Cookies for redheads!

Someone -- not saying who -- baked a special batch of cookies just for me yesterday. (No, not that kind. More's the pity, right?) They were hand-delivered right to my front door in a small paper bag.

They were, I was told, special cookies because I'm a redhead, and these cookies are a classic recipe made from ginger and molasses known as ginger snaps. Ginger snaps for a ginger! Yummy!

Classic ginger snaps

I confess, the last thing I need to eat is more cookies. (Notice I said eat more cookies. I did not say I don't need more cookies. I digress.)

Coraline and I went to a cookie swap Tuesday night and swapped 5 dozen lime-in-the-coconut balls and salted dark chocolate shortbreads for 5 dozen assorted other cookies. We came home with a ton of cookies to go with the rest of the balls and shortbreads I had here. A few of them made it into the freezer.

So my ass really does not need more cookies. But I am a ginger, and I do love me a good, fresh ginger snap, so I reached into the bag and pulled one out. It was delicious. I reached in again, but this time I didn't pull out the round cookie I expected. No, this one was ..... this one was .... OMG, I thought. Is that what I think it is? No! Yes! Could it really be a .....?

A new classic

Yes, it was exactly what I thought it was. A vagina! A vagina-shaped cookie called ..... wait for it ...... a ginger snatch!

Early Merry Christmas to me! Sometimes it doesn't suck at all to be a ginger.

Cookies are so 2011

I was in cookie mode much of December ..... oh, you had to go there, didn't you? .... I baked, gave away and, to the utter dismay of my ass, ate dozens of cookies this month. All of them were from new recipes--thank you, Pinterest. I also whipped up a couple of barks instead of making actual candy. It's fast, easy, and reliable. (Sorry, Grandma. It was too rainy to make divinity. Next year.)

I'm not including every recipe I tried. One, like the black raspberry galotte, made from the raspberries I picked while earning myself a nasty sunburn last summer, isn't ready to share yet. Why, you ask? It's simple, really. The galotte dripped as it cooked, in spite of the foil I put under the rack to catch drips. It dripped into the bottom of the oven and then as I was baking a boule (bread) soon after I took out the galotte, the juice caught on fire in the bottom of the oven. When I opened the oven door to deal with the fire, the parchment paper I was baking the boule on caught fire as well, making not one, but two fires in the oven. That's not a story about cookies though, so I'm not going to tell it. I will however share that I smacked the bread in anger right before I threw it away. One of my guests said, "It's just not Christmas if you don't spank the bread." Best quote of the day.

Here, as promised, are the recipes I tried this season, along with adaptations and notes,* because I rarely do it just like I'm told to.

A plate of cookies and bark ready to go to a community Christmas dinner put on by a local seafood restaurant.

Snickerdoodle Blondies

2 2/3 cups unbleached white flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups packed brown sugar

1 cup butter, at room temperature

2 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons white sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a 9 x 13-inch pan.

2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar for about 3 minutes. Add the eggs and vanilla; beat until smooth. Mix in baking powder and salt, then the flour until it’s blended in.

3. Spread evenly in the prepared pan, smoothing with a knife. Combine white sugar and cinnamon in a little bowl. Evenly sprinkle the mixture over the top of the batter.

4. Bake 25-30 minutes or until the surface springs back when gently pressed.

Note: This was the most popular "cookie" I made this year. They're fast and easy, and they taste amazing. I baked three pans of them and passed the recipe on to friends who also made them. While the taste is similar to a traditional snickerdoodle, a thick bar like this can't mimic a cookie. No, the recipe doesn't call for cream of tartar. If you want to keep with tradition, use cream of tartar and baking soda instead of baking powder.

Lemon Crinkle Cookies

 

1/2  cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 teaspoon lemon zest

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking powder
⅛ teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Whip in vanilla, egg, lemon zest, and juice.
3. Stir in all dry ingredients (except powdered sugar) slowly until just combined.
4. Pour powdered sugar on a large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.
5. Bake for 9-11 minutes or until bottoms begin to barely brown and cookies look matte (not melty or shiny). Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes before transferring to cooling rack. 

