Sugar Cookies with Marbled Glaze

No piping skillz, no worries! These Sugar Cookies with Marbled Glaze are classically delicious and uncommonly pretty. Even I can decorate them.

Marbled Glaze

My mom is a fabulous cake decorator. She doesn’t do it professionally, but she could. In our youth, my brother and I were treated to beautifully decorated birthday cakes and holiday cookies all done by my mom’s artistic mind and steady hand.

I did not inherit that gene.

I’m terrible at cookie decorating. My kids do a better job than I do. When I first saw marbled glaze, I thought no way am I doing that.

Marbled glaze is a frosting technique. It is similar to the mirror glaze used on cakes. However, mirror glaze involves gelatin and dries to a shiny finish, hence the name.

The marbly one used on cookies is royal white icing, made from powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla extract. Plus a little vodka if you are naughty. Food coloring is swirled into the icing, then the top of the cookie is dipped into the icing creating a marbled effect.

Well, curiosity got the best of me. The swirly glaze is so beautiful and I like pretty things. So, I tried it.

The result: stunning cookies! And it was easy enough for a terrible cookie decorator like me to achieve Instagram-worthy results.

This technique works well because of food coloring.

Food Coloring

If you are at all familiar with food coloring, you have probably used liquid food coloring. You can find it in most grocery stores in the baking aisle. It’s water-based, inexpensive, and used in cookie doughs, cake batters, and frostings.

Gel food coloring has a glycerin or corn syrup base so it is thicker and the color is more concentrated. A little goes a long way. Most cake decorators, like my mom, use it in frostings and icings to give them bright and saturated colors.

A few decades ago, gel coloring was harder to find and only sold in specialty baking supply stores. Now it is available at Walmart, Target, Michaels, and of course, Amazon.

For this marbled glaze, you need just a few drops of liquid food coloring and a toothpick to achieve a beautiful, swirly pattern for your cookies.

Lessons Learned

• The sugar cookie dough needs its time alone in the fridge for Netflix and chill. Let it have that time. The dough should be cold and fairly firm (not hard) before being rolled out so that the cutters will make clean cuts and the cookies won’t spread when baked.
• Have a ruler handy when you roll the dough to ¼” thickness. Don’t eyeball it as I have for years. Once I started using a ruler, I was astounded to discover that I had been rolling my dough too thin for too long. No wonder they burned so quickly!
• Don’t bake them too long. They will be tooth-chipping hard. The baked cookies should be a sandy color with just a touch of brown around the edges.

Hat Tips

Many thanks to King Arthur Baking for the holiday butter cookies recipe and to Jake Cohen for the tie-dye Hanukkah cookie inspiration.

Gluten-free Shortbread Cookies with Tahini

Every assorted cookie platter needs at least one gluten-free offering. Gluten-free Shortbread Cookies with Tahini should be the one! Even gluten-filled folks will appreciate this because shortbread never disappoints.

Shortbread

GBBO peeps will be familiar with the term biscuit. But if you aren’t, it is what Americans call a cookie. Shortbread is a type of cookie that is traditionally Scottish but is now found all over the world in places that appreciate a buttery bite of heaven.

Normally made with just three ingredients (butter, flour, and sugar) shortbread is a dense and crumbly cookie. It can skew savory with the addition of rosemary or caraway but is normally a mildly sweet treat.

When I was in my teens, I could not wait for Christmas time to roll around because it was only then that I could find Walker’s Scottish shortbread at the local commissary on the military base where we lived. Those shiny red tins and rectangular plaid boxes were the stuff of which my cookie dreams were made.

After traveling to Scotland, I discovered that shortbread is not a fancy cookie made only by Walker's. It's made by moms and grandmas. And it needs only a handful of ingredients.

There was no looking back once I learned to bake my own shortbread. Goodbye Walker’s (although I still love you) and hello homemade shortbread. Now, I have fun playing around and making different flavors.

Like tahini.

