What are your favorite Christmas cookie recipes?

[revvinkevin]

 

 

In the past, right around Christmas, a friend or often a neighbor would knock on the door, then hand us a small plastic wrap covered plate, with 6 or 7 or 8 different cookies on it.   I loved it because they were usually a unique variety of cookies or bars, etc you wouldn't see the rest of the year.

 

What are your favorite Christmas / Holiday cookies, bars or other tasty treats recipes? 

 

[ea56]

Kevin, here are two recipes

that I have been making for 37 years. Raspberry Shortbread Cookies, a recipe I cobbled together myself and Biscotti, a recipe that one of my customers from when I was still doing hair gave me, her name was Alpha Bertolucci. The recipe is in her handwritting. Years later I supervised a women named Carmen, she brought in some homemade Biscotti. I told her that they tasted just like the one’s I make. She said they were her Aunts recipe. I said, and was her name Alpha? To which she replied yes. It’s a small world isn’t it?

The Raspberry Shortbread Cookies were my attempt to duplicate the same kind of cookie that Larsens Bakery in Berkeley, California sold when I was a kid. My Mom, brother and sister all said they were pretty darn close to Larsens. And they are a favorite of my Allergy Dept. nurses at Kaiser. I take them a tin every December, and have for the past 21 years.

Be sure to use SHINY cookie sheets, no burnt or brown grease on the top or bottom and no dark nonstick cookie sheets. Dark attracts heat, and contributes to burnt cookie bottoms. Always wash your cookie sheets until they are squeeky clean, any residual grease will burn on them the next time they are used. I bought some cheap cookie sheets at Cost Plus when we were first married, and with proper care I’m still using them 37 years later.

Eddie

 

[ea56]

A cube of Butter

is old time vernacular for 1 stick of butter, which also equals 1/2 cup, or 8 tbs., just in case anyone is wondering.
HTH
Eddie

 

[jamiel]

Speaking of which, anyone know why butter is sold in different type sticks on the West coast....much more cube-like where in the Midwest/east it's more stick-like?

 

[lordkenmore]

Speaking of which, anyone know why butter is sold in different type sticks on the West coast

 

Deranged whim of butter makers?

 

[lordkenmore]

It's probably been years since I last baked cookies... I seldom even see cookies, although sometimes people give me a few in December. (One year, perhaps in a pitiful moment, I bought a small package of cookies off the grocery store "day old" clearance rack, and pretended they were Christmas cookies.)

 

All I have are memories of better times...

 

One memory: sugar cookies that were rolled out and cut with cookie cutters. The cookie cutter shapes could be fun.

 

The last year we lived in my main childhood home: my mother baked Christmas cookies. She gave many away--I don't know all the people who got them, but I do remember us going over to give some to an elderly neighbor. My mother baked a new cookie that year that was interesting: it had cutouts with melted candy (Life Savers?) to form a stained glass look. (This may not be the recipe, but it looks like it might be close: https://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/magic-window-cookies/4f20515a-0c96-4726-8fde-fd37364fc33a)

 

 

 

 

[xraytech]

I have several favorite Christmas cookies.
As a small child my mother would bake and sell Christmas cookies, and for our Christmas party in Elementary school she would make a plate of cookies for each kid in the class to take home.
My favorites of hers are the Betty Crocker candy cane cookies, her chocolate meltaways (a Russian tea cake with mini chocolate chips), and she makes the best lady locks( home made dough, not puff pastry like a lot of folks do), and the thumbprint cookies rolled in walnuts and filled with homemade black raspberry jelly.

Then Grandma Diamond always makes the best Anise pizzelles using her Rival Pizzelle Maker

Probably my favorite cookies were the Hungarian Kiffles Grandma Rose used to make, following Mrs.Szunyog’s recipe. They were always filled with homemade stewed apricot filling and dusted with confectionary sugar.(pictured)
I now make these cookies, I’ll make a few with lekvar filling, but apricot is my favorite

 

[mattl]

I too make those in that combo. I recall discussing this quite a while back.  I'd like to add a strawberry filling this year to the apricot and prune, but need a thicker filling recipe.

 

[superocd]

I like those soft vanilla/sugar cookies with the frosting on top. I'm not much of a baker so I usually cheat and buy them at the bakery of a grocery store. My grandma, however, made them homemade and they were better. Unfortunately, she passed when I was in college and I never found the recipe.

 

[ea56]

Re: Reply #9

If you shop at Target their granulated sugar in the 4 lb. bag has a very good recipe on the bag for those soft sugar cookies with the frosting that your Grandma made for you. I’ve made them before and they were easy and very good.

So, get thee to Tar-jay,LOL
HTH
Eddie

 

[ea56]

Re: Reply #9 Above

Sorry for any confusion, it was late and I was sure I was replying to #9, my bad, the above post re: Soft Sugar Cookies was meant to be in reply to superocd”s post directly above mine, his is reply #8.

Eddie

 

[washerboy]

Sanding sugar

Speaking of cookies...does anyone know how to get the same "heavy" sugar on cut out cookies at home like the bakery does?/tks

 

[ea56]

Mark

I think you can find sanding sugar where ever Wilton cake decorating suppies are sold. Walmart has a section dedicated to Wilton in my area. I’ve also seen Wilton suppies and products at craft stores like Micheal’s Berevrly’s and JoAnnes. And I bet you can also get it on Ebay too.,

HTH
Eddie

 

[lordkenmore]

If you shop at Target their granulated sugar in the 4 lb. bag has a very good recipe


So, get thee to Tar-jay

 

And if you don't shop Target, at least get there long enough to copy the recipe off that bag of sugar. LOL


 

I haven't tried that recipe (but then I haven't baked cookies in about 20 years...), but I do recall good experiences with using such recipes. My mother's recipe for oatmeal cookies--and which worked for me the times I made them--was whatever they printed on packages of Quaker oats.

 

[lordkenmore]

I'm not much of a baker so I usually cheat and buy them at the bakery of a grocery store. My grandma, however, made them homemade and they were better. Unfortunately, she passed when I was in college and I never found the recipe.

 

If Eddie's suggested recipe from the Target sugar bag isn't quite right it should still be possible to find something close to what your grandmother made.

 

I personally have never noticed much of a difference between cookies. Sugar Cookie A and Sugar Cookie B may be made by different people, quite possibly slightly different recipes, and definitely with different kitchens. But whatever differences there are so subtle that I don't notice them. I might notice side-by-side at a cookie tasting. But, say, eaten a year apart? They seem to be the same.

 

Also worth noting: from what I recall, one doesn't need to be much of a baker for cookies. They were one of the first things I ever baked, and I had success. The only times I've had problems have been when faced with a bad oven (my grandmother's oven just loved to burn cookies), or a recipe that's unusually cranky for some reason.

 

 

 

 

[this post was last edited: 11/29/2018-20:14]