Cookie Baking Extravaganza - The Cookies Pt. 2

In my quest to be ultra-organized this holiday season, I managed to put away the recipes from our cookie party.  Unfortunately, I'm not so well organized that I can actually remember WHERE that is.  So I had to go back to the source.

ANYWAY...

Some more of the offerings from our little venture.

These are the quintessential holiday cookie.  Perfect for decorating.  But rather than a really firm, crunchy version of a sugar cookie, these are just really soft and tender.  And SO tasty.

Buttermilk Sugar Cookies

1 ½ cups margarine
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 egg
3 ½ cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla

Heat oven to 450º.

Cream margarine and sugar; add egg and mix well. Sift together dry ingredients. Add to the sugar mixture and mix well.. Add buttermilk and vanilla and mix well. Refrigerate until chilled - about 2 hours, or overnight. Coat board with 1 c. flour when rolling out. Roll at least a 1/4 inch thick, cut and sprinkle with sugar before baking. Bake about 6 minutes. Moist and cake-like.

And, because we didn't want to exclude our four-legged friends, Offspring decided to make peanut butter treats.  Our taste tester proclaimed them to be excellent.



The canine version of a sugar coma.

Peanut Butter Dog Biscuits

½ cups water (add more water later if required)
½ cup oil
2 eggs
3 Tbs peanut butter
2 cups soy flour
½ cup cornmeal
½ cup oats

Blend wet ingredients together. Whisk dry ingredients together and mix into wet mixture to form a ball of dough. Roll out and shape. Put onto a non-stick cookie tray or lightly greased one. Cook 20 minutes at 400º.  Turn off oven and allow the biscuits to cool in oven until crisp and hard. Store in airtight container.

To show how versatile these next cookies were, after making them the traditional way called forth in the recipe, we then descended on the dough for these wonderfully spicy cookies and started cutting them into shapes, which we added to the EXTENSIVE pile of cookies-to-be-decorated.

Speculaas

3 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 Tbs cinnamon
1 tsp each cloves and nutmeg
1/2 tsp each ground aniseed, salt and ginger or white pepper
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 1/2 cups dark brown sugar, firmly packed
3 Tbs milk, dark rum or brandy
Blanched almonds
1 egg white, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 375º.

Into a bowl, sift the dry ingredients.  In a mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Stir in liquid.  Gradually add flour mixture, stirring until well combined and form the dough into a ball.  Knead the dough on a board sprinkled with about 1/4 cup flour and roll into a rectangle 1/4 inch thick.  With a sharp knife or cutter, cut the dough into rectangles, 2 1/2" x 1 1/2".  Put the rectangles on a buttered cookie sheet and decorate with blanched almonds, then brush with egg white.

Bake for 12 - 15 minutes, or until browned and firm.