cookie plates

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Post Christmas Cookie Swap + Baking Giveaway

Hello my dear internet! I hope you had a lovely Christmas and/or start to Hanukkah and/or that you Made It Through. (I have been thinking about those of my friends who have lost spouses or parents this year, those who may be struggling with complicated family or health issues, and those who are still grieving many-years-ago losses, and how grief at the holidays feels particularly bleak and awful. I know you are making it through the best way you can and I hope there are brighter days ahead.)

Drastic tone switch.

I am just stuffed-enough full of holiday food that I think it’s the perfect timing for my much-delayed Cookie Swap post. I am able to admire and appreciate all the cookies, and bookmark all the posts and recipes, without feeling the need to IMMEDIATELY LEAP TO THE KITCHEN. Although I do still have a significant amount of butter leftover… Hmm….

Thank you to everyone who sent me scrumptious photos. Let me know if I have misattributed anything or linked to something incorrectly and I will fix it tout de suite.

Cookie Plates

For a variety of Reasons, I ended up making my cookie plates in the wee hours of the morning this past Monday. Carla and I delivered them later that afternoon. Five cookie varieties made it onto the plates:

Here is my assessment of the final products:

  • Chai Sugar Cookies with Eggnog Glaze: I have made these before and the cookies are wonderfully soft and pleasingly spiced. In years past, the eggnog glaze has been more like an eggnog clump, so I added more eggnog this year until it was truly glazy. But, in True Glaze Form, it then leaked off the cookies, so it’s not a cookie you can glaze at the last minute; you need ample time for the glaze to dry/harden. Delicious, though.
  • Chocolate Snickerdoodles: This is an old favorite, and Carla requests these often. I love them, too. But my husband thinks they are kind of a niche cookie. He took a big plate of assorted cookies to work and the chocolate snickerdoodles were the last cookies standing. I think they are chewy and delicious, with a wonderful mix of chocolate and that little bitter bite of cream of tartar that makes snickerdoodles so surprising and different.
  • Basque Cheesecake Bars: This was a new-to-me recipe, and the bars turned out to be delicious. You should know right away that I used gingersnaps as the base instead of graham crackers. (Actually, I didn’t have enough gingersnaps, so I added in a sleeve of graham crackers, too – about a 2-to-1 gingersnap-to-graham cracker ratio, which was delicious.) This recipe was simple but also a little scary to execute, because you have to let the cheesecake develop this richly caramelized top and it looks (and smells) burnt. The end product was so yummy. The recipe produced a staggering amount of cheesecake; we have so much left. (FYI, a cheesecake bar or two makes for a very festive breakfast.)
  • Cranberry Lemon Bars: This was a new-to-me recipe and I would like to try it again, but it wasn’t my favorite. I loved the twin bright flavors of lemon and cranberry, and I loved how easy it was to “make” the lemon “curd.” But the cookie layer seemed a little greasy to me and I felt like it was too tender and not cookie-y enough. These are also difficult to cut in a way that makes them look nice on a cookie plate. EDITED TO ADD: After a couple of days in the fridge, these are much better than I originally thought.
  • Mint Swirl Sugar Cookies: This was a new-to-me recipe and it worked, I think, but was also VERY LABOR INTENSIVE. Rolling all the little balls and shaping the cookies was very time consuming and I don’t know that they were pretty and swirly enough to make it worth the effort. Nice peppermint flavor, though. I didn’t have any red food coloring so I used green. I also found that the cookies as directed were much too large for my cookie plates, so I halved all the little balls. This means I have approximately ten thousand remaining cookie balls, un-swirled, that I will probably end up tossing.

Cookie Problems

The main issue I had this year (besides too much time making cookies that wouldn’t ever make it on the cookie plates) was that my cookies were all so flat. They tasted good, but I like a thick cookie. I did some googling and think that maybe my problem was overcreaming the butter and sugar. For some reason, I thought the more creaming the better… but apparently there’s a point at which you deplete the butter/sugar mixture of air and this can result in flat cookies.

But THEN Jen (HI JEN!), who bore the brunt of all my cookie woes via text, noted that she had also suffered from Flat Cookie Syndrome this year, and suggested it was an issue with the butter itself. Apparently butter manufacturers are increasing the ratio of water in their butter and that can result in flat cookies. Argh!

