Sundai Kookies Mom! 🌞

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Belgian Nut Cookies

Do you remember those store-bought cookies shaped like a windmill? Well,
these cookies will bring back memories. They have the perfect combination
of sugar and spice to capture the taste and aroma of those old-fashioned
favorites.

MAKES ABOUT 50 COOKIES

⅔ cup (5 ounces) unsalted butter
⅔ cup (5 ounces) vegetable shortening
4½ cups (1 pounds) bread flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ cup plus 5 tablespoons (6 ounces) granulated sugar
½ cup plus 5 tablespoons (6 ounces) light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
5 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups (8 ounces) sliced almonds

Lightly coat a 17 ¼-by-11½-by-1-inch jelly-roll pan with nonstick
vegetable spray. Lay a piece of parchment paper in the greased pan, taking
care that it fits neatly at the sides and corners. Set aside.

Put the butter and shortening in a small saucepan over low heat. Heat
just until melted. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

Combine the flour, baking powder, and baking soda in a mixing bowl.
Set aside.

Combine the granulated sugar and brown sugar with the cinnamon,
salt, and vanilla in a mixing bowl, beating with a wooden spoon to blend.

When blended, beat in the melted butter and shortening. When the sugar
mixture is smooth, beat in the eggs, followed by the almonds. When
completely blended, beat in the reserved flour mixture to just incorporate.

Scrape the mixture into the prepared pan and spread it out in a neat,
even layer that is inch thick. It should just about fill the pan. Cover with
plastic wrap and transfer to the freezer. Freeze completely.

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350°F.

Line two baking sheets with nonstick silicone baking mats or
parchment paper. (Alternatively, use nonstick baking sheets or lightly butter
conventional baking sheets.) Set aside.

Flip the chilled dough out of the pan onto a cutting board. Starting at
the 11-inch edge, use a pastry cutter or small, sharp knife and cut the dough
into strips approximately 3 inches wide. Cut each strip crosswise into
rectangles.

As they are cut, place the cookies on the prepared baking sheets. Place
in the oven and bake for about 7 minutes, or until light brown around the
edges.

Remove from the oven and, using a metal spatula, transfer the cookies
to wire racks to cool.

Store, airtight, at room temperature for up to a week.

From "Milk and Cookies" by Tina Casaceli
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10979769-milk-cookies


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Pumpkin-Cranberry Cookies

Don’t feel like making a pie for the Thanksgiving table?
These cookies are an easy alternative and they absolutely fill the house
with the aromas of the season. They are good keepers so you can make
them a couple of days ahead to save time on that monumental cooking day.

MAKES ABOUT 4 DOZEN COOKIES

2 cups (8 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup (7 ounces) sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 cup (8 ounces) pumpkin puree
1 cup (6 ounces) fresh cranberries

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Line two baking sheets with nonstick silicone baking mats or
parchment paper. (Alternatively, use nonstick baking sheets or lightly butter
conventional baking sheets.) Set aside.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.

Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves and sift all together into a mixing
bowl. Set aside.

Put the butter in the bowl of a standing electric mixer fitted with the
paddle. Begin beating on low speed. Add the sugar, increase the speed to
medium, and beat for about 4 minutes, or until light and fluffy. Beat in the
vanilla. Add the egg, beating to incorporate, then add the pumpkin puree
and beat to blend well.

With the motor running, slowly add the dry ingredients, beating to
combine. When the dough is just blended, remove the bowl from the mixer
and scrape the paddle clean. Stirring with a wooden spoon, beat in the
cranberries until evenly distributed.

Using a tablespoon or small ice-cream scoop, place rounded mounds
of the dough, about 2 inches apart, on the prepared baking sheets. Place in
the oven and bake for about 10 minutes, or until set in the center and lightly
colored around the edges. They should feel cakelike and the center should
spring back when lightly touched.

Remove from the oven and, using a metal spatula, transfer the cookies
to wire racks to cool.

Store, airtight, at room temperature for up to a week.

