Mince pie cookies

It's that time of year, and once again, my resolve to bake up a holiday storm turned to nothing. Well, almost nothing. I did manage these mince pie cookies that I saw in Jamie Oliver's Christmas magazine. I am not a fan of mincemeat pies generally, but something about this incarnation appealed. These cookies are easy to make and they taste like Christmas! Ho Ho Ho!

Mince pie cookies
From Jamie Magazine, Christmas edition

250g unsalted butter, at room temperature
140g sugar
1 egg yolk
Grated zest of one clementine/satsuma/mandarin/whatever you prefer
300g flour
One 411g jar of fruit mincemeat (I had to buy a larger bottle of PC mincemeat and measure out 400g or so)


1 Preheat your oven to 180C/gas 4 and put greaseproof baking parchment on a couple of baking trays.

2 Beat butter and sugar together until creamy. Add the egg yolk and your citrus zest and beat to combine.

3 Sift in the flour and then fold through MOST of the mince meat (you want to hold some of it back to put on top of your cookies before they go in the oven). Stir until it all starts to come together. I used my hands here – easier.

4 Pull biscuit-sized lumps from the dough, put them evenly across the trays and then press down on each one to shape into cookies. Don’t put them too close to each other – they will run out a little while in the oven.

4 Dot some of your saved mincemeat on top of each cookie, and then put them in the oven for about ten minutes. You want them to be golden, but still a bit doughy and chewy in the middle. I found that my oven needed about 15 minutes for this, but hey, ovens are famously different.

The mince pie cookies are lovely warm – with mulled wine – but the ones you don’t eat straight away can be stored in an airtight container, or frozen.

*I bought suet-free mincemeat, because, suet? Gross!
** I didn't bother topping my cookies with extra mincemeat, but you're perfectly welcome to.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

Not a lot of introduction needed for these cookies. They're made with 100 per cent whole wheat flour, which you would think would result in a dense, heavy product. But instead, these cookies have kind of a nutty, wheaty flavour, somewhat akin to digestive biscuits.

I brought a tin of them to work and it was empty by 10:30 a.m. What more proof do you need?

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Good to the Grain, by Kim Boyce and found on Orangette

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 ½ tsp. kosher salt
2 sticks (8 oz.) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes
1 cup lightly packed dark brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped into ¼- and ½-inch pieces, or bittersweet chips

Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven, and preheat to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment. (If you have no parchment, you can butter the sheets.)

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl, and whisk to blend.

Put the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. With the mixer on low speed, mix just until the butter and sugars are blended, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture to the bowl, and blend on low speed until the flour is just incorporated. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl. Add the chocolate, and mix on low speed until evenly combined. (If you have no stand mixer, you can do all of this with handheld electric beaters and/or a large, sturdy spoon.) Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, and then use your hands to turn and gently massage the dough, making sure all the flour is absorbed.

Scoop mounds of dough about 3 tablespoons in size onto the baking sheets, leaving about 3 inches between each cookie. (I was able to fit about 8 cookies on each sheet, staggering them in three rows.)

Bake the cookies for 16 to 20 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through, until the cookies are evenly browned. Transfer the cookies, still on parchment, to a rack to cool. Repeat with remaining dough.

These cookies are very good while still warm from the oven, but I find that you can taste the wheat more – in a good way – once they’ve cooled.

Yield: about 20 cookies

Pan Chancho's ginger cookies

I was living in Kingston when the original Pan Chancho bakery opened up. A small offshoot of the successful Chez Piggy restaurant, the shop on Johnson served up loaves of fresh bread each day, as well as some take-home gourmet goodies.

I lived around the corner at the time, in a grubby basement apartment with mouldy walls and a kitchen sink that would occasionally back up, allowing us to witness what our upstairs neighbours had flushed down the drain earlier.

So, needless to say, a new bakery offering up wholesome bread was a bright spot in an otherwise dreary student existence. My roommate Julie and I jumped at the opportunity for an affordable foodie addition to our cooking repertoire. Actually, meals in our little William Street abode were pretty tasty, as I liked to cook and Julie was a talented chef too, whipping up lots of hearty New Brunswick fare like baked beans and a killer mac and cheese. But on the nights that it was too much effort to make a fuss in the kitchen, or those evenings with a double header of Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place beckoned, or the Thursday night line up of Friends and a George Clooney-studded ER called our names (yes, we watched A LOT of TV) dinner was, quite frequently, a loaf of Pan Chancho bread and peanut butter. In fact, sometimes that was chased down with a bottle of White Zinfandel, because we considered ourselves early wine connoisseurs, and topped off with a dessert of Ganong Chicken Bones. It was the high life, I tell ya.

I don’t remember these ginger cookies on offer at Pan Chancho back then, but I have enjoyed them several times since during my day trips to Kingston. Pan Chancho is now in much bigger digs on Princess Street, and boasts its own fabulous restaurant and expanded bakery. (If you’re there for lunch, try the lamb and chickpea wrap – deelish!)

As previously mentioned on this blog, I’m a sucker for most things ginger, and these chewy cookies pack a lot of bite. I’m happy to say that they reproduce rather authentically at home, so I’m most pleased to have the recipe at last. I spruced up my batch with some chopped crystallized ginger for an extra element, but they're just as tasty without.


