cookiesinheaven

I think it started about a year ago, when the students in one the classes I was teaching found out that I was going to cooking school. "Will you make us something?" they begged. I pictured myself whipping up something in the French tradition from my growing pile of recipes and modifying it to serve thirty or so college freshmen. "No," I replied sensibly. "But if you're good, I'll make you cookies!"

My mom always made a lot of cookies (and fudge) around Christmas time. While I liked the Russian tea cakes and chocolate chip cookies, the green tree cookies were always my favorite.

I’m not entirely sure why I liked them so much. They aren’t overly sweet. They don’t have a particularly strong flavor. It may just be that I could eat a lot of them without getting overwhelmed by them.

Last week I spent the afternoon baking Christmas cookies with a group of culinary-minded Googlers. Traditionally, this cookie is not just a festive holiday snack; it also makes a great homemade gift and an absorbing arts and crafts project. Our little get-together not only resulted in some melt-in-your mouth treats, but also allowed us to roll up our sleeves and get creative. Check out the photo album from our baking session, and try my recipe for buttery shortbread cookies.

For just about every holiday, there are some flavors that just seem to naturally fit right into the overall feel of the season. Christmas in particular has a lot of flavors associated with it, as families often stick with the same traditional foods year after year. Cranberry Orange bread is a staple not only for my family, but for lots and lots of the people I know (even those who don’t celebrate Christams), so while anything that has a combination of cranberries, oranges and nuts will be tasty year-round, it tends to be evocative of the holidays for me - especially if it’s crisp and cold outside.

Oranges and pecans are the two main flavor players in these cookies, which means that they are an excellent holiday cookie as far as I’m concerned. I found the original recipe in a old issue of Food & Drink - an outstanding food magazine published by the LCBO - and it called for a lime-pecan combination. The lime sounded zesty and appealing, but with a tree full of just-ripe blood oranges I couldn’t resist mixing it up a little bit.

Labels: Cookie Exchange, Cookies, Holidays, Recipes