Sunday Decmeber 4th, 2011 Cookies

Koekje, keks, biscuits, biscotti, galettas, and wafers, what do all of these words have in common? Whether Dutch, German, English, Italian or Spanish all of these cultures and more have a word to represent the Cookie. Historians suggest that the “cookie” was the result of testing the heat of the oven to see if it was ready for the baking of a cake. Bakers would put a little cake batter on a pan and put it in the oven. The resulting test cake was the ancestor to the modern day cookie. From ancient Persia where the origins of sugar cane are said to be, throughout the Middle Ages and onto the settlement of the Americas the cookie has played an important role not only as a sweet treat but as the travel food of choice for long shipping voyages. The Dutch word koekje is the root of our term for cookie. The Dutch, the English and the Scottish immigrants brought over their tea cakes and shortbread which have resulted to the hundreds of varieties of cookies we have today in Canada.

I can admit that when it comes to self-discipline it is the cookie I find the hardest to resist. Every year I hunt for the best, most interesting cookie recipes. I have my favourites but I cannot resist looking through cookbooks and magazines for a new culinary adventure. The library has more than forty Christmas cook books, many of them filled with cookie recipes.

Very Merry Cookies is a recently published cookbook put out by Better Homes and Gardens magazine. It is full of cookie recipes organized by flavours such as chocolate, peanut butter or cinnamon. It contains many baking pointers to ensure that your cookies will come out of the oven perfectly. The pictures are plentiful, beautiful and the decorating techniques are easy to follow. If you want to set out a tray that looks just as good as it tastes try this book.

I’m Dreaming of a Chocolate Christmas is a great cookbook for the chocolate lover. This book contains many cookie recipes with a holiday twist. Coconut Chocolate Chunk Macaroons, Chocolate Gingerbread Snowflakes and Chocolate Drop Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sandwiches are a few of the tasty treats you can discover in this book. It also has recipes other than cookies such as cakes and brulees. This book is authored by Marcel Desaulniers, a famed chocolatier. It has fantastic graphics that will have you drooling before you open a cupboard.

If you like to include your children in your holiday baking plans Bake and Make Amazing Cookies by Elizabeth Macleod is a children’s cookbook with both simple instructions and recipes that children would enjoy. This book is not designed with a Christmas focus but is an excellent resource for children. The thumbprint cookies, the jam filled stars and the reindeer cookies that utilize pretzels for horns would all be enjoyable projects for you and your children. The graphics have a cartoon feel and many of the recipes would look beautiful on a tray of baking.

Canadian Living, Bon Appétit, Family Circle and Chatelaine are some of my favourite magazines for accumulating Christmas baking ideas. They are always filled with new and relevant recipes, not to mention the many presentation and decoration ideas. Not only will you find recipes for cookies in these fantastic periodicals but you will find dinner ideas, house décor ideas as well as holiday style suggestions. Royal icing painted sugar snowflakes, coffee ribbons and a decorated gingerbread house are a few of the ideas I have gathered in magazines that are now annual traditions at our house. Perhaps you too can find new Christmas treats or traditions for your hearth and home through your local branch of the Thunder Bay Public Library.

Cindy Visser-DiCarlo