Tahini

Tahini is a creamy sesame seed paste. Once toasted and ground, the sesame seed kernels become spreadable seed butter or paste. It is similar to nut butter.

The paste is a popular ingredient in many Middle Eastern dips, sauces, and toppings. Most people know about tahini because it plays a starring role in hummus. But it can be used in desserts, too.

Halva is a fudge-like sweet made from sesame seed paste. Tahini is also swirled into brownies, cookies, and ice creams. It adds a slightly bitter and nutty flavor that is delicious.

Lessons Learned

• If your gluten-free flour blend does not contain xanthan gum, add ¾ teaspoon to the recipe. Looking for a flour-free cookie? Try this one.
• The mixer is NOT your friend for this cookie recipe. Creaming the tahini, butter, and sugar together with beaters adds too much air to the dough and the cookies will spread. I used a fork to mash them together, then transitioned to a large spoon to incorporate the other ingredients.
• The fridge, however, is your best friend. Be sure to chill the dough before rolling it into logs. Then chill again before slicing or you will be sorry.

Hat Tips

Many thanks to The Loopy Whisk for the tahini shortbread cookie recipe and K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash for the bagpiper photo.

Gingerbread Cookies with Rum-Butter Glaze

Gingerbread Cookies with Rum-butter Glaze are the quintessential holiday cookie. Soft and full of all the warming spices, these cookies bring all the Nutcracker vibes. Plus, a rummy, buttery glaze.

Want to make them pretty? Use cookie stamps.

Cookie Stamps

We all have a drawer in our kitchen crammed with various cookie cutters. They are useful for cutting shapes into rolled-out cookie or pie dough. And don't tell, but I may have used them once or twice with Play-Doh.

Cookie stamps, however, don’t cut out cookies. They imprint them with a design. Stamps of this type date back several centuries in Scandinavia where they are used to imprint cookies for special occasions.

Old-school cookie stamps are carved out of wood or made of clay. The stamp, which is basically bas relief, is pressed into the dough. It leaves behind a pretty design, making the cookies edible works of art.

Today, cookie stamps are wood or clay, but most often I see them made of metal. I bought my American-made ones on Amazon. And the dough into which I press them?

Gingerbread with molasses.

Molasses

Slow as molasses! My dad used to say that phrase from time to time when I was growing up and I’m sure he wasn’t talking about me. He loved the taste of molasses and his favorite was blackstrap.

Molasses comes from sugar cane juice. Boiled once, twice, and three times, the juice concentrates and produces different grades and strengths of molasses. Blackstrap is the result of three go-rounds and is the darkest variety with a strong flavor.

This oozy syrup is an ingredient in candies, cookies, and other baked goods. The flavor adds complexity to the pretty cookies featured here.

Lessons Learned

• Choose your strength of molasses flavor. I like mild molasses. Are you a blackstrap person? You’ll never know until you try it.
• Be sure to chill your dough for several hours or overnight. I found that cold dough was best for making a deep imprint with the cookie stamp. I also chilled the imprinted cookies for 30 minutes prior to baking so the design would not be lost when the cookies bake and puff up.
• Don’t want rum in the glaze? How sad. You can replace it with an equal amount of lemon juice, but that is kind of lame. Use the rum.

Hat Tips

Many thanks to Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh for their soft gingerbread tiles with rum butter glaze recipe.

Pandan Crinkle Cookies with Coconut and Lime

What’s green with snow-like caps and tastes like a tropical vacation? Pandan Crinkle Cookies with Coconut and Lime. These are easy to make and addictingly good.

Pandan

If you aren’t familiar with pandan, I’m here to enlighten you. Pandan is a type of tropical plant grown in Southeast Asia. Its leaves are a food flavoring in Indonesia, Malaysia, Phillippines, Singapore, and Sri Lanka.

I spent most of my childhood in the Pacific, living in Guam and Hawaii. Many of my Filipino friends brought pandan-flavored cakes and sweets to fiestas and potlucks. The flavor is subtly sweet and grassy with mild vanilla-y notes.

