Friday, November 29, 2024

Cranberry Crumble Bars

Bar cookies with a cranberry/orange zest filling, topped with more cookie dough and a vanilla glaze. Photographed on a green holly leaf-shaped plate.

It’s the 12 Days of Holiday Recipes! Over the next few weeks I will be posting 12 cookie and fudge recipes that I have discovered this year.

As I mentioned recently, the area where I live was hit hard with heavy winds, knocking out the power at home for four days. Our cats were so confused as to why we were sitting in the dark and the cold, and I am sure they were thinking that we just needed to turn on the heat!. We are glad that the power has been restored, but we had to throw away nearly everything in the refrigerator and freezer. I had just stocked up for holiday baking, but thankfully only a few things are refrigerated. I do feel like it has put me horribly behind schedule, but what can you do?

I had planned to make these Cranberry Crumble Bars last week, but that didn’t happen! I thought that they are a nice transition between Thanksgiving and the holiday season. With the fresh cranberries, they are nice and tart, but have the balance of the cookie dough to keep them sweet. I did have to restock a few things before I could make these, but that was minimal.

This recipe called for an 8” pan, but it has a lot of ingredients so I used my 9” pan. I still had plenty of dough! Adjusting the pan size, I knew I needed to watch the baking time but I didn’t have any issue. I had reserved two cups of dough for the topping and didn’t need all of it, I used a little over a cup, so you could adjust the ratio of base and topping if you’d like. Your house will smell magical when you bake these, the cranberries are tart but pair so well with the other flavors.

Cranberry Crumble Bars
1 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 1/4 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries
2/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon orange zest
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup powdered sugar
4 tablespoons heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9” square baking pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large mixer bowl, add the butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Beat on medium until light. Add the egg and vanilla and beat again until the ingredients are combined. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Stir on low until a dough forms.

Set aside about 2 cups of dough for the topping. Press the remaining dough evenly into the prepared pan. Use a measuring cup to help flatten the dough.

Bake for 15 minutes, until the center is set. Remove the pan from the oven but keep the oven on.

In a large bowl combine the cranberries, sugar, cornstarch, orange zest and juice, and vanilla. Stir with a spatula, then pour the mixture over the partially baked crust.

Break up the reserved 2 cups of dough with your hands and randomly place on top of the cranberry filling, making a crumble. This should not be a solid layer, you want to be able to see the cranberry filling in different places.

Bake for an additional 45 minutes. You may need to cover the bars after 30 minutes or the bars will brown too much. Cool the bars completely before adding the glaze.

Make the glaze: in a medium bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar, heavy cream, and vanilla. Add additional heavy cream if the glaze is too thick. Drizzle over the cooled bars.

Recipe from Browned Butter Blondie

Sunday, November 24, 2024

Glazed Ginger-Citrus Shortbread

Refrigerator sliced cookies flavored with ginger and citrus. Half covered with a lemon glaze and additional diced ginger. Photographed on a blue and pink oval plate.

Sorry for the delayed post, we have been out of power for four days! We are so glad we have lights and heat again!

I tried making these cookies a bit ago, but I had some struggles with the recipe. I did use vegan butter in place of the traditional dairy-based butter, and I don’t think that was the best choice for a shortbread cookie. I use vegan butter occasionally, and it typically works great, but there are some recipes that just aren’t to be edited. My original batch were too browned on the bottom, but my husband/cookie taster said that they didn’t taste burned. Hmmm.

I wanted to have these cookies so I wanted to get these made. Even though I had to adapt a couple of ingredients, based on what I had, but the flavors sounded great. The recipe called for lemon emulsion, and I had lemon oil and I hoped that was close. I also used orange oil instead of orange peel or orange jammy bits. King Arthur Baking makes pre-diced candied ginger that is diced very finely. It’s the best as chopping candied ginger is very difficult!

So the cookies baked ok, it’s just one of those recipes that you have to watch carefully or they will burn. I figured the glaze would help me out, since that compensates a lot. The glaze was great and in the end the cookies looked just fine. You do sprinkle diced ginger to finish the cookies, which makes these very ginger-forward. I love that I hope that you do too!

