Ingredients

• 2/3 cup shortening
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/3 cups honey
• 2 tsp. lemon flavoring
• 5 ¼ cups flour
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. salt

Directions

1. Mix shortening, sugar, egg, honey and flavoring thoroughly. Measure flour and stir together with baking soda and salt. Blend in. Chill dough.
2. Heat oven to 375o. Roll dough out ¼” thick. Cut into desired shapes.
3. Place 1″ apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until no imprint remains when touched lightly.
4. When cool, ice and decorate as desired.

You can’t really see under the Santas here, but this year I debuted some new Hanukkah shapes as well: a menorah and a dreidel. We’ve also been making Stars of David for a while. Cookies for everyone!

You can make a ginger bread version by substituting brown sugar for granulated, molasses for honey, and 2 tsp. cinnamon plus 1 tsp. ginger for lemon flavoring.

I stole this tin from my mom because I thought it was pretty.

Next up: THE DECORATENING.

My stomach burns with the fire of a thousand pissed off suns.

This happens only rarely, because of my health nut CEO, but every once in a while, a vendor will send someone in the company baked goods, which are then scavenged ruthlessly by the flocks of office women. So when I see an alert from my boss entitled “cookies,” I tend to jump on that joy train and ride it ’til it stops.

Today, however, this preemptive strike has proven itself a horrible decision, and I blame you, Cheryl & Co. Collection, Finer Baked Goods.

From the variety box in my boss’ office, I selected two: famous buttercream cut-out cookie, and Frosted Caramel Pecan Chocolate Cookie. The other two I saw were Triple Chocolate Frosted Cookie and something white with a pumpkin iced onto it, both of which had obvious dietary danger peeking through the label. So I chose the two which looked safer, but in this case, fortune probably favored the bold. Or the ignorant. I wish to god that I had not put either of those cookies in my mouth.

The so-called Famous Buttercream Cut-out Cookie was white with white buttercream on it. My MO with buttercream is to have Gloria slather it on in a super-thin layer, or to scrape it off a cake entirely. As I went for the scrape, the cookie started falling apart in my hand. “Oh,” I thought. “A delicate, lady of a cookie. Well, one bite can’t hurt.” I should’ve known. The structural integrity of that cookie was so unsound that it melted, literally, in my mouth, leaving only the fossilized layer of buttercream and a hint of PTSD. I should’ve just spit it out, but it literally disintegrated.

Despite this foreshadowing, I abandoned the remainder of the white cookie and went for the second, the Frosted Caramel Pecan Chocolate Cookie. This one had real pecans on a sticky icing, which despite some crumble, could actually be scraped off. So carefully I scraped, but the caramel made the icing so furiously sticky that I ended up using a kind of fork-finger-and-napkin resolution, which actually grossed me out a little. “Ahh,” I thought, “this is what performing surgery on a zombie is like.” Things are falling apart, the center isn’t holding, and so as soon as a quorum of icing and pecans were off, I bit into the cookie.

While in a time trial, this one didn’t dissolve as quickly as the white cookie, it did have that rancid “melt in your mouth” feeling that I associate with THINGS THAT AREN’T A GODDAMN COOKIE. Moreover, the caramel flavor left a persistent stickiness in my mouth and I felt it going all the way down into my gut, where it is sitting there, brick-like, waiting to strike (with early-onset diabetes.) But this isn’t even the punchline.

Here’s the punchline: after my gag reflex kicked in from the second cookie, I disposed of them immediately in my trashcan, four feet away and behind me. I can STILL smell the fucking cookie. These cookies need a kind of ghostbusters-esque elimination process where you carefully seal the soul of the cookie in a nuclear-powered death trap.

This is what happens when you cross the streams, people.

Moral: Don’t fuck up a cookie.

