I was flattered to be invited to join a group of bloggers in a challenge to bake – and write about – 12 different holiday cookies in 12 days. These first 12 days of December, to be precise. The theme this year is the 2008 Bon Appétit Holiday Cookie-a-Day collection. Out of the 31 cookies in the collection, we were free to choose any 12 recipes to bake and blog about, in any order we choose. At the bottom of this post is the list of my fellow asylum inmates participants, who have taken up the gauntlet and are baking so you don’t have to. Well, okay, if you want to actually eat the cookies, you have to bake them yourself. But it’ll be fun! Right? I said, Right?

What will really be fun, is to see who’s chosen which recipes and compare notes, tastes, and, well… let’s leave artistic merit out of it, shall we? I’ve already warned you that I am not a food stylist!

On a more serious note, December is also AIDS Awareness Month, and today, December 1st, is World AIDS Day. Many of us, if not most of us, have been touched by this world scourge in some form or another, whether it be the illness or loss of a family member or friend. I’m no exception. There were friends of mine from high school and college days – terribly talented people – who were cut down in the prime of their lives, and whose loss most of the world will regrettably never know.

Angela of Spinach Tiger has asked that we Cook Red to Remember today to increase AIDS awareness and to honor the lives and memories of those we loved and lost. You don’t have to be gay to contract AIDS, nor do you have to be young. You might be shocked to learn that one of the fastest growing populations susceptible to contracting STD’s and AIDS, is the heterosexual elderly. It’s no joke. So, while I have no compelling story to share, I can offer my compassion and support. In their honor, I’ve combined my first cookie offering for the 12 Days of Cookies with a tribute in red in support of World AIDS Day.

Notes:

I really like these cookies and will make them again – with and without filled centers. They’re fun to make and eat and I found the subtle lemon flavor helped to keep them light and not overly sweet.

I’ll take this opportunity to repeat one of my favorite tips: Whenever you have a recipe that calls for lemon juice, but not the zest, put the whole juiced rind into a plastic freezer bag and toss it in the freezer. When you have a recipe that calls for zest, but no juice, you can zest one of your frozen lemon rinds with a microplane grater, right out of the freezer! With the price of lemons these days, who can afford to waste them? My husband recently made a batch of hummus and tabouleh, and that’s how I have a supply of lemon rinds to zest for all of these recipes!

While some readers who left comments on the original recipe apparently found it difficult to remove the cookies from the parchment, I used my silicone baking sheet liners (Silpat or Matfer) and had no problem whatsoever. Personally, I think the real “trick” is to really let these cookies cool completely on the cookie sheet. That won’t take more than about 15 minutes, tops.

I whizzed cherry Lifesavers in the mini-food processor attachment of my stick blender to make the centers, and used a demitasse spoon (eensy-weensy espresso spoon) to fill them. If a few sprinkles of crushed candy miss the hole, it’s really no big deal to lightly brush at them with your finger, back to the filled centers. After a couple of hits-and-misses, I also found that it was easier to take the rounds to the baking sheet and then cut the centers out in place. Fewer stretched out and misshapen middles that way.

As you might guess, I’ve already made several of these recipes, and I will share with you now a couple of vital bits of intelligence for working with these cut-out cookie recipes:

First, these recipes don’t yield huge quantities of cookies, so there is really no value to creating several separate rounds of dough to wrap and refrigerate. These doughs are super-sticky right out of the mixer, and you’ll drive yourself mad. Just pull out a nice big piece of plastic wrap, dump the dough out of the mixing bowl into the center, and use the plastic wrap to shape it into a round (or a square, or a rectangle – really, who cares? You’re not making pie, here.), and flatten the whole thing to about a 1/2 inch thickness. When you get to the rolling out part, just cut off the amount you want to work with, and add the scraps to the next hunk.

Second, the dough may be rock-hard when you take it out of the fridge, but it will soften up in mere seconds, so don’t go wandering off to watch “Desperate Housewives” while you wait for it to become more pliable.

Third – and most importantly – whenever you see the words “on lightly floured surface”, that’s code for “keep the bench flour close and use it liberally and often.” You’ll need it.

So, there you have it for Day One, folks! Please visit my cohorts below to see what they came up with today. And drop by again tomorrow for the next installment in The 12 Days of Cookies! Sounds like a freaking soap opera, doesn’t it? Oh, wait.

Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes (honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)
Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen
Courtney of Coco Cooks
Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook
Judy of No Fear Entertaining
Kelly of Sass & Veracity
Michelle of Big Black Dog
RJ of Flamingo Musings (hey! that’s me!)
Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench
Tiffany of The Nesting Project

In honor of World AIDS Day, even Sly is wearing a red ribbon. We remember.