Holiday Baking Month: Holiday Cookies

Prep time: 10 minutes with mixer, Chill :1/2 hour to 1 hour Bake: 8-10 minutes

The holiday season is upon us, so we’ll be doing a fun holiday bake each week for December. First up, we did a softball with holiday cookies. I wanted to follow crazy ideas of mine without looking up any recipes. I have four types of cookies that came out using the same base mix. Baking is a science and one, I’m moderately alright with. Here’s the results of my cranial insanity.

Ingredients

Cookie Base

• 2 1/4 cup all purpose flour

• 3/4 cup granulated sugar

• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar

• 1 cup softened butter (two sticks)

• 1 tsp baking soda

• 1 tsp salt

• 2 large eggs

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Dipped Salted Caramel

• ~1/8 cup caramel sauce/syrup

• 1/2 cup melting chocolate melted

• Sea salt as desired

Hot Chocolate

• Hot chocolate coco powder

• 1 small bag marshmallows

• ~ 1/8 cup caramel sauce/syrup (I bought a bottle and just used it on all of them. Just easier cause it’s really to the taste)

Peppermint Kiss Blossom

• ~ 1/8 cup caramel sauce/syrup

• Hershey Candy Cane Peppermint kisses

Caramel Chocolate Blossom

• ~ 1/8 cup caramel sauce/syrup

• Hershey Chocolate kiss

Baking Adventure

The finished cookie dough to be chilled

1. Preheat oven to 350 F

2. Start off by making your cookie base. In a small bowl (this is the same recipe as my earlier chocolate chip and m&M cookies just stops short) add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix this around a bit lazily. Doesn’t need to be amazing.

3. In a much bigger bowl add the softened butter, brown sugar, and sugar. Mix this however you can. I got to use my brand new, amazing, hand saving, hand mixer with the (I think) paddle attachments. Mix until creamy.

4. Add the eggs one at a time. Make sure the egg is fully mixed in before adding the next one.

5. Add the vanilla and mix

6. Add the flour mixture in small parts mixing it as you go

7. You want this to get nice and creamy. It’ll taste like cookie dough hopefully

8. Put this in the fridge to chill for at least a half hour, maybe more. Mine was in there for like an hour.

Dipped Salted Caramel

Cookie dough with caramel mixed in is a bit creamier

1. Pull out the cookie dough. (I split it in half for what I did this night.)

2. Add the caramel into the dough and stir around to mix. This is honestly to taste, I put in an estimate of how much I used

3. Roll into small little dough balls

4. Add to a greased or parchment paper covered cookie tray. I forgot to get more parchment paper and so we used a dash of vegetable oil and a paper towel to spread it around and lightly coat the pan

5. With the half batch I used I was able to get over 20 cookies from this

6. Bake for 8-10 minutes

7. Let the cookies cool fully, ideally on a rack. The caramel makes these a bit more sticky. Beware

8. While cooling, melt the chocolate. I microwaved it in a bowl, you could make a double broiler if you’d like or use a torch or sheer force of will and body heat. Make sure it’s in a bowl when done.

9. Dip the cooled cookies halfway into the melted chocolate

10. Sprinkle the sea salt on the chocolate before it cools and hardens

Hot Chocolate

1. Take half the prepared dough

2. Pour at least half or more of a hot chocolate coco packet

3. Stir this around and mix in. It looks really really cool marbled together. This might need taste tested to see if you get the chocolate though not advisable cause you know. Raw eggs. Mine didn’t come out tasting like hot chocolate coco but I didn’t add that much in fear of overpowering it. Jokes on me.

4. Roll into little balls on a greased cookie sheet (or parchment paper)

5. Bake for 8-10 minutes

6. Cool fully on a rack.

7. Take the caramel and drizzle however you want over the tops. Go crazy, make a pattern

8. Add two marshmallows to the caramel to stick to the cookie

Peppermint Kiss Blossom

1. Take the prepared dough

2. Add the caramel to the dough and stir the crap out of it to mix in

3. Roll into little balls and add to a greased cookie tray

4. Bake for 8-10 minutes

5. Let the cookies cool mostly

6. While cooler, but still soft add the candy cane kiss to the center and press down

Chocolate Caramel Blossom

1. Add the caramel to the prepared dough and stir to mix

2. Roll into little balls and add to a greased cookie tray

3. Bake for 8-10 minutes

4. Let the cookies cool mostly

5. While cooler but not hardened, add the kisses to the center and press slightly to indent it

Afterthoughts

All the cookies when finished. From upper left: hot chocolate, caramel chocolate blossom, peppermint kiss blossom, dipped sea salt caramel.

These turned out a multiple of ways. The caramel based cookie dough was definitely my favorite. These had such a sweet kick that hit late but was amazing. Blossoms are some of my favorite cookies so those were a win. I will say, I dislike peppermint. A lot. I won’t eat it, but I was told that while caramel and peppermint makes you go ‘what?” the taste worked and was great. The peppermint is strong and doesn’t let the caramel overpower and make it weird. The dipped ones are rich and salty sweet in an amazing way and the hot chocolate ones were alright. The coco didn’t come out but if you like caramel and marshmallows, this one is for you. There’s so many different things to do when it comes to cookies so have fun and maybe some will work.