Christmas

Peanut Butter Ginger Cookies, Christmas Cookie for 2025

/ More Time at the Table / Leave a comment
Could she take the happy but savory pairing of peanut butter + ginger and turn it into a cookie? She could.

Jump to Recipe

Most years, or at least those when I’m well and very lucky, I attempt to create a new-ish Christmas cookie. For years, my modus operandi was to bake all–or nearly all–our family favorites but to try something different, too. Maybe from a magazine or a new book or even the newspaper, though these days that might only mean the New York Times. Eventually, I began creating my own new cookies. Sometimes they’re innovative; other times I just manage a tweak on a standard like shortbread or Mexican Wedding Cookies. I’m equally proud of both styles. Really, it’s not easy to come up with a cookie totally unlike anything anyone’s baked before but it’s an interesting conundrum. Nothing new under the sun and all that. For the last couple of months, maybe less, I’ve had two cookies in mind. The one you’re reading about is a cookie I’m a bit proud of, a PEANUT BUTTER GINGER COOKIE. This small sweet has been in the works for a while now, but given I’ve had the flu, I hadn’t gotten the recipe written or tested. Until now, that is. The other is one I’ll ponder in my heart, like Mary, perhaps until next year. You’ll just have to wait.

Continue reading →

Cranberry-Blueberry Crisp

/ More Time at the Table / Leave a comment
Kid friendly baking! They may need help chopping those pesky cranberries.

Jump to Recipe

Cooking demands attention, patience, and, above all, a respect for the gifts of the earth. It is a form of worship, a way of giving thanks... ~Judith B. Jones~

I don’t think I’ve ever considered cranberries and blueberries together. (We’ll soon see I’ve lied.) There’s an excellent reason for that and it’s because the two don’t exactly show up or ripen during the same season. Blueberries are summer; cranberries are fall. Blueberries and strawberries? Of course. Blueberries and peaches? Sure. Cranberries with apples? Always. But blueberries and cranberries? It just doesn’t jive. I mean, we feel as if there’s a little wiggle room here because we’re still getting Fed Ex blueberries at the store in November when the royal red cranberries begin to show up. And we’ll continue to get some for a bit– but this doesn’t exactly happen in real time, does it? There are other ways to get such a combination, like freezing one kind berry until the other appears or drying a few cups or even canning a batch (as did my mom) and storing them until needed. Even so, I don’t remember mom, a fine baker, mixing and matching summer and fall fruits. Anyone? This November, though, perfectly gorgeous, firm and bloomed Peruvian blueberries seemed to be everywhere in Colorado Springs at a great price. I bought two big packs; best sous and husband Dave came home with another one. I meant to freeze some — my typical modus operandi when we’re flush with any berry–and somehow didn’t. Taking a little fridge inventory the other day, I realized it was bake something with blueberries or die. And…I wondered: Why not mix them up with cranberries? So I did. And a star was born. 😘 Sorry, Mother Nature. Politics (maybe global economy?) makes for odd bedfellows. Or is necessity truly the mother of invention?

Continue reading →

Pistachio-Cherry Tea Cakes

/ More Time at the Table / Leave a comment

Jump to Recipe

Everyone loves these sweet spot cookies; they’ve been on Christmas goodie trays forever. You know them. Round, nutty, buttery, tender, and oh-so-powdered-sugary white. They’re often called Russian Tea Cakes, Mexican Wedding Cakes, Kourabiedes, Snow Balls, Pastelitas de Boda, Nut Balls, Swedish Tea Balls, Pecan Butter Balls, Polvorónes, and they’re even a lot like the Viennese Almond Crescents my late brother-in-law and excellent cook, Art Moorhouse, baked only in December back in the day. When I knew I wanted to use pistachios and dried cherries for my annual Christmas cookie, my mind first went to a perennial favorite– shortbread. Maybe a rolled variety. A refrigerator cookie, which is a style I rarely bake. But the more I considered, I kind of liked the idea of a chunk of a cookie instead of a flat one– so the flavors jumped out in tandem instead of just nudged your taste buds in their direction a bit at a time. And the longer I thought, I also knew an orange twist needed to be right in there vying with the nuts and fruit. Why not a classic nut ball? Of course! It would work perfectly. The problem then was the name –all those variations! With several followers giving me ideas (thanks, guys!), I’m hoping “Pistachio-Cherry Tea Cakes” really says what they are. I dearly loved “Pistacheroos,” but it was taken by what else, a bar cookie. Whatever you call them, my newest version might be your new favorite, as it now is mine. I don’t eat a lot of sweets, but I’ve certainly had my hand in the cookie jar a few times these last few days.

