THE 2024 HOLIDAY COOKIE WRAP-UP (MORE OR LESS)
Time for the annual cookie roundup.
First, here is the cookie plate, photo courtesy of the Resident Male. Two plates, actually – one for the slimmed down cookies made at least in part with reduced carb ingredients, and a smaller one for “full octane” bakes, made with conventional sugar, all purpose flour, and chocolate.
We’re getting better at lowered-carb baking here, but in all honesty, the originals are better. For those on more restrictive diets than ours, note that this is LOWERED carb, not zero carb. I would not recommend my mods for someone who is under a strict regimen. We for example are not banned from carb consumption, we are just trying to cut down, not eliminate them completely. So with that, here’s the roll, with notes on changes to what happened before, and on the travails of lowered carb baking.
Lowered-Carb Plate
- Oysters. This is pretty much my original hazelnut sprintz/chocolate ganache filling sandwich cookie, but with a couple of differences. I used 2/3 cup of granulated Swerve white sugar substitute, and 2/3 cup of Swerve powdered sugar substitute. I find that the Swerve monkfruit sugar sub is sweeter than regular cane sugar, so when I sub I use a tad less. In addition, I find that the granulated if used solo in a baked product can produce a bit of a gritty texture, so I go halfsies with their powdered sugar equivalent. That’s cornstarch-free, so it’s really just the same product, ground much finer.
I also used a mix of 1.5 cups King Arthur Keto baking flour, and a half cup of regular all-purpose flour (APF). The Keto flour has a bit of a rye-like/bran-like flavor. It also absorbs liquids and fats differently. Some recipes require additional moisture. Some are overwhelmed by the fat content. The use of a little APF vastly improves cookie texture and flavor in both cases.
For the filling I made a standard 1:1 ganache with heavy cream and Choc Zero no-sugar chocolate baking chips. And a splash of vanilla. Worked quite well, but I recommend microwave melting for the Choc Zero – not stovetop melting. It scorches very easily. More on this later. - Buffalo Bourbon Balls (which we sometimes make with rum and not bourbon). Here is a similar recipe for a full-carb cookie. My modifications ended up being a two step process. Since using store bought vanilla or chocolate wafers was right out, I had to make my own to crumble for the base of this no-bake cookie. I used a recipe similar to this one, rolling the dough out into two giant rounds. Since I was going to crumble them up after, there was no reason to form individual cookies. I ended up having enough cocoa cookie crumbs both for this recipe, and for the base of a cheesecake I plan on making next week.
Other mods on this one included substituting toasted walnuts for pecans (no pecans were available the week I made these), using the Swerve confectioner’s sugar in place of the standard issue (and shorting that by three tablespoons), and using a scant quantity of agave syrup instead of corn syrup to glue the whole mess together. Please note though that even with these changes, a cookie with agave syrup and a significant quantity of booze cannot be considered truly slimmed. - Chocolate chips. Not the best success, but edible. Again, the standard Toll House cookie recipe, but using a 3:1 mix of Keto flour to APF; subbing in the Swerve equivalents of the brown and white sugars; and using the Choc Zero chips in place of standard bittersweet chips or chunks. On the sugars, I took the make-it-less-sweet bite out of the quantity of white sugar, leaving in the brown for flavor. I also divided the remaining quantity of white sugar in half between the Swerve granulated and powdered products.
Obviously these did not spread like standard drop cookie style choc chips. That has to do with the way the fake sugars play with the butter and moisture in the cookie. Next year I will add more liquid to the batter to see if that helps. Also the Choc Zero chips scorched a bit in the 375-degree-F oven. Next time I will not bake anything containing them at hotter than 325-degrees. Still, edible and not horrible. - Peanut Butter Cookies. I didn’t try to slim down the peanut butter component in these. I started with the Joy of Cooking classic. Teddy natural chunk peanut butter all the way for flavor. But I did use the 3:1 ratio mix of Keto:APF; and the Swerve brown sugar/white sugar, minus about 10% in volume of the white to compensate for savage sweetness. This is the first year I’ve done a slimmed down peanut butter cookie without having the baking sheet absolutely awash in oil, dripping down into the oven, making a mess, and threatening a fire. The texture on these was good – perhaps a bit less tender and more “digestive biscuit” like, and the flavor was spot on.
