The tradition to bake colorful flavored cookies for Christmas, not at all new. But most of the now popular recipes, just came to us from European countries. They are distinguished from traditional cookies using spices and decorating methods.
General principles for Christmas cookie recipes
• Christmas cookies - rich, fragrant, originally decorated pastries. In the recipes of the Christmas cookies, sand dough is taken as a basis.
• It is prepared with the addition of sugar, eggs and butter, which is sometimes replaced with high-quality margarine. A special flavor to the festive cookies is given by various fillers: cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, ginger or vanilla. To improve the taste add honey, nuts, raisins.
• The dough is rolled out in thin layers and cut out of them in different shapes or with the help of a specially prepared pattern, often stars. Balls are also made from dough pieces. Cookies are placed on a baking sheet in an oven preheated to the recommended 180 degrees and baked as indicated in the recipe.
• After cooling, Christmas cookies are decorated with sugar or chocolate icing. It is also prepared with jam, which is used to glue together baked blanks or fill them with voids in baked blanks already glued with proteins. Prepare Christmas cookies and marzipan filling.
• The peculiarity of Christmas cookies, primarily in its design. For it, they use colored icing sugar or melted chocolate. They are poured in completely or applied to the surface of various drawings, squeezing through a pastry syringe. Often baked in the form of six-pointed asterisks billet glued with sugar glaze in the form of Christmas trees.
Christmas cookies recipe with ginger, cinnamon and honey
Ingredients:
• one egg;
• 100 gr. sugar;
• teaspoon of soda;
• half a pack of butter;
• two teaspoons of grated ginger;
• nutmeg (powder) - 1/4 tsp;
• teaspoon hand-crushed cinnamon;
• two spoons of honey;
• a quarter of a spoon of ground cloves.
In the icing:
• protein of one fresh egg;
• sugar, homemade powder 250g .;
• food colorings.
Cooking Method:
1. Melt the soft butter with the sugar, add a loose egg, mix.
2. Pour nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and ginger into the flour. Stir and pour into the oily mixture. Quickly rub your hands, knead the dough breaking into small crumbs.
3. Add honey and, stirring well, prepare a more viscous dough. Divide it in two, put each part in a separate bag and place for 30 minutes. in the “warm” chamber of the refrigerator.
4. Spread a sheet of parchment on the table the size of a baking sheet, lay the already cooled dough on it and roll it out thinly. With the molds, squeeze out the various figures, then gently place the parchment with the cookies on the baking sheet and place in the refrigerator.
5. After ten minutes, remove and send to bake in a preheated oven for ten minutes.
6. Cross over powdered sugar with a sieve. Beating the icinged sugar and gradually pouring iced sugar into the cooled protein, prepare the icing. If desired, divide it into pieces and mix with different dyes.
7. Transfer the colored protein mass to the pastry syringe, decorate the cooled cookies and leave to dry for one hour.
Christmas Cinnamon Shortbread Cookie Recipe - “Fir Trees”
Ingredients:
• two glasses of high-grade wheat flour;
• half a cup of sugar;
• a teaspoon of cinnamon ground in a mortar;
• two tablespoons of 100% cocoa powder;
• butter - half a bag;
• ripper - 0.5 tsp;
• one egg;
• four spoons of honey.
For icing (glaze): • two squirrels;
• icing sugar, freshly prepared - 0.5 cups.
Cooking Method:
1. Reseed cocoa with cinnamon and baking powder. Add flour, re-sieve.
2. On a large grater in a dry mixture, rub lightly frozen butter, mix. Add the egg beaten with honey and sugar, knead and let the dough stand for a quarter of an hour.
3. Roll out a flat layer about half a centimeter thick and cut out of it with a stencil or extrude hexagonal asterisks of different sizes with a mold.
4. Put the biscuit blanks on a baking dish moistened with butter and bake for a quarter of an hour, cool.
5. At low speed, use a mixer to whip chilled proteins into the foam. Continuing to whisk slowly, pour in a third of the powdered powder. After about a minute, add the rest and continue beating until the mass begins to thicken.
6. When the baked stars have cooled, collect the Christmas trees from them by putting a spoonful of icing between the tiers. To “snow lava” flowed through the twigs, gently press down the collected Christmas trees on top.
7. Serve when the icing hardens, after about an hour and a half.
Christmas cookies with chocolate marzipan - “Christmas Stars”
Ingredients:
• “Creamy” margarine - 125 gr .;
• three yolks;
• 250 gr. high-quality flour;
• granulated sugar - 65 gr.
In the filling:
• powdered sugar - 40 g .;
• a teaspoon of brandy;
• 150 gr. marzipan.
For registration:
• raspberry or orange jelly;
• bitter 76% chocolate - 300 gr .;
• icing sugar - 10 gr .;
• food dyes of red and green color;
• Marzipan - 50 gr.