Glazed Ginger-Citrus Shortbread

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon lemon oil
 2 3/4 cups flour
 2 tablespoons mini diced ginger
1/4 teaspoon orange oil
1/2 teaspoon ginger

2 cups powdered sugar
2-3 tablespoons lemon juice
Additional diced ginger

Make the dough: in a large mixer bowl, combine the sugar, powdered sugar, lemon zest, and salt. Mix for about 30 seconds until the sugar is fragrant. Add the butter to the mixer bowl and mix on medium until smooth. Add the egg, vanilla, and lemon oil and mix for about a minute. The mixture may look curdled- don’t worry.

With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour, diced ginger, orange oil, and ginger. Mix on low until the dough comes together.

Shape the dough into two logs, each about 2” in diameter. Wrap the dough logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, two hours or overnight.

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Unwrap the dough logs and slice into rounds, about 1/3”. Place on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, rotating the baking sheet once during the process. The cookies with be slightly browned along the edges. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Once the cookies are cool, make the glaze: in a medium bowl whisk together the powdered sugar and lemon juice. If the glaze is too thick, add additional lemon juice until you reach the right consistency.

Half dip each cookie in the glaze and wipe away any excess. Place on a lined baking rack (to catch any extra glaze) and then sprinkle with additional diced ginger. Allow the cookies to set before serving.

Recipe from King Arthur Baking

Friday, November 15, 2024

Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies

Three chocolate chip cookies, with added chopped bacon! Photographed on a blue plate.

It’s a bit of a joke in my household that I don’t often make chocolate chip cookies, which are my husband’s favorite. There are just so many variations that I can post on my blog. Apparently his coworkers bring him chocolate chip cookies from time to time, since he is lacking such a basic resource at home. We often have lots of baked goods around, so I don’t feel too bad about this!

His colleagues sometimes send him recipes and ask “Is this different enough for Nicole to bake?” I think this is quite funny and I am impressed that they pay some attention to the recipes I blog. This cookie idea was sent to my husband, and I figured that it was different enough to blog about. My husband sent me a few recipes and I chose this one, although it does call for three types of sugar and two types of chips. And bacon!

They key for these cookies is that the bacon isn’t too greasy, which is why we thought of using the precooked bacon. We couldn’t find that so we ended up with microwave bacon and drained it well. After it cooled I chopped it into ½” pieces or so- the crispier the bacon the less precise cutting is! The recipe you see here is half of the original, but I still made about 4 dozen cookies. These turned out picture perfect, and I hope they will allay any “you don’t make chocolate chip cookies” comments.

Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies
½ pound bacon
¾ cup butter, melted
½ cup packed dark brown sugar
½ cup packed light brown sugar
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 egg + 1 yolk
2 cups flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
½ cup semisweet chocolate chips

Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Cook the bacon until crispy. Set the cooked bacon on paper towels and allow the bacon to drain the excess grease. Once the extra grease has been removed, chop the bacon.

In a large mixer bowl, combine the butter, dark and light brown sugar, and the sugar. Mix on medium until the mixture comes together. Add the vanilla and eggs and stir again to combine. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Using a spatula, fold in the bittersweet and semisweet chips and the chopped bacon.

Shape the dough into 1-1/4” balls and place on the prepared baking sheets.


Bake for 14-16 minutes, until the edges of the cookies brown. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from Serious Eats

Friday, November 8, 2024

Lemon Ginger Cookies with Crystallized Ginger

Lemon ginger cookies packed with crystallized ginger, topped with a lemon glaze. Photographed on a gold plate.

At work we were having a celebration for one of my colleagues who is having a baby! I didn’t have too many specific requests but wanted to avoid chocolate if possible. I came across a couple of recipes and ended up choosing a lemon ginger shortbread that I had been waiting to make. Since I only needed to change the butter to vegan butter, I also made these dairy free (except for the egg). I made the slice and bake cookie dough and then baked the cookies, but they baked too long. They looked fine on top, but the bottoms were burned.

I had to go with Plan B, which is a cookie with crystallized ginger, and to honor the original cookies, I added lemon zest to the dough and added a lemon glaze to them. They don’t look the same, but they have the same flavors, and that’s good. This dough came together with no issue, and the cookies came out of the oven nice and crinkly, which was perfect. I could have left of the glaze, but I wanted to include more lemon flavor in these cookies.

