This Friday turned out to be one of my absolute favorites in along time. Not only did I have the day off (always a huge perk) but I got to bake Christmas cookies.
This wasn’t just any Christmas cookie session, it was an epic 5 hour baking session with my Aunt (who isn’t an Aunt by blood but I swear we were in a previous life. We have the same baking/crafting obsessions. Case in point: last night, she sent me an email about a new kind of frosting recipe she found. Love her.)
We had been planning this baking session for months. After digging through countless recipes, we finally settled on four things to make, quite a task for only one afternoon.
In those 5 hours (that went entirely too fast), we cranked out white-chocolate cherry shortbread cookies, oreo truffles, cream cheese sugar cookies and world peace cookies.
Since I’ve already explored oreo truffles before, I won’t bore you with them again. But trust me, they are delicious EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
Fortunately, for time’s sake, my aunt had pre-made the world peace cookies (the cookie peaking out on the very left) so I won’t be able to give you step by step directions for that one. But you can find the recipe here. They are a sinfully chocolate version of shortbread cookies and totally worth the sugar overload.
I do however have the recipes and step-by-step directions to share with you for the shortbread cookies and the cream cheese sugar cookies. So up first, I’ll share the White-Chocolate Cherry Shortbread cookies and tomorrow I’ll go over the cream cheese sugar cookies.
White-Chocolate Cherry Shortbread Cookies (courtesy of Better Homes and Gardens)
Ingredients
- ½ cup maraschino cherries
- 2 ½ cups flour
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 cup cold butter
- 12 ounces of white chocolate
- ½ teaspoon of almond extract
- Sprinkles for decorating
Method
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Drain your cherries and finely chop them. Once you’ve got your pieces small enough, place them on a paper towel and dab off the excess moisture with another paper towel.
Place flour and sugar in a large food processor (a tip that I learned from my Aunt since she doesn’t have a stand mixer. Feel free to use a stand mixer or hand mixer if you like).
Cut butter into thin slices and add to the food processor.
Pulse the food processor a few times to get the mixture going. Then hold down the pulse button until the mixture resembles small crumbs.
Add cherries, 4 ounces of chopped white chocolate and almond extract.
Pulse the food processor a few times. Then, hold down pulse button until the ingredients form a ball.
Remove dough from food processor.
Shape dough into ¾ inch balls and place them onto a cookie sheet 2 inches apart from one another.
Once you filled up a cookie sheet, dip the bottom of a drinking glass into sugar and use it to flatten the balls to approximately 1 ½ inches wide.
Place cookie sheet into oven for 10 to 12 minutes.
Remove cookie sheet from oven, allowing cookies to cool on the sheet for a few minutes.
Place cookies on a cooling rack to cool completely.
While cookies are cooling, chop up the remaining white chocolate and place it into a microwave safe bowl. Place the bowl into microwave on 50% power for 2 minutes (make sure to check on the chocolate periodically to ensure that it isn’t burning).
Once the cookies have cooled, dip one half of the cookie into the melted white chocolate. Place the dipped cookie onto the cooling rack to allow the white chocolate to set.
Allow the chocolate to set for 3 minutes. Then, if desired, place sprinkles into a bowl. Take the dipped edge of the cookie and roll it into the sprinkles. Return the cookie to the cooling rack to let the chocolate completely set.
These cookies turned out to be the most adorable Christmas treat that we made. I love the twist on the Christmas red and white.
They also are incredibly delicious, especially straight out of the oven.
Feel free to experiment with different kinds of sprinkles. We used peppermint sprinkles, silver sprinkles and even some green. I will say that the traditionalist in me can’t help but love the red and white sprinkles the best. It just screams Christmas.
But most of all enjoy baking this recipe with loved ones. There’s nothing better than getting covered head-to-toe in flour with the ones you love the most. And it doesn’t hurt if they give you killer baking tips and let you use their cool baking supplies. Laura, will you let me steal your kitchen more often?
Tomorrow I’ll be sharing our cream cheese sugar cookies and all the fun designs we made with them.
What Christmas cookies did you make this year?
Follow our newlywed journey through love, laughter and happily ever after. I'm Mr. Adam's best friend, a wedding fanatic, a health food nut, a yoga fiend, an arts & crafts-ers, a DIY-er, a wannabe world traveller, a pinterest addict and a Jesus lover. I hope you enjoy our wedding/newlywed/travel/food/healthy living/crafting adventures.
Loved baking together and I hope it becomes a new tradition! And thanks to you, I now am developing a new obsession with decorating cookies…shocking, I know.
Yay, so excited to have a new Christmas tradition. Although I don't need a reason to bake
I just found your blog through weddingbee
These cookies look so good. I especilaly love the edible glitter on the bells!
My family does holiday cookies every year, we have a few staples, but threw in some new ones this year. We did 12 kinds, which is the most we've ever done. I'm excited to see more of yours. I love getting new cookie recipes.
Welcome Melissa so glad to have you! The silver glitter was totally my aunt and she let me keep the extra. I'm amazed you crank out 12 cookies. That's quite a feat.