Brittany's Epic Christmas Cookie and Dessert Round-Up

So pretty much everyone knows the best part about Christmas is the cookies, right? Well, okay, I'm willing to concede non-cookie desserts are pretty good too. But Christmas cookies are probably the most important part of the holiday tradition to me, and it doesn't really feel like the holidays until I've gotten myself covered in flour in the pursuit of deliciousness. (It's also one of my three acceptable use cases for Christmas music.)


Last year, I had just moved to Australia and had only made a couple of friends to date. I didn't start work until January, so I had a lot of time on my hands. It was also my first Christmas ever away from home, which was a mixed bag of emotions. Since I'm totally good at processing feelings and shit, I squished all those to the side and buried them in mounds and mounds of Christmas cookies. I seriously made an absurd amount of Christmas cookies for someone who only knew about 5 people in the entire continent she was on. The Boy and I ate a tremendous number. I took about a third to his family. We froze another third and ate on them for months. I think I even ended up throwing out some when I moved house in April.

This year, I still have a bunch of time on my hands because I don't start my new job until January, but I also have a wonderful big group of friends and am psyched to be hosting my first ever Christmas Day at my own home. (I have a giant ham and a wafflemaker. BRING IT ON, CHRISTMAS.) I also run a nerdy social group in Sydney (because of course I do), so I decided to have a giant cookie-making party with those fine folks. So without further ado, may I present...

BRITTANY'S EPIC DAY OF COOKIE MADNESS!

The tastiest of all the task lists.

First up, Pretzel Turtles! These quick treats are something my Aunt Melinda makes every year. They're super easy, but also outrageously delicious. I eat about 1.2 million every year. They're small yet substantial, crunchy yet chewy, sweet yet salty... all this combines into an irresistible concoction that you just can't stop eating.This year was no exception, even though I had to make a few tweaks given what I could get in Australia. By the time we got around to packing up treats for people to take home, there were only two of these left!

These have only been out of the oven for about 10 minutes, and you can see about
a quarter of the tray is already gone.

I'm not even supposed to be eating chocolate right now because it doesn't play nice with my migraine meds, but I couldn't help but make an exception for these. I probably ate half the ones we made today.

Pretzel Turtles
Cook/Prep Time: 10-15 minutes
Servings: Not fussy. Equal to the number of candies you have.

Ingredients:
(No Measuring!)

• Bag of mini-waffle pretzels, if you can find them. They apparently don't exist in Australia (and are surprisingly hard to explain if people have never heard of them). I used flat Pretzel Crisps. Basically, you want a pretzel-thing with a minimum amount of hole-space. (Regular mini-pretzels won't hold melty chocolate.)
• Chocolate-covered chewy caramel candies, like Rolos or FanTales
• Pecans

Special Equipment: None.

Instructions: 

1. Place pretzels on an ungreased baking sheet. 
2. Place one caramel candy on each pretzel.
3. Attempt to balance a pecan on the chocolate candy or be like me and give up trying, and put the pecans in a pan to toast separately.
4. Put the pan(s) in a hot oven. Exact temp doesn't really matter, so just use whatever you're preheated at for all the other cookies. 
5. Bake for 10ish minutes, until the candies are squishy.
6. Remove from oven and immediately (carefully... fingernails are helpful to avoid burns) squish a pecan half into the melty chocolate/caramel candy so it's flat-ish. If you have pecan bits instead of halves, smoosh a couple of bits on.
7. Try to avoid eating all of them immediately. Fail completely. 

FanTales are amazing in these.

Next up is one of my favorite things of all time. I make this every year for the holidays. I also realised last year that it is both gluten-free and (if you use margarine or vegetable butter) vegan. I am neither of these things, but I have friends who are one or the other, and when they both show up at a dinner party, I am generally at a total loss for dessert. Now this is my go-to!

This is a family recipe that I have tweaked. It's different than a cooked fudge and kind of tastes like the middle of Reese's. If you add enough sugar, you can almost get it to the texture of cooked fudge, but I like it better when it's melt-in-your-mouth tender and smooshy, so I use a lot less sugar. (Bonus: Higher peanut-butter-to-sugar ratio.)

I actually couldn't find it anywhere on the internet last year and had to have someone look it up in the family recipe book and email it to me. But it the original had light corn syrup in it, which is unavailable in Australia. So I had to play with Golden Syrup and adjust proportions all around. (Bonus: even more peanut butter than the original!) I like this version better (it's richer without being a cloyingly sweet), so it's the recipe you get!

I might be eating of piece of this right now for breakfast.
Because I am a responsible adult.

 
Brittany's Squishy Peanut Butter Fudge
Cook/Prep Time: 10-15 minutes
Servings: Depends on how big you like your fudge... 16-32 pieces, maybe?

Ingredients:
(US Customary, but not fussy)

• 1/3 cup butter or margarine, softened (but not melted)
• 1/4 cup Golden Syrup, Treacle, or Dark Corn Syrup
• 1 cup creamy or chunky peanut butter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 to 1 lb powdered/icing sugar, optionally sifted

Special Equipment: A sifter is recommended to avoid lumps of sugar, but often I am too lazy. A clean counter, mat, or waxed paper to knead on.

