Kelly’s Christmas Cookies.

This holiday season has been a bit tighter budget-wise than it has in years past, so I opted to make cookies for my friends & loved ones for the holidays instead of buying gifts. I bought $5 tins at Target and picked up the ingredients for 3 different cookie recipes. I then spent Sunday afternoon making a mess of my kitchen, and am so happy with how these turned out. This route was definitely more affordable and homemade gifts are always fun, but with full disclosure before you mistake me for Martha Stewart: this took forever. I’d repeat the Spiced Ginger Drops in a heartbeat, but will probably wait for Christmas 2018 before attempting the Candy Cane Cookies again.

I adapted the below recipes from Southern Living (I am a die-hard Southern Living cookbook fan… I have been making their pies since I was 12) and Betty Crocker. Honestly, I’m exhausted from hours in the kitchen and probably won’t look at my oven for a while, but am so excited to send these off to my aunt & uncle and my boyfriend’s parents as a sweet gift for the holidays.

Without further ado, in order from easiest to hardest:

Spiced Molasses Drops (aka Ginger Molasses Cookies):

These are very easy to make and done relatively quickly! I followed this recipe almost to the T with just a couple of modifications included below (i.e. I used half the pepper originally intended). My only note is that the cookies come out quite round if you don’t press them down on the sheet before putting them in the oven. Tasty nonetheless! Also, it only makes 2 dozen (not 4 as listed, womp womp.).

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup light molasses (I used Grandma’s… worked just fine!)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 cup sanding sugar or sparkling sugar (I used Whole Foods’ 365 Cane Sugar and it worked well. It’s hard to find sanding sugar in NYC!).

Dark Chocolate Sablés

These French cookies are beautiful and delicious, but a bit tricky. I followed Southern Living’s recipe that prompts you to roll the dough into a cylinder and freeze it, and then slice and bake each cookie. The sandy texture makes it hard to get a firm edge on the cookie, so mine crumbled a bit. As a fix in the future, I think I’d roll and cut them instead, like this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. I also lowered the temp from the original recipe and reduced the cooking time to prevent it from melting too much. Otherwise, it’s a 10/10 cookie: not too sweet, and light enough that the chocolate isn’t overwhelming. Flakes of sea salt add a savory finish.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup salted butter, softened
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt
• 2 1/2 (4-oz.) 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate baking bars (I used Ghirardelli)
• Flaky sea salt or chopped toasted pecans (optional)

Candy Cane Cookies 

I’m going to shoot you straight here: these were WAY harder to make than they look. I first saw a recipe that used pre-made sugar cookie dough, and I basically laughed and thought it was a cop-out, so decided to made my own dough first… total mistake. They took hours.

Regardless, they are such a festive cookie, but I’d only recommend if you have lots of time and if it’s not your first rodeo in the baking department. You can see in the below pic that many cracked in the oven, and they were really tough to roll out.

I used a modified Betty Crocker recipe from the 70s, which I can’t really find online except for in the comments section here, and detailed below with my edits. The key was making sure the dough was super pliable in a consistency similar to playdough. These would also be great with a dusting of powdered sugar on top. I left off the peppermints as I’m not a huge peppermint fan, but the look of these is fantastic, and honestly they are really tasty (the almond extract is the key).

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp red food color
• 1/2 cup crushed peppermint candy (optional, I skipped)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar (optional, I skipped)

Step 2:

Divide dough in half and place one of the halves in a new bowl. Add red food color to one bowl and mix thoroughly until fully combined.

Step 3:

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