Discover essential tips for holiday baking with classic, gluten-free, and dairy-free options. Prep ahead for a stress-free festive season!
Delicious and Inclusive Recipes for Stress-Free Festive Celebrations
Holiday baking brings joy to many, and this season, you can try your hand at three delightful Christmas cookie recipes that are both delicious and adaptable. First up are Thumbprint Cookies, which combine salted butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and egg yolk, resulting in a rich dough that can be filled with your favorite jam. After chilling the dough, simply bake them at 375°F for about 11 minutes for a sweet treat that everyone will enjoy.
Next are Snowball Cookies, a classic that features salted butter, powdered sugar, and chopped pecans. These cookies are rolled into balls and baked at 350°F until lightly golden. After baking, they are generously coated in powdered sugar for a festive touch. For those looking for a vegan option, a dairy-free butter alternative can easily replace the butter, ensuring that everyone can indulge in these treats.
Lastly, Chewy Ginger Cookies offer a warm, spiced flavor profile with ingredients like molasses, ground ginger, and cinnamon. The dough requires chilling for about 1½ hours before being formed into balls and baked at 350°F. This recipe also allows for a vegan version by substituting the butter and using a flax egg. Each of these recipes not only provides a delicious outcome but also offers flexibility for dietary preferences, making them perfect for holiday gatherings.
Whipping Up Joy: Your Ultimate Guide to Festive Treats for Everyone!
it is holiday baking season and I have been doing tons of baking over the last few weeks I’m sure many of you have been as well and this year I feel like I kind of dialed in how to go about doing my cookies throughout the holiday season here’s the thing we are only two people and we really do not need tons of.
Cookies on hand all December long I love to bake and so I always have plenty of recipes that I want to do so this year what I’ve been doing is baking a recipe each week throughout December to send with my husband to work and that allows me to prep some dough for closer to Christmas and it gives me my baking fix without us having hordes of cookies at.
Home so over the past few weeks I have been making all sorts of cookies the past couple being sugar cookies and snicker doodles and freezing some of that dough I will share with you the best way that I have found to do this of course you could fully bake the cookies and have them ready to go in the freezer but I love doing them this way that way.
We can have some fresh baked cookies when we need them for gifting Etc today I am prepping dough for two different cookies that I’m planning to bake up next week and I’m also making up a batch of cookies for this week for Talon to take to work of the three recipes that I’m sharing today all can be made gluten-free and two can easily be made.
Vegan all can be made d da free as well the first batch of cookies I’m making today is a batch of Thum print cookies I’m making a small batch of Thum print cookies today and this batch I am doing gluten-free I’m planning to freeze most of the dough but for the sake of the video I did bake up a few to share how those turned out with you to the bowl of.
My stand mixer I am adding some salted butter this might be controversial but I always use salted butter in my baking I think it turns out better I’m using a mixture of white sugar and light brown sugar for these and I’m going to get that butter and sugar creamed together then I’m adding in an egg yolk as well as some vanilla extract this is the only.
Recipe in today’s video that I haven’t tried to make vegan with a substitute for the egg yolk but they can be made dairyfree with a butter substitute in the bowl I’m adding some flour for the gluten-free cookies that I’m doing today I am using a gluten-free allpurpose flour and my preference is always Redmill gluten-free flour specifically.
The one to1 baking flour it’s in the blue bag and I find that it gives the best results when it comes to baking if you’re trying to adapt a regular recipe I’m also adding in just a little bit of Arrow root powder you can also do do cornstarch if that’s what you keep on hand also adding in a little bit of salt.
And getting that mixed until combined I do pretty much all of my recipes in one bowl I just can’t be bothered most of the time to dirty another Bowl to mix together the dry ingredients and this works perfectly fine I’m using a 1 tbsp cookie scoop to portion out the dough then rolling into.
Balls and setting those up on a parchment line sheet you can also roll the dough in crushed nuts or sugar but I like to keep them plain using my thumb to make an indent and then these are going to go into the freezer now normally at this point I would chill these in the fridge for a bit after shaping but since I’m freezing the bulk.
Of this dough I got those into the freezer and allowing those to fully freeze before I package them up I freeze the cookie dough before adding the jam and then when I’m ready to bake I will just pull those out of the freezer set them on a parchment lined baking sheet to thaw for a couple minutes fill them with some jam and then they’re ready to.
Bake you can also bake from Frozen just add a couple minutes to the baking time use whatever Jam you prefer this is a great way to use up Jam if you’re like me and you do a lot of canning throughout the summer months so while those Thum print cookies are chilling I got started on my next batch of cookies and these are snowball cookies or.
Russian teacakes Mexican wedding cookies I think they’re all pretty much the same thing and these are a cookie that are super easy to make dairyfree and easily made vegan as well as they don’t have any eggs in them I’m starting out with some softened salted butter in the bowl of my stand mixer but again you can e easily use a dairyfree butter.
Replacement and then I’m adding in a little bit of powdered sugar I love these cookies because they really aren’t too sweet and they’re nice and small so just creaming together the butter and sugar with some vanilla extract as well next I’m adding in the flour you can use regular allpurpose flour here for this batch I’m just using some gluten-free.