Note: Proving those Mormon women can cook something besides Jello, these are my current favorite lemon cookie. Might as well just double the recipe. It's worth your time to use fresh lemon zest and juice. The dough will be too soft to roll into balls in your hands like a snickerdoodle. Just plop a spoonful into the powdered sugar and gently roll and coat it. Don't overbake. They will firm up as they sit on the hot cookie sheet and rest.

Lemon Crinkle cookies

Salted Chocolate Shortbread Cookies

1¼ cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I use dark)
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 stick plus 3 tablespoons (11 tablespoons) butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup light brown sugar
¼ cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoon fleur de sel or ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.
2. Whisk together the flour, cocoa and baking soda in a small bowl; set aside.
3. Beat butter on medium speed until soft and creamy. Add both sugars, salt and vanilla extract; beat for 2 minutes.
4. With the mixer off, add the dry ingredients. Turn the mixer on and off low speed (pulse) for a second or two about 5 times so that the flour mixture gets incorporated. Then mix on low speed for about 30 seconds, just until the flour disappears into the dough (the dough will look crumbly).
5. Turn the dough out onto a piece of plastic wrap and divide it in two. Shape each half into a 9-inch log. Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. (The dough can be refrigerated up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months. If you’ve frozen the dough, you don’t need to defrost before baking – just slice the logs into cookies and bake 1 minute longer.)
6. With a sharp thin knife, slice the logs into ½-inch thick rounds. Arrange the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving about 1 inch between them. Sprinkle a small amount of extra salt on top of each.
7. Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 11 minutes – they won’t look done, and won’t be firm, but that’s how they should be. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the cookies rest until they are only just warm, at which point you can serve them or let them reach room temperature. Store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.

Notes: Hard to believe I didn't lead with chocolate, isn't it? These are trendy as hell, what with the salt and all ( have no idea what the fuck fleur de sel is and I don't care), and they're so yummy, as long as you don't over-bake them--unless you like them crunchy. They really should be doughy when they come out for the best texture though. They continue to cook on the sheet after you remove them from the oven. If you want to see a prettier photo, go to the website. I didn't try to make mine rectangular. Life is too short.

Elvira said these look like poop. Or coal. So that's what she got in her stocking Christmas morning--poop and coal. Santa loves you, Elvira, but don't mock Mommer's cookies.

White-Chocolate Cherry Shortbread

½ cup maraschino cherries, drained and finely chopped
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar
1 cup cold butter
12 ounces white chocolate baking squares with cocoa butter, finely chopped
½ teaspoon almond extract
2 drops red food coloring (optional)
2 teaspoons shortening
White nonpareils and/or red edible glitter (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Spread cherries on paper towels and drain well.
3. In a large bowl, combine flour and sugar. Using a pastry blender or fork, cut in the butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in drained cherries and 4 ounces (2/3 cup) of the chopped chocolate. Stir in almond extract and, if desired, food coloring. Knead mixture until it forms a smooth ball.
4. Shape dough into 3/4-inch balls. Place balls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Using the bottom of a drinking glass dipped in sugar, flatten balls to 1½ -inch rounds.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 10 to 12 minutes or until centers are set. Cool for 1 minute on cookie sheet. Transfer cookies to a wire rack and let cool.
6. In a small saucepan, combine remaining 8 ounces white chocolate and the shortening. Cook and stir over low heat until melted. Dip half of each cookie into chocolate, allowing excess to drip off. If desired, roll dipped edge in nonpareils and/or edible glitter. Place cookies on waxed paper until chocolate is set. Makes about 60.

Note: This is my least favorite of the cookies I tried this season. In fact, I don't intend to keep this recipe. However, other people loved them, so try them and see. I'm not a fan of the white chocolate, so that's a strike already. I also had trouble making the dough come together. I finally added some cherry juice to bind it. If I were going to tweak these, I might try them with dark or bittersweet to see how I like that combination. Drake and I also decided we liked them better without the dip. They're not as pretty, but the dip detracted from the cherry flavor. They are pretty though, and provide color balance against chocolate cookies on a plate.

Cranberry Pistachio Dark Chocolate Bark

4.5 oz shelled salted pistachios, coarsely chopped
2.5 oz dried cranberries, coarsely chopped
7 oz dark chocolate bar (I used Hershey's Special Dark)

1. Place chocolate in a microwave-safe measuring cup; microwave on high 1 minute or until chocolate melts, stirring every 15 seconds.
2. Add nut mixture to melted chocolate, stirring until just combined. Spread mixture evenly on a jelly-roll pan or cookie sheet lined with foil; freeze 1 hour. Break into pieces.