It’s hard to describe, but it’s lovely.

You can make your own pandan flavoring, of course. I’ve even found packages of pandan leaves in the frozen food section at my local Asian market. But it’s easy to purchase pandan flavoring on Amazon or at most Asian food stores.

Pandan appears in both savory and sweet dishes. Most often it is added to rice and chicken dishes. But I really love it in cookies.

Crinkle Cookies

I had a friend whose mom would bake chocolate crinkle cookies every holiday season. They were so pretty and so delicious. Plus, they looked like they were topped with snow!

Crinkle cookies are so named because they have a crinkly, crackly look. The dough gets rolled in powdered sugar before baking. Through the magic of the oven, the dough puffs and bakes, peeking out from the powdered sugar veneer.

Chocolate crinkle cookies are the OG, of course, but variations like red velvet, lemon, and sprinkle crinkles have become very popular. This recipe combines pandan, coconut, and lime for a unique crinkle cookie. These pandan cookies deserve a spot on your holiday cookie tray, as do these.

Lessons Learned

• Pandan flavoring and extract aren’t always the same across brands. If you are purchasing a natural extract, the green color will be more subtle than the ones with artificial color added. Yes, I went for the artificial coloring because I wanted these babies to be vibrant green, not sage green.
• This is a thick and sticky dough. To help the dough firm up a little, I let it chill in the fridge for 15-ish minutes.
• When you plop the dough into the powdered sugar, it will not be a perfect ball. Once the dough is coated in the sugar, you can gently roll it between your palms to make it round.

Hat Tips

Many thanks to Dessert Now Dinner Later for the coconut lime crinkle cookie recipe.

Chocolate-Pecan Meringues with Cherries

Chewy and chocolatey, these Chocolate-Pecan Meringues with Cherries deserve a spot on your cookie tray this month. The fact that they are gluten-free and dairy-free is one more reason to say yes to making them.

Gluten-free Baking

Gluten-free baked goods can be terrible. These bread, cakes, and cookies seem to go hard on the baking soda and baking powder, hoping for some lift since gluten isn’t there to provide it. The results are often a dry, crumbly mess that only the faithfully gluten-free person will eat.

So not worth the calories!

However, gluten-free baking has come a long way in the past few years. Now there are more easily sourced flour substitutions like 1-to-1, cup-4-cup, almond, and coconut. Plus, countless gluten-free websites help the average baker put together something that is not only edible but tasty for GF family and friends.

I’ve had my share of gluten-free (and dairy-free) needs with my own peeps for several years. One of the best things to bake for these high-maintenance loved ones? Meringue.

Meringue

Once upon a time, I thought meringue was super fancy. Well, I still kind of think that. But once I actually made it, I discovered it is easy to do.

Let’s call it easy fancy.

Basically, meringue is egg whites whipped with sugar until it is stiff and glossy. It is then baked until the outside is crisp and the inside is soft, chewy, and marshmallow-like. Think: lemon meringue pie and baked Alaska.

If it is baked longer, the entire meringue is uniformly crisp throughout. It shatters when you bite into it. Dacquoise, meringue kisses, and pavlova are all examples.

Meringue is a delicious way to make a naturally gluten-free and dairy-free cookie without having to hunt down any special ingredients. It can be flavored with a variety of things like melted chocolate, dried bits of fruit, zest, and finely chopped nuts.

Lessons Learned

• Don’t overbeat the egg whites! They should form shiny, stiff peaks that remain tall when the beaters are pulled away. If you beat them for too long, they will lose their shine and become dull lumpy clumps, as I sadly discovered.
• It’s important to add the sugar a little bit at a time. Wait for it to become incorporated before adding the next spoonful so the meringue doesn’t become grainy.
• Yes, piping the cookies is an extra step but the finished product looks prettier. The alternative is to plop the batter on the sheet pan with a spoon. It’s ugly but tastes the same. You're an adult, so do what you want.

