The tradition of baking colorful flavored cookies for Christmas is not at all new. But most of the currently popular recipes just came to us from European countries. They are distinguished from traditional cookies by the use of spices and decoration methods.
General principles for Christmas cookie recipes
• Christmas cookies - rich, fragrant, originally decorated pastries. In the above Christmas cookie recipes, shortcrust pastry is taken as the basis.
• It is prepared with the addition of granulated sugar, eggs and butter, which is sometimes replaced with high-quality margarine. Various fillings give a special flavor to the festive cookies: cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, ginger or vanilla. To improve the taste, add honey, nuts, raisins.
• The dough is rolled out into thin layers and cut out of them with molds or according to a specially prepared template, various figures, usually stars. Balls are also formed from pieces of dough. Cookies are placed on a baking sheet in an oven preheated to the recommended 180 degrees and the time indicated in the recipe is baked.
• After cooling, Christmas cookies are decorated with sugar or chocolate icing. It is also prepared with jam, which glues the baked billets or fill them with voids in the baked billets already glued with proteins. Christmas cookies are also prepared with marzipan filling.
• The peculiarity of Christmas cookies, primarily in its design. For it, use iced sugar or melted chocolate, colored with food colors. They are poured completely or applied to the surface of a variety of patterns, squeezing through a pastry syringe. Often billets baked in the form of six-pointed stars are glued with sugar icing in the form of Christmas trees.
Christmas cookie recipe with ginger, cinnamon and honey.
Ingredients:
• one egg;
• 100 gr. sugar
• a teaspoon of soda;
• half a pack of butter;
• two teaspoons of grated ginger;
• nutmeg (powder) - 1/4 tsp;
• a teaspoon of hand-ground cinnamon;
• two tablespoons of honey;
• a quarter of a spoon of ground cloves.
In the glaze:
• protein of one fresh egg;
• sugar, homemade powder 250 gr.;
• food colorings.
Cooking method:
1. Pound the soft butter with granulated sugar, add the loosened egg, mix.
2. Pour the nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and ginger into the sifted flour. Stir and pour into an oily mixture. Quickly rubbing with your hands, knead the dough that breaks into small crumbs.
3. Add honey and, thoroughly mixing, prepare a more viscous dough. Divide it in two, put each part in a separate bag and place for 30 minutes. into the warm chamber of the refrigerator.
4. On the table, spread a sheet of parchment the size of a baking sheet, put the already cooled dough on it and roll it thinly. Squeeze out various figures with cookie cutters, then carefully transfer the parchment and cookies to a baking sheet and place in the refrigerator.
5. After ten minutes, remove and send to bake in a preheated oven for ten minutes.
6. Transfer the powdered sugar with a sieve. Beating and gradually pouring powdered sugar into the cooled protein, prepare the icing. If desired, divide it into parts and mix with different dyes.
7. Transfer the colored protein mass to a confectionery syringe, decorate the cooled cookies and let dry for one hour.
Recipe for Christmas cookies from shortcrust pastry with cinnamon - "Fir-trees"
Ingredients:
• two glasses of high-grade wheat flour;
• half a glass of sugar;
• a teaspoon of ground cinnamon in a mortar;
• two tablespoons of 100% cocoa powder;
• butter - half packs;
• cultivator - 0.5 tsp;
• one egg;
• four tablespoons of honey.
For icing (glaze):
• two proteins;
• icing sugar, freshly prepared - 0.5 cups.
Cooking method:
1. Transplant cocoa with cinnamon and baking powder. Add flour, transfer again.
2. On a coarse grater, grate slightly frosted butter in a dry mixture, mix. Add the egg beaten with honey and sugar, knead and let the dough stand for a quarter of an hour.
3. Roll out an even layer with a thickness of about half a centimeter and cut out of it with a stencil or squeeze a hexagonal asterisk of different sizes with a mold.
4. Put the cookie blanks on a baking sheet moistened with butter and bake for a quarter of an hour, cool.
5. At low speed, beat the cooled proteins into the foam with a mixer. Continuing to beat slowly, add a third of the seeded powder. After about a minute, add the rest and continue whipping until the mass begins to thicken.
6. When the baked stars have cooled, collect the Christmas trees from them, spreading between the tiers on a tablespoon of ice. To "snow lava" flowed along the branches, slightly press the collected Christmas trees on top.
7. Serve when the glaze hardens, after about an hour and a half.
Chocolate Marzipan Christmas Cookies Recipe - "Christmas Stars"
Ingredients:
• margarine "Creamy" - 125 gr.;
• three yolks;
• 250 gr. high-quality flour;
• granulated sugar - 65 gr.
To the filling:
• icing sugar - 40 gr.;
• a teaspoon of cognac;
• 150 gr. marzipan.
For registration:
• raspberry or orange jelly;
• bitter 76% chocolate - 300 gr.;
• icing sugar - 10 g .;
• food colors red and green;
• marzipan - 50 gr.