- Triple Gingers. Slimming down another of my originals here. With no zero-carb white chocolate chips to hand, I just used the regular. Ditto with the minced crystalized ginger. But for the rest I proceeded as per the chocolate chip drop cookie batter. Keto:APF; Swerve brown:white sugars (-10% of the white), and the rest. Like the chocolate chips, they retained their craggy ball shapes instead of spreading out nicely like my original recipe, but they have good flavor and texture.
- Russian Tea Cakes. The ethnic attribution on these overlaps so strongly that it’s hard to differentiate. But I will call this set Russian Teacakes because it used toasted walnuts in place of pecans (another victim of the Great Pecan Shortage this year). Again the Keto:APF flour ratio was changed, and the Swerve powdered sugar was deployed. The finished product was good, but the pecan-rich Mexican variant is so big a family fave that disappointment ensued. (See recipe below.)
- Earthquakes. Only minorly slimmed. I started with this one before departure, but I decided to use regular Trader Joes 60% cacao bittersweet and not the Choc Zero stuff for this one because the flavor and texture areso dependent on the cacao solids:cocoa butter ratio of the chocolate component. But I did do the keto:APF and sugar subs as with the others. Not quite as fudgy or crevasse ridden as the standard (like other keto flour containing cookies they don’t spread as well), but also in the acceptable range of results.
Full Octane Plate
- Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies. A specialty of Younger Offspring. No attempt to mod this recipe because it’s one of the all time best chocolate chip cookies out there, at the perfect intersection point of crisp and soft. Younger Offspring coarse chops the chocolate. It flakes and breaks, with the chocolate dust being just as valuable as the chunks to the finished product.
- Mexican Wedding Cakes. Miracle! Pecans presented themselves, and we HAD to do a do-over. This is the same base recipe as the Russian Tea Cakes above, but look at how well they spread. And they were just as tender, nut-rich, and luscious as they always are. (Recipe below)
- Orange Marmalade Cookies. No point in slimming these, either. Not when the recipe includes a full cup of orange marmalade. A nice light, citrusy compliment to the rest of the rich cookie plate.
- Cinnamon Bun Cookies. Yet another specialty of Younger Offspring. These are a wonderful rolled refrigerator slice and bake cookie. But the write-up has vanished off the original website and the recipe can only be found via the Wayback Machine. Skip the icing on this one. There’s absolutely no need for it. And how to get that magnificently even swirl? Surely it’s practice, Younger Offspring having made hundreds of these for charity fundraisers, but also this isn’t a two-dough cookie. It’s one dough, rolled out uniformly thin, and then smeared with a paste of cinnamon, sugar, and butter that’s about the consistency of peanut butter. Then rolled and fridged prior to careful cutting and baking.
Recipe – Mexican Wedding Cakes (also Russian Tea Cakes)
I posted this recipe about 20 years ago but the file appears to have been corrupted. Here is a refresh, with both the original and the slightly slimmed down version side by side. I can’t call the slimmed version a true keto or diabetic-diet-acceptable offering, and I can’t tell you caloric/carb count values. Just that it isn’t as impactful as the full octane version
I can’t even tell you the exact number of cookies that this will make. Lots. Enough to fill an 8-inch tin with a few left over. Especially if you make them the size I prefer for holiday cookies. Since we offer up so many kinds on one plate I make all of them rather small, so folk can taste several different types. I have a two-tablespoon cookie scoop (like an ice cream scoop but smaller). I take one scoop-full then divide it in half and roll both halves into small balls. I get about four sheets of 16-20 cookies. If I were to make these as part of an afternoon tea spread I would probably make them twice as large.
