10 Mar
St. Patrick’s Day Shamrock Cookies
Posted by Michelle as Cookies | 26 Comments
St. Patrick’s Day is a week away and there are certainly throngs of people preparing for all-green celebrations starting this weekend. Once the green beer starts flowing, you’ll be in need of snacks. Always a crowd favorite, I love any excuse to decorate sugar cookies, so I couldn’t let St. Patrick’s Day float on by without dressing up some shamrocks. I made a few different varieties, but I think I’m partial to the sprinkles and the smiley. Check out the close-ups below and let me know which is your favorite!
03 Mar
Chocolate-Dipped Shortbread Cookies
Posted by Michelle as Cookies | 35 Comments
I believe in balance. For example, if I eat three massive pieces of pepperoni pizza for dinner (yum) I will try my hardest to not eat dessert. On the contrary, if I have managed to tame my eating for most of the day, I believe in a sweet reward (thus undoing that entire day of not-horrible eating, but hey, we only go around once, right?). And since yesterday’s post was the somewhat advanced, time-consuming and ingredient-heavy (albeit delicious) recipe for yeasted coffeecake, I thought that a simple recipe with pantry ingredients would be a breath of fresh air today. Plus, shortbread cookies provide a great stepping stone into what is sure to be two weeks full of Irish-inspired recipes as we prepare to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Shortbread cookies are one of the simplest recipes you can make with ingredients that are usually always at the ready – butter, sugar, vanilla, flour and salt. That’s it! And if you want to dip them in chocolate, then of course chocolate. You’ll find no shortage of chocolate in my pantry!
24 Feb
Peanut Butter-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Posted by Michelle as Cookies | 63 Comments
What you have here is the ultimate trifecta of cookie goodness:
Peanut butter? Check.
Oats? Check.
Chocolate Chips? Check.
And there you have it – pretty much the most amazingly flavored cookies you could ever imagine. A great big thank you goes out to Jane, a reader who so kindly sent me this recipe as a thank you for sharing my recipes. She received this recipe from her mom, who found it on the back of a flour bag years ago and they have been a staple in her house ever since. I can certainly see why! As you might imagine, these are fabulous. Soft and tender from the peanut butter, a slight toasted flavor from the oats and just the right amount of sweetness from the chocolate chips. I think you’ll want to go ahead and start preheating your oven before you even read the rest of this post…
03 Feb
Cranberry-White Chocolate Almond Biscotti
Posted by Michelle as Cookies | 15 Comments
I came up with these biscotti well over a year ago and have been making them on a fairly regular basis (well, as regular as biscotti baking can be), yet they have never graced the good ol’ site here. I’ll chalk that up to them disappearing so fast when I actually do make them! They are by far the favorite among my family and friends. They are always the first to go when there are different batches of biscotti to choose from and especially around the holidays, that’s a lot. I mean, there are your plain biscotti for the less adventurous, a more classic anise biscotti, and a savory Parmesan-Black Pepper biscotti, and countless other variations. So as you can see, for a biscotti-loving clan, no compliment could be greater than to actually proclaim a favorite. When my cousin got married last November and I was asked to bake some biscotti for the cookie table, I thought for sure that the Chocolate-Pistachio Biscotti would steal the show. Oh, how wrong I was. My grandma came over wanting to know where the almond cranberry biscotti were, so she could make sure to get some before they were snatched up. I was certain that my Chief Culinary Consultant, who absolutely loves pistachios, would much prefer the chocolate-pistachio variation. Wrong yet again! He thought these were far superior. So there you have it – the true test of a cookie’s worth can be summed up by its popularity at the wedding cookie table and the holiday buffet.
By the way, have you heard of cookie tables at weddings? It seems to be a very regional, Pittsburgh-based tradition which I talked about in the Chocolate-Pistachio Biscotti post. About a month later a story about cookie tables was written in the New York Times; it’s an interesting read, and I encourage you to hop on over and give it a glance!
05 Jan
Rugelach
Posted by Michelle as Cookies | 24 Comments
I absolutely adore rugelach and can’t believe that it took me so long to make them myself. Ironically, I made them the same day that I made the Chocolate Babka – it was a Jewish baking extravaganza! The history of rugelach, much like babka, is that they were first brought to America by Eastern European immigrants and are popular during Jewish holidays. Rugelach is made up of a wonderfully tender cream cheese dough and is filled with dried fruit, chocolate, or nuts or a combination of all three. Most versions include raisins which is what I filled half of mine with, and the other half I filled with dried figs. I just love figs and look for any excuse to use them! These would also be fabulous brushed with raspberry jam and filled with bittersweet chocolate. Yum!
