More Cookie Recipes

I have such a variety of cookie recipes, though interestingly, I do not make cookies all that often. Holidays are when I go into high gear on making cookies - and that usually happens last minute, mainly as I am not generally keen on making all these individual things called cookies!! 

I have two more recipes to share here, and these are generally not ones I make for holidays. These first, I came up with the combination on my own, only later to find that indeed they are very similar in style to macarons, those cute little sandwiched meringue type cookies seen all over, now. I had long intended to try making macarons, yet they were just one of those things I couldn't seem to find the time to get around to. And then over time, macarons seemed to take the internet by storm, and suddenly they were everywhere. But long before I seriously got around to making macarons, this recipe just came together.

These macaron-like cookies are also basically egg whites and almond flour, and gluten free. I did add a touch of chocolate, but more as a spice mixture combo than as a chocolate flavoring agent. They are stellar in the flavor department, and at one point, I had a couple of teenage boys visiting, and they just about polished off the whole plate of these cookies.

Cinnamon Spice Macarons

These are single cookies; not the smooth-topped little sandwich types seen everywhere these days. Very similar in style, I made these a bit larger, but they are basically a meringue cookie with finely ground almonds. The spices make for an interesting combination. They disappeared in no time in my house.

Cinnamon Spice Macaron Cookies

Makes about 55 larger single macarons

Cinnamon Spice Macaron Cookies

6 egg whites (about ¾ cup total), room temperature
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
1¼ cup granulated sugar
¾ cup almond “flour” (very finely ground almonds)
4 teaspoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon cocoa
½ teaspoon cardamom
¼ to ½ teaspoon ancho chile powder
Pinch of salt

In a small bowl combine the almond flour, cornstarch, cinnamon, cocoa, cardamom, chile powder and salt and whisk to combine. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment.

In the bowl of a mixer, place the egg whites and cream of tartar and whip until the whites hold soft peaks. Gradually add the sugar, beating until the meringue is smooth and glossy and holds stiff peaks. By hand, fold in the dry ingredients gently. Drop by rounded tablespoons into high mounds onto the parchment, allowing at least 2 inches between cookies, as they will flatten and puff as they bake. Bake the meringues for about 40 minutes on two racks in the oven. Switch the sheets top to bottom and front to back about halfway through the baking time. They should be dried on the outside and slightly soft in the center when done. 

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These next cookies make a gorgeous presentation. They are a bit time consuming to make, as they are tiny and involve a lot of little steps. They are also so fabulously delicious, that I had a very hard time not OD-ing, the first time I encountered them. I got this recipe from a lady named Colleen, about 40 years ago. I have no idea where she got the recipe. She said someone gave it to her, and she wrote it out on a recipe card for me. All I can say is, for some special occasion, these are a must try. As they are so tiny, the recipe makes a slew of the little wafers, and make over 50 little sandwiched cookies. 

Cream Wafers

These are tiny little things (about 1½ inches in diameter) and take a bit of time to make all the little rounds and then assemble. However, they are so flaky and light, the raves you will get will more than offset any time spent on making them. Believe me!

Single Wafers before Filling

Makes a lot of tiny cookies!

WAFERS
1 cup unsalted butter, softened

Cream Wafers

⅓ cup whipping cream
2 cups all-purpose flour
Granulated sugar

CREAMY FILLING
¼ cup unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Food Coloring, optional

MAKE WAFERS: Mix together thoroughly the butter and flour, as for pie dough. Add the whipping cream and form a ball. Cover and chill.

Heat oven to 375 degrees. On a floured surface, roll out about ⅓ of the dough at a time, to about ⅛-inch thick. Keep the remaining dough refrigerated until ready to use. Cut the rolled dough into 1½-inch diameter circles. Transfer the little rounds with a spatula to a piece of waxed paper heavily covered with the granulated sugar. Turn each round so that both sides are sugar coated. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Prick the little dough circles with a fork about 4 times. Very important! Bake for 7 to 9 minutes, or until just set, but not brown. Repeat with the other ⅔ of the dough. Cool the wafers.

