White Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Today my daughter was supremely disappointed by a couple of her friends. As many mothers in the past, I decided to make cookies with her to assuage her sadness. We flipped through Martha's cookbook and decided on White Chocolate Chunk Cookies (page 172) because (a) we had all the ingredients and (b) it was the one cookie that both of my daughters and I could agree on.

These cookies are supremely easy to make - just mix up the ingredients, drop onto the baking sheet and slide into the oven! A relief after the last recipe! This recipe is rightly included in the "chunky and nutty" section as it has all kinds of goodies - oats, coconut and walnuts - which make it a very satisfying cookie. The recipe also calls for golden raisins, but my daughter requested I omit those and I happily obliged.

One of the comments on the web version of the recipe suggested substituting macadamia nuts for walnuts, and I think that would be a nice variation.

She was delighted with the result and declared them delicious!

Pecan Linzer Cookies with Cherry Filling

I was really excited to make these cookies and use my new Linzer cookie cutters. These cookies are the Pecan Linzer Cookies with Cherry Filling (page 137) from the "crumbly and sandy" section of Martha's cookbook.

These cookies are named after the city of Linz, Austria and are a holiday tradition in that part of Europe. I just wanted a tasty treat and a chance to use my new baking toy!

Traditionally, linzer cookies use hazelnuts, but this recipe called for pecans. The recipe had several steps, including toasting the pecans, grinding the pecans with cinnamon and sugar, mixing and refrigerating the dough, rolling it out and cutting the pieces, baking the cookies and finally assembling them. Wow! When I write it all out, it seems like a lot of work! But, it honestly didn't take long and I was able to fit in the baking while making dinner and then before I put the kids to bed.


Here's a picture of the cookies after they have been baked. I was very impressed with how they turned out. They held their shape very well. The cookies themselves are not terribly sweet, but with the addition of the jam and powdered sugar they are just sweet enough. They are absolutely gorgeous, and I quite like the delicious combination of the pecans & cherry. Yum!

Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies

This is my first "do-over" recipe. I tried making these cookies for my husband to take on his poker weekend, but I accidentally used bittersweet instead of semi-sweet chocolate. Let me just say, it was not a happy accident. Huge waste of time and ingredients.

In any case, I was excited to give Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies (page 67) a second chance. By the way, these are cookies pictured on the cover of Martha's cookie cookbook so somebody must like them!

They are an unexpected mix of flavors - bitter and sweet. They have a nice crunchy outside and a chewy, gooey, chocolately inside. My husband went crazy for them. They are a little bitter for me. The online comments on the web recipe are somewhat divided. This seems to be one of those recipes you either love or hate.

I followed the recipe pretty much to the letter and the cookies are beautiful and tasty.

Chocolate Crackles

Finally, I cookie that was simple to prepare! I feel like I have been tackling all kinds of crazy cookie recipes lately, and this one was refreshingly easy. I flipped through the cookbook quickly, looking for something I could make with one stick of butter, since that was all I had. I discovered Chocolate Crackles (page 68) in the "soft and chewy" section.

I am in love with these cookies. They are beautiful, and SO DELICIOUS. These are the dangerous kind of cookie that I could devour a whole in batch in about 90 seconds. They are very rich and chocolately, but because they use bittersweet chocolate and not much sugar, they aren't very sweet.

Instead of using a full eight ounces of bittersweet chocolate, I combined six ounces of bittersweet with two ounces of semi-sweet chocolate, and achieved the perfect level of sweetness.

Hamantaschen

It's Purim time! Which means it's time for hamantaschen! Seriously, you have to love a holiday that has a cookie as it's featured food (find some interesting commentary on what hamantaschen are here). Of course, Martha Stewart is too goyische to include a hamantaschen recipe in her Cookies cookbook, but she does have a recipe on her website. So, in the spirit of this blog project, I baked her recipe rather than a more traditional one.