Note: This "candy" is super easy. I doubled the recipe to fit an entire cookie sheet, so don't expect 7 ounces of chocolate to make a panful. The recipe doesn't specify what kind of cranberries to use, so I used unsweetened from the heath food store. Next time, I'll try Craisins. They're sweetened, but they also have a brighter flavor. I ran out of pistachios, so I chopped up some salted almonds for about 1/4 of the recipe. They tasted fine.

Candy Cane Bark

1 pound high-quality bittersweet chocolate,  chopped
1 cup chopped/crushed candy canes, divided
½ cup chocolate wafer cookies (such as  Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers), lightly crushed
1 ounce high-quality white chocolate, melted

1. Line a large baking sheet with foil.
2. Stir bittersweet chocolate in a medium metal bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water until melted. Or melt in a glass bowl or measuring cup in the microwave. Stir in ¾ cup chopped candy and the crushed cookies.
3. Spread over foil. Sprinkle ¼ cup candy over mixture. Drizzle with melted white chocolate. Chill in freezer until set, about 30 minutes.  Break into shards.

Notes: This recipe originally came from a much more complicated dessert on the Bon Appetit website, where they call this candy cane brittle. I don't know what they're thinking, but it's not a brittle (think peanut brittle.) It's a simple bark. Crush the candy canes in a plastic bag so they don't go all over the place. Drake smashed them with a meat mallet. Or you could use your food processor. I didn't have plain chocolate cookies, so I used Girl Scout Thin Mints. I crushed them between sheets of waxed paper with a rolling pin, and then removed most of the frosting that stuck to the paper. If you want to be lazy, don't drizzle the white chocolate. It's purely aesthetic. I also ran out of bittersweet chocolate, so about I used about 1/4 dark chocolate. Either will work.

Candy Cane Bark

That's it. You are unlikely to set your kitchen on fire with these recipes, so go ahead and start making cookies for the new year. They're all relatively easy, and they make a nice variety together on a plate. I took some to a friend's birthday party, to our final performance of Scrooge!, and to a caroling party. I also gave some as gifts and donated a tray to a community dinner for a friend who can't bake, but wanted to give to the dinner. And then I served them at my own Christmas dinner.

Cookies. You know I love cookies, right? (Still waiting. Patient, I am.) Seriously, if I could make a living baking cookies, I would be all up in the cookies all day every day. Mmmm hmmmm.

* The website for the original recipe is linked in the title.

Christmas week rambling

What a week! Am I right? I thought once Scrooge! was over I'd find some free time to zip in here and write something rude dirty pornographic profound, but instead Santa's elves tied me up with strings of Christmas lights and spanked me with candy canes I spent most of the week getting ready to celebrate the reason for the season: Christmas carols, presents, Christmas dinner, and cookies. Lots of cookies--baking, that is. But the next post is about cookies; this one is not.

Just so you'll believe that I'm not malingering, here is a brief synopsis of the week.

• With less than a week to go, I finally got both kids here at the same time to decorate the tree. Lots of memories in those ornaments. They go back over 30 years. I love the ones with photos of the kids when they were  little. I wish I'd made a photo ornament every year for each of them. On the top of the tree is the paper angel with a photo of me on the face that I made in kindergarten. It sat on top of my grandma's tree every year when I was growing up. I thought it had been thrown away after she died, but my aunt had it and gave it to me years later. Coraline tried to help by grabbing and stuffing everything she could reach into her mouth. Next year we'll have to put the ornaments only on the top half of the tree.

Fuck Martha Stewart. This is not her tree.