MAKE CREAMY FILLING: Cream the butter with the confectioners’ sugar; add vanilla and beat until smooth and fluffy. Tint with food coloring if desired. Put a small amount of filling on the bottom side of one wafer, press another bottom side of a wafer against the filling, to make tiny sandwich cookies.

NOTES: When I made these recently, I used the base of a large star icing tip that measured the right size to cut out the little wafers. A small circle cutter will also work well, if it is not too large. These are too delicate to make them too large.

My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.

Some Cookie Recipes that Fell by the Wayside

I know I have been writing blogs about healthier eating. Let's face it though, one cannot eat healthy all the time. A little indulgence here or there is just fine. 

In actuality, I meant to have these cookie recipes out on this blog before Christmas, so everyone might be able to use them for the holidays. Very obviously, that did not happen. With a Wine Tasting and Food Pairing event just before Christmas, and with guests arriving, blogging just did not happen. But, maybe these recipes can stay on the back burner until later on, or next Christmas.

One cookie recipe I had been wanting to try for years was Speculaas, sometimes also spelled Speculoos. Where they originate from is up for grabs, as far as I can tell: Dutch, Flemish, Belgian, German, French. The reason I had wanted to try making these cookies is because of the Biscoff Cookies I had tried. Mine came out more highly spiced and far less sweet than these commercially made cookies, but the recipe is delicious, and the cookies are great with a cup of coffee.

My Springerle Rolling Pin making Speculaas

Traditionally, the cookies are a highly spiced shortbread type, rolled thin and stamped with a windmill cookie mold. Any cookie mold will work just fine, or you can just roll the dough and cut out shapes. I chose to use my Springerle rolling pin, creating a lot of small cookies stamped with patterns. My Springerle pin has all sorts of animal pictures carved into it. 

The first thing needed before making these cookies was Speculaas Spice Mix. I looked through countless recipes for "traditional" Speculaas Spice Mixes and all had some things in common, while there were those few that had something different or other.  In general, something like a Pumpkin Pie Spice mixture will work, though there are some spices that are almost always a part of Speculaas that are not in Pumpkin Pie spice, namely coriander seed and white pepper.

Speculaas Spice Mix

Speculaas Spice Mix

Makes about ½ cup

3 tablespoons Ceylon cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon ground nutmeg
1½ teaspoons ground ginger
1½ teaspoons ground coriander seeds
1½ teaspoons ground white pepper
1 teaspoon ground fennel seeds
1 teaspoon ground cardamom seeds

Combine all spices in a glass jar with tight fitting lid and shake well. Store in a cool dark place. Use approximately 1 tablespoon spice mix to 1 cup of flour in your recipe, according to your taste.

Speculaas Cookies, ready to bake

Next, I took a tour of the internet looking at what kind of recipe constituted Speculaas. I read in many places that these were shortbread cookies, which is generally taken to mean there are no eggs to bind the ingredients. Yet for all that, many recipes called for eggs. I opted to keep the recipe without eggs. In most places, Speculaas are described as a thin, hard cookie. To stamp the cookies with shapes, such as windmills or other, there has to be enough thickness to be able to press down on the stamp (or Springerle Rolling Pin). I opted to roll the dough about ¼-inch thick, and then rolled/pressed evenly with the Springerle rolling pin. Many recipes called for a very low oven and very long baking times, to dry out the cookies and make them crisp. Others baked them at high temperatures for shorter periods to achieve the same thing. I took a middle-of-the-road approach here. I used a 325 oven for part of the time, then lowered it even more for the rest of the time. The cookies came out wonderfully well, and very spicy and delicious, so I am quite content with the recipe.