Hat Tips

Many thanks to Parade for the chewy dark chocolate meringue cookie recipe.

Cranberry Lime Pie

The bright color is a hint of the equally bright flavor of Cranberry Lime Pie. Crushed gingersnaps and pecans make up the warm and nutty crust. The filling: sweet-tart cranberry lime curd.

Curd

What is fruit curd? If you are a teatime person, you are familiar with lemon curd. Spread on scones and sandwiched between cookies, it is indulgent, buttery, and lemony.

Fruit curd is a combination of eggs, sugar, fruit juice, and zest cooked until some of the liquid evaporates and thickened. Sometimes the mixture incorporates butter as well. Once the curd cools, it is a creamy, spreadable paste.

Citrus fruits like grapefruit, lemon, lime, and orange are well-suited for this because their acid and sharp flavor balance the richness of the curd. Lately, I have seen berries made into curds, such as blackberry, raspberry, and strawberry. This recipe uses tart cranberries and limes.

A nice counterpoint to the luscious filling is the cookie crust.

Gingersnap Pie Crust

Cookie pie crusts are nothing new. They are made from crunchy cookies like graham crackers, Oreos, and shortbread. Crush cookies into crumbs, add butter, and press the mixture into a pan.

To quote Ina Garten, how easy is that?

This crust is made with gingersnaps. The crunchy kind from a box. Plus, pecans!

Lessons Learned

• Need your crust to be nut-free? Use just cookies. Double the amount of gingersnaps.
• If you don’t mind pieces of cranberry and zest in your curd, by all means, skip the fine mesh strainer bit. Straining it makes the curd silky smooth but that might not be your thing.
• The garnishes are optional, of course. They do make the pie extra pretty but a dollop of whipped cream instead would be just as nice.

Hat Tips

Many thanks to Epicurious for their cranberry-lime pie recipe.

Buttermilk Pie with Booze

It’s not the prettiest thing, but it is sweet and will make you smile. I’m not referring to your friend’s newest grandbaby. We’re talking pie: Buttermilk Pie with Booze.

The appeal of this pie is its simplicity. Yes, it’s ugly but it is delicious. Certain individuals will appreciate it.

This is the pie for friends who:

• Drink their coffee black.
• Order cheese pizza.
• Peruse all the ice cream flavors, then get vanilla—every time.

Jamocha Almond Fudge people, keep moving along. This is not the pie for you.

What’s Buttermilk

I was amazed to learn recently that buttermilk is a fermented drink.

In years past, it was made from the leftover milk that remained after one churned their butter. This milk was allowed to ferment, developing natural probiotics and a tangy flavor. My dad used to drink this when he was growing up in his tiny hometown in Oklahoma.

Most of the buttermilk sold today in the U.S. is cultured buttermilk. This means that a lactic acid bacteria culture is added to pasteurized, homogenized milk. The live cultures ferment the milk to produce commercially-made buttermilk.

Buttermilk is thicker than whole milk and has a slightly acidic tang, similar to yogurt. It is used as an ingredient in biscuits, muffins, pancakes, and quick bread. The lactic acid in the milk activates baking soda, giving these doughs a lift and a tender crumb.

The star of this pie is the buttermilk. I know you are skeptical, but I encourage you to make it once before passing judgment. You will be surprised at how good it is.

Plus, there’s booze.

Booze

Booze, hooch, the sauce, nightcap. They are all the same: nicknames for alcohol. Usually, these are referring to distilled spirits but can be applied to alcohol in general.

When you add booze to something that is going to be baked, cooked on a stovetop, grilled, or sauteed, some of the alcohol burns off and evaporates in the heat. Some, not all. After an hour of cooking, about 25 percent of the alcohol still remains in a dish.

If this concerns you because the alcohol doesn’t completely burn off (or because 75 percent of it does), read on.