VARIATION : At Milk & Cookies Bakery, in the fall we use these cookies
to make Pumpkin Whoopie Pies. Roll the dough into balls, about the size of
a large walnut. Place the balls, about 2 inches apart, on the prepared baking
sheets. Working with one cookie at a time, press down on each ball with the
bottom of a drinking glass to form a disk about ? inch thick. Bake as
directed. When cool, spread about 2 tablespoons ***Vanilla Cream Filling on
the flat side of a cookie. Top with a second cookie, flat-side down, and
press together gently. Set aside for about 15 minutes before serving or
storing.

***Vanilla Cream

Vanilla Cream Filling

½ cup (4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ cup (4 ounces) vegetable shortening
4 cups (14 ounces) confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Combine the butter and shortening in the bowl of a standing electric mixer
fitted with the paddle. Begin beating on low speed. Add the sugar, increase
the speed to medium, and beat for about 4 minutes, or until light and fluffy.

Beat in the vanilla.

Store, airtight, in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

From "Milk and Cookies" by Tina Casacele
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10979769-milk-cookies

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Gozinaki


When you’re baking cookies every day, word gets around.
And because the world of sweets in general and cookies
in particular is generous, cookie lovers will often send me
a recipe they’re attached to or that’s especially interesting.
Gozinaki is one of those interesting recipes. It was sent to
me by Kim Allen, a Californian, and it came to her in the
nicest way.

When her daughter was a freshman in college on the East
Coast, she returned home for Christmas break with her
roommate, Nano Liklikadze, a young woman from Georgia
(the country, not the state). During her stay, Nano made
gozinaki, a cookie that was part of her holiday tradition,
and Kim, bless her, took notes.

Depending on your perspective, gozinaki can be a
confection or a cookie – I’m going with cookie, in part
because it reminds me of something my Russian
grandmother made, and she called that a cookie. It’s
essentially toasted walnuts held together with a honey
syrup and then cut into diamond shapes. That something
this simple can be this delicious is reason to rejoice. If you
put in just 30 minutes or so of pleasant kitchen work,
you’ll have a cookie that will stay delectable through the
twelve days of Christmas. And each time you make
gozinaki, you can play around with it and add more flavors
and textures (see Playing Around). Or not: The cookies are
perfect as their own three-ingredient wonders.

Makes 28 cookies

2½ cups (300 grams) walnuts
½ cup (120 ml) honey
½ cup (100 grams) sugar

Center a rack in the oven and preheat it to 350 degrees F. Line a
baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
Spread the walnuts out on the sheet and bake for about 10
minutes, stirring two or three times, until lightly toasted. Finely
chop the nuts; Kim says they should be the size of lentils or
gravel.

Set a glass filled with cold water next to the stovetop. Have a
cutting board or a baking sheet (if it’s rimmed, turn it over)
dampened with cold water at the ready, as well as a rolling pin.

Pour the honey into a heavy medium saucepan and place it
over medium heat. Stand by and stir frequently with a silicone
spatula. When the honey begins to boil around the edges of the
pan, start adding the sugar, stirring as it goes in. Bring the honey
to a boil, still stirring, and, as soon as it boils in the center—watch
out, it will bubble up—start testing it: Drop a tiny bit of honey into
the cold water. At first the honey will separate into strands, but
very soon after, it will fall to the bottom of the glass and form a
ball. This is your sign that the honey is at the right temperature.
This can take as little as 3 or 4 minutes.

Turn off the heat, add the walnuts and stir them around in the
honey until they are glistening and coated with syrup. Scrape
the mixture out onto the dampened cutting board or baking
sheet. Immediately use the spatula to spread the mixture out
just so that it isn’t in a clump or mound—don’t worry about
precision.

Moisten the rolling pin and roll the gozinaki into a rectangle
that’s between ¼ inch and ½ inch thick. Run your hands under
cold water, shake off the excess and even the sides as best
as you can. (If your rectangle resembles an amoeba, it’ll still be
fine.) Set the gozinaki aside until it firms, about 20 minutes.

