chocolate-dipped almond crescent cookies

One of my favourite things about the Christmas season is baking family recipes.  No surprise there. Ha!  I know a lot of "Christmas-y" baking is often finicky and/or expensive, which is why it's such a special treat.  Now these cookies aren't particularly hard to make, but they do take quite a while.  There's dough chilling involved (oh the horror!), rolling out tiny pieces of dough, baking, and then dipping.  Did I mention that this recipe makes a million cookies?  You might be so sick of rolling and dipping by the end that you'll have to console yourself by eating all of the cookies!

But these are totally worth it, I promise!  The way they melt in your mouth is just divine, and the cinnamon sugar adds the most wonderful texture too. 

This recipe is one of my Grandma's, which means it's extra special when we make it.  She still has it on her baking trays, my mom and my aunt both bake it too, and I know that it'll be a recipe tradition that I'll carry on as well.  So, without further ado, here is the recipe for Almond Crescent cookies!

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Chocolate-Dipped Almond Crescent Cookies

recipe: Grandma Holloway
yields: approx. 50 cookies (depending on the size)

Directions:

In a large bowl, mix together the butter, sugar, and ground almonds thoroughly.

In a small bowl, sift together the flour and salt.  Then, add to butter mixture, mixing until combined.

Cover dough with plastic wrap, and chill for about an hour.  This is to make the dough easier to roll out!

Roll dough into tiny logs about the length of your index finger, and the same diameter as a pencil, so pretty small!  (You can make them larger if you wish, although you may need to adjust the baking time accordingly.)  We used the method of rolling the dough into small balls to get the dough to come together nicely, and then rolled them into little logs. (See pictures below.)

In a small bowl, combine cinnamon and sugar.  Roll the logs around in the cinnamon and sugar mixture until well coated.  Gently bend each of the logs into a crescent shape, and place on a pan lined with parchment or a silicone baking mat.  

Bake at 325 degrees for 14-16 minutes.

If you want to dip your cookies, warm up your chocolate, and either dip each ends of each cookie into the chocolate and place onto parchment to set.  Or, place the chocolate into a ziplock bag, cut a very small hole out of the corner of the bag, and drizzle the cookies with chocolate.

Serve!

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, room temperature

1/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup ground almonds

1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

[Optional]
Chocolate - for dipping

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Happy Christmas baking!

-Kelsey

chocolate pecan caramel thumbprint cookies

Mmmhhh....caramel!  You can't say that you're surprised that it's shown up again so soon. Ha!

We made these cookies for Christmas (yeah yeah...I'm working on the whole procrastinating thing), and they were a huge hit.  Definitely a bit more work than your average cookie...but well worth it when you want something extra special.

These cookies have so many wonderful textures going on...from the crunch of the nuts, chewiness of the chocolate cookie, and finally the smooth creaminess of the caramel!

Chocolate Pecan Caramel Thumbprint Cookies

adapted from: taste of home

Yields: ~2.5 dozen

Ingredients: 

1/2 cup butter, softened

2/3 cup sugar

1 egg, separated

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup finely chopped pecans (walnuts would be a great alternative!)

FILLING:

12 to 14 caramels

3 tablespoons heavy whipping cream

Directions:

1)  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2)  In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

3)  Beat in the egg yolk, milk and vanilla.

4)  In a small bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa powder and salt.  Gradually add to the creamed mixture.

5)  Shape dough into approximately 1-inch balls.  Place egg white in a shallow bowl and beat.  Place chopped pecans in another shallow bowl.

6)  Dip dough balls into the egg white, then pecans.  (You may need to pat the pecans on to help them stick to the dough)

7)  Place on a greased baking sheet and press a deep indentation into each dough ball.  (We used a measuring spoon, which worked well!  Your thumb would also be a good option...haha).

8)  Bake for 10-12 minutes or until set.  As soon as you remove from the oven, re-press your indentations to make sure they're deep.

9)  In a medium saucepan, melt caramels with cream on low and stir until smooth.

10)  Fill each cookie with the caramel mixture and allow caramel to cool and set. (Work as fast as possible here as the caramel tends to set very quickly.)

p.s.

 ♥ kelsey

bison cookies (chocolate sugar cookies)

I am ridiculously excited to share these cookies with you all.  They are bison!!!  And they're hilarious.  Totally a man cookie.  So make these for your man friends and I guarantee they'll be pretty stoked (mine definitely were).

I made these bad boys as a snack for my mini Grey Cup party (that's like the Superbowl for Canadian football in case you're confused) I hosted a million years ago in November right before Christmas took over the blog.  Ha!  One of my friends has a dream to own a bison ranch when he "grows up", so I knew these would be perfect to make!

Jordyn and I debated doing gingerbread for the cookie base, but eventually decided that we wanted something a little simpler.  I decided that chocolate shortbread might be the way to go, however, recipe after recipe called for several hours of chilling the dough, and that just wasn't cool with my timeline.  So, we decided to just try something new!  Jordyn adapted our favorite sugar cookie recipe, and it turned out beautifully.

Chocolate Sugar Cookies
by: Jordyn Siemens

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter (room temperature)

3/4 cup sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1 Tbsp milk

1 3/4 cups flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

Directions

1) In a small bowl, cream butter - add sugar, vanilla, egg and milk; beat hard.

2) Add flour, cocoa powder and baking powder to cream mixture and beat again.

3) Roll onto a floured counter, approximately 1/2" thick, and cut into shapes.

4) Bake at 400 degrees F for 5-6 minutes.

Decorating

Icing (either soft butter cream or royal icing)

Chocolate sprinkles

Black icing (we bought a tube from Michaels)

1)  I used royal icing to outline where I wanted the bison's fur to be, leaving out the shape of the horn to fill in later.

2) Then I pressed chocolate sprinkles into the icing, and shook off any excess.

3)  Once the icing had set, I added in a small horn with white icing, as well as a black dot for eyes and black hooves.

*next time I'll use chocolate icing so that you can't see the white through the chocolate sprinkles.

I love how well these turned out, and am pretty stoked to have a new, no-fuss chocolate sugar cookie recipe.  It'll be great for more animal cookies that are sure to happen in the future!

- kelsey