Seriously. Even though there’s no chocolate, which I know seems like it’d take a cookie right out of the running. Even so, seriously, you have to try this cookie! I really think it’s a springtime cookie, but hey, try it out at Christmas, I don’t think anybody will complain!

I modified this recipe heavily, but the idea is based on a cookie from tigersandstrawberries.com — Barbara is an amazing cook.

Aphrodite Springtime Cookies

2 1/2 C flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
2/3 C buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
14 Tbsp unsalted butter,
1 C sugar
2 eggs

Filling:

1/2 stick butter
4 oz cream cheese
8 oz powdered sugar
2 tsp rose water
2 drops red food coloring

Whisk together dry ingredients. Combine buttermilk, egg, and vanilla.

Beat butter and sugar three minutes. Beat in flour mixture and buttermilk mixture alternately, beginning and ending with flour mixture.

If you think that this method is much more like you are making a butter cake than a cookie, you are right! These are the most cake-like cookies you can possibly make. They work perfectly with the filling, believe me.

Now, you can drop the cookie dough on parchment-lined baking sheets, but I STRONGLY SUGGEST piping the dough, which is MUCH faster and easier and gives you a lot more control over the size of the cookies, plue ensures they come out round. Make ’em small, like a tsp each.

Bake at 350 degrees for 6-8 minutes, until just barely brown around edges — you don’t want to overbake them.

Now combine the filling ingredients. Pipe the filling on half the cookies and top with the other half to make sandwich cookies.

These freeze beautifully, but because the cookies are so soft, you will find they stick to each other. Put waxed paper between layers.

If you have filling left over, ice cupcakes with it. In fact, if you make twice the filling, you’ll have enough to ice a whole layer cake! Mmmm.

When I was depressed last year after losing Adora’s only puppy from her first litter? These are the cookies I made. Then I sat down and read THE HUNGER GAMES and ate all the cookies. (Well, not all, but lots of them.) So that’s my prescription if you need a comforting evening after a hard couple of weeks: a really good dystopian story and a lot of really good cookies.

Extra note here: Adora’s two puppies this time around are doing great! Which does not stop me from eating cookies, but means I’m less inclined to eat them all myself.

Okay! Merry Christmas! See you after the holiday!

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Can’t believe I never made this before! Already making plans to make ’em again, though of course not until I start running low on cookies, which I estimate will happen about March.

Anyway!

Walnut Horns

1 C butter, no substitutes
8 oz cream cheese
3 C flour

1 Tbsp butter, melted
4 C walnuts, toasted and ground
3/4 C sugar
1/4 C milk
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt

Additional sugar

Now, soften the butter — about ten seconds in the microwave. Add the cream cheese and zap another ten seconds or so. You don’t want the butter melted, just softened, it makes a difference. Beat the butter and cream cheese together, beat in the flour. Chill if necessary to make the dough easier to handle (I chilled it overnight just because that was convenient).

Divide the dough into fourths (I divided it into fifths to make smaller cookies, but suit yourself).

Roll out one portion of the dough into a 12 inch circle. Spread with 1/4 of the filling. Cut into 12 even wedges (I used a pizza cutter). Roll up each wedge from the wide end toward the tip. Curve gently into a crescent shape.

Bake at 325 degrees for 25-40 minutes (depending on how big you made your cookies, right?) until slightly golden.

Roll warm cookies in additional sugar.

Now, this is a pastry type of cookie and not a cookie type of cookie, right? These are sinfully rich and delicious, but in my opinion, although you can freeze them, they will lose a little in quality if you do, unlike a more cakey or shortbread type of cookie. Too bad! Worth making anyway!

I found the pastry easy to handle, so these were really no trouble at all to make. And they look very distinctive and pretty on the platter amid all the other cookies!

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. . . not just when they’re sitting there tempting you to skip supper and just pig out on sugar, but you know what? Making cookies is more fun than revising a manuscript, too! At least right now! At least this scene!

Aargh, what a day, just had to FORCE myself to sit down and work on this one scene. Not like it was exactly hard, just so not in the mood to work on it. Good thing I don’t depend on, you know, being in the MOOD.

Meanwhile! Here is a totally fantastic cookie that is somehow more than the sum of its parts.

Chocolaty Double Crunchers

1/2 C butter or margarine
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 C flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 C quick oats
1/2 C flaked coconut
1 C crushed cornflakes — whirl ’em in a food processor, you don’t want powdered cornflakes, but you want ’em more crushed than you can easily do by rolling a rolling pin over them or whatever.

Filling:
8 oz cream cheese
1/2 C powdered sugar
6 oz semisweet chocolate chips

Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in egg and vanilla. Combine the dry ingredients and stir in. Shape into balls smaller than seems reasonable . . . like about a tsp or so . . . and set on parchment-lined baking sheets. Flatten with a glass dipped in flour. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Cool completely on racks.

Now, soften the cream cheese and chocolate chips in the microwave, stir until smooth, then add the powdered sugar.

Make sandwich cookies. Like many sandwich cookies, these are best after they have had time for the cookie to absorb a little moisture from the filling. They freeze perfectly and, in fact, are very tasty right out of the freezer — no need to thaw, imho.

These don’t look especially fancy, but they’re very very good. The cornflakes are key, don’t substitute plain oatmeal cookies. Well, unless you really want to, I guess.

Now, here’s a much fancier cookie that will definitely make everybody’s top ten list! They’re fiddly and you might want to recruit some helpful child if you have one handy.

Caramel Pecan Treasures

1 C butter (no substitutes)
3/4 C brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 C flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

30 caramels, cut in half and each half flattened as flat as possible. I suggest leaning on each half hard with the flat of a chef’s knife. I also suggest delegating this part if possible.