Obviously, Martha can't do anything the simple way, so her recipe is fairly time-consuming and involves refrigerating the dough throughout the baking process. She also includes a recipe for making your own poppyseed filling, but since this is not one of the "official" cookbook recipes, I eschewed that in favor of storebought dessert fillings.

One of most obvious differences between Martha's recipe and the more traditional ones is the inclusion of orange zest and freshly squeezed orange juice in the dough. You can definitely taste it and the orange adds a citrusy zing without being overpowering. I'm sure you could omit it without any ill effects if you so chose.

I filled my hamantaschen with poppyseed, apple, cherry, chocolate chip, white chocolate chip and spiced gingerbread butter. The poppyseed and fruit fillings were Baker products (easily located in the baking section of your grocery store) and their thick consistency held up well. One year, my husband tried using jam to fill the hamantaschen with poor results because of their high water content.

Unfortunately, the chocolate chip fillings were less successful. For whatever reason, the sides of the hamantaschen triangle collapsed and they just looked like blobs. Tasty blobs, but blobs nonetheless.

The recipe suggested that it will yield 60 cookies but I got closer to 35-40 cookies out of it.

Coconut-Cream Cheese Pinwheels

My husband asked me to slow down with the cookie-making because we have had way too many sweets in the house, so it has been a few days since my last batch of cookies. I thought it was time to break out the baking gear, though and picked a doozie for today!

Martha's recipe for Coconut-Cream Cheese Pinwheels (page 61) is extremely labor-intensive, but as you can see from the picture, produces beautiful, impressive-looking cookies. While the recipe is certainly time-consuming, none of the tasks are difficult. This is a wonderful cookie for a party or a baby shower.

In her cookbook, Martha recommends using a fluted cookie cutter and pastry wheel, but since I don't own those tools, I simply used a square cookie cutter and a sharp knife and I still thought the cookies looked gorgeous.

Coconut is only used in the filling and is not an overpowering flavor in these cookies. In fact, if you don't like coconut, you could easily omit it and still have a delicious cookie. The amount of filling is well more than enough for the recipe - in fact, you could halve the amount and still have enough.

I used a baby spoon for doling out the filling and the jams and that worked beautifully. I used both strawberry and raspberry jams, but found that the raspberry was a better choice because it had more substance while the strawberry jam ran a little (but still tasted yummy!).

Chocolate Cookie Cutouts

We have been snowed in for the past few days, so what better activity to do with the kids than bake cookies!? Of course, Valentine's Day is upon us so I wanted to make something heart-shaped. I tried out Martha's Chocolate Cookie Cutouts (page 239) recipe.

I made the dough last night, and refrigerated it overnight. When I took it out of the refrigerator to roll out this morning, it was fairly hard. But with some muscle power, I was able to roll it out thinly onto the parchment paper. I also got to use my new kiddie cookie cutter from Sur La Table. I had to press the nonpareils into the cookies to get them to stay put.

I was so impressed with the cookies when they came out of the oven! In the past, when I have made cutout cookies, the shapes have oozed and turned into giant glops that in no way resemble the intended shapes. These were perfect hearts! They were beautiful and tasted yummy too. They weren't too sweet (my husband suggested they would be delicious made into a sandwich cookie with icing in between). This recipe was in the "crispy & crunchy" section of the cookbook, but the cookies were soft and delicate when I made them.

Since it's Valentine's Day, I wanted to make more heart cookies, especially since one of my daughters is not a huge fan of chocolate. I also wanted to try out my new Kuhn Rikon cookie press. I bought it to use with one of the Martha recipes, but I haven't been able to find a key ingredient so today, I just used the recipe in the booklet that came with the press.

The press came with 14 different disks that shape the cookies, including hearts, flowers and of course, pumpkins and bats, among others. It took only a minute to figure out how to assemble it and insert the dough, and soon enough, I had perfect little hearts! They were fairly small, so I could fit LOTS of them on one cookie sheet. I can't wait to try out all the other shapes!