Cooking method:
1. Transfer the flour to the table, collect it with a slide and make a small wide depression on top. Pour sugar into it, put slices of butter and quickly chop with a knife. Then add the yolks, cook the dough. Wrap it with tighter film and send it to the refrigerator for an hour and a half.
2. Roll out the cooled dough with a 4 mm layer and cut out the stars from the cookie cutter. If the mold size is 5 cm, 64 pieces should be obtained.
3. Transfer the cookie blanks to a baking sheet covered with parchment and bake for 10 minutes.
4. Roll the marzipan, squeeze out 32 stars from it with the same recess, half as much as from the dough.
5. Preheat the jelly. Spread one baked cookie on them, put a marzipan preparation on top. Lubricate it with warm jelly and cover with the other half of the dough. So, collect all the cookies.
6. Take the marzipan cooked for decoration. Divide it in half and mix the parts with different dyes. Then roll out, cut out the stars.
7. Melt the chocolate using an ordinary water bath. With a culinary brush, grease each cookie well and place a colored marzipan star on top. Then turn 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;
• Butter "Traditional" butter - 200 gr.;
• 100 gr. any slightly toasted nuts;
• white high-grade flour - 300 gr.;
• four tablespoons of peach or apricot jam.
Cooking method:
1. Add 100 grams sugar and chopped butter to the sifted flour. Gently break the eggs. Drain the squirrels in a clean bowl, and add the yolks to the flour and carefully chop everything with a knife. Collect the resulting crumbs with a ball, knead the dough. Form a sausage with a diameter of 5 cm from it, place in a bag and put in the cold for exactly half an hour.
2. Beat the chilled proteins until white foam. Mix the remaining sugar with chopped nuts.
3. Cut the dough sausage into centimeter-wide slices and roll the balls out of them. Alternately dipping balls into proteins, roll them in a nut powder and transfer to a baking sheet. Be sure to pre-grease the frypot with vegetable oil.
4. Lightly pressing your finger on the top of the balls, make small indentations, which are filled with jam. Place a biscuit with nut cookies in the oven for a quarter of an hour.
Christmas cookie recipe with marmalade and raisins
Ingredients:
• half a glass of sugar;
• one egg;
• butter, 82% butter - 110 gr.;
• two full glasses of flour;
• three tablespoons of fat milk;
• crystalline vanillin - 1/2 tsp;
• 50 gr. dark unsalted raisins;
• colored marmalade - 50 gr.
In the glaze:
• one protein;
• icing sugar - 70 gr.
Cooking method:
1. Pour raisins with hot water for ten minutes, then rinse the berries with warm water and pat dry. Cut marmalade into large pieces. Separate the yolk from the protein.
2. Rub the warm softened butter with sugar, immediately add the protein and beat. Enter the yolk with vanilla sugar and mix.
3. In a separate small bowl, mix the flour with cinnamon, then pour into an oil base, mix. Add crushed marmalade with raisins, knead a soft, not sticky dough.
4. On a slightly powdered flour surface, quickly roll out the dough with a large layer up to half a centimeter thick. Cut out the figures with the help of molds and, moving the blanks on a baking sheet, put it in the oven for 20 minutes.
5. Before the appearance of lush foam, beat the protein with powdered sugar. Decorate the cooled cookies with a protein mass to your liking.
Christmas Cookie Recipe - Vanilla Hearts with Jam
Ingredients:
• a glass of wheat flour;
• three tablespoons of powdered sugar;
• 150 gr. "Peasant" oil;
• large egg;
• a glass of peeled almonds;
• 50 gr. any jam;
• granulated sugar - 2.5 tbsp. l .;
• a bag of vanillin.
Cooking method:
1. Pour almonds with boiling water for three minutes. Then flip it over in a colander. From slightly cooled nuts, remove the upper brown peel and grind the kernels with a blender into powder.
2. Mix almond crumbs with flour, white and vanilla sugar. Add salt, chilled butter and yolk, knead. Place the dough in a bag or wrap with a thin cling film to prevent it from weathering and put in the refrigerator for an hour.
3. Take out and roll out thin, 0.3 cm thick, cut out the hearts with a layer and a special recess. From half of the blanks, carefully cut the middle, leaving the edges about 5 mm wide.
4. Beat the protein. Lubricate one side of hollow hearts with protein mass and lay on a whole workpiece, smeared side down. To stick well, gently squeeze, then transfer to a frypot slightly moistened with oil and bake. Cooking time depends on the oven and takes on average no more than 10 minutes.
5. Fill the notches of the cooled cookies with jam, and rub the edges with icing sugar.
Cooking Christmas Cookies Recipes and Tips
• Use only high-quality butter and margarine to prepare the dough. Poor-quality products will change its structure, and the finished cookie will not be crumbly.
• Like any other pastries, place cookies only in an oven warmed up to the required temperature, otherwise thin preparations will not bake, but will dry.
• Decorate only well-cooled workpieces. Glaze or chocolate will not stick to hot cookies - they will melt.
• To prevent beautifully decorated cookies from sticking together, transfer them to a common dish only after the furniture has completely dried.
