Cookies

At this time of year, cookies are the perfect dessert to make: they're great for bringing to work for sharing at holiday parties, for sending off to friends and relatives who want something yummy from home, to share with neighbors.

Here are six cookie recipes to bake up for gift giving, general sharing, or just plain eating, including Perfect Black and White Cookies and Soft & Chewy Gingerbread Men. Enjoy!

GRANDMA'S PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES







This was one of my grandmother's recipes, along with the oatmeal cookie recipe that follows. You can find them in my e-cookbook, Off The Wall Cooking.

Ingredients

1/2 C butter

1/2 C peanut butter

1/2 C sugar

1 egg, well beaten

1 1/4 C flour

3/4 tsp. soda

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

Directions

Cream butter and peanut butter together. Add sugar gradually and cream thoroughly. Add egg. Sift flour once before measuring. Sift flour, soda, baking powder, and salt together and add to creamed mixture. Chill dough well, then form into balls the size of walnuts. Place balls on lightly greased baking sheet. Flatten with fork dipped in flour, making criss-cross pattern. Bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

GRANDMA'S OATMEAL COOKIES



Another one of my grandmother's recipes. When it came to baking, cookies were her specialty. You can also find these in my e-cookbook, Off the Wall Cooking

Ingredients

1 C flour

1 C brown sugar

3 C quick cooking oatmeal (NOT the instant oats!)

1 C butter or margarine

1/4 C boiling water

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda

Directions

Mix flour and brown sugar. Add oatmeal; stir. Melt butter; add to dry ingredients. Mix baking soda into boiling water; add to other ingredients, stirring well. Place batter into loaf pan, lined with aluminum foil, and place in freeze for several hours. Slice & bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes.

Oatmeal Cookie dough, taken from the freezer; showing first cuts before baking



Then cut down the center, like so:



Placed on parchment paper-covered baking sheet, for easier handling



OLD FASHIONED SUGAR COOKIES

This comes the Food Network Kitchen.Total Time: 4 hr 40 min; Prep: 10 min; Inactive: 4 hr; Cook: 30 min; Yield: 3 dozen cookies, depending on the size of the cutters; Level: Easy

To view this online, click here.

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

Colored sugar and milk, for decorating, or Royal Icing, recipe follows

Royal Icing:

2 pounds confectioners' sugar

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons meringue powder (egg white powder)

Food coloring, as desired

Directions

Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a second large bowl and mix well. Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture 1 cup at a time. Chill the dough for 3 to 4 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment. Roll out the dough and cut it into shapes with cookie cutters or a knife. Place the shapes on the prepared cookie sheet. If decorating with colored sugar, brush the cookies with milk and sprinkle with colored sugar (if using royal icing, leave unfinished). Bake until the cookies are just beginning to brown around the edges, 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies.

Remove the cookies to a rack to cool completely. If using royal icing, decorate the cookies as desired.

Royal Icing:

Combine the confectioners' sugar, meringue powder and 3/4 cup water in a large bowl. Mix slowly with an electric mixer until stiff enough to form peaks; the icing should be pure white and thick, but not fluffy and bubbly. If the frosting is over-beaten, it will get aerated which makes it harder to work with. If this happens, let the frosting sit to settle, and then use a rubber spatula to vigorously beat and smooth out the frosting.

Add up to 1 tablespoon food coloring and mix with a rubber spatula until the color is uniform. Gels are best with royal icing. You don't want to thin them with liquid colors. Be careful of adding too much color, which reduces the sheen of the frosting and can break down the consistency of the frosting over a couple of days. Store the icing at room temperature, covered, with plastic wrap on the surface.

Yield: 3 1/2 cups icing

SOFT & CHEWY GINGERBREAD MEN

This comes from The Baker Chick. Adapted this recipe from Baking Illustrated, this recipe makes about 30 3-inch cookies.

To view this online, click here.

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup (6 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces and softened slightly

3/4 cup molasses

2 tablespoons milk

Instructions

In food processor workbowl fitted with steel blade, combine the flour, sugar, spices, salt, and baking soda and process until combined, just a few seconds.

Add the butter pieces and pulse until mixture is sandy and looks like a fine meal- no big clumps. (This only took about 15-20 seconds.)

With machine running, gradually add molasses and milk; process until dough comes together.