Use a chef’s knife to cut the gozinaki into diamond shapes
about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide. Once cut, the cookies are
ready to serve.

STORING

The cookies will keep for at least 1 week in a covered container at
room temperature: Line the container with parchment or wax
paper and put a piece of paper between each layer of cookies. I
prefer to pack them like this and then store them in the fridge,
where they’ll stay for about 2 weeks; take them out 15 minutes
before serving. These are not made for freezing.

PLAYING AROUND

Once you’ve made your first batch of three-ingredient gozinaki,
you might want to add another flavor or texture. Here are some
ideas to get you started.

Multi-Seed Gozinaki. Add 2 tablespoons each sesame, flax and
sunflower seeds to the honey when you add the walnuts.

Mixed-Nut Gozinaki. Walnuts are traditional for these cookies, but
they can be made with other nuts or a mix of nuts. Consider almonds,
cashews, macadamias, pine nuts and/or pistachios. Whatever nuts
you use, toast them first.

Orange Gozinaki. Before you get started, grate the zest of 1 or 2
oranges over the sugar and use your fingertips to blend the ingredients
together until the sugar is moist and fragrant. If you’d like, when you stir
the walnuts into the orange-flavored honey syrup, you can also stir in
about ⅓ cup chopped candied orange peel, homemade or store-bought.

Dried-Fruit Gozinaki. Dried fruits such as cherries, cranberries, dates,
figs, apricots and/or raisins are nice in gozinaki. Aim for about ⅔ cup
chopped fruit. Cut, chop or snip the fruit into small pieces, soak in very
hot tap water for about 10 minutes, drain and pat thoroughly dry. Stir
the fruit into the honey syrup along with the walnuts.

Chocolate Gozinaki. You can add chocolate to the gozinaki or top it with
melted chocolate, or go all out and add it in and out. To add chocolate to
the mix, use chocolate chips of any variety (about ½ cup) and add them
after the walnuts have been stirred into the syrup. To add a chocolate
topping, melt about 1 cup chips or chopped chocolate and drizzle over
the surface. When the gozinaki has cooled to room temperature, cut it into
diamonds and refrigerate it for 20 minutes to set the chocolate.

From "Dorie's Cookies" by Dorie Greenspan
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28560925-dorie-s-cookies


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DATE-NUT PINWHEELS

Growing up in New York City, I remember date-nut bread,
date pudding, date-nut cake and cookies with a filling that
might have been the date version of Fig Newtons. The
dried dates used to make these sweets were an everyday
ingredient, as common then as dried cranberries are now.
Of course they’re still available, but they and the
wonderful recipes they were used in seem to have fallen
out of fashion. A shame, because, as I was reminded
when I made these cookies, they’re great!
These cookies never went out of style for my friend
Oklahoma chef John Bennett, who gave me this recipe. He
makes batches to serve with tea or ice cream; for lunch,
dinner, snack time or anytime; and for no reason other
than that they’re good. You’ll understand when you make
them. The dough is sweetened with brown sugar and bakes
to that muchloved combo: slightly crisp on the outside, chewy
inside. And the filling, a quick-cooking mix of chopped dates,
nuts, water and sugar, is thick, pleasantly sticky and
scrumptious.

You might think that adding sugar to already
sweet dates is too much—I did, but I was wrong.
The original recipe calls for slicing the cookies ¼ inch
thick. They are very good that way, but I think they’re even
better when you go big and slice them ½ inch thick. Cut a
few thin and a few thick and decide for yourself. (If you cut
the cookies ¼ inch thick, the baking time will be 11 to 13
minutes.)

A word on stickiness: Dates are sticky by nature and
therefore not so easy to pit and chop. You’ll find this
recipe quick to make if you buy dates that are already
pitted and even quicker if you buy them pitted and
chopped. They’re easy to find in the supermarket.

