Holiday Cookies 2015

I won’t play catch up with a full post about each of the four cookies I baked on Monday, but since I had requests for the recipes, I’ll provide them here.

I’m also trying out a grading system rather than stars. These are just my snooty-patooty feelings about the recipes since I’m a total baking snob and this blog is sort of going to serve as a baking journal for me.

Molasses Spice Cookies with Orange Essence from Cook’s Illustrated

Grade: A+

These are my favorite gingersnaps – which I don’t actually like to “snap” so I suppose I should call them molasses cookies. These have a soft texture and rich flavor. The orange-sugar is a marvelous addition, and I will make these every year for forever.

You have to have a subscription to see the recipe on the Cook’s Illustrated site, but this person has posted the recipe elsewhere, so I’ll let them be the copyright infringer (even though they didn’t give appropriate credit to the source of the recipe!!).

Oatmeal Scotchies from Mindy Segal’s Cookie Love

Grade: A

I’m not usually a crispy-cookie kind of gal, and these spread out A LOT, but they are damn good. The recipe is available on the Amazon site for the cookbook (see link above), but I’ve been really pleased with the book as a whole. She likes her cookies salty, and I do too, but I usually add less than the recipe calls for (by close to half).

Browned-Butter Snickerdoodles (with an eggnog twist) from All That’s Left Are The Crumbs

Grade: A-

I’ve made these before, and they are fantastic snickerdoodles. I added a bit of nutmeg to the mix and the sugar coating to make them a wee bit more holiday-y. Maybe it was only in comparison to the others, but I wasn’t as keen on them this year. Nevertheless, these are the best snickerdoodles I’ve encountered.

Double-Chocolate Peppermint Cookies from Epicurious

Grade: B-

Even reducing the peppermint extract in these by half, I still felt like the peppermint overwhelmed the chocolate in this recipe. It also calls for a ton of chocolate chips, and I’m not sure anything is gained in terms of flavor or texture by adding a bunch of melted chocolate to the batter. Will probably try adapting a different chocolate cookie recipe to get what I’m looking for.