Cookie-Related Giveaway

Y’all, I took part in three major cookie operations this year. The first was at my house, with Carla, her friend, and my friend. The second was an impromptu get together at the neighbors’ house where a friend and I rolled, cut, and baked approximately nine billion sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies for eleven children to decorate. The third was my private middle-of-the-night cookie session during which I baked until the wee hours in blissful, uninterrupted silence while everyone was sleeping.

The first two cookie events were centered around cookie decorating, and required rolling pins. The rolling pin I used was a hand-me-down from my husband’s late grandmother, the kind with a big cylindrical barrel in the center and two handles on the sides. It’s fine, but pretty utilitarian. I don’t think I’ve ever considered that there might be rolling pin variations, or that a rolling pin could be aesthetically pleasing in addition to being a useful baking tool.

But then, my friend arrived at my house for the first cookie venture with an unexpected and delightful gift for me: a new rolling pin!

I had never once considered wanting a rolling pin, and I was nonetheless DELIGHTED by the rolling pin she brought me!!! It was so beautiful! And French. Oooh la la! So now I have MY OWN ROLLING PIN in addition to the inherited one!

This is all to say that I want to spread the rolling pin joy.

If you are interested in having your very own French rolling pin, tell me in the comments and I will randomly draw someone’s name at… some point. (Let’s be honest, I am not great at Making Firm Commitments these days, so it might be a while.) And then I will send the winner their very own French rolling pin!

You do not have to have participated in this cookie swap to participate. Nor do you have to like cookies or bake cookies. Rolling pins are good for many other baking projects besides cookies and I do not judge.

AT LONG LAST, THE COOKIE SWAP!!!!

It was so delightful to get photos of delicious-looking baked goods in my email! Here is everyone who participated (and if I didn’t include you, it is PURELY USER ERROR and has nothing to do with you or your cookies, so please resend and I will add to this post) and a couple who I forcibly included. Once again, if I have messed anything up, please do not hesitate to email me at lifeofadoctorswife (at) gmail and I will happily make any updates you desire.

  • Elisabeth at The Optimistic Musings of a Pessimist baked the following, and added some notes on her experience with each:
    • Peanut Brittle Bars. Relatively easy, so addictive!
    • Saltine Toffee – This was the one item my teenage daughter insisted I make this Christmas. You can make the recipe with or without the peanut butter! This year I made some with the peanut butter layer (my personal favourite) and added crushed Saltines on top to differentiate from the more traditional “Christmas Crack” that skips the peanut butter step.
    • Peanut Butter Balls. I never follow a recipe exactly – I just take tiny tastes along the way until it has the right texture. Mostly that’s because once I start eating the dough, I can’t stop. Instead of dunking them in chocolate, I flash freeze them for about half an hour and top with a little spoonful of melted chocolate. Much less work than dipping!
    • Brown Sugar Fudge. This is my 10-year-old’s favourite Christmas treat. It is SWEET, but very delicious and smooth, unlike some brown sugar fudge which tends to be grainy. This year, I spread the recipe into a 9×13 pan so it was relatively thin and cut the fudge into fun Christmas shapes before it had completely set. Any of the remaining scraps I rolled into little fudge balls since the fudge was still slightly warm and pliable.
    • Fall Chocolate Chip Spiced Cookie. These are the only actual “cookies” I have made this holiday season. I have frozen dough so I can pop a few in the oven on an as-needed basis. I think I’m going to be needing them a lot. Goodness, these are fast becoming my favourite cookies and it’s all thanks to you, Suzanne!
  • Ernie from No Small Feet produced Christmas Cookies and Rocky Road Fudge Bars.
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  • Gigi from Gigi Rambles whipped up some Peanut Butter Fudge, Almond Bark, Gingersnaps, Peanut Butter Cookies, and Chocolate Chip Cookies for her cookie plate.
  • Steph from All for the Love of You, her wife Beth, and their culinarily talented younger child North filled cookie plates with Buckeyes, Pizzelles, Pinwheels, and Gingerbread. (North also made almond butter chocolate chip cookies and an apple crumb cheesecake!)
  • Jen texted me photos of the beautiful sugar cookies she decorated with her kids.  

It was SO MUCH FUN to see what everyone made, and to have the extra little joy of thinking about my blog friends while I was baking. Thank you so much for “swapping” cookies with me! And don’t forget to enter the rolling pin giveaway if it suits your fancy.

