Wow, I believe I was naive. When I asked you if you would be interested in my Easter cookies, 82% of you replied postively when I asked you on Instagram. I honestly didn’t expect that. Unfortunately, cookies are usually only baked during the winter and Christmas season in Germany. We even have a special word for it “Plätzchen” instead of ‘Kekse.” I love cookies all year round and for that reason published a cookie recipe recently. In February I introduced you to chocolate chip cookies with whisky. But apparently Easter is the big exception and even Germans don’t mind a cookie during this season, so yay, cookie time it is. As is often the case, I also shipped some cookies to some friends of mine who can’t bake anymore or simply don’t have time. The ones pictured were shipped one way or another. Today I will introduce the three types of cookies you see pictured below. These are hazelnut cookies as rabbites, lemon cookies with lemon curd, also shown as rabbits, and lambs and Easter eggs, which are sugar cookies with royal icing. I made the hazelnut and lemon cookies as sandwich cookies, glued together with hazelnut cream or lemon curd. They are similar to Linzer cookies. Since I didn’t have the correct cookie cutters for Linzer, I cut out the hole with a nozzle.
If you know me, it won’t come as a surprise that I am a huge fan of any type of chocolate chip cookie. I tried so many different recipes before I finally settled on this recipe for chocolate chip cookies. The below recipe contains whisky or bourbon, and also includes rye flour and rolled oats. It is only a distant relative of the original, but be it as it may, these cookies are extremely delicious. You will definitely taste the whisky flavor, but it is not too dominant. The only downside is that you definitely need to chill these cookies as otherwise you will not get a lot of whisky flavor. Best is 24 hours or overnight.
I probably sound like a broken record, but my very favorite cookie from my birth place Uruguay is alfajores marplatenses. This translates to a chocolate sandwich cookie, which is filled with caramel aka dulce de leche. A decadent delicacy. Obviously I already have a recipe on the blog, however, this time I thought I may give another recipe a try. The recipe below follows the recipe by Isabel Vermal, an Argentinian pastry maker. Her dough is slightly different from my first recipe, it is slightly drier and contains more flour. It is a beautiful contrast to the dulce de leche filling. May I interest you in making below recipe?
Spritz cookies without any cookie press, this is what I am presenting to you today. All you will need is a piping bag with a star tip and you should be good to go. In order for it to work, there are two secrets: first the consistency of the dough can be altered by adding milk by the spoonful, and second, in order for the piping bag not to explode, we will fasten it with some scotch tape. Kindly note that you need to find the happy middle between very dense dough, which is hard to pipe and dough that is too loose so the cookies won’t hold their shape. It does require a bit of experimenting until you have the right consistency. I hope that below instructions are helpful.
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Guys, I will do a cookie week starting as of today. I decided to do this early so that you can research recipes and plan ahead. You may even ship cookies and for that it is always better to start in advance, I at least freeze mine before I send them out. You can read about how to ship cookies in this blog post. However, let’s get back to these Taiwanese pineapple cookies. I found the recipe on the German blog Life is full of goodies, Mara self-published a cookie cookbook, it is called “Internationales Plätzchenbuch“. She glazed hers, I decided to leave mine plain and just dust them with some icing sugar. Continue Reading…
If it were for me, we could skip Halloween all together and dive right into Christmas season. Do you also feel that way? For me fall is perfect for a nice cookie, they are simply comfort food for me, cozy and simple. I remembered that I have a wonderful chocolate cookie on the blog with a caramel center. So I decided to revisit the recipe and tweak it a little bit. I mean, I originally published the recipe in 2017 and I do have a bit more baking experience under my belt. You won’t believe how many cookies I have baked in the last seven years as a pronounced cookie monster. The below recipe has a slightly lower amount of butter and chocolate chunks and I also decided to make them a bit smaller. Also, I decided to sprinkle the cookies with sea salt after baking. Seriously, it took nothing for the cookies to disappear and I need to make more again…
Today I have pumpkin cookies with browned butter for you. At least here in Germany pumpkin is normally only used in savory dishes, which is a pity! So I am following the North American tradition of using all things pumpkin in sweets and the like. I already have a few pumpkin cookies on the blog, so I will add this one to my small list. What I like about these is that you do not need to chill them and if you have canned pumpkin at hand, these are really easy to make. The only extra step is browning the butter, which will give a nutty and caramelized extra flavor. The icing also contains browned butter, so how about you try these?
You may have had enough from cookies, but I don’t care, I decided to blog a last-minute recipe: German hazelnut crescents with five ingredients. This recipe was passed down to me by a lovely lady in Munich. Just as these Heidesand cookies and this Dresdner Eierschecke are recipes from readers, this one has a funny backstory. The German platform Nebenan.de works like a community platform, I got curious when I saw that somebody was asking whether German bakeries in the vicinity sold homemade cookies. I learned that his mother had requested homemade cookies during the season. Since she had recently moved to a nursery home, she couldn’t make them herself anymore. He didn’t dare to make some, so I inquired. One thing let to another and after all I managed to bake these crescents according to his mother’s recipe. Yes, of course she got a batch right away.
Every year I make a Christmas cookie plate with different cookies, usually with around 10+ cookies. I wanted to share my two plates with you for inspiration. How to ship cookies is explained in this blog article, another article looks at how to deal with sugar cookies. If you want to freeze egg whites, this article may be for you. So let’s start with the cookies I made in 2023 and 2022:
Right before Christmas I wanted to share a sugar cookie with royal icing made to wreaths. I use these for our Christmas tree, but obviously you can also just eat them like this or give away as a gift. My Christmas tree ornaments always need to be homemade, at least most of them. I usually decorate my Christmas tree with gingerbread. As we have a dog now, we do have some “fake” gingerbread ornaments, mainly hanging at the bottom so that there is no danger. However, this year I decided to also decorate with the sugar cookies made as Christmas wreaths. Continue Reading…