Happy Christmas Eve and happy holidays! I should be scrambling around my house making canapes and getting ready for the flood of relatives coming through the door this afternoon, but I tarry. Instead, I’m thinking about whether I need to bake more of these cookies for tonight, and about things I would like but will not get for Christmas, such as:
A mechanism in my bed that allows a hole to be cut out so that I sleep on my stomach and still be able to breathe, massage-table style
An secret FDA-approved supply of injectible glucocorticoid that is only supposed to be administered by doctors but that I could administer myself whenever my skin breaks out
Back to things that I can make a reality: the kids and I baked these cookies for me to bring to the office for the holidays. They’re so easy that even I can make them, and the girls decorated liberally with sprinkles. I only had to make two colors of frosting (red and green) which makes me happy.
I believe that Martha Stewart is the original source for this recipe, which I got years ago in a cookie exchange. Here it is:
CHRISTMAS SHORTBREAD COOKIES (Martha Stewart)
This buttery cookie gets better with age: it can be stored up to a month, and over time the flavor deepens.
Preheat oven to 275 degrees F. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add salt and vanilla, and beat to combine. Add flour, 1 cup at a time, beating on low speed until just combined.
On a very floured surface using a floured rolling pin, roll out dough to about 1/4″. (I used floured wax or parchment paper, below and above the dough — less sticky I find.) Use cookie cutters to cut into shapes. Bake until evenly pale golden but not browned, 13-15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Makes 36 cookies.
For the icing, I used Marian at Sweetopia’s recipe here. If you need to know anything about cookie decorating, look around her site — she knows everything!
Hope this fills your emergency cookie needs. Now — to clean. Have a delicious Christmas and holiday season!
I’ve been making lots of wintery stews lately, and have even taken pictures, but I’ve been engulfed by Downton Abbey and have only just finished Season 1, so I have to keep my priorities straight, but look for those recipes in the near future. I’m thinking about having a Downton Abbey party. This idea hasn’t really materialized fully in my head yet, except that it would be really nice to have a staff of servants (which my children are proving out not to be), even if some of them can be quite damaging (though from what I’ve seen so far, mostly toward each other). I’m sure the party will need to involved these paper dolls, Edwardian desserts, and a whole new wardrobe for me. My husband’s English, and so are my neighbors, so maybe I can just have them milling around Englishing everything for effect.
Between Downton Abbey episodes, the kids and I did some cookie decorating. Our friends have a son who is really into Angry Birds. I mean, really into Angry Birds — not only does he play the game, he has the board game, pillow cushions, plush toys — you get the picture. I took a Downton Abbey quiz and discovered that my Downton Abbey character is the Earl of Grantham, so you will not be surprised to know that I’ve actually never played. We wanted to thank this family for something, so we made these cookies. I used the shortbread recipe I usually use, this time without subbing the coconut oil for butter (in truth, I haven’t found anything that tastes quite as much like butter as butter). The kids started out by doing some sketches:
The daughter in this family isn't as into Angry Birds so we did a penguin and a bunny too.
I prepared the frosting, using for the first time the plastic wrap method from Karen’s Cookies, which worked GREAT and made for very little mess. Then I outlined the cookies in black.
See the little frosting packets in the back? What a great idea (not mine)!
Next, flooded them:
(If you’re looking for a great tutorial on working with royal icing, visit Sweetopia, but on the condition that you do not compare her cookies to mine.)
We had to allow for drying time between layers, but it was easy enough to add eyes and fill in the beaks.
This was a first run, so I’d do some things differently. For one, you’ve probably noticed I didn’t follow the sketches. But I laid out this page to make it seem like I did. Next time, I’ll follow the sketches. I also started out outlining the eyeballs in black, but it made the birds look myopic and possibly Silicon Valley hipster geek-ish, and not quite as angry as I hoped. You’ll notice the bird just underneath the penguin in the photo above looks more like Concerned Bird than Angry Bird…and the beaks on the yellow birds makes them look like Twilight fans with goth lipstick. Should not have done them in black. For the pigs, I should have flooded the whole circle first and then drawn in the detail, instead of having done the eyes and nose as part of the initial outline. And those things that were supposed to be ears? I should have skipped them.
Here are our other cookies. Here you’ll see Deranged Pig, Deeply Disturbed Pig, butterflies, a happy face and a bunny that must be related somehow to Charlie Chaplin.
It was a good way to spend a Saturday. Actually, I had totally forgotten that my husband had invited a friend over at 1, so at 12:50 I was still in pajamas, a hideous hair clip and had gel paste food coloring all over my hands. I ran upstairs to get dressed and the gel paste coloring was getting everywhere — like when I put moisturizer on my face, it was green. See, I do need servants.
Have any ideas for a Downton Abbey party? Please share!
Nowadays, everything baked as cute-potential to me. Years of obligatory Christmas cookie baking have pushed me into mastering the shortbread cookie, but I was always a little sad that mine didn’t look cute. Certainly not Amy Atlas-cute. On the plus side, people who got my cookies knew they were definitely homemade.
One thing that has always fascinated/terrified me is fondant. On the one hand, it tastes gross. On the other hand, it looks amazing. Since it looks amazing, I always assumed that I, She Who Was Cursed With Inability to Make Frosting, would never be able to do it. Well, turning 40 has emboldened me and now that I have also successfully made frosting, I decided to give it a whirl. Note: if you do not want to spend a couple of hours scrubbing fondant scraps off the floor after you make it, I recommend that you don’t do this with your kids the first time. Nobody told me that. If I wrote a cookbook I would tell you these things.
