Yummy Christmas…
I am home from church today – Ben (almost 2) is sick and, although he is in a good mood, the bug he has caused my 4 year old nephew to get pnumonia so I am not taking any chances on getting any other children sick. Ben really needs his rest anyway and I am not sure it would be a good idea to drag him out into the cold weather.
Our family absolutely loves to cook and bake during the holidays. We enjoy cookie, candy and desert making and the house smells so yummy every year. This year we have decided to put that love of baking into our Christmas gifts. My idea was to get baskets from Michaels and fill them with the goodies we make. We started baking and yesterday it was – cookies! There
are typically three kinds of Christmas cookes that my daughter and I bake. The classic Chocolate Chip Cookie, Egg Nogg Cookies, and Vanderhoos. My daughter (almost 12) is a wiz in the kitchen. Although she doesn’t bake the Egg Nogg cookies, simple because she doesn’t like them at all, she makes the Chocolate Chip and Vanderhoo Cookies most of the time. I will
be adding our recipes to this blog as we go, along with pictures of our masterpieces. Most of these recipes are not our own but may be exact or modified from recipes we have found on packages, in books, and on the internet.
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Chocolate
Chip Cookies |
- 2 1/4 cup all purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup butter or margarine (butter flavored
Crisco can replace 1/2 cup of the butter for a very nice flavor and
texture) - 3/4 cup sugar
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup chopped nuts (if you want)
Beat butter, sugars, and vanilla in large bowl until creamy. Add eggs one at a time and beat well. In a different bowl mix flour, baking soda, and salt. Beat flour mixture into butter mixture a little at a time until combined. Add your chocolate chips and nuts (if desired). Drop rounded table spoon sized mounds onto a cookie sheet leaving plenty of room between each cookie. You don’t want to place them too close together so take your time. Bake at 375 for 7 to 8 minutes
until edges start to brown. Let cool on cookie sheet for at least 5 minutes then transfer them to a wire rack or a counter covered in wax paper. When completely cool you can place them in an air tight container.
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Egg Nogg
Cookies |
- 2 1/4 cups flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- 3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1 and 1/4 cups sugar
- 3/4 cups softened butter
- 1/2 cup eggnog
- 1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 2 large egg yolks
- 1 Tbsp ground nutmeg
Combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmega and mix well. Set aside the flour mixture while you cream sugar and butter in a separate bowl. Add eggnog, vanilla, and egg yolks
and beat at medium speed until smooth. Add flour mixture and beat at low speed just until combined and be sure not over mix. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto un-greased baking sheets 1 ” apart. Sprinkle lightly with nutmeg. Bake for 17 to 20 minutes at 300 in a pre-heated oven until edges start to turn brown and IMMEDIATELY transfer them to cool on a wax paper covered counter to cool this is KEY to having an Egg Nogg Cookie that is not falling apart!
Also, there are a few flavored egg noggs that might taste good in these cookies. I think flavored coffee creamers might be tasty in these as an egg nogg substitue, as well.
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Vanderhoos
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Oooh, these are the absolute best, melt-in-your-mouth, sweet, crumbly, and gooey filled cookies you will every find and, NO, I will not be giving out the recipe – SORRY, my mother and grandmother would kill me!!! This recipe is family secret. You can find similar recipes
on the internet under divinity but I will assure you that it is not the same. I actually had a very sweet lady get angry and call me names once because I wouldn’t give her the recipe and she rarely talked to me after the fact. That is how unbelievably delicious these cookies are.
Today we will be making Summer Sausage from scratch. We have actually already started this one but it has to sit in the fridge overnight so all we will need to do is bake them to
complete them. Actually, my husband got busy mixing the ingredients yesterday morning. He absolutely loves to bake when he has time and even more than that he loves Summer Sausage. He was not patient enough to wait for me to start it today. We have never tried this
recipe before so I guess we will see this evening if our Summer Sausage is anything worth giving in our goodie baskets. I will post our Summer Sausage photo and recipe tomorrow.
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