Holiday (cookie) season, 2018 - Part 2

It's almost Christmas!  The baking is essentially done and we can sit back and enjoy the fruits of our preparation.  I hope your holiday season has been sweet.  

I'm happy I checked off everything on my to-bake list and even had room to improvise a little along the way to the finish line.  Following my previous post, I made the requisite batch of sugar cookies.  The kids in my life adore sugar cookies and they seem to have to make an appearance at Christmas.  These sugar cookies, with mugs of hot chocolate, make for a sweet finale to our family Christmas party.  

And what's not to love about sugar cookies...they're classic for a reason.  They're sweet (obviously) and always festive and eye-catching decorated however you like.  I'm not very creative but some kids tell me that when it comes to decorating sugar cookies, the key is lots of sprinkles.  I may need to up the sprinkle quotient on my sugar cookies next season! 

Aside from sugar cookies, I loved the simple vanilla sables (recipe from Dorie Greenspan) I baked this year.  The wonderful sandy texture, with the simple yet delectable flavor of the vanilla butter cookies, made me forget my love and commitment to chocolate for a moment.  I will be making more slice-and-bake cookies during the next holiday season!

Viennese sablés

Operation "Christmas Cookies" is winding down at my house.  We've been busy making and eating our fair share of cookies this month.  I now have a small stash of Italian tri-color cookies, chewy chocolate gingerbread cookies, sugar cookies, as well as these sablés I want to chat about today, stowed away in the freezer ready to be enjoyed on Christmas day.  I'm really looking forward to taking it easy and relaxing with my family over the holiday break...

On the one hand, I'm glad that the "must-do" baking's done and I can put away my cookie cutters for a little while.  On the flip side, I don't want to let go of December! It is such a magical month of gift-giving, treat-baking, and general merry-making (when else can you say "merry-making"!).  I so enjoy the indulgences and luxuries of this month, and seeing the confetti of powdered sugar, sprinkles, peppermint, and holiday spices popping up everywhere is such a treat!  Inspiration has been everywhere.

So I'm glad we still have time to talk Christmas cookies one more time before we go hunker down with our families, and eat said cookies.  I decided to try Dorie Greenspan's recipe for Viennese sablés from her latest book (aka, early Christmas present for moi).  Sablés are your French shortbread or butter cookies - "sablé" for "sand", signaling their signature sandy, crumbly texture.  They are crisp at first bite but have a melt-in-your-mouth tender texture within that make them special. You taste buttery sweetness with a hint of salt and vanilla in the background. There's no better time to make and savor classic cookies like these than during the holidays.

Earlier this year, I made chocolate chip shortbread cookies (another Dorie recipe, incidentally) and was blown away by the lovely, flaky yet meltingly-tender, texture created by using confectioners' sugar in the dough.  I daydream about those cookies sometimes. Well, these are very similar, and they taste like the Danish butter cookies that many of us know and love.  Those cookies have a special place in my heart and this homemade version brings back memories of eating them as a child.  The homemade rendition is a tad less sweet, which isn't a bad thing.  And in my case, they're not nearly as nicely shaped as the ones that came out of the blue tin but the holidays are a forgiving time.

So I grabbed my pastry bag and star-tip, and took at stab at piping these cookies.  I tried some "W"s, the classic shape representing "Wittamer", the pastry shop in Brussels where these cookies originated, as well as a few other simple shapes. Knowing my own limited skills, I mainly made little sablé fingers.  And I stuck with the recipe, resisting the urge to add vanilla seeds or citrus zest.  But since it is Christmas, I felt the need for a little embellishmentso I dipped some of my cookies in white chocolate as well as a few in dark chocolate.

Honestly, these cookies are probably best enjoyed just as they are, no embellishments necessary when it comes to taste.  We can attest that they go very well with a cup of hot cocoa.