

Notes:

I had a little difficulty with the “glass dipped in sugar” part. The sugar wouldn’t stick to the glass, but the cookies did. To remedy that, I put some demerara sugar in a small plate, placed the cookie balls in the sugar and flattened slightly with my fingers. I then placed the cookies on the (ungreased) cookie sheet, sugar-side up (spaced about 1″ apart), and flattened them with the glass. Worked like a charm!

Also, allow the cookies to cool completely on the cookie sheet after baking. I wanted these to be really pale to contrast with the dulce de leche filling, so I baked them for the minimum 8 minutes. They were fully baked and perfectly crispy – exactly what I was looking for!

But then, I expected no less from my friend, Marye. Check out her books and check out her blog, Restless Chipotle for awesome writing and recipes!

To make your own Dulce de Leche, see my recent post on Apple Cream Napoleons with Dulce de Leche. It’s super-easy, but admittedly a little time-consuming. Still, you can’t beat it for flavor and versatility – and it’ll keep for weeks. Once you make it, you’ll look for all kinds of ways to use it, too!

Dulce De Leche

I love Rugelach. A soft, but crispy, pastry rolled up with a sweet filling and sliced into 2-bite pieces, to me, they’re the ultimate holiday cookies, no matter which holiday you feel like celebrating. While they’re considered a “Jewish” cookie, rugelach are a tasty addition to any cookie platter. That’s why I’ve chosen them for this installment of the 12 Weeks of Holiday (Christmas) Cookies.

One of the best things about rugelach is that you can fill them with virtually anything you like, making them really personal to you. I’ve added some flax seed meal to the dough, as I do with many of my cake and bread doughs, to give it a bit of a healthy boost.

I’m also including a “traditional” filling here, but don’t be limited by that! I filled the cookies you see here with some of my homemade Peach Vanilla Marmalade, sprinkled with finely chopped pecans. You can spread the dough with a thin layer of your favorite jam and/or nuts of choice, or even mini chocolate chips. The only limit is your imagination!

This is also a great make-ahead cookie. They’ll keep for more than a week in a sealed container on your counter and for several months in the freezer.

Rugelach

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup flax seed meal
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, cold & cut into small pieces
1 8 ounce package cream cheese, cold & cut into small pieces
1/3 cup sour cream

Preparation:

Put all the ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse till the dough comes together in a crumbly mass. Divide the dough into 4 roughly equal pieces. Wrap each piece in plastic wrap and press into a rectangle. Refrigerate the dough for a minimum of 2 hours and up to 2 days.

“Traditional Filling”

1/2 cup white sugar
1 Tbs. ground cinnamon
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
1/2 cup raisins

Combine all filling ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.

Assembly:

Preheat oven to 350º F.

Take one of the dough packets out of the refrigerator at a time. On a well-floured surface, roll the pastry out into a 1/8″ thick rectangle (roughly 8″ x 12″, but don’t sweat it). Spread 1/4 of the filling mixture evenly across the surface of the dough, leaving about 1/2″ of clear space around the edges.

Roll the filled dough up, jelly-roll style, long-ways. Turning the roll seam-down, cut the roll into pieces about 1-1/2″ wide and place the pieces on a greased cookie sheet, also seam-side-down. Repeat with the other pieces of dough.

Refrigerate the cookies for 20 minutes before baking. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, until the cookies are lightly browned.

Notes:

* If using a “wet” filling, such as jam, do make sure your cookies sheet is well-greased. Alternatively, you can also use non-stick foil or a silicone liner to line the pan.

* I don’t know about you, but I never get a nice even rectangle when rolling out my dough. If you don’t either, take a bench scraper or a knife and square off your rectangle to get nice, straight edges. By the time you’re done trimming, you’ll have a rectangle that’s probably smaller than the measurements above. Just put the scraps in a plastic bag and put them in the fridge. When re-chilled, the scraps can be re-rolled to make more rugelach!

* I didn’t write down a “yield” number because your results, as they say, may vary. I got 33 cookies out of my last batch.

M and I were called to go to my father-in-law’s last night. Right in the middle of making the dinner that was going to be my #GoJunkFood post. His aide didn’t think he was going to last the hour it took us to drive up here.

