The 12 days of Christmas Cookies: Day 1 - Peanut Sighs

I love Christmas. People who know me know this is very unusual for me, because usually I'm not one for holidays and traditions and all that sappy stuff that comes with it. However, when it comes to Christmas, I make an exception. There's nothing better than decorating your apartment (which I usually do come November 1), going Christmas shopping (which I'm usually done with by November 2), finally being allowed to listen to your extensive collection of Christmas songs without people looking at you weirdly (which I do as soon as the temperature drops below 5°C) and going for a walk in the snow while everything's lit up festively around you (yes, even I get sappy then). And baking Christmas cookies of course. I rarely ever bake cookies throughout the year, so I usually go all out around Christmas time.

This year, however, Christmas is stressing me out. Since I'm working seven days a week lately, I didn't have time to decorate until last Saturday and though I usually make my Christmas wreath from scratch, by last weekend I still hadn't gotten around to it, so I caved and bought a ready-made one (well, at least I "improved" it afterwards). I also had to decide whether to go Christmas shopping or bake cookies, because I simply don't have time to do both. So I did all my Christmas shopping online one night last week and decided to go for the cookies. Especially since I don't really get around to baking at all lately.

I was aiming for 12 different ones, but alas, I failed. One turned out horribly and went into the trash. One still sits unfinished in my kitchen (well, we might rescue those still. We'll see.). And after the other nine were done, I was done as well and simply had no patience or energy or time to do more. So instead of doing the twelve days of cookies, right now it looks like it we might only get up to 9. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway. Day 1 is one of my all-time favorites. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I love peanut butter. So what better way to start this countdown than with peanut butter cookies that are quick, easy and delicious?

Peanut Sighs

For the cookies:
100g roasted, salted peanuts
150g all-purpose flour
100g softened butter
50g peanut butter (smooth or crunchy, as you like it)
50g white sugar
3 tsp vanilla sugar (if you can't get vanilla sugar where you live, use 1 tsp of vanilla extract)

For the decoration:
about 40 whole roasted, salted peanuts for decoration
about 50g dark chocolate, melted


1. Preheat your oven to 150°C

2. Grind the peanuts in a food processor or blender. (It's best to grind only small portions at a time, because the peanuts will form a solid mass once they're ground that can jam the knives in your processor). Mix the ground peanuts with the flour.

3. Combine the softened butter, peanut butter and sugar and whisk with an electric mixer until well combined.

4. Add the flour mixture (all at once) and whisk quickly until you get a homogenous mass.

5. Take a bit of dough and, with your hands, form small balls (for some reasons, mine always turn out at least 4cm in diameter - if you want bite-sized cookies, try to make smaller balls than I do.) and put them on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

6. Bake for about 20 minutes (the cookies aren't supposed to change their color or turn dark!).

7. Once the cookies are cooled, melt some dark chocolate, fill it into a piping bag and pipe a small dollop of chocolate onto each cookie. Lightly press a whole peanut into the chocolate.

Enjoy!

♥ Nicole

Macarons with 4 different fillings

Aaah, macaron. My old foe.

For the longest time, I was scared to even try to make macarons, because all the recipes I read sounded like being able to make a good macaron involved about 278 steps that needed to be exactly right in order to get an edible cookie. And I'm really not good with following directions exactly. Nevertheless, I tried my luck twice and both times turned out, well, inedible.

Back then, when I tried to find out what had gone wrong, I was left with about a dozen possible explanations: Hadn’t I aged the egg whites long enough? Did I maybe use 126 grams of egg white instead of 117 grams? Did I whip them 45 seconds too long? Of course in hindsight, all of this was stupid. Now, I’m pretty sure the first time around I just sucked at macaronage and didn’t fold the mass long enough and the second time I simply took them out of the oven way too early, so they fell apart.

How do I know that now? I found Stella’s Macaron Mythbuster post. And I could have kissed her. A pastry chef telling everybody to chill out, because making macarons does not involve magic or any kind of elaborate preparation? Exactly what I needed to try again.

So after making the Portuguese Croissants for brunch, I had a lot of egg whites left over that I didn’t want to throw out, so it was the perfect opportunity to try again. This time, though, I tried to stick to Stella’s recipe as closely as possible and didn’t add colors or anything, because it was about trying to get the macaron right first. Colors and more elaborate flavors than vanilla are reserved for next time.

And lo and behold, they turned out beautifully. Alright, alright – maybe they could’ve been a little bit prettier, but that was me being totally unable to pipe them right. They tasted really nice, though and I’ll definitely stick to this recipe from now on, at least for almond and vanilla flavored shells (I’m planning on trying peanut butter shells next, though, as soon as I can get my hands on some peanut flour).


Plain Vanilla and Almond Macarons with 4 Different Fillings

[Shell Recipe from Brave Tart]

115g almond flour
230g powdered sugar
145g egg whites
70g sugar
mark of 1 vanilla bean
2g salt

1. Sift the almond flour and powdered sugar together. Set aside.

2. Mix egg whites, sugar, mark of the vanilla bean and salt and whip until it forms firm peaks, about 8 to 10 minutes, depending on how fast your machine works.

3. Dump the almond-sugar mixture on top and fold it into the egg whites. Every few turns, spoon out some of the mix and drop it back into the bowl. The mixture has the right consistency when it takes about 20 seconds for the spoonful to incorporate itself into the mix again. If it stays sitting on top, keep folding, if it incorporates quicker - well, you've screwed up. [Stella's recipe says it takes about 40 folds, mine took almost twice as many, so it's important not to simply count, but really check the consistency!]

4. Fill about half of the batter into a piping bag with a round tip and start piping circles onto a baking tray covered with baking paper. [Now I have a macaron silicone sheet, so I don't have to worry about size, but if you don't have one of those and want equally sized circles, find something round about the size you want your macarons to be, and use it as a pattern to draw circles onto your baking paper before you start piping. Don't fill your circles to the very edge, because the macarons will spread a little bit.]

5. Rap the tray on the counter a couple of times (to disperse air bubbles) and bake at 150°C for about 20 minutes. (Right away. You do NOT have to let them sit on the counter. I actually had two sheets and one had to wait 20 minutes until the other was done and the macarons I put into the oven right away had nicer feet than the ones sitting on the counter for 20 minutes).

6. Let them completely cool before you start filling them.



Fillings

I had actually made some coffee chocolate ganache for the filling, but the stuff took forever to cool down and harden and I was on a timetable, so I had to improvise. I filled some of them with lemon curd, some with peanut butter mixed with a couple of teaspoons of melted chocolate, some with raspberry jam and some with a mix of raspberry jam and coconut bread-spread (for the Germans: REWE's "Glück der Tropen"). The fillings all went really well with the subtle vanilla flavor of the shells and the peanut-butter-chocolate ones tasted especially great on the next day when the flavor had had some time to settle.

Bon appetit!


♥ Nicole