Ingredients for Regular Version
- 1 cup unsalted butter (not margarine)
- 3/4 cup confectioners sugar (plus more for rolling later)
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour (King Arthur recommended)
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 cup finely ground pecans (walnuts, or hazelnuts may be used but pecans are best)
Ingredients for Slimmed Version
- 1 cup unsalted butter (not margarine)
- 1/2 cup plus 3 tbs Swerve confectioners/powdered sugar equivalent or similar monkfruit based sugar substitute (plus more for rolling later)
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 3/4 cups King Arthur Keto baking flour
- 1/2 cup all purpose flour (King Arthur recommended)
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 cup finely ground pecans (walnuts, or hazelnuts may be used but pecans are best)
Cream butter. Add sugar (or sugar sub), and vanilla. Mix together thoroughly. Stir in flour and salt until mixture is uniform in texture. Stir in ground nuts. Chill until the dough is easy to handle.
Heat oven to 400-degrees F (around 204-degrees C). Roll dough into small balls of approximately 1 tablespoon each. Place dough balls on ungreased sheet of baking parchment on baking sheet. They can be placed about two inches apart because they will spread a bit into dome shapes, but shouldn’t flatten completely like chocolate chip cookies. Prepare a soup bowl or small mixing bowl with a quantity of your chosen powdered sugar for rolling the cookies.
Bake 10-12 minutes, until just set (watch these like a hawk after about 8 minutes). Cookies should look pale with just a tinge of browning around the bottom edge. They should NOT be brown all over. Let cool on baking sheet for a couple of minutes, then roll immediately in the prepared powdered sugar and set them on a baking rack to cool. When cool, roll them again then store in a plastic wrap lined cookie tin or similar storage solution. If kept covered they will be tender for about a week and a half, then slowly dry out. They will still be edible, just no longer soft.
REVISITING THE OYSTERS
This being cookie season it’s no wonder that this post is also about a family favorite, repeated year upon year since 2006 or so. This time, I attempted a slimmer version of our Oysters. That’s a hazelnut spritz sandwich cookie with a chocolate ganache filling – another sort-of invention of mine. The odd name came about the first year I did them. I didn’t grind the toasted hazelnuts fine enough, and bits of nut stuck in the dies of the cookie press. Lots of blobby, odd shapes resulted. We mated them as best we could. But the shapes and top/bottom format made the kids think of the shellfish, so the name stuck.
My original Oysters recipe is here.
Now there’s not much to be done to slim down the ganache – that’s just a strong bittersweet chocolate and cream, no sugar. Yes it has carbs, but a zero carb cookie is an asymptotic goal at best. Like the other cookies this week I subbed in the King Arthur Keto Wheat Flour for standard all purpose, and Swerve granulated (and powdered) sugar substitute for the white sugar. I generally use a bit less of the sugar sub than was called for in the unmodified recipe because I find the stuff to be sweeter than regular sugar. In addition, I ran out of granulated Swerve, and used a third of a cup of their confectioners’ substitute in place of that last half-cup of granulated.
And there was a small complication with the hazelnuts. They were locally unobtainable here this year, although had I known at the time I would have ordered on line from a specialty nut dealer. But fortuitously I did have enough leftover from last year and stowed in the freezer to do the recipe. I’ve used leftover nuts before and have not noticed any degradation in taste or performance, provided they are brought back to room temperature before toasting, chopping or otherwise using in the recipe being prepared.
Here are the hazelnuts after being rolled around and rubbed in a clean linen dishcloth. That flakes off lots of the brown inner membrane. While in an ideal world it would be totally removed, this amount is enough to avoid too many little brown flecks in the finished cookies, and to reduce the bitterness those membranes bring.
OK. So I made the batter. To get the right consistency I needed to add lots more cream than originally specified to achieve the peanut butter-like consistency. The dough needs to be just firm enough to pick up and pat into a log to insert into the cookie press, but still quite soft. Some years even with the “full octane” version I’ve had to add more than the recipe’s 6 tablespoons of milk or cream to get there. Perhaps the flour those years was drier than usual In any case, King Arthur does warn that recipes may require additional liquid to work properly with their Keto flour. I ended up using about 9.