We’ve been spending a lot of our time lately clearing out the DVR, watching or erasing a ton of stuff we’ve recorded, and I ran across a really old Melting Pot that we recorded on Cooking Channel. Hosting, were a really green Rocco DiSpirito and Cat Cora – they were so cute! Anyway, the theme of the show was citrus, and the last thing Cat made were these adorable pear-shaped orange-almond cookies, that were – get this – no bake! Okay, they spend a very small amount of time on top of the stove, but that’s it! I thought these would be just perfect for Week 2 of our Twelve Weeks of Holiday (fine, Christmas) Cookies series.

Just don’t ask me to pronounce them.

Orange-Scented Almond Cookies: Amygdalota me Orange
(adapted from a recipe by Cat Cora on Cooking Channel)

Ingredients:

3 cups blanched almonds
2-1/2 cups confectioners sugar
1 tablespoon orange water
1/4 cup orange juice, plus more, for shaping

Preparation:

Grind the almonds in a food processor until ground fine. Add in 2 1/2 cups of sugar. Put the almond mixture into a large saucepan on medium high heat. Add in the liquids and warm until sugar is dissolved and the mixture becomes a cohesive ball. Put aside to cool.

Once cool, shape tablespoon-sized portions of the mixture into 1 1/2-inch-high pear shapes, wetting your fingers with the juice. Dredge each cookie in confectioners or granulated sugar to coat.

Wrap individually in cellophane or place in a box with a lid. Let stand for at least 3 days before serving.

Notes:

If you like marzipan, you’ll love this cookie, and if it weren’t for the 3 day drying period, this would be the fastest cookie, ever. The big advantage is that you don’t have to heat up the oven at all!

The 12 Christmas Cookies series snuck up on me, this year, mainly because the group decided to start now, and – very wisely, I might add – to post one cookie a week instead of one cookie a day.

So, I’m starting off simple, with my favorite chocolate chip cookie in the world. I’ve never made another chocolate chip cookie recipe that could beat it for flavor and texture – chocolaty, chewy, and crispy. It keeps well in an airtight container or plastic storage bag, and freezes well. Although it’s not a fancy schmancy “holiday” cookie, I don’t think any cookie platter would be complete without a really good, rich chocolate chip cookie.

The “Neiman Marcus” Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe started making the rounds of the Internet (such as it was), as an urban legend, about 15 or more years ago, back when the Internet as we all knew it, consisted mostly of e-mail and dancing babies. I’m betting that most of you have never heard the story, having been way too young to remember green screens and DOS, so a quick retelling. The story goes something like this:

A man and his young daughter were eating lunch in a Neiman Marcus restaurant, and ordered their chocolate chip cookies for dessert. They loved the cookies so much, that the man asked their waitress if they could have the recipe. She replied that they could have the recipe, but it would cost them two-fifty. The man thought that $2.50 was pretty reasonable and the waitress gave them the recipe. When he received his Neiman Marcus bill sometime later, he noticed a restaurant charge for $250. Outraged, he called customer service and was told that they could not remove the charge and he was stuck with it. Now apoplectic, the man told them that as revenge, he would e-mail the recipe to all his friends and relatives and urge them to do the same. The End.

This recipe makes an enormous quantity of cookies, so feel free to halve or even quarter the amounts. I quartered it and ended up with 30 cookies. The calculator is your friend.

“Neiman Marcus” Chocolate Chip Cookies
(makes approx. 112 cookies)

Ingredients:

2 cups butter
2 cups brown sugar
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
4 cups flour
5 cups blended oatmeal *
2 tsp. soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
24 oz. chocolate chips
8 oz. milk chocolate candy bar (grated) *
3 cups chopped nuts (I made these with California Walnuts)

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 375º F.

Cream the butter and both sugars. On low speed, add eggs and vanilla till completely incorporated.

Add the flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and baking soda, mixing till combined, then add the chocolate chips, grated milk chocolate, and nuts.

Roll into balls about the size of a ping pong ball and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. Cool on the cookie sheet for several minutes before removing to a rack to cool completely. Or not. A cold glass of milk or hot cup of coffee at this point would be awesome.

Notes:

* To make “blended oatmeal”, measure the amount of oatmeal and run through the food processor or a blender on high, till ground to a fine meal consistency.

* The “original” recipe called for an 8 oz. Hershey Bar. Now, you and I know that Hershey Bars haven’t come in an 8 oz. size in probably 10 years. Also, this time, I didn’t have any Hershey Bars, so I used some Hershey milk chocolate Kisses. In order to grate the chocolate, put it in the freezer for about an hour, then pulse it in your food processor.

Well, of course it’s too early for Christmas, so why wait to make these fabulous cookies? Make ‘em for Halloween or Chanukah, or anytime at all!