It’s time! It’s time! It’s time! It’s time to create and consume cookies with impunity! Christmas comes with an automatic, unlimited, infinitely renewable License to Cookie. We must use this privilege. Perhaps even abuse it! Maybe we won’t lose it if we don’t use it, but we certainly will be judged differently if we try to apply for such a decadent license later than January 1.
A
perusal of The Archives will leave you with little doubt that my favorite
sweets to make over the years have been cookies and bars. As far as I’m
concerned, they all qualify as Christmas Cookies, because they’re all cookies,
except for the bars, which are pans full of cookies all run together, then cut
apart again.
Here
are 26 favorites of various shapes and flavors. Each is equally welcome on my
holiday cookie platter.
Drop
cookies are probably the easiest to manage. In most cases, the doughs can be wrapped
well and frozen, so you can pull cookie dough out of the freezer to bake fresh
cookies just about any time. (I prefer to do this than to freeze baked
cookies.) Most of these recipes are some variation on classic chocolate chip
cookies, oatmeal cookies, and peanut butter cookies.
Milk Chocolate Chip and M&M Cookies (pictured above)
Apricot and Almond Cookies with White Chocolate (pictured below)
Other
cookies may involve some extra shaping, such as rolling out and cutting, shaping
into logs and slicing, or rolling into balls. Most of these also come from
doughs that can be frozen.
Ginger Molasses Cookies (pictured at top)
Sugar Cookies (great with Simple Butter Frosting; pictured above and below)
Finally,
here are some brownies and other bars. There’s often a lot less fuss with a pan
of bars that you can just whip up, bake off, and cut up to share. These freeze better
as bars and aren’t suitable to freeze as doughs/batters. Don’t forget: you can
exponentially increase your flavor genius by adding or swapping different
fruits, nuts and candies into these easy treats. (I suppose this applies to all
of the above as well!)
Fudgy Mint Brownies (pictured above)
Oatmeal and Dried Cherry Bars (pictured above)
Walnut and White Chocolate Blondies (pictured below)
There are
so many ways to exercise your license to cookie, satisfy your sweet tooth, and
make your family and friends happy! Get in the kitchen and get your cookie on!
One year ago: 10 Favorites with Fresh Cranberries
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