09 Dec
Nut Crescents
Posted by Michelle as Cookies | 20 Comments
Also known as Nut Horns. Also very, very similar to the ever-popular Snowballs a.k.a. Mexican Wedding Cookies a.k.a. Russian Tea Cookies. So many different names! These cookies are made of a buttery, shortbread style dough with ground nuts. After they are baked and cooled they are rolled in powdered sugar, giving the cookies a sugary-sweet kiss that will have all the kids running (be on the lookout for white fingerprints!). The original recipe calls for a mix of walnuts and almonds, but I decided to go with all walnuts; I love walnuts much more than almonds and I had a big bag of them thanks to a recent stock-up trip to Sam’s Club. This is a great cookie to include in Christmas tins or baskets, as they keep well at room temperature for about a week.
04 Dec
Chewy Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies
Posted by Michelle as Cookies | 20 Comments
So, in order to understand why I felt the urge to whip up oatmeal raisin cookies in the midst of holiday baking season, you’ll need to know a little more about me. You already know that I love food and love to bake. And for the most part, I’m a girl’s girl. But… There’s a bit of tomboy lurking beneath the surface that comes out from time to time. Maybe you caught wind of my love for hockey and football when I made the Pittsburgh Penguins cookies earlier in the year for the Stanley Cup Finals or when I made the Pittsburgh Steelers cookies for the start of football season this fall. But wait, there’s more… Not only am I a crazy hockey and football fan (and currently waaaay too into my fantasy football team – it’s my first year playing), but I can’t get enough of the NHL09 game on PlayStation. My Chief Culinary Consultant and I can play for hours on end. I’m not even all that good, but winning every 4 or 5 games keeps me pretty well addicted.
So, where do the oatmeal raisin cookies come in? Well, over Thanksgiving weekend we were watching a Pens game and the announcers were talking about Matt Cooke, a scrappy 3rd liner (apologies for the hockey talk), who is affectionately nicknamed “Cookie”. They told a story about being on a recent road trip and at breakfast in the team hotel, Matt Cooke requested a cookie, saying that he eats a cookie everyday. And the cookie he requested? Oatmeal Raisin. First of all, it made me hungry for them as soon as I heard, and secondly, it was too fun a story and I felt like I HAD to make them.
01 Dec
Chocolate Sandwich Cookies (Homemade Oreos)
Posted by Michelle as Cookies | 57 Comments
One word: Amazing. If you have any affinity for Oreo cookies at all, you will happily devour these without looking back. Two chocolate wafer cookies that sandwich a vanilla cream between them – if you close your eyes you may not even notice that they didn’t come out of a blue package. Well, that’s not entirely true. They are better because they’re homemade, of course. The familiar chocolate wafer packs an insane amount of richness and a perfectly balanced flavor, thanks to the use of Dutch-processed cocoa powder. And the vanilla cream in the middle? The texture is perfect and you can easily twist these apart just like you did when you were a kid. Whether you lick off the cream the middle, eat one side at a time, or dunk the whole thing in milk, one thing is certain: you will absolutely enjoy eating these. You’ll feel like a kid again, all while enjoying a grown-up, non-processed version of a favorite cookie.
30 Nov
Empire Cookies + Giveaway!
Posted by Michelle as Cookies, Giveaways | 319 Comments
We are one day away from December and this past weekend has thrown me completely into Christmas mode. To be honest, it really doesn’t take much, but two days of Black Friday shopping and a few Christmas carols, and I am ready to dive head first into the shopping, gift wrapping, and holiday baking. My grandma has made empire cookies around the holidays for as long as I can remember, and they have always been one of my favorites. My loving them is a bit surprising since I usually prefer rich desserts, but I can never get enough of the buttery shortbread-type cookies with jam sandwiched between them and topped with a simple icing. I can’t believe they haven’t been on the site prior to this, so I’m thrilled to share them with you. Let the holiday baking begin!
23 Nov
Chocolate-Pistachio Biscotti
Posted by Michelle as Cookies | 26 Comments
A cousin of mine got married over the weekend and as is customary for most weddings in the Pittsburgh area, they had a large cookie table filled with goodies made by family and friends. If you’re from another area of the country, or from another country altogether, is this a tradition where you live? I don’t think I’ve ever been to a wedding in this area and there not been a large display of cookies made by family and friends of the bride and groom. It seems to transcend ethnicity, age, and just about every other factor you can think of. I personally think it’s great – along with the traditional wedding cake, guests can grab a cup of coffee and a plate of cookies to have with dessert. Most couples also provide take-out boxes at the table so when you leave the wedding, you can take some cookies home with you. It’s a great option for people who don’t like cake, and you get to sample some of the recipes that have been in the bride’s and groom’s families for years.
I was asked if I could make a couple different variations of biscotti to be included in the cookie table, and I was happy to oblige. I asked the bride if she wanted anything in particular and she asked for almond biscotti with cranberries and white chocolate (which I have made before and which you will see here on the site soon) and a chocolate biscotti with some type of nuts. I thought that pistachio would be an unexpected and delicious accompaniment to the chocolate; after all, they went together wonderfully in the spumoni I made over the summer. So I ran with that flavor combination.