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Thinking About Cookies

I woke up very early this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. Instead of stressing (more) about all the holiday details that I have yet to complete, I thought I would get up and Do Something Productive… but my family is still asleep, so whatever Productive Thing I chose needed to be silent and that’s impossible. Our house, which I have grown to love, is extremely good at transmitting sound. My daughter went to bed after ten last night, so I want her to sleep as late as possible; my husband is just coming off a brutal call week, so I want him to sleep as late as possible. So I’m stuck doing silent things like sitting in my box-filled office and planning a complex cookie tray I neither have the time nor skill nor freezer space to complete. You may note that planning an imaginary cookie assortment is the opposite of Something Productive, but it is enjoyable. 

If you also need a silent distraction this morning, or if you are wondering what to make for the Cookie Swap, perhaps you will join me in thinking about cookies.

Fancy assortments of cookies were a big part of my childhood. Several of my parents’ friends would create elaborate plates of mixed cookies and other confections and hand them around at Christmastime. I even seem to remember, some years, making cookies with my mother: gingerbread cutouts and stained glass cookies. A person in my circle makes a cookie plate every year and it sounds like a weekslong labor of love and intense labor. I’ve made small cookie plates on at least two occasions – with a handful of cookies that I made in a day or two – but I’ve never been one to make one of those works-of-art assortments. 

Because I have never done a real cookie assortment, I read this fascinating blog post about how to put together a stunning arrangement. It was such an easy breezy post, it filled me with a completely false confidence in being able to do such a thing myself. 

Images from the blogs linked below

If I were to make a cookie tray, I think it might include the following:

  • Basque Cheesecake Bars: My husband wanted to make a pumpkin swirl cheesecake for Thanksgiving, so I bought all the ingredients… but then we never got around to making it. These bars sound delicious, unusual, and they would make use of some of the piles of cream cheese clogging up my fridge. I think I would also swap out the graham cracker crust for gingersnap crust, since I bought gingersnaps for the cheesecake. Yes, always a good idea to make substitutions in a recipe you’ve never tried before.
  • Marbled Sugar Cookies: Carla was enthusiastic about participating in the cookie making, but I know she is really mostly interested in cutting out shapes and decorating cookies. These are super pretty and I think she’d have fun with them. Also, this sugar cookie has a cream cheese base, so I can continue chipping away at my stockpile of Philadelphia’s best.
  • Stained Glass Window Cookies: These are pretty and I think Carla would enjoy both smashing Jolly Ranchers into bits and creating stained glass masterpieces.
  • Chocolate Snickerdoodles: These are Carla’s all-time favorite cookie, and she requested that we make some. I think they are delicious, and there’s something about the combination of chocolate and cinnamon that is unique and wonderful. Plus, they will be a nice color/flavor change-up.
  • Zimtsterne: These gluten-free cinnamon star cookies are so yummy. They are made with almond meal and have a wonderful nutty flavor. My only issue with them is that I can never get the glaze to stay completely white. 
  • Swirled Cookies: These are so vibrantly colorful, I want to make them immediately.
  • Cranberry Lemon Bars: I have been wanting to make these, and I think the lemon and cranberry will add a welcome burst of tartness to the cookie plate.
  • Chai Sugar Cookies with Eggnog Glaze: Yes, this cookie plate is already pretty heavy on the sugar cookies, but I think incorporating these chai cookies would add a fun new flavor to the mix. Plus, I have made these before and they are delicious. 

Now that all that pesky planning is done, the only thing that’s left to do is whip up all these cookies! I even already have the plates. (I got mine at the dollar store, but aren’t these cute?!)

What would you include on your own imaginary cookie plate? 

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Five for Friday

Let me just say, for those people who have never tried blogging: It can be SO GOOD when it comes to a) motivating yourself to DO SOMETHING and b) finding lovely people who understand and commiserate and support. Yesterday’s fretful post really helped get my rear into gear, and every comment that came in felt like a warm hug. Thank you. Let’s do some gift-fret-free bullets, shall we?

It’s Beginning to Look a Teeny Weeny Bit Like Christmas: After yesterday’s post, I very firmly told my husband that we needed to finalize the gifts now. And then I proved to him, using the UPS cost estimation feature, that it would cost us three times as much in shipping costs to wait for amazon to deliver some items vs me going to an actual store and buying them and shipping them now. That turned out to be highly persuasive. We ended up getting both my MIL and my SIL some cozy pajamas. (After so many comments in favor, I wanted – badly – to get them each a towel warmer, but it wasn’t going to work with shipping to me and then wrapping and shipping to them. Then I thought, if I can’t get a towel warmer for my MIL and SIL, perhaps I can get one for my husband and/or child?!?! But our bathroom is really, really not conducive to having a towel warmer in it, so I am going to postpone that idea for another day.) Despite my many misgivings – we Santa got Carla the Uggs that are apparently this year’s Stanley tumbler/Kendra Scott necklace/Lululemon belt bag. I was able to march right over to the mall yesterday morning and buy everything right there. I also marched right over to the bookstore and bought the books that we had been dithering on ordering for several other gift recipients; one of the books was out of stock locally, but I pushed right through that little obstacle and bought an alternative. 

