Daring Bakers: Twelve Days of Cookies

BISCUIT TIN BONANZA 

Holiday season is the time for sharing and Peta of Peta Eats is sharing a dozen cookies, some classics and some of her own, from all over the world with us.

When the November Daring Bakers challenge was announced, I of course imagined myself making all 12 cookies. In reality, however, that was never going to happen. But while expecting to make two kinds of biscuits, at the most, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself with more than that in the end. (Well, I couldn't have a bonanza in my biscuit tin if it were filled with only one type of cookie now, could I?)

From Peta's recipes, I made the Lebkuchen but with a couple of substitutions: The recipe calls for honey but I was forced to add molasses and agave syrup as well as I didn't have the amount needed of any single one of those ingredients. By choice, I replaced the brown sugar with red palm sugar for a richer flavour. And I added allspice to the list of spices. The raw cookie dough was like fudge and tasted very good and if not for the raw egg in it, I would have eaten it without baking the cookies! The ones shaped like Christmas trees have a "glass window" (couldn't get a stained effect, unfortunately), made by filling cutouts in the cookies with crushed clear coloured hard sweets before they are baked.

I made three other biscuits as well. The Fig Bars (my favourite biscuit) are based on the Date Pillows I posted on a while ago, while the Lime Meltaways (for the tang) and Chocolate Pretzels (for the shape) are from Martha Stewart's Holiday Cookies, a 2006 special issue magazine.

After all the biscuits were made, I happened to have an egg white left over and decided to use it for Fortune Cookies (I halved the recipe from about.com and managed to make seven cookies) – they just add interest to the biscuit tin! (And the fortunes will cheer me up after my heart fails from all the butter and sugar I've had!)

Many thanks to Peta for all her hard work, her tips in her Food Talk article on making piped short bread and especially her lebkuchen recipe! And check out what the Daring Bakers made in the slideshow at the site. There are so many varieties, colours and shapes. Lots of ideas for future cookie bakes.

Here are few other items that I think would be perfect for any festivity:

Chocolate Bark with Pumpkin Seeds, Cranberries and Ginger

Banana Pecan Biscotti

Poppy Seed Crescents

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies (with recipe link)