6 Ideas For Holiday Cookies

Cookies make a great addition to any holiday gathering.
Cookies make a great addition to any holiday gathering.

If you are taking online baking courses, chances are you will want to contribute some delicious baked goods to your holiday dinner. Here are six tips for cookies that are easy to prepare and will make dessert memorable this year:

Keep it simple
Cookies don’t have to be complicated to be a chewy and delicious complement to your holiday meal. There is nothing wrong with making a batch of straightforward, yet tasty, sugar cookies. All you need is about half an hour and a few simple ingredients like flour, baking powder, sugar, butter, milk and an egg.

Even if you want to offer more than one kind of cookie at the feast, starting off with sugar cookies can make life easier. As Alton Brown pointed out, sugar cookie dough is adaptable to a huge variety of cookies. Once you have the dough ready, you can use it to make sheets of cookies in several different shapes and sizes, adding whatever additional ingredients you desire.

Embrace the season
Make your cookies perfect for the festive occasion by choosing appropriate shapes, colors and decorations. This might be a matter of merely picking up a few cookie cutters, or you can spruce up the cookies with sprinkles and other visually appealing ingredients.

A bit of icing will go a long way to contributing some holiday spirit to your table, as well as cookies that taste even better. Before you purchase icing at the store, think about making some yourself. According to Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food, a simple vanilla frosting requires only beating together 4 tablespoons of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 2 tablespoons of milk and a pinch of salt.

add-your-favorite-liquors-to-a-hot-cup-of-coffee_1107_40099944_1_14122287_500-30hi6guo0l40y2jtvh8g00Chocolate chunks are more exciting than chips
Almost everyone loves chocolate chip cookies. However, your cookies can rise to the special occasion when you incorporate larger chunks of chocolate. Bobby Flay suggested chopping up two 5-ounce chunks of chocolate, one semisweet and the other milk chocolate, for a batch of three dozen cookies.

For your gathering, consider using white chocolate or some other variation. In any case, you family or friends will appreciate the effort that went into producing those chunks, rather than using pre-made chips, when they experience the added sweetness.

Add a little crunch
Soft, freshly baked cookies are great, but sometimes you want your treats to have a satisfying crunch. Freezing your dough before baking will result in crunchier cookies. Though this works well for a wide range of treats, it’s especially appropriate for gingerbread cookies.

As in this recipe from Rick Rodgers, you can prepare gingerbread cookies by making cookie dough with ginger, cloves, cinnamon and molasses. Roll out the dough and refrigerate until firm. Cut out the desired shapes and bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Then the cookies will be ready for you to apply icing.

Experiment with fun flavor combinations
You can try out an intriguing mix of ingredients without making your dessert preparations overly complex or difficult. Create exceptional holiday-appropriate treats that don’t require any advanced baking techniques with just a little bit of inventiveness.

Once you have mastered making a simple cookie dough, the possibilities are endless. Offer a contrast to sweet flavors with a lemon frosting by combining lemon juice and sugar. Sandra Lee recommended bringing together coconuts and macadamia nuts and topping the cookie with melted white chocolate.

Cookies are for adults, too
Just because kids love cookies doesn’t mean every variety you bake needs to be appropriate for children. Think about trying out some more adventurous flavors, like mixing in espresso or a touch of an alcoholic beverage, for the grown-ups at your gathering. For instance, you can add whiskey to your chocolate chip cookies or stir rum into the cookie dough.

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