You do need to be thoughtful when baking with vegan butter. For the most part it works just like butter, but I do think the original shortbread I made browned too quickly because the vegan butter acts just a little differently. For the glaze, I used the glaze from the original recipe. It called for lemon juice, but I needed to thin it a touch so I had purchased some non-dairy milk that I could use. When I dipped the cookies, I suppose that the glaze could have been thicker, but it still worked well.

Lemon Ginger Cookies with Crystallized Ginger
120 grams butter or vegan butter
200 grams sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 teaspoon lemon zest
250 grams flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
150 grams finely chopped crystallized ginger
2 cups powdered sugar
2-1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
Pinch of salt
Additional lemon juice or milk, as needed

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixer bowl, combine the butter, sugar, and vanilla. Beat on medium until light. Add the egg and lemon zest and mix again to combine. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and ginger. Mix on low until the dough almost comes together. Add the chopped crystallized ginger and mix again, on low, until the dough is cohesive.

Shape the dough into 1-1/4” balls and place on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 12-14 minutes, until the cookies are set and beginning to turn golden. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before removing them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Make the glaze: in a medium bowl combine the powdered sugar, lemon juice, and salt. Whisk until a smooth glaze forms, thinning with additional lemon juice or milk if needed. Dip the cooled cookies halfway into the glaze, wiping off any excess. Allow the cookies to set on a wire rack before serving.

Recipe from Where is My Spoon? Glaze recipe from King Arthur Flour

Friday, November 1, 2024

Maple Cinnamon Mummy Cookies

Maple Cinnamon Cookies, drizzled with glaze, topped with candy eyes to make the cookies look like mummies

I have been saving these cookies to make for Halloween and the time finally arrived! While these cookies could be made without candy eyes and simply look like a maple cinnamon cookie with a drizzled glaze, why would you not go that extra step to celebrate the holiday? I will be honest that I bought candy eyes some time ago and then realized that package was quite small, prompting me to make am 8 pm dash to the local store to find more. I do plan, it just isn’t always quite enough.

These cookies come together quickly, a spiced cookie with maple syrup. I used some bourbon-barrel aged maple syrup as we had some and my husband thought that would taste great. You can use whatever maple syrup you have, but do make sure it isn’t pancake syrup. That is a completely different ingredient. You can also use heavy cream, milk, or half and half for the glaze. The type of milk you use will impact the fluidity of the glaze, but you can adapt to that.

This recipe made a fairly big batch of cookies, so I experimented a little. I flattened some cookies and not others, and the ones that I didn’t flatten looked better in the end. The recipe I give here for the glaze is double the original, and I could have used more glaze. I made about 1-1/2 recipes of the glaze and still ran out. I’d rather have too much glaze than too little. These cookies are quite sweet, but that’s to be expected with the maple and the glaze and the candy eyes!

Maple Cinnamon Mummy Cookies
1 cup butter, melted and cooled
1½ cups packed brown sugar
⅓ cup maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon maple extract
1 egg
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5-6 tablespoons heavy cream
Candy eyes

In a large mixer bowl, combine the melted butter, brown sugar, maple syrup, vanilla ad maple extract. Mix on medium until the mixture comes together. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour mixture. Mix just until the dough comes together evenly. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour.

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Shape the dough into balls, about 1-1/4” in diameter. Place them on the prepared baking sheet.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, until slightly puffy but set. Allow to cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack.

Once the cookies are cooled, make the glaze: in a medium bowl, combine the powdered sugar, vanilla and 4 tablespoons heavy cream. Using a small whisk, beat the mixture until a glaze forms, adding additional heavy cream as needed to reach drizzling consistency. Drizzle over the cookies and add candy eyes if desired. Allow the glaze to set before serving.

Recipe from Cooking with Carlee

Friday, October 25, 2024

Apple Butter Swirl Cookies

Apple Butter Cookies, with an extra swirl of apple butter and cinnamon, drizzled with a powdered sugar and apple butter glaze

At our local fall festival, there are so many vendors and it can be really overwhelming! We tend to pick up the same sorts of things: candy of different sorts, jams and jellies, candles, holiday decorations, and that sort of thing. I also like to look at the jewelry vendors, as I often wear necklaces to work. Some necklaces are just too large, but it is always fun to look.

We did pick up some apple butter at the festival, and it felt like it had been ages since I made anything with apple butter, so I sought out a couple of different recipes to try. When I searched my blog, I had made a couple of things with apple butter, but mainly bar cookies and also an apple butter thumbprint cookie. These have a swirl that you partially freeze and then add to the dough. That worked ok, although I am not sure that it is super obvious when you look at the cookies.

