Tag Archives: Christmas Cookies

On the second night of Chanukah: Oat Pistachio Cookies

On the second night of Chanukah I made my true love Oat Pistachio cookies. I have been wanting to make them ever since I saw these cookies on Natasha’s beautiful blog, Butter Baking. Based on the traditional English cookie, The Hobnob, they are an oat based digestive cookie, coated in chocolate.

Buttery, crumbly and a bit chewy in the center, they are the perfect cookie to have with tea at bedtime. Some people even like to dunk them in their tea. I have never understood the appeal of this. Why would you take a perfectly good crunchy cookie and make it soggy?I decided to amp up the crispy factor by adding some finely chopped pistachios to the dough. Their delicate nutty flavour is a great partner for oats and whole wheat flour. These cookies call for Golden Syrup, which helps with keeping the texture a bit chewy. Golden Syrup is quite common in the U.K. It is not exactly the same as corn syrup, but if you can’t find it, corn syrup is ok as a substitute. I actually found it at Walmart!A coating of bittersweet chocolate takes these buttery, crumbly cookies to the next level.

Click here to print recipe for Oat and Pistachio Cookies.

On the first night of Chanukah: Pecan Toffee Squares

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On the first night of Chanukah I baked Pecan Toffee Squares for my true love. He thought they were pretty fantastic. I mean, what’s not to love? Buttery, crumbly shortbread base, crunchy toasted pecans in a sticky toffee filling, topped with a drizzle of milk chocolate and a light sprinkling of coarse salt, because that’s how we roll around here.Here’s a quick tutorial on how to line a baking pan with parchment paper.

flatten dough with bottom of measuring cup

Because the holiday of Chanukah lasts for 8 nights, I thought it would be fun to post sweet treats for 8 days in a row. The true meaning of Chanukah has nothing to do with sweets.

The celebration of Chanukah is beautifully explained by Rabbi Andrew Jacobs, on “Blog Shalom”, “The Maccabees were a tiny group of Jews who should not have been able to defeat the powerful Greeks. But they did! And because of this miracle, Judaism survived and did not become consumed by Greek culture. This story of miraculous survival repeats itself many times throughout Jewish history. Despite tremendous powers that have raged against us, nothing has stopped the Jewish people. This is a miracle.”

In our family, gifts are not traditionally exchanged, although there was one year when my husband shocked me by giving me one perfect gift after another for each of the 8 nights. I was going through a bit of a dark time and he thought the gifts might cheer me up a bit. By the fourth night I became suspicious, and realized he had a bit of help in choosing the gifts. He had enlisted the aid of his sister to be his shopping elf! In all honesty, the best gift he gave me that year was an introduction to a great therapist who helped me work through this difficult time. I am forever grateful for that.

Click here to print recipe for Pecan Toffee Bars.

Salted Skor Bar Shortbread

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If a cookie could be my Spirit Animal, (and in the fertile playground that is my mind, why the hell not), Salted Skor Bar Shortbread would be mine. These cookies embody everything that I aspire to be. Well balanced, little bit sweet, a little bit salty, with a bittersweet surprise mixed in.

The recipe is based on Martha’s Holiday Shortbread. In December 2012, my blogger friend Bobbi, over at Bob Vivant, wrote about her sister’s adaptation of them, which included the addition of lots of coarse sea salt and chocolate chips. She called them “addictive little buggers.” I deleted the chocolate chips and added chopped up Skor Bars (Heath Bars if you live in America). I think thay are cookie perfection.

If my husband and kids are reading this, please make sure that these cookies are served at my funeral. I am thinking that they could be passed around just before the eulogy starts. If they can pass out candies to throw at Bar Mitzvahs, why not Salted Skor Bar Shortbread at a funeral? I think that a little nibble while listening to all those funny, touching stories about me, would be quite fitting.

My girlfriend Sandy was helping me make these cookies last week. She is a curious person and asks lots of questions, a very endearing quality! She asked me why her oatmeal raisin cookies spread so flat in the oven and mine, using the exact same recipe, spread only slightly. The problem, I suspect is with her butter. Most cookie recipes call for room temperature butter. That does not mean butter that has been sitting on the counter all day. Take the butter out of the fridge and cut it into 1/2 inch cubes. Let it sit for about 30 minutes and it will be at the perfect temperature. Cool butter creams perfectly with sugar, trapping and holding onto air, allowing you to create a better dough. Once the dough is made, form it into a log and chill. You can make a round log or a square log. Square logs are simple to form.

These square cookies look so neat and tidy after slicing.Then all hell breaks loose in the heat of the oven and rogue bits of toffee escape from the dough, forming delicious nooks, crannies and tails of very deeply flavoured toffee, just on the verge of being burnt, providing a wonderful bittersweet flavour and very crunchy texture.

Click here to print recipe for Salted Skor Bar Shortbread.

Chocolate Dipped Pistachio Shortbread Cookies

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This is a tale of cookie evolution. These sweet beauties started off their short life as Cheddar Pistachio Biscuits. I had envisioned them as a little nibble to have with a glass of Prosecco over the holidays. I thought they would be similar to the Cheddar Biscuits I made a few years ago, which were met with rave reviews by my wine ~~swilling~~ sipping girls weekend friends. I baked up a batch of the Cheddar Pistachio biscuits and was kind of horrified by the results. The orange cheddar clashed horribly with the green pistachios and offended my highly tuned sense of aesthetics. I could deal with the ghastly appearance if the flavours were good, but they just tasted so odd, because they were neither sweet or savoury, but rather a muddled in-between. It just confused the palate. With blessings by my tasting panel (husband and child #2), they got tossed.

Being December, I decided to wholeheartedly enmbrace the sweet route and make a pistachio shortbread cookie. And because December is all about excess, (we have January to practice our moderation skills after all!) I dipped these in melted bittersweet chocolate and rolled them in some finely chopped pistachios. The inspiration for this recipe came from a 2004 Bon Appetit recipe for hazelnut shortbread sticks. They rolled the dough into little fingers, baked and then dipped them. I sped the whole process up by turning these into slice and bake cookies.Each cookie is heavily studded with coarsely chopped pistachios, so that each bite delivers crunch. The final dunk into the bittersweet chocolate provides a perfect balance for the richness of these sweet and buttery cookies.

Salt and Serenity

Tales from my kitchen