Earlier this week, I found myself telling someone that I wasn’t too impressed with Martha Stewart recipes as everything I’d made so far was mediocre.
Then why did I decide yesterday to make “Chocolate Charms” from an old Martha Stewart Christmas book I own??
They were awful. I have put them in a tin and hope that perhaps they will get better as they age.
Here are two of my favorite tips for your Christmas baking:
- Invest in some good cookie dough scoops. I prefer the ones I purchased from Williams-Sonoma over Crate and Barrel or Target. When a recipe calls for 1 inch rolled cookie, I scoop the dough with my smallest scoop and then roll them. They are uniform and will bake evenly. The same goes for crescents, I scooped first and then shaped the crescents.
- Buy a gram/oz digital scale. I have both American and metric recipes, which is why I purchased the scale initially. An added bonus is that I now weigh the ingredients that are messy and hard to clean out of measuring cups, such as peanut butter and shortening. 1 cup of peanut butter weighs 260 grams. 1 cup of Crisco weighs 208 grams. 1 stick of butter weighs 4 oz. My scale has a big metal bowl which makes cleaning up a breeze.
These are the cookies I have baked so far this month:
- Vanillekipferl (almond crescents, or ‘Moons’ as Julia called them)
- Sandgebäck (shortbread sandwiches filled with black currant jelly)
- Peanut Butter Cookies with PB Cups
- Basic frosted brownies (no BtS Brownies this year, we’re dieting!)
- Russian teacakes
- Chocolate Charms
I'm planning to experiment with my favorite Rugelach recipe and make it into a bar cookie. Keep your fingers crossed!
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