TSC’s 2020 Christmas Cookies
I love this time of the year as it is filled with a lot of fond memories and some of my favorite family traditions. Of course, 2020 has thrown all of our traditions for crazy loop and I am looking forward to the new traditions that will be created this year.
Typically, when it comes to Christmas Cookie baking, I make cookie boxes to take around down to businesses I support throughout the year but with COVID I put that on the back burner as I know a lot of people are not comfortable accepting baked goods right now. Even though I am not making the boxes this year, I can still share the cookie love / recipes with the TSC community, so that the cookies can still be enjoyed.
My love for Christmas Cookie baking definitely started with my Grandma Poulton — for as long as I can remember she would make multiple tins of cookies and store them in her garage. When everyone came over for the holidays, we would all run to the garage and grab as many cookies as we could. You could always hear the tins opening and closing throughout the holiday season — you can’t go wrong with my Grandma’s cookies as we all still request them when we visit. When I lived with her and my Grandpa, she made sure to teach me how to make all those cookies too, which is such a fond memory.
However, with my celiac diagnosis, I am not able to enjoy her baking and am still working on converting those recipes to something that taste remotely close to hers and are celiac safe. When I do get them just right, I will make sure to share as they are so yummy!
Also, even though I did not get the chance to bake cookies with my Grandma, I was still able to have a blast with not only being able to FaceTime a good friend and bake with her, but also got the chance to have one of my other good friend’s in the kitchen with me and teaching her my ways! We baked for 6 hours, so I suppose you can say that we had a Christmas Cookie Baking Extravaganza!!
This year I decided to make recipes I have never made before, which means a little bit of anxiety that I will not like them and/or others will not like them either. If you attempt any of these recipes, I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
Some items you may want for your current or future cookie making extravaganzas:
Chocolate Chip Cookies
These are the cookies I made over Thanksgiving. You can find the recipe by clicking here. The bigger difference between making them and now is that I left the dough in the cookie scoop ball instead of rolling them in my hand and flattening them a little. You 100% get two different type of cookies; one is round & fluffy while another is flat, thin & crispy. Choose which one you’d rather enjoy or maybe even get crazy & enjoy both types of cookies!
Fluffy Iced Sugar Cookies
Ingredients:
Dry Ingredients:
3.5 C Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour
1 TSP Baking Soda
1 TSP Baking Powder
A Pinch of Salt
Mix:
1.5 C Vegan Sugar
1/2 C Crisco [the one in the light blue can]
3 “Neat Eggs”
1 TSP Vanilla Extract
1 C Buttermilk
I used a substitute of buttermilk since I bake not only gluten free but vegan as well. Utilize 1 3/4 TSP of cream of tartar per 1 cup of dairy free milk. Make sure that you add the cream of tartar to the dry ingredients or you will get a very clumpy substitution if you put it in the milk.
Icing:
1 TBSP Vegan Unsalted Butter
1 TBSP Crisco [the one in the blue tin, again]
1/2 TSP Vanilla
1 bag of Confectioner Sugar
1 C of Dairy Free Milk
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit.
Make & mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
Make & mix the mix ingredients into a large bowl or KitchenAid bowl.
Alternate adding the dry ingredients & dairy free milk to the large bowl or KitchenAid bowl while mixing it all together to create a fluffy dough.
Scoop batter onto a cookie sheet that is either greased and/or lined with parchment paper. Make sure the dough is round and slightly flattened on the top.
Bake for 12-14 minutes. The bottoms of the cookies should be lite brown.
Make icing - put the vegan unsalted butter, crisco, and vanilla into a bowl. Briefly whip those together. Then start adding & alternating between the confectioner sugar and cold dairy free milk to the mix until the icing is not only thick but spreadable!
The icing should not easily come off a rubber spatula.
You can add sprinkles on top of the icing as well.
Let the iced cookies sit out a little so that the icing can harden a little!
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients:
1 C of Creamy Peanut Butter
1 C Light Brown Sugar
1 “Neat Egg”
1 TBSP Vanilla Extract
1 TSP Baking Soda
1 C Dark Chocolate Chips - I utilize Enjoy Life
You can utilize semi-sweet chocolate chips too
Instructions:
In a large bowl, combine the peanut butter, brown sugar, “Neat Egg”, and vanilla.