I was very encouraged by the swift and easy cookie press action. One two-stop squeeze for each cookie, forming them fairly flew. Here they are unbaked.
Obviously I use one of the larger hole dies for the cookie press to avoid a repeat of “the oyster problem.”
On to actual baking. That’s where things began to be noticeably deviant from standard. Like the peanut butter cookies for this year and the two prior, these cookies sweated a lot of oil. I might have been able to reduce the shortening in them, but once a batter is mixed you can’t get it out again. They floated around on the surface of the silicon baking mat, in effect frying in that oil.
Here’s the last sheet with the stragglers. Admittedly I let that sheet go a minute or two longer than I should have – the cookies shouldn’t be that brown around the edges. And that odd man out is the last cookie – the traditional cook’s share – fashioned from the remaining bit in the cookie press that can’t make it through to true cookie form.
See those droplets on the mat? That’s fat exudate from the cookies. It’s hard to see but there’s a lake of it on the mat.
Still the cookies were cohesive and semi-attractive. Now, how did they taste?
Sadly, like the gingers, peanut butters, and chocolate chips, only a glimmer of their true selves. That ubiquitous cardboard-rye taste of the Keto flour overwhelmed the hazelnut flavor. They look ok, but to me at least they are yet another disappointment. Obviously the chocolate ganache will punch them up a bit, but that won’t happen until next week. I am delegating filling these to Younger Spawn, whose baking expertise is far in advance of mine. It’s best not to fill these too early because they do change texture as moisture from the ganache seeps into the spritz cookie.
I’m done with the slimmed portion of the cookie parade. That’s three years in a row I’ve attempted to make a less sinful cookie, and three years I’ve not been satisfied. I am afraid the answer may be not trying to re-engineer the cookie. It may be just to not make them anymore. This may well be the last year for ten types of cookies. Especially considering that the Keto flour and sugar substitute are four times as expensive as regular ingredients. Perhaps next year I will go full octane, making the originals but only as half- or quarter-batches of five types, and no longer share the largesse.
A SLIMMED DOWN GINGER
No, I’m not going to write about a red-haired friend embarking on a diet and exercise program. This is one of the holiday baking posts that intrudes on the otherwise fiber-filled menu here at String each December.
Back in 2018 I mashed together several thoughts and came up with another more or less original cookie – the Triple Ginger White Chocolate Chip. I posted the recipe for it in 2019 after two full and successful holiday cookie test runs.
The dough for it is of the same basic type as a chocolate chip cookie, perhaps a bit lighter on the brown sugar, with added cream for more richness, and three types of ginger – dry ground ginger, minced candied ginger, and ginger juice – to give it kick. As I had done them before they were delightfully sharp and gingery, lighter than gingerbread, with the white “chocolate” morsels acting sort of like internal frosting, bringing little bursts of sweetness. They quickly became a family favorite, and I’ve done them every year since.
This year, the third year I’ve been attempting to bake at least some of the cookies in lower-carb incarnations of their former selves, I tried to reduce the caloric load of this cookie. I had dismal results in previous years using various mixes of almond and coconut flour for other cookies. A few were absolute failures, but I was encouraged this year by the introduction of King Arthur Keto Flour. I haven’t used it for bread, roti, or tortillas yet, but that may eventually happen. I have tried the recipes they posted for it on their website, for pie crust and chocolate chip cookies. Neither was good enough to post links for them. I also used various Swerve brand monkfruit based non-sugar sweeteners.
The Keto flour and the Swerve granulated, brown and confectioners sugars all claim to be near analogs in baking – in theory they can be subbed one-to-one for conventional products. In practical use, not really. More like “kinda” and “maybe.” To start with I find the Swerve products are sweeter than regular sugars. And the King Arthur Keto flour isn’t as hydrophilic as normal wheat flour (it doesn’t suck up as much moisture or fat). It also browns faster, but doesn’t leap from raw to burnt the way almond and coconut flours do. In fact, it does ok for dusting and pan frying – something the other flours totally fail.
