holiday traditions

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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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Low, Ham Sandwich, Disturbing Development, Dinners This Week

I am feeling very low lately. It’s not like there’s any reason at all – my life is full of gifts and blessings. On top of the lowness, I find myself feeling frustrated at myself because I shouldn’t be feeling this way. And yet, here we are. 

One small thing I can do to move forward is to post about this week’s dinners. Maybe not the most scintillating of topics, to read or to write, but it’s better than staring at an empty screen and/or dumping my very inconsequential whines onto the page. 

We are about to embark on another period of extra busy-ness, as Carla enrolls in a new sports team. We will be back to having extracurriculars that run up against dinnertime nearly every day. This means that we need to focus on quick and easy. Probably a lot of the time, I will end up eating black bean tacos or salad, and my husband will end up eating ham sandwiches. In fact, “ham sandwich” has become code for “eat something easy of your choosing” in our household, even if the resulting meal includes neither ham nor sandwich. 

Oh – that reminds me. There’s been a Disturbing Development: Carla was eating chicken nuggets the other day for dinner. She had eaten three and wanted something else, and I suggested that if she was still hungry, she should eat the fourth. And she said, “I think I’m tired of chicken nuggets. I don’t think I like them anymore.” 

This is it. This is the horrible endpoint I’ve been anticipating and fearing for years, because she eats them so frequently. And I’m not even going to apologize for it, because there is protein in chicken nuggets and, more importantly, she EATS THEM. Or did eat them. I do TRY to shake up her meals – I do. But there are so few things she eats, and I hate mealtimes that morph into me coaxing/wheedling/demanding that she eat the thing on her plate. Plus, chicken nuggets are EASY, which is important too, and ready in under 10 minutes if I use the air fryer. 

What am I going to do if she stops eating chicken nuggets? 

(Carla’s suggestion, by the way, was that she would eat tacos every day. And, yes, fine, tacos are great and I am happy to make a big batch of meat at the start of the week so she can eat them as often as she likes. But she gets tired of those too, plus sometimes it seems like “eating tacos” is an excuse for eating multiple crispy corn taco shells and copious amounts of cheese. I get it, and crispy taco shells and cheese have their time and place. But I don’t think, in our situation of plentiful options, that they should be my kid’s MAIN source of calories, you know?) 

Carla’s meals are never part of my Dinners This Week posts anyway, since she rarely eats what my husband and I do. But I am still fretting over how to get appropriate quantities and varieties of food into her. (She eats scrambled eggs and salmon and steak and – sometimes – pork tenderloin or teriyaki chicken or hamburger. She will not starve.)

Ugh. We also have HOLIDAYS this week. Well. I cannot get up enough energy to think about making anything special. Fortunately, we have been invited to a Passover Seder with friends, so I don’t even have to think about that. We can dye Easter eggs on Saturday. And maybe that will have to be that. My mother always used to make a ham for Easter dinner, but I don’t like ham enough to make a whole one. Although… maybe it would produce plenty of leftovers for my husband… and Carla sometimes eats ham (although usually in Lunchable form). I don’t know. 

Despite having a wonderful list of reliably delicious dinners to pad out the meal plan each week, I still find myself wanting to try New Things, so I’ve got two oldies and two newbies on the list. Here’s what I am tentatively planning to make this week, keeping in mind that we might chuck it all and eat nothing but ham sandwich. 

Dinners for the Week of April 3-April 9

  • Ginger Chicken Asparagus Stir Fry: This is a new-to-me recipe, but asparagus is plentiful these days and this is a way of preparing it that haven’t tried before.
  • Baked Gnocchi and Vegetables: On a whim the other day, I picked up a bag of cauliflower gnocchi from Trader Joe’s. I don’t particularly like gnocchi, and I’m deeply suspicious of cauliflower masquerading as foods that it clearly is not. But I own a bag now, and I need to do something with it. Maybe this is the solution?
  • Chili-Honey Chicken and Sweet Potatoes: I have only had this once, so far, but it was so incredibly delicious. I’ve been thinking about it nonstop lately. Maybe it’s time to make it again. I am a little fearful that I loved it so much initially because a) it was novel and b) I thought I’d burned the sweet potatoes beyond recognition but they turned out to be deliciously charred. I doubt I could recreate the same conditions of uncertain anticipation and relief, you know?
  • Lemon Garlic Pasta with Fresh Veggies: Pasta is one of my go-to comfort foods, and I loved this dish the last time I made it. It sounds springy and filling. 
  • Baked Ham? With what? The more I think about this, the less appealing it is. But my mom made ALL holidays special, and I feel like such a failure for not trying to make them special for Carla. I KNOW THIS IS DUMB. Knowing that it is dumb doesn’t make the feeling evaporate.

