A quick and easy Christmas cookie, chewy, colorful and festive. They are just two buttery bites big and taste like the very best sugar cookies – without the fuss and mess of rolling! Looking for color for your Christmas cookie plate? This is it!
Forget big-name chefs and hot-shot TV-food personalities. The real food celebrities are the countless home cooks who put healthy affordable meals on the table seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.
You know, like you. YOU.
Enter Food52, the website and new cookbook but most importantly, the first organization to coax the best recipes from the best home cooks in an organized fashion.
During its first year, Food52 made two or three seasonal challenges each week.
In summer, it was “Send us your best corn chowder recipe” and in winter, “Send us your best baked ham recipe”. Home cooks did send their best recipes – in droves, especially as word got out.
Each week, Food52 and a growing community of contributors and followers somehow tested each challenge’s recipes and selected just one as “best”. And then they published The Food52 Cookbook, what Food52 founders and cookbook editors Amanda Hesser (she of Cooking for Mr. Latte fame) and Merrill Stubbs call the “love child of 52 weeks of recipe contests”.
And it’s fabulous. The cookbook is organized by season, just one recipe per challenge. The recipes are almost always practical and often inventive. They’re filled with insider tips and suggestions, the ones a friend would pass along when sharing her own recipe. I like to think that most would fit into Kitchen Parade like butter slides onto hot toast.
At Food52, what I call No-Roll Christmas Sugar Cookies are called “Secret Cookies”. They are so simple that I really do recommend fresh butter and even fresh flour. They’re easy to mix, require no chilling before baking and add color to a cookie tray. Kids and cousins? Grownups and grandpas? Everyone loves ‘em!
Dark-colored sugars show up best; yellow, say, doesn’t contrast enough. I don't recommend making this dough ahead of time. Either refrigerated or left out, the texture changes somehow and the dough is harder to work with and the cookies lack the crisp definition that make them so special. Is this cookie a Scandinavian butter cookie in disguise? Made with almond extract instead of vanilla, No-Roll Christmas Sugar Cookies remind me of a simple unleavened butter cookie that I learned to bake in a home ec class while living in Finland.
Do you have a favorite traditional easy Christmas cookie recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. Follow Kitchen Parade on Facebook! NO FUSS - NO MESS
NO-ROLL CHRISTMAS SUGAR COOKIES
Time to table: 1 hour
Makes 3 dozen small two-bite cookies (easily doubled but a triple batch is too much for my stand mixer)
- 12 tablespoons (1-1/2 sticks, 170g) salted butter, room temperature
- 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar (200g)
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract
- 1-3/4 cup flour, fluffed to aerate before measuring or 230g
- Colored sugars – red, green or a mix
Preheat oven to 350F.
In a mixing bowl, use an electric mixer to blend the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the yolk and extract and combine well. Add the flour and combine well.
Roll the cookie dough into balls (one-inch balls, that's 12 grams, for two-bite cookies, larger balls for larger cookies) and arrange quite close together (they spread just a little) to fill a baking sheet.
Hunt through the cupboards and china cabinet to find a glass with a patterned bottom – here, my grandmother’s sugar bowl worked perfectly. A smooth-bottomed glass also works but a pattern helps hold the sugar and if you’re really lucky (I wasn’t) the sugar will impress the pattern into the dough.
Rub the bottom of the glass with a little butter. Place the colored sugars on small plates, one color per plate. Dip the bottom of the glass into a colored sugar, then gently and evenly press the glass to flatten the cookie until, well, it’s flatter and squatter (like a thick button) but not thin and not flat.
Bake for about 10 - 15 minutes or until the cookies are baked clear through and the bottoms are crisp and golden. Let cool for five minutes, transfer to paper towels on the counter to cool completely. Transfer to a storage container.
Delicious immediately but over a few days, the buttery, chewy flavor and texture continue to develop.
WEIGHT WATCHERS POINTS WW Old Points 2, WW PointsPlus 2 DISCLOSURE The good folks at Harper Collins sent a complimentary copy of The Food52 Cookbook and provided a giveaway copy for Kitchen Parade readers. The opinions, as always, are my own. My Disclosure Promise
The buttery taste makes this a butter cookie! The pretty colored sugars make this a sugar cookie! The chewy texture makes it my favorite kinda cookie! DISCLOSURE Many cookies were sacrificed in order to form these opinions. Do not let their demise go unappreciated.
This Week, Years Past 2002 - 2010
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This Week, Elsewhere
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FIRST, A THANKS
For all who have entered to win the copy of Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich, thank you! Your cookie-baking traditions made me laugh and cry, some times at once. Thanks for sharing those stories! That giveaway remains open through December 8th, so you've still got another day to enter, see Holiday Baking Tips.
Sorry, GIVE-AWAY NOW CLOSED
Food 52 Cookbook Giveaway!
THE COOKBOOK The Food52 Cookbook, 140 Winning Recipes from Exceptional Home Cooks by Amanda Hesser, Merrill Stubbs & the Food52 Community
IMPORTANT! Each entry must include your e-mail address so that you can be notified if, I mean when! you win. If you like, disguise your address so a real person can can read it but automated address collectors cannot, something like cookie hyphen baker at lovechristmas dot dot com.
FIRST ENTRY - COMPLETE THIS SENTENCE IN A COMMENT ON THIS PAGE. (Don't forget that e-mail address!):
"When it comes to decorating Christmas cookies, ... .
SECOND ENTRY - SIGN UP FOR A FREE E-MAIL SUBSCRIPTION, then come back and leave an additional comment saying you did that. (Don't forget that e-mail address!)
Sign up for either Kitchen Parade or A Veggie Venture, here's the subscription information.
THIRD ENTRY - TWEET or SHARE on Facebook something like what's below, then come back and leave an additional comment saying you did that. (Don't forget that e-mail address!)
"No-Roll Christmas Sugar Cookie recipe & Food52 cookbook giveaway http://alturl.com/zf9qs @kitchenparade"
THE FINE PRINT This giveaway is open to all U.S. and Canadian (hello, Canadian readers!) readers. All entries must be received by midnight CST on Wednesday, December 14, 2011. Winners will be chosen by Random.org and notified via valid email address. If I don't hear back from the winner within 48 hours, I will select another and try again. This giveaway is sponsored by publisher Harper Collins.
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These look lovely and easy- hate rolling out cookies.
"When it comes to decorating Christmas cookies, ... I go the easy "sprinkle" route most of the time...will frost or "paint" on occasion.
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Just joined Kitchen Parade and am already looking forward to trying those recipes, especially these easy sugar cookies.
Please enter me in the drawing for the cookbook. I'll keep my fingers crossed, when I'm not cooking....
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just made my list!
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I'm also a long time subscriber of Kitchen Parade and Veggie Venture.
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I already signed up to receive your blog posts for both blogs by email. Unfortunately I don't always have time to reply.
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