As a result I tend to tinker with conventional recipes when subbing in these products. I will scant the quantities of the fake sugars by a tablespoon or two, and tinker with the liquid and fat levels when I use the fake flour to avoid a sticky, greasy dough.
Here is the cookie dough for the Triple Gingers this year, with amendments. I used my original but I left out a tablespoon of brown fake sugar and two of the white fake sugar, and added an extra tablespoon of cream:
It looks pretty normal, although the dough isn’t “sticking” to the chips like it usually does. But I continued on. I always fridge this type of dough overnight before portioning it out and baking it.
I did the usual – scooping using my 2.5 TBS dough scoop (like a little ice-cream scoop), then dividing the lump in half and rolling it into two balls. We like small cookies at holiday time because there are 10 types on the plate. Little cookies let folks sample without being overwhelmed.
Usually what happens with these drop cookie doughs is that if I make a generally round-ish ball, it melts during baking to yield a flatter nicely circular cookie. Here’s a picture of the Triple Gingers from a previous year to illustrate:
And here are this year’s. But not even the first most lumpy batch. That set went into the oven and then emerged in exactly the same shape – misshapen balls. No melting, no spreading. So when I made the second batch I flattened them with the heel of my hand. Again, no melting, no spreading. They may be blobs, but at least they are somewhat cookie shaped. Second and third batches seen before (left) and after baking (right):
Not my most attractive product, for sure. To be fair, I did notice that the King Arthur Keto chocolate chip recipe didn’t make spreading cookies either, but I thought that was because I did something wrong. Those also just didn’t taste right. Kind of like I had used rye flour and cardboard by mistake, and with the texture of a store-bought packaged cookie, and not a comforting home-made one.
Back to the Gingers… How did they taste? I sampled (of course). While they are ok, they are not as they should be. They don’t have the cardboard/rye flavor I didn’t like in the chocolate chip cookies, which is good. But they don’t have the ginger punch of my original recipe, and I suspect they will get hard quickly. They are sweet, with a pleasant caramel note, but that note reduces the ginger to an afterthought. Ugly and disappointing as they are, they are still serve-able, and will take their place in this year’s cookie line up. But obviously more tinkering is warranted. Between the differential take-up of the butter by the flour, and the performance of the fake sugar, successful adaptation will take a lot more than just dumping more ginger into this recipe.
And as a last note – remember I said that the dough didn’t hold onto the chips? I had to jam them in, which is why so many are on the surface. When I was done forming the cookies I had a puddle of extras left behind. I’ve never seen that happen before with any type of morsel-bearing cookie.
And I think I should get a medal for not snacking on them as I finished the bake.
ADVENTURES IN BAKING
As long time readers here know, I have a standing promise to provide ten types of home-baked cookies for the holidays. For the most part, we’ve been evolving a series of family favorites, and year on year are moving those closer to perfection. But this year we’ve opted for a disruption.
Keto baking. Kind of.
We’ve decided to slim down the annual carb-fest that is the holidays. We were not dogmatically inflexible about it, but we did try to make the cookie plate a bit leaner this year, without sacrificing the comforting festive level of indulgence, and leaving some unaltered so we could share them with nut-allergic friends. Some recipes were standards we modded with our own substitutions. Some were new – cognates of known faves, but composed and published specifically for no carb/low-carb baking. Not all were entirely successful, but we did have some very pleasant surprises.
Among our discoveries were the handling properties of the various flours, a disagreement with a claim of 1:1 equivalency for the sugar substitute we used, and what Xanthan Gum actually does. This post may be helpful to others who want to try this adventure. I know it will help me remember this year’s pitfalls if/when I try it again.
As usual, I was greatly aided in this endeavor by Younger Offspring, whose baking acumen now far surpasses mine. The padawan has truly become the master.
