Tag: cookies

Blonde Redhead Cookies & Marzipan Fruitcake Cookies

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Different cookies on a mint green dish with two bright green Christmas baubles

Well, well, well, if it isn’t the spectre of Christmas approaching one month hence, to say nothing of the ghost of my debut novel Hoods Landing—in that the canonical biscuits mentioned therein, which I made as offerings for my recent Auckland launch, inspired these two Christmas Cookie recipes: Blonde Redhead Cookies and Marzipan Fruitcake Cookies. They’re both exceptionally easy to make, I should know; I baked three batches of the unadorned originals the night before my launch party while in a state of extreme hecticness. And look, you don’t actually have to cordon them off to Christmas alone, useful if you neither condone nor care for that specific holiday; but I certainly was doing my best to evoke the season’s flavours and there’s rarely a more useful time to have some minimal-stress cookie recipes and indeed, cookies at hand.

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Toasted rice sablés

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rice cookies on a cooling rack on top of a blue and white piece of fabric
More than once have I bellowed “CLAIRE!!” amid baking an eponymous Claire Saffitz recipe; it’s a kind of ruefully recalcitrant acquiescence at her calmly and warmly insisting that I embark upon what feels like an exceptionally complex additional step, usually with annoyingly stunning results. In the case of these toasted rice sablés, it was the titular toasting of the rice flour (delicious, worth it) but the horse had to buck somewhere and in this case I demurred on rolling the cookies in rice bubbles (I tried, they kept falling off, delicious without).

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Chinese five-spice coffee molasses cookies

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Molasses cookies drizzled with white chocolate

As a chronic re-watcher—I have certain films logged seven (A Mighty Wind), eight (Original Cast Album: Company), and eleven times (Go) within the last few years alone on Letterboxd and somewhat freely admit it—and an avid re-reader; it so follows that I also like to return to recipes. And unlike films, when it comes to repeating recipes, I can tinker with the source material. In this case, I saw Angela Chung’s beautifully marbled and delicious-sounding Chinese Five-Spice Molasses Latte Cookies on her Moments of Sugar site and, immediately inspired, thought those flavours could find an ideal and somewhat lazier home in the already incredible Joe Frogger cookies I made last year; the result being these white chocolate-streaked Chinese Five-Spice Coffee Molasses Cookies. Not an improvement, just another excellent option.

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Salty pecan oat sables

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A stack of biscuits with a few sprigs of lavendar next to them

As much as I enjoy a culinary pun, I also enjoy a culinary trompe-l’œil, like my feta with chilli oil pine nuts which is doing its best to resemble both soft tofu with chili oil, and cream cheese with sweet chilli sauce — a delicious double bluff. In the case of these salty pecan oat sables, they’re endeavouring to appear as banausic and unremarkable as a biscuit can be, and yet below their drab surfaces lurk layers and layers of cunning flavour.

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