Get your dry ingredients together. Notice the massive amount of dried ginger? That's hot.

Cream your butter and sugar, then add in the molasses.

Roll out the dough into balls, and coat in remaining sugar. This gives the crackled finish to the cookies.

And here's the final product -- chewy and gingery. Great with a nice cup of tea, and cheaper than a roadtrip to K-town.

Ginger Cookies
From Pan Chancho Bakery cookbook, as reprinted in The Toronto Star

2 cups (500 mL) all-purpose flour

1 tbsp (15 mL) ground ginger

2 tsp (10 mL) baking soda

1 tsp (10 mL) ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp (2 mL) kosher salt

3/4 cup (185 mL) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1-1/4 cups + 2 tbsp (310 mL + 30 mL) granulated sugar

1 large egg

1/4 cup (60 mL) fancy molasses

In medium bowl, whisk together flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.

In large bowl using electric mixer on medium, cream butter and 1 cup (250 mL) plus 2 tbsp (30 mL) sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, scraping down sides of bowl. Add molasses; beat well. In three additions, beat in flour mixture just until incorporated.

Shape dough into 24 balls, each about 2 tbsp (30 mL). Roll balls in bowl with remaining 1/4 cup (60 mL) sugar. Place several inches apart on large, parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake 15 to 17 minutes in preheated 325F (160C) oven until just golden. (Cookies will spread to about 4 inches/10 cm.)

Makes 24 large cookies.

Christmas cranberry cookies

Can you believe it's the day after next? I had great intentions of doing a lot of baking this year, but instead I only got around to making these cookies from the Jamie Oliver Christmas magazine. They're pretty unique, in that they use fresh cranberries, instead of dried. I'm not entirely sure they were a total success, but they're something different at least.

The dough doesn't come together all that well, so you have to try your best to get it into log form. Luckily, after some time in the fridge, it hardens up nicely and manages to hold together.

Then you slice them up and pop them in the oven. They're quite pretty, aren't they?

And here's how they look after 12 minutes in a 350 oven. They spread out a bit, and the cranberries burst, causing some burning on the bottom. But overall they have a pretty delicate texture, and a nice flavour, if a little sweet.

Merry Christmas! And a special mention to the holiday elf who dropped off a much better selection of cookies to my house this week. Thanks, Ann!

Cranberry and White Chocolate Cookies

From Jamie Magazine, Christmas 2010 edition

100g butter
85g icing sugar
1 vanilla pod, split and seeds scraped
100g self-raising flour
30g cornflour
4 tablespoons rolled oats
50g white chocolate, roughly chopped
50 g cranberries, fresh or rehydrated*

Beat the butter and icing until pale. Add the vanilla.

Combine the flour, cornflour and oats. Add to the butter.

Mix in the chocolate and berries.

The mixture will appear quite dry but all you need to do is mold it together into a large ball. Cover it in clingfilm. Shape the dough into a roll about an inch and a half wide. Keep in the fridge for at least one hour.

Preheat the oven to 180c/gas mark 4.

Take the dough out of the fridge and remove the clingfilm. Using a sharp knife, slice the dough into 1cm rounds. Place them on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and bake for 12-15 mins. They should be golden brown but soft to touch.

Transfer to a cooling rack and allow to cool and crisp a little before devouring!

*To rehydrate dried cranberries, soak them in a little hot water until they are soft.

A sweet start.....

....to the new year. These molasses cookies will satisfy a sweet tooth, but there's also a hint of spice that's quite nice as well. They're the kind of cookies that remind me of bakery treats -- crispy on the outside, and chewy and flavourful inside. Plus, they've solved the mystery for me of how to get that crackled, almost broken top on a cookie. I think it's the rolling in sugar before baking that does it, but don't quote me (I'm the daughter of a biology teacher after all, not chemistry!).

I amped up the ginger quotient when I made these by throwing in a handful of chopped, candied ginger. A nice addition, if I do say so myself. Are you listening, Martha?

Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies (recipe from Martha Stewart’s Cookie Book)
Makes about 36

Ingredients:
-2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
-1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
-1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 2 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
-1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1 1/2 cups sugar
-3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
-1 large egg
-1/4 cup molasses

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. In a shallow bowl, place 1/2 cup sugar; set aside. (*note: I found I needed less than 1/4 cup)

2. With an electric mixer, beat butter and remaining cup of sugar until combined. Beat in egg and then molasses until combined. Reduce speed to low; gradually mix in dry ingredients, just until a dough forms. Put dough in the fridge and chill it for at least an hour.

3. Pinch off and roll dough into balls, each equal to 1 tablespoon. Roll balls in reserved sugar to coat.

4. Arrange balls on baking sheets, about 3 inches apart. Bake, one sheet at a time, until edges of cookies are just firm, 10 to 15 minutes (cookies can be baked two sheets at a time, but they will not crackle uniformly). Cool 1 minute on baking sheets; transfer to racks to cool completely. Store in an airtight container up to 4 days.

These go well with a latte, regular cup of coffee, or even a cold glass of milk. Happy dunking!