Winter Holiday Baking

[Anonymous]

Hello!
What are your plans for Holiday baking this winter season? I am always interested in what families bake for the Holidays!

For St. Lucia’s Day I am going to bake up some Lussekatt ("St. Lucia Bun”, a saffron bun shaped like a little S), which should be fun, I made some last year but they were a little dry, hopefully this year they’ll be better! For Christmas in our house I am not sure what I am going to bake, it is so hard being far away from my family back home in the mid-west, so I am trying to start my own traditions for my family!

Happy Baking!!

[Anonymous]

So glad someone started this thread!! I'm looking for some good recipes to start our own traditions, too. I want to try a german christmas cookie that is square and looks like a pillow. It has anise seeds (??) on the bottom. Anyone make these?

[Anonymous]

For Christmas cookie baking, there are really two different kids -- with the kids and without the kids!

I say this because I LOVE holiday baking, but having the kids "help" can get very very fruistrating. My kids have very little patience, and they fight incessantly about who gets to do what.

So I find it helps if I plan some simple baking activities for them. Cookie Cutter Cookies (with a stiff sugar cookie dough) always works well. I make the dough ahead of time and use wax paper. It helps to have the same number of rolling pins as kids. Each child rolls the dough out and cuts the cookies, puts on his own cookie sheet, and bakes.

We mix some simple powdered sugar icing -- each child makes his own -- and they spread the cookies; then they each have their own spinkle shaker of decorations.

Another cookie recipe that is good for kids is Mexican Wedding cookies. It doesn't have eggs so the kids can eat the raw batter. They mix this one up by themselves, and I let them pound the nuts to crack them. It's pretty easy -- just involves a lot of rolling, just like playdough. And the end result looks like snowballs.

I like bothe the above cookies for kids because the use of food color dys is very limited. Food coloring seems to make my kids crazy and irritible, and who needs that on Christmas?

For me, Christmas has always meants Spritz Cookies -- the kids that comes out of a press. But I just haven't been able to find a cookie press that the kids can handle. So I try to do this one on my own.

[Anonymous]

I love to make biscotti at Christmas. I typically make them with almonds. They are great for gifts, because they keep for months in a metal tin. People are always very impressed by them -- even though they are pretty easy to make. They are delicious dunked into coffee or hot chocolate.

[Anonymous]

My aunt always did the holiday baking in our family. The massive box of cookies always included spritz, russian teacakes, chocolate chip cookies, and these yummy toffee-chocolate things. Mostly from the Betty Crocker cookbook of the 1960s.

My mom would make plum pudding. I made a fabulous Jamaican rum fruit cake (almost black, very moist, not at all like those nasty things that come in cellophane) a few years. Sweet, yummy memories...

I bought a cookie press when I was single to make spritz. Can't say I've done holiday baking since then though. DH doesn't care for sweets and I don't need the extra calories. I do miss it though....

When DC is older we will probably do more holiday baking together to give to friends and neighbors.

[Anonymous]

OP here ~ Ah! I love the Betty Crockey Cooky book, I have it next to my desk right now! It is a little funny to see how almost every cookie calls for mass amounts of shortening!

[Anonymous]

Has anyone ever made a "Kringle" before? I saw a recipe for one and it looked really neat, but was wondering if anyone has put one together before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My aunt always did the holiday baking in our family. The massive box of cookies always included spritz, russian teacakes, chocolate chip cookies, and these yummy toffee-chocolate things. Mostly from the Betty Crocker cookbook of the 1960s.

My mom would make plum pudding. I made a fabulous Jamaican rum fruit cake (almost black, very moist, not at all like those nasty things that come in cellophane) a few years. Sweet, yummy memories...

I bought a cookie press when I was single to make spritz. Can't say I've done holiday baking since then though. DH doesn't care for sweets and I don't need the extra calories. I do miss it though....

When DC is older we will probably do more holiday baking together to give to friends and neighbors.

Oh my, this sounds like "Black Cake" as described by Laurie Colwin in one of the essays in Home Cooking. Is it???

[Anonymous]

We love the Martha Stewart "Surprise Cookies" - easy to make and yummy!

[Anonymous]

I was inspired by an article in the NY Times about stollen -- a yeasted sweet bread with plumped up raisins and toasted almonds. I hadn't ever made a yeasted sweet thing before so I wasn't sure what to expect (the dough has yeast, egg, milk and butter) or what kind of texture I would get, but our stollen came out great. My family at it up before it was even cold. We decided when the snow clears we're getting more yeast and making another stollen for Christmas morning!

[Anonymous]

My family always did the cookie-cutter sugar cookies with the icing. We always looked forward to it as kids. My mom would bake the cookies and my dad would mix up all kinds of colors of the icing for us. We would all sit around the table and ice/decorate the cookies (wreaths, angels, santas, reindeer, stars, snowflakes, etc.) one weekend before Xmas. Mom would always make one large gingerbread man shaped cookie for each of us to personalize as our own cookie. I hope to do this with my kids when they are older. As we got older, the decorating go quite sophisticated.