Scrape dough onto work surface; divide in half. Working with one portion of dough at a time, roll 1/4-inch thick between two large sheets of parchment paper. Leaving dough sandwiched between parchment layers, stack on cookie sheet and freeze until firm, 15 to 20 minutes. (Alternatively, refrigerate dough 2 hours or overnight.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Remove one dough sheet from freezer; place on work surface. Peel off top parchment sheet and lay it back in place. Flip dough over; peel off and discard second parchment layer.

Use cookie cutters to cut dough into men or other shapes. Transfer dough to prepared cookie sheets 1 inch apart.

Gather scraps and chill while you cut out the second sheet of dough. You can keep re-using the scraps, but may need to add some flour and continue to chill the dough. If the dough gets really soft, freeze the whole sheet for 10 minutes before baking.

Bake cookies 8 to 11 minutes or until the edges are set- do not overbake. Cool cookies on sheets 2 minutes, then cool on a wire rack.

Decorate with icing once cooled!

RAISIN OATMEAL COOKIES

This is from the infamous long-since-forgotten emailing list, though it looks like it was from a diabetic list.

Yield: 2-1/2 dozen cookies (1 per serving)

Ingredients

6 tablespoons margarine, softened

1/4 cup fat-free sour cream

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1-1/2 cups quick-cooking oats

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup raisins for baking

Directions

Mix margarine, sour cream, egg, and vanilla in large bowl; mix in brown sugar. Mix in combined oats, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon. Mix in raisins.

Drop dough onto greased cookie sheets, using 2 tablespoons for each cookie. Bake at 350 degrees F. until browned, 12 to 15 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

Nutritional Information Per Serving (1 cookie): Calories: 90, Fat: 2.7 g, Cholesterol: 7.1 mg, Sodium: 57 mg, Protein: 1.5 g, Carbohydrate: 15.3 g

Diabetic Exchanges: 1 Bread/Starch, 1/2 Fat

PERFECT BLACK AND WHITE COOKIES

This is from Melissa Clark at The New York Times cooking e-newsletter. Melissa wrote, “Tender, moist and scented with vanilla, almond and lemon, these classic confections popular all over the Midwest and the state of New York are more cake than cookie, with a fine crumb and velvet texture from the sour cream in the batter. Even better, they are glazed with both vanilla and chocolate, so you don’t have to pick favorites. These are best eaten within 24 hours of baking, when the cake is at its softest and the glaze at its snappiest. But if you store them in an airtight container at room temperature, they’ll be good for a few days longer.”

Yield: 12 to 14 cookies; Time: 1 hour, plus cooling

To view this online, go to https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020254-perfect-black-and-white-cookies.

Ingredients

For the Cookies:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/3 cup sour cream or whole-milk yogurt

1/3 cup whole milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick), at room temperature

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoonsgranulated sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

For the Glaze:

2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

Boiling water, as needed

1 1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pinch of fine sea salt

2 1/2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled

2 1/2 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

Preparation

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Arrange racks in top and bottom thirds, and line two rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, sea salt and baking soda. In a medium bowl, whisk together sour cream, milk, vanilla, lemon zest and almond extract.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until combined, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary.

Reduce speed to low and beat in 1/3 of the flour mixture, then 1/3 of the sour cream mixture. Repeat until both mixtures are incorporated, scraping sides of bowl as necessary. (Mixture will be the consistency of thick poundcake batter.)

Dollop heaping 1/4-cup scoops of batter onto prepared baking sheets, spacing them 2 inches apart. (You should have 12 to 14 cookies.) Bake for 6 minutes. Rotate the baking sheets. Continue to bake until the cookies have firmed up and spring back when lightly pressed in the center, 6 to 9 minutes. (They’ll brown only on the bottoms.) Take care not to overbake, or they will dry out.

Transfer baking sheets to wire racks and let cool for 15 minutes, then transfer cookies directly to racks to cool completely.

While the cookies cool, make the glaze: Place the confectioners’ sugar in a medium bowl and whisk in 3 tablespoons boiling water, the corn syrup, vanilla and salt. Continue to whisk, adding more boiling water as needed, until you have a thick yet spreadable frosting that is the texture of hot fudge sauce. (Too thick is preferable to too thin.) Flip each cookie over and spoon glaze over half of its flat side, spreading to edges with the back of the spoon. Place on wire rack to set. You will have vanilla frosting left over.

Whisk melted chocolate into vanilla frosting, then whisk in cocoa and enough room temperature water to make a thick yet spreadable glaze. Glaze the bare half of each cookie. Let glaze set for at least 1 to 2 hours before serving.