Make sure the mixture is well-combined, so it is gritty. If you are utilizing a KitchenAid you will more than likely need to stop the mixer to scrape down the bowl as necessary.
Add the baking soda to the non-gritty mixture
Fold in the chocolate chips to the mixture and try not to eat the dough.
I utilize a cookie scoop to scoop out the dough onto a baking sheet. If the dough is not staying together you can always roll it in your hands.
Also, make sure the cookies are at least fingers apart or they will spread out & into one another while baking.
Once you have all the dough on the baking sheet, flatten the tops of the cookies slightly, and put baking sheet filled with cookie dough in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
You can make other cookies during this time! This is what I did to let the time pass.
Make sure oven is set to 350 Fahrenheit.
Bake for 10-12 minutes. The should edges should be crispy/set and tops/middle should be slightly under baked.
The cookies will firm up as they cool. I highly suggest you letting these cookies cool on a wire rack.
Spritz Cookies
Ingredients:
2 1/4 C Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour
3/4 C Vegan Sugar
1/4 TSP Baking Powder
1/2 T Salt
1 C Vegan Butter - softened
1 “Neat Egg”
1 “heavy” TSP Almond Extract
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit.
Mix together the vegan butter and sugar in a large bowl or in a KitchenAid. Do this until it is fluffy.
Add the “Neat Egg” and almond extract. Mix.
What I did with the almond extract is poured it into the TSP over the bowl and let it overflow for 5 seconds into the sugary butter mixture.
Make sure the taste of almond comes through in the batter. If not, you need to add more.
Mix the gluten free flour, baking power, and salt in a medium sized bowl.
Add the flour / baking powder / salt mixture into the KitchenAid bowl. Make sure to mix well.
The batter may become a little crumbly and that is okay!
You can separate the dough into separate bowl and mix in food coloring if you would like as well. Please utilize food colorings that are not filled with artificial dyes.
Some of my favorite options for this are:
Fill the cookie press and follow the direction given with the speciality baking tool. It took me a try or two to get the hang of it, but this tool is THE ULTIMATE cookie making tool that I have always needed! It helps make cookies cute and festive with minimal effort!
Utilize a non stick cookie sheet to press the cookies onto. Once the cookies are pressed onto the cookie sheet, you can sprinkles to the cookies if desired.
Bake for 10-12 minutes.
The bottom of the cookies should be lite brown.
White Chocolate Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies
Ingredients:
2 bags [8 oz.] of white chocolate baking chips - I utilized the brand Pascha
1/2 C Vegan Butter - softened
1 C Sugar
1 TSP Baking Soda
1/4 TSP Salt
2 “Neat Eggs”
2 3/4 C Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour
1/2 C Raspberry Jam
Parchment Paper
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
Set aside 1 bag [8 oz.] of the white chocolate baking chips.
In a pan, melt 3/4 [3.5 oz} of the second bag of white chocolate baking chips over medium heat and let it cool.
Keep the remaining 1/4 of the second bag of white chocolate baking chips for later. You will need to melt this to drizzle over the cookies at the end.
In a bowl, mix the vegan butter with sugar, until combined and fluffy.
Add in the “Neat Eggs” and melted white chocolate. Make sure you mix until combined
Add in the gluten free flour, baking soda and salt until combined as well.
Fold in the bag of white chocolate baking chips
You do not need to utilize the entire bag if you feel like that is too much white chocolate baking chips in your dough!
Make sure your baking sheet is either greased or has parchment paper on it as you will know place spoonfuls of dough with two fingers of space between each cookie.
Bake for 9 minutes. The cookies should be lightly browned around the edges.
Cool the cookies on the wire rack and utilize a TSP or your thumb to make a little thumbprint or hole in the cookies.
This is where the jam will end up going once the cookies are called.
While the cookies are cooling you can heat up the raspberry jam until it has thinned out a little and is more like syrup. Also, melt the 1/4 bag of white chocolate baking chips.
I totally forgot to heat up my jam and it shows in the pictures [* face palm *]
Once the cookies are fully cooled, scoop the jam [around 1/2 TSP] into the thumbprints / holes in the cookies then drizzle chocolate mixture over each cookie.
Refrigerate to firm up.
Notes:
You can store these cookies in the fridge if you prefer.
Please store all cookies in airtight sealed glass containers.