Mail Call: I also addressed, stuffed, stamped and MAILED my holiday cards. Did I think I had ordered twenty more cards than I actually did? Yes. But no matter. I think I got everyone on the list. I had to go to the post office to acquire more stamps, and then stood there and stamped the remaining sixty or so stampless cards. While I was stamping, an older-than-me-but-not-demonstrably-elderly man came in, mailed something, and then started chatting at me. He wanted to know what I was mailing – both he and the postal worker first assumed “wedding invitations” which strikes me as slightly odd given the timing and also my advanced age, not that a person has to be the picture of youth to plan a wedding – and then told me how he had mailed sixty holiday cards just days before, and how a long line had piled up behind him because you can only slide two or three cards at a time through the mail slot. I kept waiting for him to tell me the punch line – that someone behind him finally pointed out he could open the little door beneath the slot and put in the whole stack – but he didn’t. I debated telling him myself – for future reference – but he went on to chat at me about how many fewer cards he sends these days than in the past, and then enumerated the (all sad) reasons, so it felt as though the moment had passed. This story doesn’t have any sort of moral; I just love it when people talk to me and I can just smile and nod. (Is this what it feels like to be Nicole????)

Surprise and Suspicion at the Post Office: I had heard (perhaps from you???) that some mail carriers aren’t accepting any mail at all that’s headed to Canada. So I was prepared to be told “no” when I requested some stamps for my Canadian card recipients. Instead, the postal worker said she didn’t see why a couple of small letters wouldn’t get through. Packages, no; definitely not. But a little ol’ holiday card? That was sure to sneak by! Then she sold me some stamps and I left the post office feeling very confused. I am 100% sure I don’t understand Canada’s mail strike that well, but Wikipedia tells me that Canada Post has requested that other countries stop sending mail to Canada at all. “Mail at all” has got to include holiday cards, right? So… I’m reluctant to put my cards in the mail, is what I’m saying. I am tempted… but if I did… what would happen to them?!?!

Cookie Swap, Anyone?: I realize that I mentioned the idea of having a blogland cookie swap, and then even made cookies, and then got so caught up in gift panic that I forgot all about it. But I would still like to do it! So: if YOU are interested in doing a blogland cookie swap (even if you don’t have a blog!)!!!! Please send a link to your cookie post and/or photos of your cookies to lifeofadoctorswife [at] gmail by midnight Eastern time on 12/20, and I will add a link to your blog and/or your photos to a post I will post BEFORE CHRISTMAS. I am happy to include any information you care to share about your cookies. A deadline of 12/20 should give me time to make MORE cookies. In addition to human cookies, by the way, Carla and I are planning to also make cookies for dogs. So that will be… something. 

Let’s Wrap Things Up: In addition to finalizing my gift purchases and mailing the holiday cards, I have been wrapping gifts for the out-of-state relatives. I hate wrapping gifts. It is The Worst. I am not good at it – it requires an ability to cut straight lines, for one thing, and I do not have that ability. Unfortunately, my mother has inculcated in me the firm – no, the intense – belief that wrapping adds to the specialness of the gift receiving experience. As though the beauty of the gift wrap corresponds with the amount of love you feel for the person upon whom you are bestowing the gift. “I love you so much I will make bows out of flimsy paper.” Every time I wrap a gift, I try to do so with love in my heart. Love for the gift recipient, not for the scissors or the tape or the goddamn wrapping paper that never cuts straight. I try to make it as beautiful as I can because I feel like that helps add to the joy and anticipation of the gift portion of the holiday. And yet. When I am mailing so many gifts, I am well aware that the gift wrap is likely going to tear and the bows will get smushed and the whole effect is going to be less stunning than I want it to be and the people who receive these crumpled and ripped gifts are going to think I don’t love them at all. Anyway. I hate wrapping. It is stupid and wasteful and yet it is an essential facet of the gift exchange process and I CANNOT QUIT. 

I have still not decorated anything at all! Perhaps that will change TODAY.