 

What are you eating this week? Any plans for the holidays, eating or otherwise?

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Cookie Report, Cookie Plates, Dinners This Week

Oh hey, I am so late to the Dinners This Week party! Party of one, but still. Instead of planning dinners, I made cookies. Lots of cookies. Well, lots for me. (A person in my circle makes these gorgeous cookie plates with A DOZEN varieties of cookies on it, in all different styles and colors and textures and flavors. That is a whole different level of dedication.)

Anyway. Doing a great big baking binge was the only way I could see to making ALL the cookies my husband and I wanted to make this season. And even so, we sacrificed two items: 1. sufganiyot, which I really wanted to make again, but which are kind of fussy and 2., zimtsterne, which I make every year and which I adore, and yet they didn’t seem as fun! and interesting! as trying some new things.

We ended up making:

Gingerbread Latte Cookies with Browned Butter Icing:  The cookies were good and had a nice spice balance. They were a good texture – crisp around the edges but nice and soft in the middle. But the frosting was impossible to make and completely NOT spreadable. It sort of rests in a dollop on top of the cookies. It had a decent flavor, I think, but the browned butter was not very discernible. I think this is because the instruction for browning the butter was “Add the butter to a pot set over medium heat. Allow the butter to brown lightly until it smells toasted, about 2-3 minutes. ” While there are specifics in that instruction – medium heat, 2-3 minutes – the “smells toasted” is extremely subjective. My husband asked me if I’d browned the butter enough and I gave him a huge shrug because who the hell knows? Clearly not, if we’re going by the taste of the frosting. Also, I just now in finding that link for you discovered in the body of the post that I was supposed to use milk to thin the frosting. THERE IS NO MENTION OF MILK IN THE INGREDIENT LIST OR INSTRUCTIONS. But that would have been very helpful in the moment!

Taylor Swift’s Chai Sugar Cookies with Eggnog Frosting: These were good, soft sugar cookies. I love the eggnog frosting, which was wonderfully nutmeggy and nog-eggy. Although – again – it was too much and overly sweet. My husband also mentioned that he thought it was supposed to be a glaze rather than a frosting – and indeed the recipe text does refer to it as a glaze – to which I said, “I followed the recipe and this is what resulted.” My daughter made the frosting, and she added twice as much eggnog to the powdered sugar as the recipe called for, so it would thin out enough, and yet it was still quite thick.

Cranberry Crumble Bars with Orange Glaze: I made these for the first time a few years ago and I love them. They are so good – just the right mix (for me) of crumbly, lightly sweet shortbread and tangy cranberry. Carla and I ate one for breakfast today and yesterday. Yum! I like this batch much better than I did last year, and I think the difference is that I used fresh rather than frozen cranberries. (Well, I had to use a cup of frozen because this calls for four cups of cranberries and one bag of cranberries was about three cups. Sigh.) I washed them and let them dry on a towel completely before I used them in the recipe, and they seemed more tart and less wet than last year’s batch.

Peppermint Chocolate Crinkle Cookies: I have not actually tasted these, because after tasting three varieties of cookie I was and still am completely sugared out. But my husband and daughter like them!

Gingerbread Cutouts: The Gingerbread Latte cookies came with instructions for making cutouts in addition to the drop cookies, so Carla was all over that. She made a simple powdered sugar/milk glaze (which acted like a glaze) and she had a wonderful time choosing the cookie cutters and decorating the cutouts. She’d begged me to buy her a package of candy eyes back in October, but we never did a Halloween baking project, so I handed her the box and told her to go wild. There are some deeply creepy angels that resulted from the eye application, but I think the stockings and stars are cute with their big googly eyes.