First, the group portrait:
1. Earthquakes – more commonly called Chocolate Crinkles. Full octane. We didn’t play with this recipe, this one used standard all purpose flour and real sugar. There are many variations of this recipe out there. Ours, from long time pal Kathryn, uses butter and not shortening. I now use Dutch process cocoa in it for an extra cocoa-kick. Very much like one-bite brownies and much loved.
2. Orange Marmalade cookies. Also not slimmed. After all if the recipe calls for half a jar of marmalade to begin with, there’s very little point in making emendations around that. This is a burst of fresh sunshine, sweet but not overpoweringly so, and a nice contrast to the others. I use this recipe, and with it polish off the jar of marmalade that also contributed to the apple-orange Anonymous Apple Pie back at Thanksgiving.
3. Oysters. My own invention. A hazelnut spritz so named because the first time I did them I didn’t grind the nuts fine enough, and they were weirdly blobby in shape. This year’s are slimmed down from my original recipe, with Swerve sugar substitute standing in for the granulated white sugar, and 3/4 cup of almond flour being substituted for one of the two cups of all purpose flour. I didn’t tinker with the ganache filling with a splash of Frangelico, but we did whip it to make it more airy, mousse like and less dense than usual. The result was very light, delicate, and cake like, much softer and tender than the normal spritz cookie texture. The dough however was a nightmare to put through the cookie press, with three tries and extensive profanity needed to achieve one useable cookie shape. If I do this again next year I might introduce a bit of Xanthan Gum to add more structure to the dough. Even with that painful birth, the result is quite pleasant. Worth further exploration.
4. Keto Linzers. This one is new this year. Although we substituted a reduced sugar, no fructose, whole fruit mixed berry/cherry preserve for the home-made filling, we followed this recipe. We reduced the amount of sugar substitute a bit because we are finding that it is in fact sweeter than cane sugar. The dough was very sticky and rolling between pieces of baking parchment or waxed paper is an absolute necessity, along with lots of extra coconut flour to keep the dough from adhering to the paper. The resulting cookies are delicate (this seems to be a standard characteristic of these alternative flour baked goods). These turned out nicely. A do-over if we bake keto again.
5. Mexican Wedding Cakes. A family standard, this year slimmed down. Except for the confectioner’s sugar on the outside. I used the family standard recipe, much like this one, but substituted 3/4 of a cup of almond flour for one of the two cups of all purpose flour, and Swerve buzzed down in the food processor for the powdered sugar in the dough. They flattened out a bit more than usual in baking, making buttons instead of more rounded/domed usual shapes, but are still as tasty, fitting the bill for this must-have.
6. Cocoa Macarons with White Chocolate Ganache Filling. I was just a observer on this creation. I am very impressed by Younger Offspring’s ability to leap into Fine Baking, and the associated display of piping skills. These by their nature are almond flour and egg white. The results of this recipe are spot-on in taste, with the occasional crackled top being a product of our very imprecise kitchen scale (note to self – this thing is due for replacement). The white chocolate ganache was enhanced by a dollop of raspberry liquor.
7. Cinnamon Swirls. Another specialty of Younger Offspring, these are thin and light, with a profound cinnamon kick that benefits from the addition of orange zest to the dough. Full octane – this one had no subs. The Offspring uses this recipe but leaves out the glaze – the cookies don’t need it.
8. Lemon cut-outs. In previous years we have made the Joy of Cooking sugar cut-outs, with lemon zest in the cookie, and icing made from confectioners sugar and lemon juice. This year we did a total keto cookie instead – this one, complete with icing made from the Swerve sugar substitute and lemon juice. This is the cookie that really demonstrated the difference that Xanthan Gum can make. Although the dough was slightly sticky, the gum gave it structure much closer to that of a dough with gluten-bearing flour in it. It was much easier to handle, roll, and cut than the similar no-gum dough for the Linzers. This dough also retained the cut-out shapes better during baking than the Linzer dough, which spread a bit more.
