Why, hello! Leite's Culinaria is the James Beard Award-winning site that helps home cooks and bakers put dinner on the table and laughs in the kitchen. Hungry for more? Join more than 30,000 food lovers and subscribe.
Share
Fa-La-La Fabulous! 12 Cookies for the 12 Days of Christmas
Published over 1 year ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader,
Take a hike, lords-a-leaping—we've got stand mixers-a-mixing. Instead of twelve drummers drumming, may I introduce you to a dozen friends who are far more attractive and certainly more tasty!
12 Days of Christmas Cookies
And, unlike those golden rings everyone's singing about, these won't require a second mortgage on your house.
These festive cookies are adorned with sweet-tart dried cranberries and crunchy pistachios. They're the perfect addition to your holiday cookie collection.
Italian Rainbow cookies are popular at Christmas, when they are called Neapolitan or Venetian cookies, perhaps to denote the colors of the flag of Italy.
These peanut butter blossom cookies are, like chewy and chocolatey like the classic but they also go a little glam with the addition of Guittard milk chocolate wafers. Otherwise, they're exactly the same as the kiss cookies your mom had waiting for you after school.
This Christmas cookie recipe has evolved over the years. These days, I prefer to roll out a softer, 1/4-inch (6.5 mm) thick cookie compared to when I was younger and desired a thinner, crispier cookie.
These old-fashioned peanut butter cookies, made with sugar, flour, peanut butter, and eggs, are like the cookies you grew up with, crispy, chewy, and peanut buttery.
These classic shortbread cookies are made with just 5 ingredients: butter, sugar, flour, vanilla, and a pinch of sea salt. A simple, perfect approach to a beloved Scottish tradition that's a perfect Christmas cookie.
Viennese crescent cookies are a tradition in Austria. They're made with hazelnuts, shaped like a half-moon, and dusted with confectioners' sugar. One nibble and we think you'll understand why they're a classic.
These biscochitos are a New Mexican Christmas cookie classic. Their trademark flaky texture and flavor comes from using lard in the dough, along with cinnamon, sugar, anise, and brandy.
These chocolate ginger crinkle cookies are a pleasing riff on a familiar (and easy!) Christmas standby. Chunks of crystallized ginger and dark chocolate make for a rather grown-up experience of a childhood classic.
Lebkuchen are traditional German Christmas cookies that are subtly reminiscent of gingerbread. Although actually, we prefer to refer to them as "moments of perfectly spiced cut-out cookie deliciousness."
It’s simple: chocolate cookie dough surrounds a peanut butter center, and the whole is dredged in sugar before baking. In the oven, the cookie spreads out, and like magic, you end up with a peanut butter center between two wonderful chocolate layers.
Why, hello! Leite's Culinaria is the James Beard Award-winning site that helps home cooks and bakers put dinner on the table and laughs in the kitchen. Hungry for more? Join more than 30,000 food lovers and subscribe.
Hi Reader, Not long ago, I made my Pasta Al Limone with the windows open and felt briefly, dangerously elegant.The water was boiling. Lemon zest and Parm cheese were piled on the cutting board, and for once everything I needed was within reach instead of hiding behind the capers like a wanted fugitive.This is the kind of pasta I want when warm weather arrives: quick, fresh, bright, and just indulgent enough to satisfy without weighing down the evening.So in spring I reached for lemon, peas,...
Hi Reader, I don’t trust recipes that call for “2 tablespoons chopped parsley” and then expect applause.Two tablespoons? That’s garnish thinking. That’s fear talking.Fresh herb season requires a different spirit altogether. A more generous one. The sort that reaches into a bunch of dill, basil, cilantro, mint, parsley, chives, tarragon—whatever’s looking vivid and alive—and uses enough so you can actually taste it.Because herbs don’t merely decorate food. They wake it up.A bowl of potatoes...
Hi Reader, I have a bad habit of tasting dinner and immediately making the face.You know the one. The tiny squint. The pause. The “something’s missing” stare into the middle distance, as if the answer might appear between the stove and the spice drawer wearing tap shoes.Nine times out of ten, it’s acid.Not more salt. Not more butter. Not a dramatic last-minute reinvention that leaves the kitchen looking like a crime scene. Just lemon. A squeeze of juice. A little zest. That clean, sharp edge...