First, the fondant-decorated cookies!
I started by baking up a batch of shortbread cookies. I felt a little guilty about all the butter that goes into shortbread, so I modified the recipe a tiny bit by subbing the last tablespoon of butter with a tablespoon of NUTIVA Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, which is the coconut oil that I think tastes the best. I’ll paste in the cookie recipe below too. So you end up with a cookie that looks like this:
Now, the fondant prep was so messy and I did it with my kids that I would have required 8 more hands in order to have photographed it. But I will refer you to a great video tutorial (made by someone who apparently does have 8 more hands) on how to make marshmallow fondant. In my research the marshmallow fondant was easier and tastier than traditional fondant. And I have to say, it was pretty tasty for fondant.
Once the fondant is ready, you just roll it out — I used parchment paper sprinkled with cornstarch, both under and over the fondant (so I used my rolling pin over the top piece of parchment) and rolled out til it was about 1/8 inch. After this it’s pretty much like working with Play-Doh. You can color the fondant with a gel paste food coloring — you’ll need to knead it for a while to distribute the color (I recommend wearing plastic gloves for this if you’re not dressing up as Lady Macbeth in the near future). You can cut out shapes with cookie cutters or a knife and then make it stick to the cookie by wetting the back of the fondant like we used to do with postage stamps before sticking it onto the cookie.
Excuse her dirty fingernails.
Fondant cookies my kids made
I also did a few with royal icing that looked so bad that I’m telling people that my kids made them.
And just when you thought you’d be safe from sports on this decidedly unathletic blog, I just have share my favorite internet activity around Jeremy Lin and the ensuing Linsanity. I love Cinderella and underdog stories about Chinese /Taiwanese-American third-string NBA players from Harvard (so apparently do Rainn Wilson and Spike Lee), and this is one of the best. His quiet demeanor and humility just add to the charm:
From Phil Taylor @SI_PhilTaylor (Sports illustrated columnist): I know there are other things going on in the sports world besides Jeremy Lin. But I don’t care about any of them. #nyk #linsanity
Ok, back to the baking. I don’t recall the source of this recipe, which I’ve modified, except that it came from a Christmas cookie exchange years ago and I’ve used it ever since.
SHORTBREAD COOKIES
Ingredients
1 1/3 cups (2 sticks + 5 tbsp) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tbsp coconut oil (Nutiva preferred)
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
Preparation
Preheat oven to 275 degrees.
Use an electric mixer with paddle attachment, and cream butter and sugar on medium speed til light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add salt and vanilla and beat to combine. Add flour one cup at a time, beating on low speed until just combined.
Roll out dough between two sheets of floured wax or parchment paper using a rolling pin. Bake until pale golden, but not browned, about 13-15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Cool completely before decorating.
MARSHMALLOW FONDANT
I got this recipe off of About.com and it’s pretty much perfect.
Ingredients
8 ounces miniature marshmallows (4 cups not packed, or half of a 16-ounce bag)
1 pound powdered sugar (4 cups), plus extra for dusting
2 tbsp water
Food coloring or flavored extracts, optional
Preparation
Dust your counter or a large cutting board with powdered sugar. Place the marshmallows and the water in a large microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high for 1 minute, until the marshmallows are puffy and expanded.
Stir the marshmallows with a rubber spatula until they are melted and smooth. If some unmelted marshmallow pieces remain, return to the microwave for 30-45 seconds, until the marshmallow mixture is entirely smooth and free of lumps. If you want colored or flavored fondant, you can add several drops of food coloring or extracts at this point and stir until incorporated. If you want to create multiple colors or flavors from one batch of fondant, do not add the colors or flavors now. Instead, refer to step 6 below for instructions.
Add the powdered sugar and begin to stir with the spatula. Stir until the sugar begins to incorporate and it becomes impossible to stir anymore.
Scrape the marshmallow-sugar mixture out onto the prepared work surface. It will be sticky and lumpy, with lots of sugar that has not been incorporated yet–this is normal. Dust your hands with powdered sugar, and begin to knead the fondant mixture like bread dough, working the sugar into the marshmallow with your hands.
Continue to knead the fondant until it smoothes out and loses its stickiness. Add more sugar if necessary, but stop adding sugar once it is smooth–too much sugar will make it stiff and difficult to work with. Once the fondant is a smooth ball, it is ready to be used. You can now roll it out, shape it, or wrap it in cling wrap to use later. Well-wrapped fondant can be stored in a cool room or in the refrigerator, and needs to be kneaded until supple before later use.
If you want to add coloring or flavoring to your fondant, flatten it into a round disc. You might want to wear gloves to avoid getting food coloring on your hands during this step. Add your desired amount of coloring or flavoring to the center of the disc, and fold the disc over on itself so that the color or flavor is enclosed in the center of the fondant ball.
Begin to knead the ball of fondant just like you did before. As you work it, you will begin to see streaks of color coming through from the center. Continue to knead until the streaks are gone and the fondant is a uniform color. Your fondant is now ready to be used or stored as outlined above.
, which is the coconut oil that I think tastes the best. I’ll paste in the cookie recipe below too. So you end up with a cookie that looks like this:
— you’ll need to knead it for a while to distribute the color (I recommend wearing plastic gloves for this if you’re not dressing up as Lady Macbeth in the near future). You can cut out shapes with cookie cutters or a knife and then make it stick to the cookie by wetting the back of the fondant like we used to do with postage stamps before sticking it onto the cookie.
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