Hazelnut macaroons

• 2 3/4 cups hazelnuts, shelled and skinned (see below)
• 2 plus 1 egg whites, room temperature
• 2 1/2 cups sugar (I used 1/2 cup less, and it was still very sweet, so use your discretion)

To skin hazelnuts, place on a foiled baking sheet in an even layer and roast in the oven at 375˚F for about 8-10 minutes. Pour the toasty nuts out onto a kitchen towel, then fold the towel over the nuts and rub the towel against your nuts (??) vigorously to remove as much of the outer skin as possible. The skin is not really bad or anything, and it won’t all come off anyway, so this is really kind of optional. Also optional: toasting the nuts anyway… the taste of toasted hazelnuts is better than raw, in my opinion, but it’s up to you!

Preheat the oven to 300˚F and line a cookie sheet with butter-greased parchment paper. Grind the nuts fine in a food processor and place in a large mixing bowl. Whisk two of the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the nuts in smallish batches. Fold the remaining egg white in, and then add the sugar and mix until fairly homogeneous. Roll into 1-1 1/2 inch diameter balls and place on the cookie sheet slightly flattened. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until lightly browned. [I had to do it in two batches because our bakeware sucks, and each batch was around 20 cookies.]

Whatever you do, don’t let any water or milk touch the chocolate as that causes it to “seize” and do weird things to the texture. Use chocolate and nothing else (maybe sugar is okay, but there’s already two cups in the cookies for god’s sake).

I have the cookies for you.  Unrequited loves will contact you.  You’ll look prettier.  You will see your enemies driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women.

I am much beloved and have friends who like me for my cookies. The first batch was halved, and the cookies barely made it out the door before Gloria and I devoured most of them. When I made this recipe the second time, I came up with about 4 dozen cookies with the Platonic ideal size of a cookie–maybe, 3.5″ diameter? You can make them smaller and more plentiful, or halve the recipe. Moral: only halve the recipe if you have no friends. And be prepared, with the power of these cookies, to make more friends than you ever desired.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

• Rum
• 1 1/2 cups of raisins
• 2 sticks of butter
• 1 1/3 cups light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt (you can use less salt, but then we can’t be friends.)
• 3 cups rolled oats

Step 0. You don’t have to do this, and the second time I made these, I certainly didn’t wish to expend the rum. But if you want, soak the raisins for at least 30 minutes in some rum (I used Cap’n Morgan’s Spiced Rum.) I didn’t think I’d be able to tell the difference, but it does lend a layer of mystique and beauty to the cookie. I’m not even joking. If not, drink the rum, and leave your raisins the hell alone. They’ll still be good, just not sell-your-children-for-raw-c0okie-materials good.

Step 1. Cream together the butter, brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract. Doing this by hand is a drag, so make sure you have a mostly gooey base. The lumps of butter will come out a lot easier when you do step 2, but put something on the television and make sure the whole concoction is mostly free of giant lmps.

• FYI: no one ever has the right brown sugar when they need it. If you were a dunce and could only find dark brown sugar, substitute in about a 1/3 of a cup with white sugar.

Step 2. Whisk (or if you don’t want to wash a damn whisk, fork) together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Then, little by little, pour and stir it into the goop from step 1. You should have a beautiful, smooth cookie dough by the end of this step, with a caramel color.

Step 3. Roll up them sleeves and stir in the oats and the raisins.

Step 4. Don’t skip this step. Cover your cookie dough in saran wrap and put it in the fridge. Leave it, like one Miss Britney Spears, alone. The dough needs to rest for at least an hour, until it’s pretty well chilled through. Why? Because it won’t get to be round but also thick and chewy if it the dough has time to run all over the place. Then you’ll have flacid cookies, and your friends will all call me wondering why.

Step 5. Okay, I know. It’s hard to be patient. But look, after a while, go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Here is some motivation for waiting:

These cookies are beautiful.