Cooking Method:
1. Cross over the flour on the table, collect a slide and make a small wide top on top. Pour sugar into it, put the pieces of butter and quickly whisk with a knife. Then add the yolks, cook the dough. Wrap it more tightly with film and send it to the refrigerator for an hour and a half. 2. Roll out the 4mm thick chilled dough and cut the stars out of it. If the size of the form is 5 cm, it should be 64 blanks.
3. Transfer the cookie blanks to a parchment-filled baking tray and bake for 10 minutes.
4. Roll marzipan, squeeze out 32 stars from it with the same notch, two times less than from dough.
5. Heat the jelly. Spread them one baked cookies, put a marzipan billet on top. Lubricate it too with warm jelly and cover with the other half of the dough. So collect all the cookies.
6. Take marzipan prepared for decoration. Divide it in half and mix the parts with different dyes. Then roll, cut the stars.
7. Melt chocolate using an ordinary water bath. Culinary brush well grease each cookie and place a colored marzipan star on top. Then turn it over, brush the top with chocolate and let it dry well.
A simple recipe for Christmas cookies with nuts and jam
Ingredients:
• two eggs;
• 130 gr. white sugar;
• creamy “Traditional” butter - 200 gr .;
• 100 gr. any slightly roasted nuts;
• white high-grade flour - 300 gr .;
• Four tablespoons of peach or apricot jam.
Cooking Method:
1. Add sugar to the flour, in the amount of 100 grams and butter cut into cubes. Carefully break the eggs. Squirrels pour into a clean bowl, and add the yolks to the flour and carefully pat everything with a knife. Collect the resulting crumb ball, knead the dough. Form a sausage with a diameter of 5 cm out of it, place it in a bag and place it in the cold for exactly half an hour.
2. To get white foam, beat the chilled proteins. The remaining sugar mix with chopped nuts.
3. Cut the sausage from dough into pieces of a centimeter width and roll balls from them. Dipping balls one by one in squirrels, roll them in a nut sprinkle and put them on a baking sheet. Be sure to pre-grease the roaster with vegetable oil. 4. Lightly press your finger on the top of the balls, make small grooves that fill with jam. Place the baking tray with the nut cookies in the oven for a quarter of an hour.
Christmas cookies with marmalade and raisins
Ingredients:
• half a cup of sugar;
• one egg;
• butter, 82% butter - 110 g;
• two full glasses of flour;
• three spoons of full-fat milk;
• crystalline vanillin - 1/2 tsp;
• 50 gr. dark undisturbed raisins;
• colored marmalade - 50 gr.
In the icing:
• one protein;
• icing sugar - 70 gr.
Cooking Method:
1. For ten minutes, pour the raisins with hot water, then rinse the berries with warm water and dry. Cut the marmalade into large pieces. Separate the yolk from the protein.
2. Rub the butter, softened in the heat, with sugar, immediately add protein and whisk. Enter the yolk with vanilla sugar and mix.
3. In a separate small bowl, mix the flour with cinnamon, then add it to the oil base, mix. Add the crushed marmalade with raisins, knead the soft, non-sticky dough.
4. On a lightly powdered surface, quickly roll out the dough in a large layer up to half a centimeter thick. Cut out figurines with the help of molds and, after moving the blanks to a baking sheet, place it in the oven for 20 minutes.
5. Prior to the appearance of fluffy foam, beat the protein with powdered sugar. Decorate the cooled cookies protein mass to your liking.
Christmas Cookie Recipe - “Vanilla Hearts with Jam”
Ingredients:
• a glass of wheat flour;
• three spoons of powdered sugar powder;
• 150 gr. “Peasant” oil;
• large egg;
• a glass of peeled almonds;
• 50 gr. any jam;
• granulated sugar - 2.5 st. l .;
• bag of vanillin.
Cooking Method:
1. For three minutes pour boiling water over the almonds. Then flip to a colander. With slightly cooled nuts, remove the top brown skin and crush the kernels into a powder blender. 2. Mix the almond crumb with flour, white and vanilla sugar. Add salt, chilled butter pieces and yolk, knead. Put the dough in a bag or wrap it in a thin food wrap so that it does not become chapped, and put it in the fridge for an hour.
3. Remove and roll out thin, 0.3 cm thick, cut the hearts with a layer and a special notch. Carefully cut out the center of the half of the blanks, leaving edges about 5 mm wide.
4. Beat the protein. Grease one side of the hollow hearts with protein mass and place on the whole billet, with the greased side down. To glue well, press lightly, then shift to a roasting pan slightly moistened with oil and bake. Cooking time depends on the oven and on average takes no more than 10 minutes.
5. Fill the chilled cookies with jam and fill the edges with powdered sugar.
Christmas Cookies Recipes Cooking Tips and Tips
• Use only high-quality butter and margarine to make dough. Poor-quality products will change its structure, and ready-made cookies will not be crumbly.
• Just like any other pastry, place cookies only in an oven heated to the required temperature, otherwise thin pieces will not be baked, but dried.
• Decorate only well-cooled preforms. On hot cookies, icing or chocolate will not stick - they will melt.
• To prevent beautifully decorated cookies from sticking to each other, transfer them to a common dish only after the decoration dries completely.