Makes about 18 cookies

FOR THE FILLING

¾ cup (113 grams) chopped pitted dates
½ cup (60 grams) finely chopped walnuts or pecans
½ cup (120 ml) water
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice or 2 teaspoons
orange juice
FOR THE DOUGH
1¾ cups (238 grams) all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon baking powder
⅛ teaspoon baking soda
1 stick (8 tablespoons; 4 ounces; 113 grams) unsalted
butter, cut into chunks, at room temperature
1 cup (200 grams) packed light brown sugar
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt1 large egg, at room temperature

TO MAKE THE FILLING:

Put all of the ingredients in a small saucepan
and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring, then reduce the
heat so that the mixture simmers gently. Stay at the stove,
stirring regularly, until the liquid has been absorbed and the
dates and nuts are soft, thick and spreadable, just a few minutes.
Scrape the filling into a bowl and let cool to room temperature.

TO MAKE THE DOUGH:

Whisk the flour, baking powder and baking soda together.
Working with a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment,
or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat the butter, brown
sugar and salt together on medium speed until smooth and
creamy, about 3 minutes, scraping down the bowl as needed. Add
the egg and beat for another minute or so, until it’s thoroughly
blended in. Turn off the mixer and add the dry ingredients all at
once, then pulse the mixer a few times. When the risk of flying
flour has passed, mix at low speed until it’s thoroughly
incorporated. You’ll have a soft dough that will clean the sides of
the bowl.

Turn the dough out onto a piece of parchment paper and
shape it into a rectangle. Cover with another piece of paper and
roll the dough until it’s about 12 x 10 inches; slightly larger is
better than smaller here. While you’re rolling, stop to peel the
pieces of paper away from the dough frequently, so that they
don’t get rolled into the dough and form creases. Slide the dough,
still between the paper, onto a baking sheet and refrigerate for at
least 2 hours, or freeze for at least 1 hour.

TO FILL AND ROLL THE DOUGH:

Remove the dough from the refrigerator or freezer and leave it on
the counter until it’s supple enough to bend without cracking.
(This doesn’t take long.)

Peel away the paper on both sides of the dough and return the
dough to one of the pieces of paper. Position the dough so that a
long side is parallel to you. Using an icing spatula (or the back of a
spoon), spread the filling over the dough, leaving about 1 inch of
dough bare at the top and about ½ inch on the other sides.

Starting with the long edge closest to you, and using the paper to
help you, roll the dough up into a log, trying to keep it as compact
as possible. The ends will be ragged, but that’s fine—they’ll be
trimmed before baking.

Wrap the log and refrigerate it for at least 1 hour.

GETTING READY TO BAKE:

Position the racks to divide the oven into
thirds and preheat it to 350 degrees F.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

Unwrap the log, place it on a cutting board and trim away the
ragged edges, cutting until you can see spirals of filling. Using a
sharp thin knife, cut the log into ½-inch-thick rounds. Don’t worry
if there are gaps between the filling and the dough—they’ll fill in
as the cookies bake.

Place the cookies on the baking sheets, leaving about 1½ inches
between them. If you haven’t used the entire log, return the
remainder to the refrigerator.

Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, rotating the baking sheets top to
bottom and front to back after 8 minutes. The cookies will spread
and puff and brown lightly; they should still be soft if poked
gently. Let the cookies rest on the baking sheets for 2 minutes,
then gently transfer them to a rack to cool until they are just
warm or at room temperature.

If you have more dough, slice and bake, using a cool bakingsheet.

STORING

You can make the filling up to 3 days ahead and keep it tightly
covered in the refrigerator. The rolled-out dough can be
refrigerated for up to 3 days or wrapped airtight and frozen for up
to 2 months. The filled log can be refrigerated overnight or frozen
for up to 2 months. The baked cookies are good keepers—pack
them into a covered container, and they’ll keep for 4 days or more.
They are not good candidates for freezing.


From "Dorie's Cookies" by Dorie Greenspan
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28560925-dorie-s-cookies


Whew! Sweets For the Kids (adults too!)