Instructions: 

1. Mix butter, syrup, peanut butter, vanilla, and salt by hand until well blended.
2. Slowly add powdered/icing sugar until it becomes difficult to stir. Sprinkle powdered sugar on your kneading surface, dump out the fudge, and sprinkle powdered sugar on top. Knead the dough thoroughly to combine, slowing adding more sugar as desired until fudge reaches desired consistency. (As noted above, I like it very squishy and more peanuty rich than sugary rich, so I use not even half of a 1lb bag of powdered sugar. My family likes it to be sweeter and harder like cooked fudge, and thus use more than double the sugar I do. Both are delicious and there is no wrong answer here!)
3. Press into an 8x8/9x9-ish pan. Cut into squares and enjoy!

Big Soft Ginger Cookies 
Though not traditional in my family, I love me some chewy ginger cookies. We made this recipe for Big Soft Ginger Cookies this year. They're good, but not as good as the ones I made last year. They're soft and delicious, but are lacking the gooey chewiness I prize in a cookie with lots of molasses.

But they turned out picture-perfect, which is rare for me!

Oatmeal Scotchies
I normally don't associate these with being a Christmas cookie, although I do love them. Butterscotch chips are also non-exist in Australia--I had such a hard time explaining them to my housemate Milli that when I badgered her into buying me some while she was on holiday in Hawaii, she came back with three different baking chips because she wasn't sure what I was trying to ask for. (She's amazing.)

I've been hoarding the chips, but decided to use the rest of them up in these delicious, delicious cookies for Christmas happiness. We used this recipe for Oatmeal Scotchies, which is great. I like the cookies to be only a little sweet, with most of the sweetness coming from the chips, so I left out the white sugar entirely. (I've also replaced the white flour with buckwheat or spelt for a slightly-more-savory and slightly-lower-GI cookie on various occasions, any they're awesome.)

So the moral of this section is that if anyone ever decides to send me a care package from the States,
I would love you bunches if you sent butterscotch chips.

Gingerbread Trees
So have I mentioned that my housemate, Milli, is amazing? She used this recipe for Gingerbread Men and 5 different-sized star cookie cutters to make a bunch of gingerbread stars...

The teeny tiny stars are way cuter than they have any right to be...

 ...and turned them onto these mind-blowingly amazing Gingerbread Trees!

What.
Too awesome for words.

First, she made up some Royal Icing using this recipe. She took two cookies of the biggest size, put some Royal Icing between then to stick them together, and stacked them so they were off-set. Then, she repeated this step with increasingly smaller sizes (two cookies per size) to build the tree. The top teeny star is stuck back-to-back with another teeny star, decorated, and stuck on standing up. Then, she colored some the the icing red and some green, in separate ziploc bags, snipped the end of the bag, and added dots of red and green icing as decoration. Seriously amazing. 

The recipe above made enough gingerbread for four full trees and a couple random extra cookies.

 Mini-Christmas Puddings
My friend Elise has been making these for years. How totally adorable are they? Also: Totally soaked in booze. The little garnish is chopped up read and green Snakes (Australia's equivilent of gummy worms).

Adorable and soaked in booze? Now who does that sound like...

This is basically the recipe, except don't bother to measure the brandy. The amount you need heavily depends on the texture of the fruit cake you use. If it's a drier cake, you'll need more; if it's a moister cake, less. Just pour free-hand, mixing all the while, until the dough is squishy enough to roll but firm enough to hold into a ball.


Mince Tarts
These are also one of Elise's specialties. She made some pie pastry, about enough for one pie, which resulted in 18 tarts. She cut out circles with a round cookie cutter (could use a bowl or large glass) and put the pastry in cupcake wrappers/patty pans in a muffin tin. The, she filled them with a mix of dried fruit and grated apple that had been simmered with a bit of brandy and placed a bit of pastry on top. They cooked at 180C/350F for about 20 minutes, until the pastry was browned.

We own a million cookie cutters (and hot pink cookery!), so these have cute shapes on the top.
If you do not own a million cookie cutters, strips of dough or squares are fine.

Roll-Out Sugar Cookies
And finally, the Christmas cookie one can never go with out--rolled out and decorated sugar cookies! They are probably the least delicious cookie, but are the most fun. We used this sugar cookie recipe and refrigerated it for an hour or two before rolling out. The icing is the leftover Royal Icing from the trees, thinned out a little with milk. Normally, though, I just use a glaze made from a tablespoon or two of milk, a couple drops of vanilla extract, and enough powdered/icing sugar to make a runny paste.

Some highlights of my creation:

I've never seen a purple moose
I really hope to see one
But I can tell you anyhow
I'd rather see one wearing a bow-tie

 

Quick, eat some fruit!

Christmas airplane!

American friends, please re-read the paragraph about the
Australian-equivilent of gummy worms being Snakes
to truly appreciate how clever I am.

Christmas pineapples!

Okay, I might not be so good at the "Christmas" part of these cookies.

That's all! Whew. It was a long day of deliciousness. How's everyone else's dessert-making going? Any personal or family favorites to share?