9. Not Your Average Toll House Cookie. This was our own minor modification. We start with the classic Toll House cookie dough, and we used real sugars and all purpose flour, but instead of loading them with semi-sweet chocolate chips, we used unsweetened cocoa nib chips from Trader Joe’s, plus a handful of the semi-sweet chips, well chopped. The result were these zebra-striped buttons. They are more cocoa bitter than sweet, and intense. An excellent “grown up” chocolate chip cookie that’s delicious with coffee, tea, or wine. I hope TJ’s offers the nibs again next year so we can engineer a do-again (they do have a habit of introducing something wonderful that then vanishes.)
10. Triple Gingers. Again, the ones I invented a couple of years back, but slimmed, with Swerve brown and white sugar substitutes, plus using 1 1/3 cup of regular flour plus 1/3 cup of coconut flour in place of the 2 1/3 cup of flour in the original. I also upped both the powdered ginger and ginger juice a bit. This was one of the first sub-in cookies I tried, and the one in which I discovered that the sugar substitutes are sweeter than real sugar. If I do these again, I would dial back the amount of both brown and white sugars because I prefer a lower sweetness level. (Side note – this was one cookie I had made surplus of last year and froze, so I was able to compare the full octane version and the modded version side by side. The difference was profound, so I do now firmly doubt the Swerve claim of “1:1 substitute for regular sugar in cooking and baking.”
11. Peanut Butter Cookies. Yes, we lost count along the way and ended up with eleven kinds this year. This was a new keto recipe, and by far the least successful of any we attempted. I used this one, with poor results. I used Teddy natural chunky peanut butter, an excellent local product I’ve used in baking for years (ingredients are just peanuts and salt). Note that the recipe did specify a natural style peanut butter. I followed the directions exactly, and used the amount of coconut flour indicated. The resulting dough was a bit softer/stickier than my usual, but not unreasonable to handle, and I was able to roll small balls and press them, although I ended up marking them with a fork as indicated instead of being able to use my usual cookie press (they stuck to that). BUT when I baked these, they exuded gushers of oil – so much that the cookies floated around and oven-fried rather than baked, and the oil overflowed the cookie sheet. I took them out just when they were cohesive and just a tiny bit brown on the edges, and rack cooled them – they were still dripping. After all of the oil lost in baking the result was dry and unappealing, with surprisingly little peanut flavor. I do not recommend this recipe, and don’t think it’s worth any further effort. If we go keto again next year I will look for a different peanut butter cookie.
Bonus Panforte: To round it all out, we did rescue from the freezer the second of the two panfortes I made last year. Obviously not keto – not by a long shot. Younger Offspring again demonstrated piping skills, using the leftover dark and white chocolate ganaches to adorn the top. We didn’t serve it on Christmas Eve, but we will certainly cut into it now, and save a goodly part for New Years Eve dinner as well.
So to sum up – some hits, some with room for improvement, and some misses. And yes – we do now have enough cookies to last forever. Again.
THE COOKIE TRADITION CONTINUES
As long-time readers here know, we do ten types of cookies to welcome the holidays. We do a mix of old time favorites, with a few new types each year, and have been slowly adding the tastiest of the new cookies to the regular roster. I think this year we’ve hit on the best assortment yet.
Here’s the spread, with links to the recipes (or close equivalents) where available.
- Peanut Butter. The Joy of Cooking standard, with one household adaptation. We use Teddy brand all-natural chunky peanut butter instead of the more usual and more industrial Jiff or Skippy. It gives a better texture, and a more intense, less kiddy-sweet peanut taste. And because it was a special gift – instead of the traditional fork-press decoration for the top, I use a sun-shaped cookie stamp to celebrate the solstice.
