I love these cookies so much. They’re giant, and chewy, and full of all the spices of the holiday season - but not too spicy, lots of molasses flavor, and accented by a sweet sugar coating that causes delightful crusty crinkles all over. I actually can’t imagine making these at any other time of year (I think I actually have a mental restriction on the idea) which makes them that much more special. Molasses cookies come but once a year!
Read MoreA lot of holiday recipes can be quite involved, and require fancy ingredients, which makes sense, because Christmas is a time to celebrate and pull out all the stops.
But sometimes you just need a break. You want something that’s delicious and festive but comes together in under an hour with ingredients you probably have on hand.
This chocolate peanut butter bark is just the thing. It’s quick and easy, and ridiculously addictive to eat. It freezes well, and makes a lovely gift.
Read MoreThese cookies are a refreshing change from the typical Christmas cookie assortment. They have a great texture - crumbly and studded with oats and chopped almonds, but not at all clumsy or chunky. The not-too-sweet, buttery cookie base is a perfect backdrop to the cranberry white chocolate pairing.
Read MoreI find few things as luxurious and festive as hazelnuts. Pricey, compared to other nuts, hazelnuts simply beg to be a Christmas splurge. So here they enter in for Day 11 of our Twelve Days of Cookies.
Read MoreSpritz are a Christmas cookie standard. Although deliciously simple, they can also be a bit…well, simple. They easily take the back seat to other, more indulgent, treats.
That’s why I’m so excited about these jazzed-up Christmas spritz. That simple butter cookie is piped into attractive rosette swirls, baked to a light golden crunch, smeared underside with creamy sweet dulce de leche, and then sandwiched to form a show-stopping treat.
Read MoreOur 7th Cookie in our 12 Day line up is chocolate drizzled, caramel coated nuts & popcorn aka crunch munch (yes, we’re coining the name). Wait, that’s not a cookie?! I guess we are fudging things a little. :) But, maybe after giving this a try, you’ll forgive us.
Read MoreOkaaaaaay, so I use bourbon in a lot of my desserts. Yes, I brought a bourbon walnut pie to an Octoberfest party and yes I accented my chocolate chess pie with a boozy bourbon whipped cream. My favorite bread pudding is bourbon raisin with a bourbon butter sauce that could make you tipsy. I love bourbon! Just gotta own it.
Read MoreChristmas has become our Italian holiday (where Easter we go full out Polish). And if there is something I’ve learned from living among Italians, they love their cookies. At any family gathering from weddings to funerals, there are platters upon platters of homemade cookies.
Read MoreOkay, so not cookies. But the fourth in our line-up for The Twelve Days of Cookies is a family staple during the Christmas season, so I couldn’t resist sneaking it in. Besides, these candy cane brownies wouldn’t be out of place at a cookie-exchange party, in a tin gifted to friends, or gracing your holiday dessert spread.
I don’t really like eating candy canes myself. I mean, maybe one per year. After that, their charm kind of wears off. And yet, you basically have to deck out your Christmas tree with candy canes…So, what to do with the excess? Crush them up, and sprinkle them over a deep cocoa brownie topped with a fluff of pink peppermint buttercream!
Read MoreOk, these cookies are kind of magical.
For one thing, they require very little preparation or fuss. I made them in the amount of time my 5-month-old was happy to sit in her bouncer. Magic.
They’re also gluten free. I know, that’s not always the best advertisement for baked goods, but it’s undeniably handy to have a couple GF recipes in your collection, like if you have a GF friend or relative … or if you set out to make cookies but you have no flour (yes, real life story, don’t ask, it has been a long week and it’s only Tuesday). But these cookies are so delicious that you would never even guess it. Magic.
And they are cookies, but they taste like brownies. Fudgy, chewy, chocolatey brownies. But no flour or butter needed! Like I said, magic.
I might add that found this recipe in Food52’s Genius Desserts cookbook. Magical AND genius.