Continue reading →

Cashew-Pecan Spice Bars

/ More Time at the Table / Leave a comment
Need an egg-free cookie? Here it is!
Jump to Recipe

In a galaxy far away, I was once the gift shop manager of the lovely historic property, Woodlawn Plantation/Pope Leighey House in Mt. Vernon, Virginia. Right up Rte 1 from my own home in Woodbridge, this was not only a most convenient work spot but a beautiful early-American house museum and a loving, learning place to work. How I adored my coworkers! Each winter, I traveled to attend a gift show to buy new merchandise for the shop and one eventful year, I was smitten (gobsmacked, really) by a company that baked and delivered the most delicious brownies and bar cookies I’d ever tasted at a commercial level. We began to carry them quite soon afterward in the shop and the Pecan Squares — dripping with honey and toasted Georgia nuts on a buttery shortbread base–were the standout choice of the short, but sweet menu. It sadly soon became evident we couldn’t sell enough of them to make a profit (there was quota to buy each month and they often went bad on us) and I sorrowfully canceled our standing order. But! I never ever forgot the taste of those pecan squares and was thus thrilled to later see a recipe for a similar cookie in the famed–and personal favorite– SILVER PALATE COOKBOOK (SP). I baked them myself (were they as good???) and sent them to my husband as he traveled with the Air Force band and while he went to officer’s training school. Fast forward nearly 40 years and I was about to summon the memories of those cookies to create my own 2023 holiday treat, Cashew-Pecan Spiced Bars (Chai Squares? Nutty Spice Bars? Spicy Chai Nut Bars? What’s in a name?!), for this very blog. A new Christmas cookie is something I’ve done for a number of Decembers now and I was a little late to the gate getting started this year despite best intentions. Let’s not talk about the construction zone that is our house right now or even about the big-mess Christmas kitchen.

Continue reading →

Dave’s Date Bars

/ More Time at the Table / 2 Comments
Fancy these up by making a date bar sundae. Top with ice cream, caramel sauce, whipped cream, and cinnamon!

For veteran December cookie bakers (I’m not using the word old here), there are always those few special recipes that make it into the oven lineup every year. They’re one of the kid’s or neighbor’s favorites or maybe it’s the cookie that always disappears most quickly out of the tin on the counter. If nothing else gets baked the whole month, we’re stirring up these particular goodies.

Continue reading →

Apple-Cranberry Crostata

/ More Time at the Table / Leave a comment

Jump to Recipe

If you asked me what my favorite dessert was, those who know me are sure I would not say, “apple pie.” When a friend bakes one, naturally I’ll have a small piece. Without regret. But it’s pretty darned weird there are two apple pies on the blog within a month. I’m not a betting woman, but if I were, I sure as heck would have betted against that happening.

Continue reading →

Pumpkin-Cranberry Bread

/ More Time at the Table / 1 Comment
Jump to Recipe

I know without question I cannot bake and cook at the same time. Disaster awaits. Or at the very least, serious unhappiness. There must be either a baking morning and a cooking afternoon or some variation thereof. This doesn’t mean I won’t stir up a pan of cornbread while my beans finish cooking at 5:30 or that I’d refuse to bake cookies if the slow cooker was on. No, no, no–not at all. But it does mean I shouldn’t be chopping and adding ingredients to a soup and think I can also whip up a loaf or two of quick bread in the the short minutes between soup chores. Because if I do, the bread will be missing its cinnamon, for instance, or in this case, its very necessary salt. And I might serve the soup without making sure all of its ingredients were just as tender as they should be. Which I did — and sent it to ill neighbors like that. (I hope the carrots weren’t crunchy. God, Alyce.)

Continue reading →

Apple-Pecan Pie

/ More Time at the Table / 2 Comments

.

When fall finally arrives (not sure it’s here yet), it’s time to bake again — and by November, it’s time to think of baking for Thanksgiving and Christmas. If I am anything in life, I am a pie baker. I’m not a county fair blue ribbon winner, but I’m something better — I’m the person folks like to see walking into their house or the church potluck with a pie basket on her arm. It wasn’t always that way, but pie baking is a progressive art or one that is a lifelong undertaking. I began with pies that didn’t taste badly, but were pale and puny at best and were luckily called out by older, experienced pie bakers in the mid-70’s. (“You could have left that in the oven a while longer.”) Even now, hundreds and hundreds of pies later, there’s the occasional crust that won’t hold together, for example, and gets ceremoniously dumped straight into the garbage can. It doesn’t faze me anymore, but pies continue to be educational as long as you’re willing to bake them. If you don’t bake one for a while and then assume you’ll be fine, that pie may or may not bake into something worth eating with a scoop of good vanilla ice cream.

Continue reading →

“Peaknut” Crinkles

/ More Time at the Table / 2 Comments

Each December for the last several years, I’ve dreamed up a Christmas cookie for the blog. This time, I might have found my very favorite–just in time for your weekend last-minute baking.  “Peaknut” Crinkles are a twist on the always-favorite Chocolate Crinkles so often made at holiday time.

My own crinkle recipe– pictured above–and this is a riff on that– is one I’ve made for years and I have no idea from whence it came.  More than once, I’ve really searched to discover its provenance, but the crinkle recipes I find are not like mine and so I have no idea. Thanks to that cookie baker I’ve never found!! Now, just so you know:  the difference between “my” recipe and the others is this:  mine uses melted chocolate and ALSO chocolate chips; every other one I locate is made with only cocoa.  So.   “My” Chocolate Crinkle Recipe.

Continue reading →