Allpurpose flour again also adding in some chopped pecans though you can also do walnuts and a little bit of salt and then I’m going to get that all mixed together at this point my Thum print cookies had chilled and I am baking up a small batch of them today just to share with you how these turn out but the bulk.
Of that dough will stay frozen for later use laying those out on a parchment lined baking sheet you can set these a lot closer together because they really won’t spread much and then I’m spooning in a little bit of jam to each thumb print I’m using some of my home canned raspberry jam today for these maybe about a/ teaspoon to a teaspoon of jam.
In each cookie I also love apricot jam and then those are going to go into the oven back to the snowball cookies now again I am freezing the bulk of this so I’m just using some parchment paper on a cutting board portioning that dough out into one table spoon balls and then a few of these I will bake right away for.
The sake of sharing the bulk I am going to freeze like this until they’re solid and ready to package again what’s nice about the snowball cookies is that they really don’t spread much so you can place them pretty close together on the baking sheet and get a lot done at once I’m just lining a.
Baking sheet with some parchment paper I didn’t need to place the these too close together since I am baking up such a small batch and those are going to bake just until they’re lightly golden as always I’ll have the full recipes from today’s video in the description box down.
Below once those cookies are done and lightly golden brown I’m going to allow them to cool on the baking sheet for just a couple minutes and then I’m tossing them in a little bit of powdered sugar I’m actually going to do this twice I like to do it once while they’re still warm and then again after they’ve.
Cooled now for the main task at hand today I am baking up a ton of chewy ginger cookies these are one of my favorites for the holidays I love anything spiced and I ended up doing I think seven batches of these today between regular and then a small batch each of gluten-free and vegan the process is the same with just a couple.
Adjustments so for these I’m adding some softened salted butter to my stand mixer and I’m going to add in some white sugar and some lightly packed light brown sugar as well and get that cream together then I’m adding in an egg to make this vegan or eggree it works great to add in a flax egg as a replace if you’re not familiar with that it’s.
Just a mixture of ground flax seed and water that you set aside for a few minutes it gels up and it works really well as an egg substitute in a recipe like this I also add in a little bit of vanilla extract and some black strap molasses again this first batch that I’m doing is.
With a gluten-free allpurpose flour but it can be done with regular I promise not everything I’m doing today is with gluten-free flour I’m adding that directly into the stand mixer along with some B baking soda lots of ground ginger some ground cinnamon ground cloves and sea salt as well.
Now typically for the ginger cookies if I was just making them right away I would chill the entire bowl for maybe about an hour and a half or so in the fridge I am freezing this dough so I am portioning it out into 1 and 1/2 tblspoon balls using a cookie scoop and then adding that onto a parchment lined cutting board and getting those into the.
Freezer now those snowball cookies had fully cooled so I went ahead and got those tossed in a little bit more powdered sugar just to keep their white color before getting started on the next batch I myself need to eat gluten-free and.
Especially when I’m gifting baking to people I need to be really careful with cross contamination I don’t want me to be the reason why somebody gets sick hence why I did the three batches of gluten-free cookies first before I moved on to the regular ones just getting that all done at once means I can avoid it as much as possible having all the.
Gluten-free dough prepped for next week will help with that a lot so now I’m moving on to the regular batch of ginger cookies this is the exact same recipe I’m just using regular allpurpose flour now I know we are getting pretty close to the holidays so while I’m sure some of you still have some holiday baking to do.
Many of you have already completed it so this might not help you for this year but I really like doing one batch of cookies per week throughout December and having that dough ready to go it’s allowed me to freeze some of that dough so that as we want fresh cookies to either gift or have out I can pull that dough from the freezer bake it up and we.
We have fresh cookies I know you can freeze them fully baked but I like having the option to have them freshly baked n for this massive batch of ginger cookies I am baking them all up today so I got.
The bowl wrapped with some plastic wrap I typically use beeswax wrap for stuff like this but again for myself trying to avoid cross contamination I like to keep those for anything gluten-free Once the dough had chilled for about an hour and a half or so I started to get that portioned out and I’m rolling those in a little bit of sugar placing them on.
The baking sheet maybe an inch and a half apart and then those are going to go in the oven after they come out of the oven I like to tap the baking sheet either on the counter or the cooktop and that is going to help to flatten them out a little bit and help to give them those nice cracked.
Tops which is what I love those are going to cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet before they get transferred to a cooling rack by now it was later in the evening and all of my cookie dough that I had Frozen was ready to pack up with all the preserving we do I have a food saver and I love using it to pack up the cookie.
Dough you can definitely do this in a Ziploc bag and try to remove as much air as possible this is just going to help to keep the dough nice and fresh and I’m portioning these out into about the amount that I anticipate I would want to bake up at once now I try to keep some space between them sometimes they get kind of jostled around this has been a.
Really great way for me to prep dough earlier in the season so that closer to the holidays when we are home we want to be doing other things I can just pull this from the freezer bake up some cookies to have fresh on hand again I know at this point it’s a little bit later in the season so that may not be applicable to you for this year but.
Maybe that will come in handy for years to come I know it’s been a really nice way for me to break up some of the baking without having a a couple massive days of doing everything at once for those that celebrate I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and New Year.
I’m grateful for all of your support this year and I will see you in the new year