For a recipe that calls for two tablespoons of hooch like this one does, the finished pie will have about one and a half teaspoons of remaining alcohol. I won’t calculate what each slice contains, but I think it is safe to say you won’t get buzzed by eating a slice of this pie. Or even the whole pie.

The spirit I chose to add was the whiskey I had on hand (Buffalo Trace if you are curious). But you can use whatever hard stuff you have and taste you enjoy. If you don’t like or want to use alcohol, you can just omit it.

Lessons Learned

• Don’t want to make your own pie dough? Use a purchased pie crust instead. But homemade is worth the extra 15 minutes to pull together, I promise.
• You will want to use real buttermilk for this recipe since it is a key ingredient. In other baked goods, you can get away with a buttermilk substitute (milk plus lemon juice), but that won’t work here.
• Use a regular 9-inch pie pan, not a deep dish one. I made the mistake of making it in a deep dish pan on the first try and the filling was too skimpy.

Hat Tips

Many thanks to Simply Recipes for the perfect pie crust recipe (I used the butter and shortening version) and Well Plated by Erin for the buttermilk pie filling recipe.

Chocolate Tart with PB Pretzel Crust

You only need five ingredients to make Chocolate Tart with PB Pretzel Crust. It’s a sweet and salty combination that is perfect for the dairy-free peeps in your life. It’s easily adapted to be gluten-free, reduced sugar, and vegan, too!

Why do sweet and salty taste good together?

Sweet and Salty

We all have that friend who dips their french fries into a milkshake, scatters crushed pretzels over ice cream, and salts each slice of watermelon. I used to think these people were gross. Now, I realize they are geniuses.

Salt makes sweet things taste better.

Because salt is a flavor booster, it helps us identify and enjoy the different flavors in foods. Our taste buds contain many cells that send signals to our brain, which then registers what we are ingesting. Certain sweet taste cells will only fire up when sodium is present.

This explains why so many cookie and cake recipes call for a pinch of salt or employ salted butter. These recipes know what’s up. When we get both sweet and salty in one bite, we are hooked.

Salt rounds out the flavor in chocolate ganache.

Dairy Free Chocolate Ganache

Ganache is a fancy word for chocolate and heavy cream mixed together. Normally, the cream is warmed and poured over chopped chocolate and stirred until glossy. The mixture can be used for pouring over cakes and desserts, or making truffles and candies.

Because I have several dairy-free people in my life, I like to make my chocolate ganache with full-fat coconut milk. I find that heating the milk in the microwave and adding the chocolate works just as well as the stove-top method. The ganache comes out silky smooth and delicious.

Stevia-sweetened dark chocolate chips, like the Lily Brand, are my personal favorite. They are not too sweet. I think the reduced sugar content is a welcome relief in a dense rich tart like this one.

Lessons Learned

• To make this gluten-free, you know what to do. Find GF peanut butter pretzels.
• Want this to be vegan? Replace the butter with vegan butter or solid coconut oil and use vegan chocolate chips. Is there such a thing as vegan peanut butter pretzels? Vegans will know.
• Let this tart sit outside the fridge for 30-ish minutes before slicing and serving. It will be pretty firm straight from the refrigerator.

Hat Tips

Many thanks to The FeedFeed for the chocolate and peanut butter pretzel tart recipe.

Apple Galette with Frangipane

Here we are, knee-deep in apple season. What are you going to do with them? If you have apples, pastry cream, and dough, you can make Apple Galette with Frangipane.

Galette

What is a galette, you ask? It is a free-form, topless tart. I know that sounds a bit like a 1960s hippie chick but it’s not.

Originally, galettes were made in northern France as flat, round, rustic pies that could be savory or sweet. The dough edges were folded partway over the filling, rather than trimmed and crimped like a traditional pie.

Ina Garten uses puff pastry as the base for her fruit galettes. Jamie Oliver uses shortcrust pastry for his savory galettes. The apple galette we are making here involves buttery pie dough.

The star, besides the apples? Frangipane.

