COOKIES!

Cookies remind me of the holiday season.  As a child, I remember family and friends starting to bake cookies from Thanksgiving weekend and they stored them in large tins lined with wax paper.  When family and friends visited during the holiday season, they enjoyed a cup of coffee and a plate of assorted cookies would magically appear.  These are my favorite memories as a child — eating butter cookies until I almost exploded, nothing has changed…

I love to bake cookies and have baked cookies with my children since they were about 1-1/2 years old.  I am sharing some of the tips I have learned along the way and some of my favorite recipe cookies.

I must admit, I still use the Tollhouse Chocolate Chip cookie recipe on the package of their semi-sweet morsels.  And, my go to for oatmeal raisin cookies is on the inside of the Quaker Oats container.  So, now you know my secrets — why change something that is good and a tradition.

CHEF JACQUIE’S BAKING COOKIE TIPS:

Before you begin to bake, gather all your ingredients, equipment, and recipes; there are a wide variety of ingredients, but only a few rules:

• Always read your recipe first and all the way through. This will give you important information such as, preheating your oven, dividing ingredients or refrigerating your dough for a few hours before baking.
• Make sure butter is room temperature and if you should use unsalted butter for recipe.
• Crack eggs, one at a time, into a smaller bowl. This will ensure that if the egg has gone bad, it will not ruin the rest of the ingredients.
• Always mix your dry ingredients together, and then add your wet ones.
• Don’t over mix; this causes toughness in the dough.
• For uniformity in cookie size, use a gelato scooper.  Buy a few in different sizes.
• Wait one minute before removing cookies from baking sheet and then place on a cooling rack.
• Wait until cookies are completely cooled before removing from cooling rack or they crack and bend.
• Once cookies are completely cooled, then they can be packaged up.
• To make your cookies extra festive pipe the edges with different colored icing. If you don’t have a pastry bag use a plastic zip locked sandwich bag. Place your icing in the bag and snip off the tiniest tip off one of the corners.
• If you want more pizzazz from your cookie, sprinkle colored sanding sugars on top of the icing, perfect for the holidays!

I am adding another family recipe to the list this year.  This recipe comes all the way from Australia.  It is my cousin Lia’s family recipe for Almond Biscuits.

Happy Baking from our Family to Yours!

Chef Jacquie