Step 6. Put cookies on some parchment paper (the baker’s choice for cookies!). I use two large spoons and fill one with a heaping spoonful, then scrape it off with another one. You can shape your cookies to be a little more circular. They’ll expand by about an inch each, so put them a couple inches apart. A dozen per normal cookie tray is good. Bake for approximately 8-10 minutes. I’d say do a batch, and see how they look at 8. They should look golden brown around the outside and still a leeeeettle bit raw in the middle. If they’re gooey in the middle, put them back in for a minute. If you overbake them by a leeeetle, then they’ll just turn out browner, but still delicious.

Step 7. After you remove each batch, let them sit on the hot cookie sheet for about 5 minutes before removing them to a plate where your friends will devour them.

Step 8. JUST BURY YOUR FACE IN THAT BUSINESS.

***

Bonus material: Here are some rousing endorsements of these cookies:

Donnie C.: “10 out of 10.”

Paul L.: “The secret ingredient is crack.”

Q.R.Murphy: Imagine a husk of a man trapped in the vice grip of a diabetic coma, but still giving a thumbs up as if to say, “Totally worth it.” Oh, wait, I think he just said, “These are good.”

Chocolate chip-banana-oatmeal cookies

• 1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
• 1 c sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon (or 1/2 tsp each of cinnamon and nutmeg, if you’re “into nutmeg”… I’m not)
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 c softened butter (that’s a stick and half… yikes. canola oil or vegetable shortening probably also work?)
• 2 1/2 ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 large egg (of the chicken variety)
• 2 c oatmeal (the recipe calls for quick-cooking, which is what I had on hand* …the regular kind probably also works though?)
• 2 c semisweet chocolate chips or 1 1/2 c semisweet chocolate chips and 1/2 c chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 375˚F**. Grease or parchment paper a cookie sheet. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the first four ingredients. Add the butter and mix until crumbly. Add the bananas, egg, and oatmeal, and mix well. Finally, add the chocolate (and nuts, if ya got ‘em), and mix well. Drop about a dinner spoon sized glop for each cookie onto the sheet and bake for 13-15 minutes**. Cool on a cookie rack and serve warm with cold milk!

* We had “Coach’s” brand oats… I do not know who “coach” is, or why we have his oats.

** I had my doubts about the time and temperature, but they have since vanished. I tried 350˚F for shorter (which is what I am used to for other cookies) but the 375˚F for longer batch was markedly better (still soft on the inside, but nice and crispy on the outside). I daresay 385˚F or even 400˚F might work! Baking: it’s like science, only not at all.

The first is for a strawberry shake (from the “Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home” cookbook):

Ingredients:

• 1 pint fresh strawberries (cleaned and stemmed)
• 1 cup plain, vanilla or lemon nonfat yogurt (I’ve used vanilla each time I’ve made this)
• 3-4 tablespoons of orange juice, apple juice or apple-strawberry juice
• 2-3 tablespoons of maple syrup

Put it all in a blender until smooth. I’d recommend chilling it a little bit before serving so it’s nice and cold, but it still tastes good right out of the blender.

Second recipe is for egg-free chocolate chip cookies (from allrecipes.com). They may be just as bad (calorie wise) as other cookies, but for some reason using yogurt makes them seem healthier to me.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar (you can reduce the amount of sugar a little bit and it will still taste plenty sweet)
• 1/4 cup margarine or butter
• 1/4 cup shortening (I actually just used a little bit more butter instead of shortening)
• 1/2 cup plain nonfat yogurt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease cookie sheets.

In a medium bowl, cream together the sugars, butter and shortening until light and fluffy. Stir in yogurt and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture, then mix in chocolate chips. Drop teaspoonfuls of dough 2 inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets. (Recipe, in theory, makes 36 cookies)

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until the edges begin to brown. Cool for a minute on the cookie sheets before moving to wire racks to cool completely.

When I made these cookies, the consistency was more muffin-like than cookie-like, but they still tasted delicious. I think next time I am going to divide the batch in half – one half of the dough for making cookies and the other half for eating raw. That’s one of the major perks of cookie dough without raw eggs!