Almond Paste, Marzipan, Frangipane: What’s the Difference?

These terms have confused me for a long time. I know they are all made from almonds. But are they the same thing?

No.

The breakdown of what’s what and how it is used:

• Almond Paste: Blanched ground almonds, powdered sugar, and egg whites. It has a coarse texture but is still soft and pliable. Add it to cakes, cookies, and other desserts that are going to be baked.
• Marzipan: Peeled ground almonds, powdered sugar, and a tiny bit of water. It is a thick, smooth, slightly stiff paste that can be dyed in different colors and used like fondant as candy and decoration.
• Frangipane: Almond meal, granulated sugar, eggs, butter, and sometimes milk. It is a soft, spreadable pastry cream. Spread it as a filling in tarts, croissants, and galettes before baking.

Almond paste and marzipan can be homemade but are also available to purchase ready-made in grocery stores and online. Frangipane is always homemade and needs to be used the same day.

Frangipane comes together quickly and is the base of this apple galette. Apples + almond frangipane = deliciousness!

Lessons Learned

• Don’t be afraid of all the French words in this post. Galette = rustic pie, frangipane = almond pastry cream. You don’t have to pronounce them correctly for them to taste good.
• The dough requires chilling time in the fridge. Don’t skip this step! The chilling will keeps the crust from flopping open and the contents from spilling out when baking.
• We’ve recently talked a lot about apples so you know I am using Cosmic Crisp and Granny Smith here. Golden Delicious would also be a good pick because the slices bake up tender while still holding their shape. This is a galette, after all, so you want it to look good topless.

Hat Tips

Many thanks to Cooking Classy and Publix Super Markets for their apple galette recipes!

Caramel Apple Upside Down Cake

Ready to enjoy all the fall vibes? Caramel Apple Upside Down Cake brings it regardless of what the weather looks like outside.

The Autumn Season

Have you found yourself wandering the aisles of Home Goods lately and eyeballing all the pretty autumn decorations, brushing your hand across the cozy sofa throws, and sniffing the harvest-themed candles? Me too.

Temperatures are cooling, leaves are changing colors, and the sun goes down earlier now in parts of the Northern Hemisphere. The thought of cool crisp weather and warm apple cider is so appealing.

However, I am jolted back to the reality of 90-something-degree sunshine when I leave home decor stores and get into my stifling hot car. There is no way I am decorating with warm fleece anything on my couch just yet.

Even though Southern California weather is not cooperating to fulfill my autumnal longings, I’m not complaining. I’m thankful for the sunshine. And for the random rain showers like we’ve had the past week.

Swapping out current pillow slipcovers for some orangey ones and tucking pampas grass among other dried floral stems helps me shift into the autumn season while I wait for cooler days.

Plus, I’m baking with apples.

Best Apples

Earlier, we talked about the best apples when making an apple pie. These same varieties work well when baking tarts, galettes, and cakes. I’ve been using a lot of Golden Delicious and Cosmic Crisp this month, with Granny Smith coming in close behind.

Because the apples are nestled in quick caramel at the bottom of the pan for this upside-down cake, you want a variety that is not going to turn to mush. The cake is flipped apple side up before serving so the pieces need to be tender yet still hold their shape.

I used Golden Delicious apples for this recipe. Yes, I sliced them crosswise because I was feeling ornery that day. But you can slice them however you wish.

Lessons Learned

• The pan size is flexible here. My 9-inch square pan was previously engaged when I made this, so I used a 7x11-inch rectangular pan and it worked out fine.
• Don’t lick the spoon after stirring the caramel. Your tongue will be mad at you for several days.
• If you really want to geek out by reading up on the best apple varieties for baking, take a look at J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s side-by-side comparison. It is so enlightening!

Hat Tips

Many thanks to Sally’s Baking Addiction and Betty Crocker for their apple upside-down cake recipes and to Aaron Burden on Unsplash for the autumn leaves photo.