Consolidated "Christmas Baking" thread
 

Mmmm. Like I need cookies in our house right now.

I have made gingerbread, sugar, a lemon poppy seed shortbread, chocolate crinkles, biscotti and hopefully panforte if I can get my act together.

Very few consumed by us, mostly given away.

How about you?

Butter cookies...lots and lots of butter cookies.

I also like chocolate chip.

Did I mention butter cookies?

Usually it is chocolate chip. But we're not consistent in terms of having it every Christmas. :p

#1 on the list is always going to be chocolate chip. But as far as "Christmas" cookies go, sugar cookies are good. Can't stand gingerbread though. I don't even like the way that smells. So, my wife usually doesn't bake those at all.

Definitely sugar cookies with buttercream frosting (lots of Crisco and powdered sugar)! My mother has a recipe that has been passed down for about 4 generations now..... yum!^

I generally do sugar cookies with buttercream frosting and christmas sprinkles. Yummy!

Here's my favourite:

Christmas Cookie Ingredients:
1 cup of water lemon juice
1 tsp baking soda 4 large eggs
1 cup of sugar 1 cup nuts
1 tsp salt 2 cups of dried fruit
1 cup of brown sugar
1 bottle Jack Daniel's Whiskey

Sample the Jack Daniel's to check quality.

Take a large bowl, check the Jack Daniel's again, to be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink.

Turn on the electric mixer...

Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.

Add one teaspoon of sugar...

Beat again.

At this point it's best to make sure the Jack Daniel's is still OK, try another cup ...
just in case.

Turn off the mixerer thingy.

Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit....
Pick the frigging fruit off floor... Mix on the turner.

If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers just pry it loose with a drewscriver.

Sample the Jack Daniel's to check for tonsisticity.

Next, sift two cups of salt, or something....

Who giveshz a sheet.

Check the Jack Daniel's.

Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.

Add one table.

Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink...
Just whatever you can find.

Greash the oven.

Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over.

Don't forget to beat off the turner.

Finally, throw the bowl through the window, finish the Dack Janiels and make sure to put the stove in the dishwasher.

CHERRY MISTMAS

My favorite of all time are Danish brown cookies, which I learned to make a long, long time ago. I have the recipe and the story behind them on my blog.

Moving put a crimp in my baking, though, so I haven't made them this year. When I do get to baking, it'll be various types of shortbread, in shortbread pans that I've been accumulating. I love shortbread!

favorite to make? :D none?

now eating > sugar cookies especially for the holidays

chocolate chip are always good, but i must admit i prefer otis spunkmeyer to any other variety, whether bought or homemade etc.

I usually do two versions of butter cookies

1) softer dough for using in the cookie press
2) less soft dough (more flour, sugar and egg but the same amount of butter as the previous) for cuttouts decorated with royal icing

Also chocolate chip cookies with chips & M&Ms, macaroons & White Trash (yes, terribly Un-PC but its been called that for as long as I can remember).

White Trash
Corn & Rice Chex (or Crispix)
Cheerios
M&Ms
Peanuts
Mini Pretzels

Coat it all in melted white chocolate chips and spread out over wax paper to harden. Break up the larger bits and enjoy!!

There's a newer recipe out there similar to this called "Puppy Chow" that involves peanut butter and milk chocolate to coat.

My two favorites are Mexican Wedding Cookies (seems odd, since I am neither Mexican nor celebrating a wedding) :p and Apricot Rugelach. I also enjoy butter cookies. For me, Christmas cookies are all about the butter.

Madeleines. There are never enough.

Lebkuchen (particularly as tree decorations) and stollen (certainly not as tree decorations).

However, as I can't make them very well, I end up getting them from my local Aldi, where they get them from people who can.

agreed, whipping up a batch for Sunday, chocolate and lemon.

Tradition with my partner is vanilla kipferl.

viva la cookie.
 

normally, we bust out the old Betty Crocker Cooky Cookbook, and make some of the standards -- Russian Tea Cakes/Mexican Wedding Cakes, Chocolate Crinkles, Raspberry Thimble Cookies, plus Pecan tarts, and maybe a peanut brittle, or creme de menthe bars. then we give a ton of them out to folks. trying to have a "healthy" holiday, so we may skip the whole cookie train this year.

[smiley face beginning to weep]

I am weeping with you. This afternoon I made two kinds of biscotti, epresso chocolate shortbread dough, cherry/orange icebox shortbread and about to make punitons (the cookies you get at polaine).

After that, I'm done.

Until tomorrow.

:D

I am starting my holiday baking right now (cookies in the oven while I post) :) I use the Martha Stewars magazines and the tried and true spritz cookies.

Ditto the spritz cookies. Also the peanut butter cookies with the hershey kiss on top. Been thinking about trying some krumkake this year.....