Speculaas

Speculaas Cookies 

Made about 60 cookies

12 tablespoons (170 g) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (213 g) light brown sugar, packed
⅓ cup (80 g) water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups (284 g) all-purpose flour
½ cup (44 g) white rye flour
½ cup (40 g) finely ground almond meal
¾ teaspoon (3 g) salt
½ teaspoon (1 g) baking soda
3 tablespoons (11 g) Speculaas Spice Mix

In a stand mixer, beat the butter with the brown sugar until very light and fluffy. Combine the water and vanilla extract, then begin adding to the butter mixture by teaspoonfuls, beating continuously and waiting until the water is completely incorporated before adding more.

Separately, whisk together all the remaining ingredients to combine. Add the dry ingredients into the bowl and mix on low speed until the dough comes together into a mass. Turn out of the bowl and form into a large ball or roll, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours, or up to 3 days.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment.

If using a Springerle rolling pin, or other cookie stamps, roll out the dough to about ¼-inch thick with a regular rolling pin. Use the Springerle rolling pin and dust well with flour. Roll the Springerle pin, pressing evenly over the cookie dough and leaving the dough about 1/8 to 3/16-inch thick. Cut out the cookies and set them about an inch apart onto the prepared parchment lined cookie sheets. Gather up the scraps and re-roll them as needed, to use up the dough.

If cutting out the cookies with cookie cutters or just cutting into small rectangles, roll the dough with a regular rolling pin to about 1/8 - 3/16-inch thick and set the cookies an inch apart onto the prepared cookie sheets.

Bake the cookies for 15 minutes. Rotate the cookie sheets and lower the oven temperature to 275 degrees, leaving the cookies in the oven. Bake the cookies for an additional 20 minutes, until very crisp, but not browned.

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Another kind of cookies I made for this year's holidays are Chocolate Cherry Cookies. I based these on a recipe I first encountered on Facebook (see that recipe here, called "Maraschino Cherry Almond Chocolate Cookies"). My reasoning was that my husband has had a "favorite" Christmas cookie his Mom always made, and I have been making them each year since I met him, 28 years ago. These were called Cherry Bon Bons, and while tasty, they are a pain to make! The dough was difficult to work with, and it needed to be formed around a well-drained whole Maraschino cherry, then my husband liked them rolled in the little, hard "rainbow nonpareils" that ended up all over the counters and floor before I was done rolling the formed dough in them. 

Chocolate Cherry Cookies

The recipe I found seemed to have the things my husband likes best all in one cookie: maraschino cherries, cherry juice in the dough, and even better, chocolate chips, too! As I looked at the recipe, the dough part sounded very similar to the dough for the Cherry Bon Bons. Instead of wrapping it around the cherries, the cherries are chopped up instead. So far, I was really happy with this concept. I made the recipe a bit larger and changed some of the amounts by slight bits and the whole thing came out so great that I am hard pressed to think of ever going back to the Cherry Bon Bons again, no matter how cute they are!

Chocolate Cherry Cookies

Chocolate Cherry Cookies 

Makes about 66 cookies

1 (10-ounce) jar maraschino cherries, drained, syrup reserved
3 sticks unsalted butter, softened
½ teaspoon almond extract
½ teaspoon salt
1½ cups confectioners' sugar
3½ cups all-purpose flour
3 - 4 tablespoons maraschino cherry syrup
1½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Make sure the cherries are well drained before starting the recipe. Set them into a sieve or colander and drain, then set them on paper toweling to wick out more moisture. If there is too much residual liquid in the cherries, this will add moisture to the cookie dough and they may not set up so nicely in the oven. Once the cherries are well drained, chop them and set them aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer beat the butter with the almond extract, salt and confectioners' sugar until creamy. With the mixer on low speed, add in the flour until nearly all incorporated, then adding in 3 of the tablespoons of cherry syrup. If the dough is too dry to come together, add the remaining tablespoon of syrup. Add in the cherries and the chocolate chips. Mix just until combined.

Make 1-inch balls, or use a cookie scoop and place the balls about 1½ - 2 inches apart on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for approximately 14 minutes, or until set but not browned. When done, slide the whole parchment sheet with the cookies onto a cooling rack. They will easily release once cooled slightly.


My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.