"cookie a day" news and stories

Is there any other cookie that symbolizes the holiday season, in shape and look, than a cookie shaped like a star? It has that Christmas look, and it's a cookie you'd want to hang on your tree as much as eat it.

I scoured the web and found a punch of different star cookie recipes for you to try this holiday. I tried to get a mix of different flavors and different colors. If you find anymore, please let us know in the comments.

1. Christmas Star Cookies. These are from BrightIdeas.com and utilizes red and green M&Ms (you'll find them at the supermarket this time of year) for that festive look.

Here's another recipe from that 1984 Woman's Day Holiday Cookie pull out. They are a Dutch bar cookie served around the holidays and are fairly easy to pull together. I think they are my favorite of all the cookies I've baked so far this season as they come out light, crispy and buttery.

The only tricky thing is spreading the sticky batter out onto a cookie sheet. The way I did it was by lining a 10 x 15 x 1 cookie sheet with parchment paper (making sure that there's overlap on all sides) and plopping the batter in the middle. When the spatula I was using failed to be an effective spreader, I got out a sheet of waxed paper, lay it on top of the batter and then scooted the batter out to the edges. It worked really well and I was glad I did it, because the batter didn't really spread out much during baking.

I've been wrapped up in finishing my masters thesis this last week (thankfully it's finally all done) so I haven't done much in the way of holiday baking. So today, instead of offering you a recipe that I've tried and can vouch for, I'm pointing you in the direction of a recipe for Chocolate Peppermint Drop Cookies that I bookmarked several weeks ago on Vanilla Garlic. These treats appeal to me because they are drop cookies, none of that fussy rolling and cutting (which I actually do enjoy doing, but I also like cookies that can just scooped and baked). It's a recipe that he adapted from Jill Van Cleave's book Big, Soft, Chewy Cookies. And I'm sure, having tried some of Garrett's past recipes, that it will be a good one. So go over and check it out!

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Let's not get all crazy technical here by telling us that a brownie isn't a cookie. We already got all kinds of heat about dictionary definitions, etc when we told the lucky recipients that they were receiving the results of our cookie-baking chaos. "Cookie baking?" they asked? "Cookie?" These are brownies!

Ungrateful little *censored*. We had it in our minds to snatch the batch back and run off with our "brownies."

If we have to get technical about it, let's just say that these Peanut Butter Cream Brownies are peanut butter cream and chocolate fudge "bar cookies" and be done with it. The bottom layer is a standard fudge brownie recipe that uses cocoa powder, but if you have your own favorite recipe, use it, keeping in mind that the brownies bake in a smaller pan. In other words, if your recipe goes into a 9x13 pan, make half of it.

The top layer is a peanut butter and cream cheese mixture, hence the name Peanut Butter Cream. We used crunchy peanut butter, not because we think tiny chopped hard things tainting peanut butter is okay, but because we used all the smooth peanut butter making regular peanut butter cookies.

My search for good holiday cookie recipes has taken me far and wide. I've flipped through my file folders, scanned indexes of cookbooks, searched the internet and called my mom, all in the pursuit of tasty cookie recipes. Today's recipe comes from the Woman's Day 1984 Holiday Baking supplement. My mom has had it tucked into her binder of recipes for the last 20+ years and read me a few recipes from it over the phone a couple of nights ago.

The one I chose to make today was originally called Honey Boys or Trees, but I've changed the name slightly because I used a variety of cookie cutters. The other thing I did to alter the recipe was to up the amounts of the spices slightly, as I was going for a more flavorful cookie. They turned out really well, with a texture that reminds me vaguely of shortbread. These cookies would be good if you're trying to avoid processed sugars but still want a holiday cookie that looks and acts like the traditional cut out cookies.