Holiday Cookies 2020
It doesn’t even feel like December is halfway over. 15 days until we can say bye felicia to 2020.
The peculiarly warm weather aside (and I’m sure we’ll have a brutal Jan/Feb), it’s just been too damn calm and business as usual. Not drowning in Teddy Bear Tea + holiday corporate banquets + buffet prep is a refreshing change of pace, but without all the hubbub, it just doesn’t feel like the holidays to me anymore. I wouldn’t say I miss feeling like I'm drowning in sugar and butter and a neverending prep list, my head spinning so fast in the chaos that all I want in life id to sit down and never get back up again. But like, what is November and December without it?
Hotel life has broken me as a person.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the itch to make holiday cookie boxes for our building’s staff. Guess I can’t seem to spend a holiday season without making cookies until I wanna cry. At least this time, I’m only making like 3 dozen of each cookie instead of 3000. And I get to pick the varieties. It’s still a lot of cookies.
Buying all the non-food related supplies on Amazon was a bit painful. The ribbons, cookie boxes, cellophane bags, candy cane-shaped sprinkles, glittery colored sugar, all things I had at my fingertips and definitely took for granted. They are expensive and sold in wayyyy to huge a quantity, at too high a price, for me to keep all the time, so I had to choose and streamline. It wasn’t easy. And it was still $$$.
Holiday Cookies 2020
Gingerbread sandwich cookies with white chocolate & cream cheese filling
Cashew & cranberry linzer-style cookies
Dark chocolate-dipped spritz butter cookies
Palmiers
Mint chocolate thumbprint cookies
Tapioca coconut & pandan “meltaway” cookies
personalized “Happy Holidays” sugar cookie plaques
(bonus personalized dog bone cookies for those with dogs)
I drew this cookie key with my mouse during my down-time at work to include in the boxes. I love how bad it is, it’s so me.
I worked really hard to ensure they’re all different shapes and sizes and not all just round, and it really came together when I made this diagram!
More about the cookies, for the memories:
Gingerbread sandwiches: The original idea for these was to make gingersnaps but more chewy and soft, and turn them into something resembling oatmeal cream pies. A white chocolate filling evolved eventually into a cream cheese filling + white choc because I thought the tang would go well with the spice. As I thumbed through books for recipes and ideas, I came across Tartine’s “soft glazed gingerbread” recipe in two books and they sounded like a great dough for this application. It clearly held its shape and would handle a sweeter filling in lieu of a sugary glaze. The components ended up working well together.
Final recipe: Tartine’s Soft Glazed Gingerbread & Bravetart’s custard-based Cream Cheese Frosting +white chocolate
Cashew & cranberry linzer-style shortbread: technically not a linzer because I didn’t really add spice, but it is jam + shortbread! I actually just really wanted to use the cranberries I had leftover from Thanksgiving, and flipping through my notebook, I remembered how much I loved these tender and nutty cashew shortbreads. So 2+2 = 5.
Final recipe: Andrea’s Cashew shortie dough + cranberry jam to taste - Maybe I will blog about this one and write this recipe out.
Dark chocolate dipped spritz butter cookies: I added this one at the very last minute during my recipe deep dive. I can’t exactly remember what I swapped it out for, but I’m really glad I decided to include THE cookie tin cookie, the very classic spritz butter cookie. I didn’t feel like making another type of jam, so I thought I’d coat them in chocolate and sprinkles, sort of like how the old school bakeries do them (in my mind, at least?). But also, I didn’t feel like buying compound chocolate and ended up forcing myself into tempering chocolate after a long day of baking all the damn cookies. But in the end, they turned out so well. My arms hurt from stirring the chocolate, but I did it! I think this was my favorite cookie.
Final recipe: The Baking Bible’s butter cookie dough + chocolate and sprinkles
Palmiers: When I thought about the classic cookie tins from my childhood that were always repurposed into storage containers, I always remembered them to have palmiers. But my memory turned out to be full of lies?? Because according to the internet they seem to just have a butter cookie in the shape of a pretzel… Anyway, I wanted to make palmiers and randomly remembered Claire from BA’s pre-cancelled times making palmiers in a video about pantry desserts, so I made a pie dough, stuck some sugar in it, and called it a day. They were so easy and delicious, but I really did them dirty by rushing the cutting and baking step in the end. They could have been so good if I just let the dough thaw for 10-15 minutes instead of trying to cut through very brittle frozen butter. Wish I had time for a redo :’(
Final recipe: Bravetart’s pie dough (which is pretty much a rough puff) + Claire’s video for assembly reference. The bravetart dough always baked too crispy in a pie for my personal taste, but it was perfect for glass-shatteringly crisp palmies.
Chocolate & peppermint thumbprint cookies: These were an overall disappointment. I really felt the need to include something chocolatey and nut-free and not a circular shortbread because 2 other things were buttery shortbread type things with nut. So I looked online for a chocolate thumbprint dough. I needed something that didn’t spread and didn’t feel like experimenting with my thumbprint dough recipes amidst everything else I had going on. Not only was this a real pain to assemble, but guess what?? They spread! I had to smush them back into shape mid-bake and re-print a hole. At least the ganache kisses I did were cute.
Final recipe: Sally’s Baking Addiction with less peppermint, and typical 1:1 dark chocolate ganache
Tapioca coconut & pandan “meltaways” (kanom ping): These were cute! I included these just to have something cute and different. At least they turned out exactly how I imagined them to be. I imagine the texture of a tapioca cookie and the way it sort of coats the palate and slowly melts might take people for surprise, but they have a really nice aromatic aroma and the colors turned out super cute and festive.
Final recipe: Pailin’s kanom ping video
Decorated sugar cookies: I really ran out of steam with these ones. Initially, I wanted to challenge myself and really take my time and be patient enough to make them beautiful, because sugar cookies are really not my strong suit. But of course, I had no time. I ended up going with a very simplified design and tried very hard to remember everything my dear coworker Thanya taught me back in the day and summoned her spirit within me. It didn’t work entirely. But I think I did better than would have at work, on my 11th hour of my 11th straight day, when I just want to go home.
Final recipe: Sweet Sugar Belle’s Sugar Cookie Recipe at Thanya’s suggestion (a very nice recipe that handles extremely well and allows you to roll the dough out right away) + royal icing by feel
Dog cookies: I only have one dog cookie recipe because like I said, dogs don’t care. I could switch it up, but what’s the point? This recipe is reliable and relatively healthy. For ~~the holidays~~, I mixed in some chopped turkey bacon that I blanched and rinsed several times to get rid of as much salt (and flavor, probably) as possible.
So yeah. Cookies. My whole apartment smells like butter. I smell like butter. My leg hurts from standing. I’m exhausted. It’s nice. It feels right.
Happy Holidays. Bye 2020 :wave:
The biggest challenge of this whole ordeal was definitely the lack of space. There's no way to keep everything out of dog’s reach without sacrificing time and efficiency. I had to creatively stack and juggle, wasting more time than I would have liked. Only having 2 flat-ish half sheet trays and 3 quarter sheet trays didn’t help either.
But it doesn’t feel much too different than at the Ritz, when the cluttered pastry kitchen was over capacity every single holiday season. Definitely brought me back to those days, 8 long months ago. Seems like a lifetime ago.
The actual cookies, in real life.