Baking Recipes: Sweetness for the season
The holidays are all about tradition. They bring us together, creating a sense of unity and history.
And it wouldn’t be the holidays without some seasonal baking.
Of course, we all have favourite recipes that we turn to each year – that’s tradition. But there’s often room for one or two new ones.
After all, isn’t that how traditions get started?
So, the Real Life team is offering up six cookie recipes this holiday season – ones that have found a place in our homes and traditions – that we hope may sweeten your holidays this year.
Lime Sugar Cookies
An untraditional cookie, perhaps, but citrus is a nice bright flavour in the winter months. The recipe is inspired by one from the cookbook produced by Rebar, a vegetarian restaurant in Victoria, B.C., but with some revisions are now chewier – my preferred type of cookie.
1/2 cup (125 mL) butter
2 tbsp (25 mL) vegetable oil
2 cups (500 mL) granulated sugar, plus additional for sprinkling zest of 3 limes
2 eggs
5 tbsp (85 mL) lime juice
3 cups (750 mL) flour
1 tsp (5 mL) baking soda
1 tsp (5 mL) salt
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cream butter with oil, sugar and lime zest until light and fluffy. Add lime juice and eggs, beating until thoroughly mixed. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. Add to the butter mixture and mix until just combined.
Using a spoon or small scoop, form 1 1/2 – 2 tbsp (20 to 25 mL) balls and place on the lined baking sheet, leaving room to spread during baking. (They almost double in size.) Flatten each and lightly sprinkle with granulated sugar. Bake for 8 or 9 minutes, until tops are dry and edges are beginning to deflate. Cool on a wire rack.
Makes about 24 cookies.
Lavender shortbread
It was a trip to the tea shop at Edmonton’s historic Rutherford House that showed Iain Ilich the joys of lavender shortbread. After some experimentation, he discovered baking it at home was as simple as adding a couple of rounded teaspoons of the flowers to your favourite shortbread recipe. This is his go-to version, adapted from the Joy of Baking website.
Find culinary lavender at the Silk Road Spice Merchant (silkroadspices.ca, 403-261-1955).
1 cup (250 mL) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup (125 mL) icing sugar
1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla extract
2 cups (500 mL) all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt
2-2½ tsp (10-12 mL) culinary lavender
Cream butter in a mixing bowl with an electric mixer. Add the icing sugar and beat until smooth. Add the vanilla and beat a bit longer.
Add the flour to the bowl, then sprinkle the salt and lavender on top.
Mix with a spoon until well combined, then mush together with your hands.
Compact and hand-roll the dough into spheres a bit smaller than a golf ball, then set them down on a parchment-paper-covered cookie sheet.
With your fingers together, squish them down. Bake for 14 to 16 minutes in a 300°F (150°C) oven, checking to make sure they don’t burn. Don’t overbake.
Makes about 20 cookies.
Hazelnut Macaroons
These chewy cookies from Valerie Berenyi are easy to make. She says they offer satisfying flavours of toasted coconut and hazelnuts, while the slivered candied cherries add a festive note. She started making them in 1989 when her son was about two, having clipped the recipe from Canadian Living magazine. They were such a hit they became an instant tradition. The cookies freeze well in a tightly sealed container, Berenyi adds, nestled between sheets of parchment or waxed paper.
2 cups (500 mL) flaked coconut
2/3 cup (150 mL) granulated sugar
1/4 cup (50 mL) all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp (1 mL) salt
4 egg whites
1½ cups (375 mL) chopped hazelnuts
1/2 cup (125 mL) slivered candied cherries
1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla
In a large bowl, stir together the coconut, sugar, flour and salt. Whisk egg whites until foamy.
Stir egg whites, hazelnuts, cherries and vanilla into coconut mixture.
Drop by tablespoonfuls onto lightly greased baking sheets.
Bake in 325°F (160°C) oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are golden brown.
Let cool on wire racks. Makes about 32 cookies.
Jewish Shortbread, from Best of Bridge
Kathryn Shimbashi’s mother made these cookies, from Best of Bridge, starting in the late ’70s, and they became a family tradition for many years. Later, it was the first cookie she made after moving to Vancouver in her 20s. But, most importantly, Shimbashi says, these quarter-moon-shaped cookies are both tasty and easy to make.
1 cup (250 mL) butter, room temperature (never use margarine)
1/3 cup (75 mL) white sugar
1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla
1/2 cup (125 mL) finely ground walnuts or pecans
1 2/3 cups (400 mL) flour
pinch salt
1/2 cup (125 mL) white sugar
4 tsp (20 mL) cinnamon
Cream together butter and sugar. Add vanilla, nuts, flour and salt and beat well. Shape into crescents and place 1 inch (2.5 cm) apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 325°F (160°C) for 15 to 20 minutes. While still warm, coat with sugar and cinnamon or, for variety, coat with icing sugar.
Make 2 to 3 dozen cookies.
Chewy Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies
Cranberries add a holiday zing to these oatmeal cookies, says Yvonne Jeffery, who was looking for a treat with a slightly healthy touch. The recipe comes from Eric Akis’s Everyone Can Cook – Entertaining Everyday (Whitecap, 2003), and the resulting cookies freeze well.
1 cup (250 mL) butter, at room temperature
1 cup (250 mL) golden brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup (125 mL) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla extract
1¼ cups (300 mL) all-purpose flour
3 cups (750 mL) quick-cooking oats
1 tsp (5 mL) ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt
1/2 tsp (2 mL) baking soda
3/4 cup (175 mL) dried cranberries
Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Beat the butter and both sugars until light. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the vanilla and mix well.
Place the remaining ingredients in another bowl and mix until well combined. Gradually mix the dry mixture into the butter mixture until well combined.
Use a 2-tbsp (25-mL) measure to drop spoonfuls of batter onto non-stick or parchment-lined cookie sheets, leaving a 2-to 3-in (5-to 8-cm) space between each cookie.
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Place the sheets on a rack and allow the cookies to completely cool before removing and storing in a tightly sealed jar or tin.
Cook’s note: You can use 3/4 cup (175 mL) raisins or chocolate chips, or a mix of both, instead of cranberries.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Theresa Tayler decided to put a new twist on a traditional family cookie by ditching regular chocolate chips for her adaptation of this Joy of Cooking recipe in favour of Lindt’s sea-salt dark chocolate (which can be found at most large grocery stores). Use a knife (or a meat cleaver, like Tayler did) or a mallet to break the chocolate into chunks.
As an alternative, use regular chocolate chips and top each cookie with a small sprinkling of sea salt partway through baking.
1 cup and 2 tbsp (275 mL) all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp (2 mL) baking soda
1/2 cup (125 mL) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup (125 mL) sugar
1/2 cup (125 mL) packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1/4 tsp (1 mL) salt
1½ (7 mL) tsp vanilla
1½ bars (150 g) Lindt A Touch of Sea Salt chocolate, broken into chunks sea salt, optional
Preheat the oven to 375°F (190C). Grease or line 2 cookie sheets.
Whisk together flour and baking soda and set aside. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugars until well blended. Add egg, salt and vanilla and beat again until combined. Stir in the flour mixture until smooth. Stir in chocolate pieces.
Drop the dough by heaping teaspoonfuls about 2 inches (5 cm) apart on the cookie sheets. Bake, one sheet at a time, until the cookies are just slightly coloured on top and the edges are brown, about 8 to 10 minutes.
If desired, at the 8-minute mark, sprinkle a pinch of coarse sea salt onto the top of the cookies and stick back into the oven for one more minute. Let stand briefly, then remove to a rack to cool.
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