Diane Mott Davidson, the queen of the culinary mystery novel, would like to help you out with your holiday baking endeavors with her tried-and-true tips on how to bake delicious cookies—and keep them fresh for Christmas. It’s always a pleasure to welcome her to the blog, especially when she shares with us her kitchen know-how.
This is what preparation for the holidays reminds me of: being pregnant. You’re exhausted, overwhelmed, and facing a to-do list several miles long. Yet in the Baking Department, with some advance preparation and a big freezer, you will get through this, and it will be fun. Trust me.
Before we get going, though, a couple of notes of warning:
1) Steer clear of cookie exchanges. (If this makes me sound like Scrooge meets the Grinch, so be it.) These exchanges generally require you to make 30 or more dozen cookies, then swap with 29 other bakers, none of whom will have used butter. So my advice, if you’re going to go to all that trouble anyway, is to make 30 dozen of your own cookies from the recipe list below. (Of course, depending on your fancy, pocketbook, time constraints, etc., you can make many, many fewer.)
2) Once you bake and cool these cookies, the very last thing you want to do is to put them where inquisitive eyes can see them before the holidays even begin. So eschew the plastic freezer bags and pack the cookies in opaque containers. These you need to wrap securely in white freezer paper, which you tape up and label, Frozen Trout, 2005. No one is going to unwrap those bad boys.
Cookie recipes that can be made in advance and frozen:
- Goldy’s Nuthouse Cookies (recipe from Double Shot makes 6 dozen)
- Crunch Time Cookies (recipe from Crunch Time makes 4 dozen)
- Canterbury Jumbles (recipe from The Last Suppers makes 11 dozen!)
- Bleak House Bars (recipe from Sweet Revenge makes 32 bars)
- Strong Arm Cookies (recipe from Dark Tort makes 8 dozen)
If you are an Episcopalian like me, you may be asked to bring cookies to a church party or, if you are less lucky, a meeting, and you can gleefully put out a couple dozen Canterbury Jumbles, and keep your main stash safe.
To be left for Santa:
- A dozen Bleak House Bars
To be made and frozen for holiday dinners for friends, family, or both:
- Door-Prize Gingerbreads (recipe in Sweet Revenge makes 3) (Wrapping: plastic wrap, white freezer paper, tape. Label: Frozen Halibut from the Candlishes’ trip to Alaska, 2006.)
You can take one or more of the gingerbreads out to thaw while you make your holiday dinner, then when it’s time for dessert, ask the children or grandchildren to sprinkle the tops with confectioner’s sugar.
Note that children/grandchildren bit. Even if you don’t make a single cookie and buy them all from the grocery store, or online, or you don’t bake any at all, the most important aspect of the holidays is to show love to those around you. This does not have to be with cookies or gifts or with anything more than hugs and kisses and a story read to a child in your lap.
I wish you an affection-filled holiday,
Goldy
Stay up to date with what Diane’s cooking and writing by liking her on Facebook! Her new book, Crunch Time, is on sale as a mass market paperback this January 2012.