I had read through the recipe and there were no issues, but at the end the original blogger said that the recipe would make about 11 cookies. That seemed odd to me, but her cookies were quite large (2.5 ounces). I make cookies my “regular” size and that ended up weighing about 1 ounce. The size of your cookies will impact baking time, but I baked mine about 13 minutes. The swirl is interesting; in one or two cookies, the swirl was too close to the edge and melted a bit, but otherwise they were good. These cookies are soft, because of the apple butter, but also crisp. It seems like an impossible combination, but it works in these cookies!

Apple Butter Swirl Cookies
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 tablespoon apple butter
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup apple butter
1 egg
2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon apple butter
2-3 tablespoons heavy cream

In a small bowl, combine the melted butter, apple butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Stir until well combined. Cover the bowl and place in the freezer for 15 minutes.

In a large mixer bowl, add the butter, brown sugar, and apple butter. Mix on medium until the mixture comes together, about 2 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla and beat again on medium until incorporated. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix until the flour almost disappears into the dough.

Remove the cinnamon/apple butter mixture from the freezer. Drop pieces of the mixture on top of the dough. Turn the mixer on and off, swirling the cinnamon/apple butter mixture into the dough. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Scoop the dough onto the prepared baking sheets, placing around 8 cookies per baking sheet.

Bake for 13-15 minutes, until set and the cookies don’t look wet. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Once the cookies are cool, make the glaze: in a small bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar, apple butter, and 2 tablespoons heavy cream. If the mixture is too thick, add additional heavy cream and again whisk until smooth. Drizzle the glaze over the cooled cookies.

Recipe from Baran Bakery

Friday, October 18, 2024

Almond Shortbread Bars

Almond Shortbread Bar, topped with an Almond Glaze and Slivered Almonds. Photographed on a blue and white plate with a sleeping kitty image.

I have been planning to make these bar cookies for quite a while, and I really don’t know why it took me so long to do so. Some time ago I went to the store to get almond paste, as that was the one ingredient in these cookies that was more uncommon. It was quite hard to find, as the stores carried marzipan rather than almond paste. They are similar but not the same. I was really upset when they put tubes of marzipan in an almond paste display! I finally found it at least. (Almond paste has more almonds and marzipan has more sugar, FYI.)

I have used almond paste in different ways, but in this case, it gets added to the dough. You want to make sure the almond paste is in small pieces when you add it or it won’t incorporate easily. Other than making sure that the almond paste is evenly incorporated, these bars are not difficult. They are sticky, and spreading in the pan isn’t easy, but my slightly damp hands worked best.

They cool just a few minutes and then make the glaze. It starts with melting butter and cream. I was out of cream so I used milk, which made my glaze a little thinner. After assembling the glaze, I let it sit about 5 minutes and that helped. It does thicken as it cools, so don’t be too concerned. While the glaze does remain somewhat soft, the bars have the best almond flavor you can imagine. I thought ½ a cup of butter was a lot for the glaze, but it isn’t; it just makes it extra tasty.

Almond Shortbread Bars
1 cup butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup (156 grams) almond paste
1 egg
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups flour

1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup heavy cream (or milk)
About 3 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup sliced/slivered almonds

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9” x 13” pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter and sugar on medium until light. Cut the almond paste into small pieces and add to the mixer bowl along with the egg and almond extract. Mix on medium until the mixture is smooth and the almond paste is well distributed in the dough. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour, stirring just until the dough comes together.

Spread the dough in an even layer in the prepared pan. A metal spatula and slightly damp hands can help in this process.

Bake for about 25 minutes, until the bars begin to turn golden. Allow the bars to cool 10 minutes before making the glaze.

Make the glaze: in a medium saucepan, add the butter and heavy cream. Heat on medium low, stirring frequently, until the butter is melted and the mixture is smooth. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in about 2-1/2 cups of powdered sugar and the almond extract. If the mixture seems too thin, add additional powdered sugar. Stir in the sliced/slivered almonds.

Pour the glaze over the partially cooled bars, making sure that the glaze covers evenly. Allow the glaze to fully set (or refrigerate) before removing the bars from the pan and cutting into squares.

Recipe from The View from the Great Island