Note: I made all the separate doughs on one day and allowed them all to rest in the fridge overnight, and then I made all the cookies into balls and rolled them in whatever sugar they were supposed to be rolled in and put them back in the fridge for a second night, which I think results in smaller, thicker, softer cookies. But I can’t say for sure because I did no testing whatsoever.

Since I made so many cookies, I put together a few cookie plates to share with friends. I gave one to the person in my circle I mentioned above – even though her cookie plate is a carefully orchestrated work of art, this was what I had to reciprocate. She mentioned that she gets very tired of all her cookies after spending so long making them, so she enjoyed tasting something new. I also made cookie plates for our neighbors and for a friend I saw earlier this week.

My friend was so delighted and surprised by the cookie plate. She’d never had one before! That surprised me, because they were so ubiquitous when I was growing up. And we’ve gotten a few cookie plates here in the Midwest as well, which is quite far from where I grew up. But maybe they aren’t A Thing everywhere?

They were definitely A Thing when I was growing up. We often got cookie plates from family friends. My family’s tradition was to make hand-dipped chocolates, which we would deliver in person to friends on Christmas Eve. For years, my mother would keep an eye out for inexpensive but pretty plates on which to display the chocolates.  Then she would wrap the plates beautifully in cellophane and put a little label on them so everyone knew which chocolates were which. They do this even now; Carla and I have attempted chocolates once or twice, but I hope once my parents move here we can make it an annual tradition once more.

My friend was concerned about the plate (I found adorable white ceramic plates with silver snowflakes at the dollar store and snapped some up to give to people who don’t celebrate Christmas; I got plaid ones from Target for the people who do celebrate Christmas): she wanted to return the plate, and was a little befuddled when I told her it was hers to keep or pass on. I ended up telling her it was from the dollar store, and I think that made her feel better about keeping it.

In my mind, a cookie-plate plate is very different from other food-sharing occasions in which you expect the dish back. For instance, if you make a casserole for a grieving neighbor or a lasagna for a new mom. In those cases, the dish returns to you. Since “returning the dish” is How It Is around here, I always use either disposable bakeware or specify to the recipient that I don’t need it back. Some people feel strongly that you should never return an empty dish: it should come back with something you made in it. This is not how it went when I grew up (the dish was part of the gift), so it makes me a little stressed. How do you know what to fill it with??? We got a little Tupperware container of peanut brittle from someone at my husband’s office, and I am wondering if we need to fill it up with something and send it back. But what? And when?

Are cookie plates A Thing where you live? Do you participate in cookie plate making or eating? What is your feeling about the dish the cookies arrive on?

While it has been very cookie heavy around here, we still must eat non-cookie food. So here is an abbreviated Dinners This Week.

Dinners for Christmas Week 2022

  • White Bean Enchilada Soup: Yum. I reserve a can of Great Northern beans from the recipe, as well as the corn, and blend everything in the pot. Then I add the final beans and corn for a little texture. It makes the soup very creamy and rich.
  • Thai-Style Pork Tenderloin with this Quinoa: My husband said that he is tired of soup, so this is Not Soup.
  • One Pot Parmesan Pasta: I think I found this via The Birchwood Pie Project and it looks delicious. Maybe I could add some chicken for my husband. I have this strong urge to add some peas, too? Who knows where these urges come from.
  • Christmas Breakfast: This is on my husband to figure out. I do not care for breakfast and have no preference. Whatever it is, and I am assuming it will be Full Of Carbs, we will probably also have berries and bacon.
  • Christmas Dinner:
    • Cranberry Relish: Although maybe this will be a week-after-Christmas snack instead.
    • Caesar Salad: I make my own dressing, using my dad’s recipe. This will, of course, depend on whether I can get any romaine at the grocery store. We have had alarming lettuce shortage signs popping up all around the produce section for weeks now.
    • Bouche de Noel: Usually we make sticky toffee pudding cake for Christmas, but this year the same baker who made my (high-quality, even if it wasn’t what I wanted) birthday cake advertised that she is making bouche de noel. We haven’t had one in years, but they are fun and festive so I ordered one immediately.

I take it back. They are all deeply creepy.