• I wrote a few weeks ago here that we were going into hell week for Scrooge! and I felt like I needed a massage and a soak in a hot tub. Two days later another Scrooge! cast member gave me a gift certificate for a free massage from a licensed medical message therapist!* I know, right? Turns out her name wasn't Sven, and she was a crazy fucking sadist but she had a very firm touch (which I asked for). She found every single pressure point on my body and stabbed flaming, hot pencils into them. It hurt, but in a good away .... like when she stopped torturing me releasing my pressure points, I felt tremendous relief from the pain she was causing. After the hour was up, she told me my back had been so tense it felt like I had rocks and pebbles under my skin instead of muscles. I'm pretty sure she didn't mean I have a sexy hard body. She definitely worked out some kinks though. I'll be going back to her once I heal from this massage. I needed that.
• For the past many years I've hosted a Yule ritual and dinner at my house. For several reasons I don't need to go into, this year I didn't. I was out singing Christmas carols at an outdoor mall last week as a fund-raiser for one of the local community theaters when a new friend asked me if I was holding my annual ritual. I explained that I didn't plan to celebrate this year. By the time I got home that night, she had sent me an invitation to attend a ritual and potluck at her new apartment*. I took my sorely relaxed muscles, a pot of vegetarian white chili, and a  homemade focaccia and enjoyed a meaningful, intentional observance of the darkest day in spite of myself. And maybe let go of a few things I needed to drop.
•  After I left, I joined a bunch of theater friends for "shake off the post-play blues" karaoke. At one point we had nine people crammed around a table for four, but it was like loaves and fishes. As people showed up, somehow we found more room and more chairs in a crowded bar. It's hard for me to believe that a year ago I didn't even know most of the people at the table, or I didn't know them well*. Lots of photos showed up on Facebook that night. ....You are the dancing queen ....
• As much fun as karaoke was though, the next day my voice was trashed. Not from singing, but from talking over the commotion in a loud bar for hours. Normally I'd just let it rest, but the music director for Scrooge! had asked me to sing with his choir on Christmas Eve. I couldn't resist the opportunity to sing with a pipe organ and a brass band*. Thursday was the only time I could rehearse with them, so rehearse I did, and I dragged the Diplomat along with me. The choir members seemed impressed that members of the Scrooge! cast had come to sing with them. I'm sure they were less than impressed after I croaked my way through the three songs we're performing. Or maybe they didn't even hear me over the brass band in front of us and the pipe organ behind us. I certainly couldn't hear me. In fact, I can only assume I was singing.
• And yet after the choir rehearsal I hurried to a caroling party at the home of Steampunk Cindy and Grogilingus**, so I could sing rasp Christmas carols in the rain*. It's the first time I've carried an umbrella while I was caroling (where's the fucking snow?), but about a fourth of the party--fortified by mulled wine and sugar--braved the weather to entertain those neighbors we found at home. We rewarded ourselves with more sugar and more mulled wine when we were done. I'll go to the gym next week. Really I will.
• I have not sung a note today. Like a big fucking diva, I'm saving my sweet soprano for tomorrow night's Christmas Eve service. I didn't even sing in the van on my way to and from Kroger, which was as crowded as a fucking tribble reunion on the Starship Enterprise, and about as much fun. While I waited in a very long line at the checkout, I pulled a bottle of wine off the shelf and split it with the guy behind me and then stashed the empty bottle behind the magazine display took out my new Kindle and read a Stephen King book. If King hasn't written a horror novel about shopping the two days before Christmas, he should. If you have to go out shopping tomorrow, I highly recommend getting drunk before you leave home and carrying a flask for fortification,  which is legal as long as you keep your blood alcohol level under .08 while you're driving simply carrying along a book or magazine to read in case you have to wait in line. It's quite relaxing.
• Tonight I'd hit the limit. Instead of accepting an invitation to go out with friends again, I stayed home and baked several dozen cookies and stirred up a couple of kinds of candy. More on that, including recipes, tomorrow. Drake has been home since last Friday, and this is the first night we've had a chance to just hang out. The turkey is thawing for Christmas dinner, and thanks to my shopping trip I have 5 pounds of butter and a gallon of whipping cream in my fridge, but I don't have any presents wrapped yet. Go ahead, Stephen King. Try to top the horror of going to bed the night before Christmas Eve without a single present wrapped. Even the Master of Horror himself can't beat that.

Tomorrow I promise I'll write about cookies--after I wrap the presents. I would trade cookies for present-wrapping. Any takers?
 

* Fuck November, the gratitude month. I have much to be grateful for in December.

** Yep, that's his nickname, and I didn't even give it to him. He tied a cherry stem into a knot in about 20 seconds flat at another party this past weekend, which made me want to experience multiple cookies with him .... except for his lovely wife who understandably wants those cookies for herself.