I told myself I wasn’t going to make Christmas cookies this year. It’s too hard, I thought. I don’t have enough time. Then, in the middle of thinking about how much I didn’t want to make cookies, I found myself driving to the store to buy decorative tins and ingredients for three kinds of holiday treats. It sortof felt like holiday auto-pilot.

It’s easy to go on baking auto-pilot when you’re using easy, familiar recipes. These Lemon Bars and Ginger Crackles come together in less than half an hour, and the Chocolate Mousse Cookies are much less work than similar sorts of ‘chocolate brownie cookies’ that call for long whipping and dough resting times. In the end, they didn’t take much time at all.

With all three of these recipes, you’ll spend most of your time waiting for things to bake or cool. Two are from Abby Dodge’s website (Dodge’s The Weekend Baker is one of my favorites, and she has a new book in the works!), and the other is one of my family’s favourites. If you’re struggling to find some last minute Christmas cookie ideas, give one of these a try.

1) Lemon Bars

2) Ginger Crackles

3) Irene Double Chocolate Mousse Cookies

I can’t be the only one who has trouble finding a decently shaped gingerbread man cookie cutter. They’re either too big or too small, too detailed or not detailed enough, or horrifically bent and misshapen. This year I settled on a plain cutter, though I was sorely tempted by these ninjabread men.

I’m a member of the minimalist school of gingerbread man decorating. Sometimes I don’t decorate them at all, and sometimes I give them two or three buttons. Comparatively, these borders and expressions are pretty elaborate. One of these days I will work my way up to a full-fledged gingerbread house.

I thought this gingerbread recipe was especially good. The cookies are strongly flavored and not too sweet. Even when thoroughly chilled, the dough is soft to work with. I would recommend 1) making the dough and chilling it overnight, 2) rolling out portions of the dough and cutting the cookies, and 3) freezing the cut dough sheets before removing the cookies. If you try to move the cut shapes while the dough is at room temperature, you’ll end up with torn or distorted cookies. The finished cookies will stay crisp for nearly a week- perfect for shipping and holiday snacking.
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I’ve been mailing care packages in small USPS flat-rate boxes. They’re the perfect size for a bag of cookies, which can arrive worse for wear if you don’t pad them with some crumpled paper or scrunched up plastic bags. I have yet to find a truly easy, economical way to ship baked goods. I used to use tins or tupperware wrapped in butcher paper, but the boxes are cheaper.

The term “CARE package” is actually a registered trademark that dates back to World War II. According to Wikipedia, the first care packages contained (among other things):

one pound of beef in broth
one pound of steak and kidneys
8 ounces of liver loaf
8 ounces of corned beef
12 ounces of luncheon loaf (like Spam)
8 ounces of bacon
2 pounds of margarine
one pound of lard

I can almost guarantee that your friends will prefer a box of cookies in lieu of “luncheon loaf.” These crisp, buttery cookies are the love-child of a sugar cookie and a sablé (a sandy French shortbread). Since they freeze well, they’re good for serendipitous occasions when you need a small, spicy sweet. I plan to try some variations with citrus zest or other spices. Cardamom is one of my favorites though, and I suggest you start simply.
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Over the weekend, I made macaroni and cheese, fried green tomatoes, bean and ham hock soup, barbecued chicken, cinnamon rolls, and brownie bites. Upon hearing this, two of my friends proclaimed me a Southern chef. While I think one needs Southern heritage to truly claim that label, I won’t deny that current geographical circumstances have heavily influenced my cooking.

I didn’t intend to change. When I consider why i’ve felt compelled to fill my shopping basket with okra, peaches, and pig parts, I can’t come up with a definitive answer. Perhaps the availability (and abundance) of certain ingredients has slowly overtaken my taste buds. Or maybe my desire to fit in is manifesting itself in gallon-containers of tea, meringue-topped pies, and sour-dairy-enriched baked goods. It could be that i’m cooking to please a different audience- new friends and coworkers whose tastes are a far cry from mine circa 2005 (which sadly involved a lot of tofu, packaged hummus, and frozen brussels sprouts).

I don’t mean to stereotype the regional cuisine, but it is different. Before I moved here, I had never seen two kinds of tea or pickled peppers at a potluck. I had never tasted pecan pralines, cheese grits, trigger fish, or tomato pie. When I am with my relatives from Guam, we make a lot of bbq and coconut dishes. When I am with my bicycle-riding hipster friends, we eat a lot of vegetarian/vegan food. So it doesn’t surprise me that in Alabama, my cooking is…porkier- for lack of a better word. It could just be a phase. Check back with me in a month- maybe then i’ll be making curries, grain salads, and frittatas…

I made these brownie bites more for aesthetics than taste, which isn’t to say they didn’t taste good! I’m particularly fond of the glaze, which yields enough to cover a small cake.
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Most of my home-baking decisions are based on the above formula, or a similar one that considers whether or not my coworkers will like the finished product. These Caramel Cracker Bars, while not especially refined, will get devoured in an instant. I brought a tin of eighteen to work today, and i’m pretty sure they were gone within a half-hour.

This is the sort of recipe I love to make on a weeknight. I’ll put on some music or some guilty pleasure TV (in this case, So You Think You Can Dance) and putter around the kitchen. I’ll finish cooking and cleanup within an hour. Once the cookies have cooled, I’ll eat one or two, then package up the rest to freeze or take to work.

I like to have easy, appealing recipes on hand for potlucks, parties, care packages, and christmas cookie assortments. People get really excited when they learn a confection involves crackers. This recipe isn’t complicated, and its has countless variations (ie White Trash Toffee, Chocolate-Covered Caramelized Matzoh Crunch, Ghetto Toffee, Trailer-Trash Toffee, etc).

In this version, sweetened condensed milk makes the filling chewy- similar to a millionaire’s shortbread. I’d love to see a variation made with dulce de leche. I also wonder if saltines would be an acceptable crust-substitute for other bar cookies…
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