6 oz semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 Tbsp shortening
60 pecan halfs. Halves? Whatever.

Now: as always, cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the vanilla. Combine the flour and baking powder and stir that in. Roll into 60 balls. Place on parchment-lined baking sheets. Flatten slightly with a glass dipped in flour. Bake at 325 degrees for 12-15 minutes, until slightly golden.

Quickly place caramel halves on each cookie while cookie is still as warm as possible.

Melt the chocolate with the shortening. I suggest you do this in the microwave, but if you love your double boiler, suit yourself. Drizzle or pipe or spread a little chocolate over each cookie. Top each cookie with a pecan half before the chocolate sets.

If you have willing help, you might want to double this recipe, because you will love it but it IS a pain in the neck, all those dratted caramels, I mean, honestly.

Also! Puppy update! Yep, still cute! In fact, very much in the cute sluglike stage because their eyes aren’t open yet. You know, a puppy this age? The brainwaves are the same whether it’s asleep or awake, isn’t that an entertaining little bit of trivia?

But the little boy rolled on his back today and yawned and stretched and waved his feet in the air and, okay, I have to say, major cute moment there.

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Okay, NOW I’m working on revising BLACK DOG. Actually I think it’s going pretty well and won’t take too long, though possibly I’m asking for trouble to sound optimistic.

I’m adding flashbacks and personal memories of the past, but so far very short ones. Though doing this is forcing me to figure out a more detailed past scene, which then has ramifications every single time somebody thinks about the past.

So I see a complete read through would once more be a good idea when I think I’m done. If I can stand it.

Then to be nice to Caitlin, I really should mark the important changes in red so she can see what I’ve done a little more easily.

Still, it’s going okay. So far.

Meanwhile! Watching puppies grow. They’re just about 12 oz today, which means they did just about double their weight in ten days like good little puppies are supposed to. They are quite fat, actually. I need to add another picture to my other website. Tomorrow, if I get to it.

Also! Onward with the promised cookies!

These are something of a pain, but well worth it once a year, if you want to splurge on macadamias:

Chocolate Macadamia Meltaways:

1 C butter (no substitutes)
1/2 C powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 C flour
7 oz macadamia, finely chopped.

1 C semisweet cocolate chips
1/2 C. additional coarsely-chopped macadamias

Cream the butter and sugar in the standard fashion; beat in vanilla; gradually add flour; stir in nuts. Dough will be stiff.

Melt chocolate chips and stir in coarsely-chopped nuts. Drop by 1/2 tsp on waxed-paper-lined cookie sheet. Chill 20 minutes.

Now, count the dabs of filling. Divide the dough into that many little balls (each will be about a tsp of dough). Shape a piece of dough around each little dab of filling and roll into a ball between your palms. This is a fiddly little job and you will find it’s hard to roll the cookies quite into balls because the chocolate dabs will be flat on one side. Do the best you can; they’ll be fine.

Bake at 375 degrees for about 12 minutes. Roll in powdered sugar to coat. Serve to gasps of admiration from all your friends and relatives.

There! After that, you deserve a casual easy cookie that isn’t the least bit fiddly. Try this popular little item:

Snow Bites

8 oz cream cheese
1/2 C butter
3/4 C margarine

(the original recipe called for those proportions, but I’ve used all butter and all margarine and the thing that matters is the cream cheese, you can vary the other two)

2 C sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
5 C flour
2 C dried cranberries or mini chocolate chips or whatever floats your boat

Cream the cream cheese, butter, and margarine. Beat in sugar. Beat in egg, salt, and vanilla. Gradually stir in flour. Stir in cranberries or chocolate chips or whatever.

Drop onto parchment-lined baking sheets or else roll into balls and place on cookie sheets, if you want a slightly fancier presentation.

Bake at 350 degres of 12-14 minutes, until slightly golden on bottom but still quite white on top.

There you go, everybody will love these, I promise!

Place cookies

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I make tons of fancy cookies for Christmas, and lots of them are in the running for BEST IN THE WORLD. I thought I’d post my personal picks for top ten and let other people try ’em. The one I think is the VERY BEST, I’ll post tenth. If I know where the original recipe came from, I’ll say so, if not, then I have no idea.

So! Onward, to make your name as a cookie goddess!

Caramel Swirls

1 C butter
4 oz cream cheese
1 C brown sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp maple flavoring
2 3/4 C flour

30 caramels
6 oz cream cheese

Cream the butter, cream cheese, and sugar. Beat in egg yolk and maple flavoring. (This is the ONLY recipe I like maple in, so if you’re not a big maple fan, try it anyway.) Stir in the floor. Wrap dough in plastic and chill three hours or longer.

Meanwhile, peel all those caramels. This would be a good job for a compliant child, if you have one handy. Melt the caramels with the remaining cream cheese (I do this in the microwave).

Now, divide the dough in half. Place half on a large sheet of waxed paper and cover with another sheet of waxed paper. Roll out into a sizable rectangle. Um, about 18″ by maybe 10″? Not paper thin, you know, but thin-ish.

Spread half the caramel filling over the rolled-out dough, going all the way to the edges.

Roll up like a jelly-roll, using the waxed paper to help manipulate the roll. Finish by letting the roll sort of spill off the waxed paper onto a sheet of plastic wrap. Wrap up roll of cookie dough and place on cookie sheet in the freezer.

Repeat with the remaining cookie dough and filling.

Freeze until good and firm, at least a couple of hours or for as long as is convenient. A month is fine.

Unwrap and slice into 1/4 inch cookies. Bake on parchment-lined baking sheets at 350 degrees for about 12 to 14 minutes. Serve to universal acclaim.

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