Read MoreThis holiday season, we are so excited to be bringing you 12-days worth of sweet treats that will make for great gifting, sharing, leaving out for Santa, or gobbling up yourself as you wait for the coffee to brew on Christmas morning!
Day 1 of The Twelve Days of Cookies starts off with these delightful Lofthouse-style cookies. A blending of batters that meets somewhere between cookie and cake, these soft, buttery vanilla rounds bake up with a little dome reminiscent of a muffin top. Topped with a fluff of buttercream frosting and a shake of festive sprinkles, these cookies are irresistible to adults and children alike.
Read MoreMy sandbox read this afternoon* was a charming vintage book my MIL picked up at an estate sale, knowing it was exactly the sort of thing I’d love.
*there’s a very large sand pit in the backyard; many afternoons are spent here while the little girls dig around.
Read MorePutting a meringue layer in my cakes is quite possible the best thing I’ve ever thought to do in the kitchen. It adds such a delightfully light and airy crunch and sweetness. I’m hard pressed to think of a cake it wouldn’t work with (except maybe maybe a stodgy gingerbread or carrot cake), but it went especially well with this cake. Peppermint flavored meringue with chopped chocolate folded into it and baked till crisp and melt-in-your-mouth is like a holiday party in your mouth on its own, but layer it with red velvet cake, cream cheese frosting, a delicate minty whipped cream and crushed candy cane and you’re just hitting all the spots.
Read Morebriefly mentioned this book in my Advent post last year but I wanted to revisit it as Advent approaches. When my oldest kids were very young, I found it difficult to navigate this time of year. I had grown up with some pretty solid family traditions and carried expectations of the same into married life, but I found my husband and I rather fumbled through the first couple of Advents, unsure of what would be our own family traditions. And when the children were so young as to seem hardly aware and their memories weren’t very long term, lots of times it felt like we were just going through motions. Gradually, however, it all began to stick. They remembered one year what we had done in the last. The traditions were setting! Around that time, I purchased this sweet little book, Advent Storybook. I wanted something like an advent calendar, but which didn’t involve siblings fighting over a tiny piece of chocolate (a predominant memory of my childhood Advents). I wanted something that would help lead the kids’ anticipation for presents into a more fruitful season of patience and waiting.
Read MoreI was a middle child. Growing up, there was always a steady stream of books available for me to read. My parents must have acquired books for my older siblings as they reached new developmental stages, so by the time I was old enough to read, there was already a vast library to choose from. When I was finished with one book, I would sit in front of the towering shelves and look at the spines, all neatly arranged, trying to decide which to start on next. The question never was whether I would start another book. It was always, simply, which? I can remember fingering certain volumes, intrigued by their covers, just waiting for the time when their wonders would be accessible to me.
Recently, it dawned on me that it is one of my responsibilities, as a parent, to provide the opportunity for such wishful waiting to my own children. I want them to grow up with that same sense of eager anticipation.
Read MoreSo, for a few months there this was my favorite brownie recipe. But over the weekend I revisited my old favorite brownie recipe and, well, it's back to being my favorite. Because it is truly amazing. I don't know what I was thinking.
Actually, I do know what I was thinking. That other recipe is so quick to make, and comes out more like a standard brownie box mix. No-fuss, simple plain-old brownie goodness. Something you wouldn't feel bad about scooping ice cream on top. Or layering in an ice cream cake.
THIS Peppermint Fudge Brownie, on the other hand, stands alone. With a deep cocoa flavor, fudge-like consistency, peppermint filling and laden with chocolate chips, it would border on obscene to serve it with anything else.
Read MoreThe weeks before Christmas can be tricky. I'm like anyone else: I get all the warm and fuzzies when I see lights on houses, wreaths on doors, and hear Christmas jingles on the radio. But I'm just as interested in preserving the expectation of the weeks before Christmas as I am eager to celebrate it. After all, Christmas is about the birth of a baby, and just like with the birth of any other baby, the months beforehand are ones of preparation and joyful anticipation.
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