Cooking Grand
For the Cookie Baker: The Basics of the Season

With Joanne Carr
Grand Island Dispatch, December 15, 2006

In the spirit of the season, let’s try some cookies. So, just to continue in the purpose of last week’s column, you may want to put these on your giving list.

I have tried an assortment of recipes over the years. I have abandoned some as “too much work,” and some as “nobody cares for them.” The recipes kept here weathered the test, so I assure you that the ones in this column are worth your time. They are good. They are colorful. You will please your giftees.

Before I get to the recipes, I will have to tell you about how I package the cookies.

For a lot of years, I searched for the right size containers to use. They had to be quite large. A few years ago, I discovered the right ones – empty 34.5 –oz. plastic containers for family-sized batches and 11.5-oz. plastic containers for friends – emptied of the ground coffee, of course. I decorate these containers with Christmas wrapping paper, and they’re as festive as the more-expensive cookie tins.

I have a few recipes that I am not going to share, To get them, you will have to either change your last name to “Carr” or send me a hundred-thousand dollars – whichever your prefer. (Remember the Neiman-Marcus $100,000 cookie recipe that circulated the Internet in recent years?) For now, you will have to settle for these three.

They’re all ready-to-bake – with something special added

The first one is so simple that you may ask any child of 9 or so to do it for you. All you have to do is go to the supermarket and look for the ready-to-bake cookies in the refrigerator section. Follow the directions on the box and, voila, you have started your supply of give-aways.

I can’t resist enhancing this oh-so-simple cookie, though, so I made a half-recipe of sugar glaze:

Sugar Glaze

2 cups confectioner’s sugar
4 teaspoons light corn syrup
4 teaspoons milk
Food coloring (optional)

Mix above ingredients thoroughly and brush over the tops of cookies, using as a base for decorating. This base dries shiny and firm.

I use a pastry brush and, in this case, didn’t add food coloring, as I wanted the Christmas tree decoration on the ready-to-bake cookie to show through. I sprinkle plain, white sugar over the glaze before it dried so the sugar would stick.

They look great!

Chocolate Chip Surprises

The second cookie is easy, too. It is the standard chocolate chip cookie, with a few surprise additions. Follow your usual recipe – for Tollhouse Morsels, the recipe is right on the package – and it’s a great one.

I add 3/4-cup of sweetened and flaked coconut. Then, for color, I add 3/4-cup of M&Ms. They, too, look great.

‘Margarine’ or Butter Cookies

The third cookie is actually called a butter cookie – but as I do it, it is a margarine cookie.

As the owner of a high cholesterol count, I have substituted a popular blue-and-yellow-packaged margarine over the years, instead of the called-for butter.

Do as you like; either will turn out a great cookie.

Set oven at 400° and assemble the following ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter (or margarine)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 and 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Mix first five ingredients with an electric mixer until fluffy.

Gradually mix in flour/baking powder mixture by hand.

Chill two to three hours until firm.

Roll out with a rolling pin on a well-floured surface, being careful to have enough flour to keep dough from sticking to the surface and the rolling pin. Roll to 1/4-inch or 1/8-inch thick. Cut with different holiday-shaped cookie cutters and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 6 to 10 minutes, or until edges of cookies are light brown. (I bake mine for only six minutes.)

Remove from cookie sheet and cool on rack.

Now begins the fun – decorating 40 – 50 cookies.

Cream Cheese Frosting

This will make a lot more frosting than you will use on the cookies, but this recipe keeps for three weeks, covered with plastic wrap. (Bake a cake or cupcakes soon.)

1/2-cup (1 stick) margarine (softened)

8 oz. cream cheese (softened)
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 cups confectioner’s sugar
Food coloring (optional)

Blend the softened margarine with the softened cream cheese, adding the vanilla. Beat in the confectioner’s sugar.

Tint small portions of the frosting, if desired, with one or more colors of food coloring.

Add sprinkles or colored sugar while frosting is still moist.

My kitchen was a sea of leftover bits and pieces of colored frosting, coconut, holly and berry sprinkles, pecans and colored sugar when I called it a day – after all cookies were decorated.

Bob came in and surveyed the scene, asking, “Where’s the ugly cookie that is so terrible that you won’t give it to anyone?”

“Take whatever you want, Cookie Monster,” I replied. “Dinner will be a little late tonight.”