Festive Cookies: Both On The Table And As A Gift

Cookies for the New Year are both a delicious dessert, and a wonderful tradition, and an original sincere gift to friends, acquaintances and colleagues.

Cookies for the New Year are both a delicious dessert, and a wonderful tradition, and an original sincere gift to friends, acquaintances and colleagues. To give the desired shape to the dough, ready-made molds are used, but the recipes themselves, as well as the methods for preparing the glaze, must be studied in advance in order to choose the best one for the holiday.

 

Gingerbread

This is a classic Christmas cake. The dough for gingerbread assumes a plastic structure. It does not rise much, which helps to maintain its appearance.

For test:

0.5 kg flour, 5 g baking powder, 2 eggs, 150 g butter, 200 g liquid honey (can be replaced with maple syrup), 5 g cinnamon, 3 g coriander, 3 g nutmeg, 15 g ground ginger, 5 g zest (the amount of spices can be adjusted, the main thing is not to reduce the content of ginger).

 

For glaze:

2 eggs, 400 g of granulated sugar or powdered sugar, 10 ml of freshly squeezed lemon juice, food coloring.

The icing is applied with a confectionery syringe or bag.

Place honey in a saucepan or large metal bowl, add sugar, coriander, cinnamon, nutmeg, zest, ginger. Heat for 2-3 minutes, stirring until a creamy substance forms, then immediately remove from heat. Heat the oil, but do not heat it and add it to the pan, beat the egg into the same place, add the baking powder and flour, knead. The latter can be added more than prescribed in the recipe, the main thing is to ensure that the dough does not stick to your hands. Then wrap it in cling film and refrigerate for 2 hours.

 

Take the dough out of the refrigerator and divide the dough into 2-3 parts, roll each into a layer of at least 5 mm and no more than 8 mm thick. Using molds, cut it into figures, put them on a baking sheet covered with baking paper, and send for 8-15 minutes in an oven preheated to 180 degrees. Then take it out and place it on a cold wire rack from the grill or from the oven, this is necessary so that the gingerbreads cool evenly and moisture does not linger in them.

If there are no molds, then you can use a glass, and apply drawings in the form of faces of a snowman, Santa Claus, a round snowflake or a Christmas ball. Having made a hole in advance with a straw for drinks, after baking, the gingerbread can be hung like a decoration on a Christmas tree.

 

To prepare the glaze, the white of fresh eggs is separated from the yolks. Then you need to beat it lightly with a whisk, pour in powdered sugar, pour in lemon juice, mix. The consistency should be slightly runny, about the same as pancake batter. Further, it all depends on the number of dyes: you need to divide the total mass by as many as they are planned.

With the help of pastry bags or syringes, you first need to apply the contours of the picture, after half an hour fill with the main color, after 20 minutes draw the details and leave to dry for a day. By the way, such gingerbread cookies are stored for 3 months, but so that they do not get stale, they must be placed in a zip bag or a tin can.

Cookies with cranberries and pistachios

This baking recipe is simpler than the previous ones, but the cookies look no less cute than they help in maintaining the New Year's atmosphere.

Ingredients:

0.5 kg of flour, 100 g of dried cranberries, 150 g of butter, 100 g of crushed pistachios, 100 g of sugar, 2-3 g of salt and vanilla.

 

Mash the melted butter with a spoon along with sugar, add flour, salt and vanilla, stir. Then add cranberries and pistachios, knead the dough with your hands or in a bread machine so that the filling is evenly distributed.

Line a baking sheet with baking paper. Pinch off a piece of dough, roll into a ball, squeeze it between your palms and place on parchment. Place cookies, keeping a distance of 4-5 cm between them.

Send to the oven preheated to 180 degrees and bake for about half an hour. The finished cookies should have a nice golden color.

Sugar cookies with icing

For test:

400 g flour, 2 eggs, 200 g sugar, 200 g butter, 5 g baking powder, 2 g salt, 3 g vanilla.

 

For glaze:

2 yolks, 50 ml orange juice, 100 g powdered sugar.

Mix soft butter with sugar and beat, add eggs. Then add flour, vanilla, baking powder and knead the dough. Then wrap it in cling film and refrigerate for half an hour.

Then the dough must be rolled out into a layer about 1 cm thick, cut out with cookie cutters or a glass, placed on a baking sheet covered with baking paper, and returned to the cold. After a quarter of an hour, send to a preheated oven, bake for about 10 minutes, put to cool.

For glaze, beat the yolks with juice, add powdered sugar, knead. Cover the gingerbread with it and let stand for about 2 hours. If desired, dyes can also be added to this type of glaze and create festive patterns with it.