For the last several years I haven't made Christmas cookies. But reading this thread got me all stirred up so I went to Williams Sonoma yesterday to buy a cookie press and I'll be making Spritz cookies later today. I think I'm going to try the recipe for garlic cheese crackers that came in the pamphlet too.

Just finished making sour cream lemon pound cakes, double crackle (chocolage) cookies, chocolate chip cookies with mini white chocolate peppermint chips, lemon icebox cookies, and am now making cupcakes with Santas on top of them.

The house smells YUMMY I must say!!!

I don't know if they are a Christmas cookie but I like the peanut butter with a hersheys kiss on top. In my Family they only seem to be made at Xmas

I'm thinking about making a batch of almond macaroons tonight, which I'll dip in in dark chocolate tommorow night. :D

Christmas always seems to require some lemon bar cookie (maybe lime this year, since the lime tree is raining them down) and peanut butter chocolate chip haystacks made from all the take-home chinese noodles that seem to accumulate in the pantry...

Update: My co-workers are loving me today :) The cake went within 2 minutes; cookies are down to 1. I think I need to plug in the mixmaster again tonight!

Family favorite: snowball cookies.
Sugar cookies (recipe from Beyond Paradise cookbook--the BEST recipe!)
Peanut brittle--not a cookie but all my friends fav

I forgot shortbread cookies! I love shortbread (probably because the #2 ingredient is butter!!!) cookies over the holidays....

three hugs today at work due to my fudgy nutty brownies and plain cake yummy brownies (my names :)).

Just finished baking spritz cookies with decorations which will be served on day 3 of the week bake-a-rama :)

I say next year Seattle Cookie exchange do!

oooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh - I am soooooooo in!!! What a FABULOUS idea!!!

I'm in!

Snickerdoodles. I love vanilla and cinnamon and have a heavy pour when it comes to the vanilla in the recipe.

Making these has become a father/daughter tradition in my household.

i highly second you in this..I'm highly addicted to the taste of these cookies. I make these all-year round, not just during the holidays. :D^

I'm in, too!

Sugar cookies (with white frosting and red/ green sprinkles) -- I'm pretty old school. Spritz cookies (almond flavor) are fun, too, but we must have had a ghetto-@ss press, because those things never really looked very pretty when we made them... they tasted okay, though! :)

I would love this! Count me in.

Having been to lalala's cookie party in the past, I would so TOTALLY fly up to SEA to do a cookie exchange.

Alas, I just moved 48 hours ago and I'm trying to unearth all my kitchen supplies from boxes - no homemade cookies (or a tree) for me this year. I might just have to do Christmas in January to make up for the loss as I seem to be the only one in my family who bakes anymore.

Got a plate of fruitcake cookies from the lady across the street. So far none of us has liked them. Gramma BamaVol made some awesome Christmas cookies back in the day. One had a mint chocolate wafer buried in the center. My all time favorite.

Hamentashen :D

Also like...my mother-in-law's shortbread christmas wreaths, merangue (made with egg whites, sugar, chopped walnuts, and choc chips), and jewel cookies (a shortbread-like cookie rolled in nuts and filled with jelly).

Oh...and I also like the one's with a Rollo baked in the center. A co-worker of mine makes them each year! Yum!

Christmas cookies
 

When I was small holiday cookies consisted principally of slice-and-bake sugar cookies decorated with colored sugar or dipped in dark chocolate. Chocolate helped the taste but even as a kid I could tell they weren't great. Things got more interesting over time as my mom's cooking skills improved and she started trying recipes from women's magazines. Thumbprint cookies--think little Linzer morsels--still make the cut; the recipe for bourbon balls did not. As I learned how to cook I started trying exotic foreign recipes with names I could barely pronounce, even got a spritz gun to make extruded butter cookies (yummy, but not worth the effort in the space I have).

Then one year I tried a recipe for chocolate truffles, and over the years really went off the deep end with chocolate making, making a lot of people very happy;). Sadly, time and travel mean no fun with chocolate for the second year in a row, so for the first time in years I'm doing a few batches of cookies to give away. No time for laboriously hand-formed and decorated masterpieces, just going for taste. With planning the prep can be squeezed into odd bits of time, unlike chocolate making.

Right now there's a pan of fruitcake bars in the oven (first time I've tried the recipe but it looks great). I may do a batch of biscotti--pistachio-cherry should look festive. Chocolate is always appropriate so the brownie-recipe-made-into-slice-and-bake-cookies will be included.

What are your traditional cookies? What are your favorites? Two separate categories which may or may not overlap...

My holiday baking has been sporadic at best, but when I DO bake, I do traditional tollhouse (with nuts!), 7 layer bars, and pecan sandies, (also known as russian tea cakes or mexican wedding cakes), and occasionally biscotti.

I love to eat a good sugar cookie, but those seem to elude my baking abilities.

I love love love chocolate crinkle cookies!