- Cinnamon swirls. I can’t take credit for this one. Their spiraled perfection is entirely one of Younger Daughter’s specialties. She uses the CIA’s Cinnamon Bun Cookies recipe. It’s a rolled refrigerator cookie that can be made and frozen ahead of time, then defrosted and baked when needed. The frosting is optional, and in my opinion, not needed because the cookie is sweet enough on its own. She leaves it off so the dramatic spiral is better displayed.
- Orange Marmalade Cookies. New this year, this is a soft cookie with a zingy, fresh orange icing. We are adding this one to our do-again list, for sure. We made these about half the size of the original, to keep with our bite-size cookie theme (with so many kinds, having smaller cookies allows a range of grazing). If you do them as small as ours (about 1.5 inch across) you will have too much icing. Either cut the recipe by about a third, or enjoy the leftover spread on muffins.
- Chocolate Chips. Pretty much the Nestle Toll House classic, minus the nuts since so many of the other cookies are nut-rich. This year I made them thinner and crispier, by special request.
- Triple Ginger Cookies. This was my special invention last year. The only difference between last year’s and this year’s is that last year I formed the cookies by rolling the dough in balls. This year I did “wild drop” using two teaspoons. I’m still looking for a really good name for this one.
- Earthquakes. Well, we call them that. Most people call them Chocolate Crinkles. No clue as to why we had so little seismic activity on the batch this year – very little dramatic cracking. But they taste the same – intensely chocolaty, like a bite size brownie. There are dozens of recipes out there for these. Mine is from Long Time Pal Kathryn, and uses butter, not oil as the shortening. Here’s something similar.
- Oysters. Another home invention – a sandwich cookie, of hazelnut spritz awith dark chocolate ganache filling. So named because the first time I did these I didn’t grind the nuts fine enough, and they clogged the cookie press, making strange, blobby shapes. We fitted those together as best we could, and named them accordingly.
- Buffalo Bourbon Balls. Some years we make these with rum, some years with bourbon, but always with pecans. This no-bake cookie was in a circa 1960s edition of the Buffalo News. It is much like this one, although my version uses a bit more cocoa and nuts by proportion, and makes a bigger batch.
- Mexican Wedding Cakes. Another must-have, this is an intensely rich shortbread, full of ground pecans, rolled twice in confectioner’s sugar (once warm, once when cooled). Our recipe is like this one, but again, scaled up to make a larger batch.
- Cut-Outs. We start with Rich Rolled Cookies from Joy of Cooking (1964 edition), and add lemon zest to the cookie itself. Then for the icing we dissolve powdered sugar in lemon juice (not milk or water), tint it with food coloring and paint/drip it onto the thoroughly cooled cookies.
- Ms. Jean’s fudge (not shown because it’s still setting up in the fridge). This year half the batch is with nuts and half is plain, in deference to my nut-adverse friends. Ms. Jean is a family friend, a beloved neighbor and my kids’ honorary Aunt, whose specialty is sharing joy, with a double helping over the holidays. Her’s is a standard quick-fudge, made from chocolate, butter, sweetened condensed milk, a splash of vanilla and a pinch of salt. The one on line most like it is this one from Cooking for Engineers, although Jean’s added a quarter tsp of vanilla and pinch of salt. Save yourself effort though – line your pan with plastic wrap to make getting the stuff out and cut MUCH easier. And have the pan lined are ready to go before you stir the milk into the chocolate.
Now, how do we manage to make all of these? Especially when I work and am not home all day? Over time, and in order. I start early in December, by making the bourbon balls. They need time to mellow, like a fruitcake. The peanut butter cookies are next because with their high oil content, they are a long-keeper. The last ones to be made are usually the Mexican Wedding Cakes because they are delicate and go stale more quickly than some of the others. Most nights that I bake I make a dough and fridge it, to bake on the next evening. On weekends I might do two or three batches in their entirety. As each cookie is finished, it is stowed away in its plastic-wrap lined tin, and its on to the next.
Oh! The holidays do come in a stampeding herd this year.
Happy Hannukah!
Last night was the first candle.
How could I end this post without linking to the latke recipe, too? 🙂
String-Or-Nothing 