Cookies for New Year, St. Nicholas Day and Christmas. TOP 5 best recipes of all kinds of shapes and tastes. The subtleties of cooking and video recipes.
It's time to start preparing for the upcoming New Year holidays. You should think not only about hot dishes, snacks and salads, but also about New Year's pastries. It can be cakes and pastries, muffins and rolls, pies and gingerbread … However, recently, homemade New Year's cookies have become very popular. Figures for products can be thought up independently in the form of Christmas trees, stars, little men, houses, cones, snowflakes, animals, etc. Any cookies for the new year can be beautifully decorated with icing or cream.
Christmas cookies - the subtleties of cooking
- In the process of kneading the dough, it may crumble or creep. If it crumbles and doesn't come together, add a little butter. If, on the contrary, the dough sticks to your hands, stir in the flour a little.
- To make the dough roll out better, after kneading, wrap it with cling film and send it to the refrigerator for half an hour.
- When you roll out one part of the dough, keep the other part in the refrigerator so that it does not start to melt.
- The cookie will be brown if you put cocoa powder in the dough.
- If you use icing on baked goods, reduce the amount of sugar added to the dough, otherwise the baked goods will be sugary sweet.
- For a variety of cookies, add all kinds of spices to the dough. For example, put cinnamon in one batch, cloves in another, cardamom in the third, etc. But the most New Year's cookie is ginger, which in Europe is a symbol of Christmas.
- If there are no special molds to cut out cookies, make a stencil from available tools, for example, in the shape of a man, a Christmas tree, a Christmas tree toy, an asterisk … Make a blank on thick paper (cardboard), cut it out and apply it to the rolled dough. And the simplest shape - a circle - cut out with a glass or a glass.
- Any cookie can be hung on the Christmas tree like a toy. To do this, make a hole in the blank with a cocktail tube, and when the cookies are ready, insert a ribbon, a bow into it.
- For softer, crumbly cookies, bake them on a greased baking sheet. For crispy items, use floured baking paper.
- Cookies are baked at a temperature of 180 ° C very quickly, maximum 5-15 minutes, depending on the thickness. Therefore, watch the time so as not to overexpose it in the oven. Otherwise, it will dry out and lose its fragrant smell.
- Cookies can be stored for a long time, about a week, so bake them in advance and put them in storage boxes.
- A classic cookie decoration is a frosting made from one egg white, 200 g of powdered sugar, 2 tbsp. water and 1 tbsp. lemon juice. The products are whipped with a mixer until thick mass. The more sugar, the thicker the icing, and the thicker the icing, the easier it is to paint on the cookies.
- For the custard frosting, boil 50 ml of water, reduce heat and slowly add 300 g of icing sugar. While stirring the mass, pour in 1 tsp. lemon juice and cook for 5 minutes.
- You can add food colors, both purchased and homemade, to any glaze.
- Use a piping bag, syringe, or a plastic bag with a cut-off corner for drawing.
- Draw on the cookies very quickly because it instantly freezes.
- Cookies decorated with icing should be left on for 12 hours for the icing to dry completely.
Ginger cookie
Gingerbread cookies are a traditional New Year and Christmas dessert. A large amount of aromatic spices must be added to the dough: cinnamon, cardamom, star anise, cloves, nutmeg …
See also how to make gingerbread for Christmas.
- Caloric content per 100 g - 498 kcal.
- Servings - 1 kg
- Cooking time - 1 hour 45 minutes
Ingredients:
- Flour - 3, 5 tbsp.
- Egg white - 1 pc.
- Eggs - 1 pc.
- Lemon juice - 10 drops
- Baking powder - 1 tsp
- Powdered sugar - 300 g
- Ground cardamom - 1 tsp
- Butter - 100 g
- Ground star anise - 0.5 tsp
- Soda - 1 tsp
- Ground ginger - 0.5 tsp
- Sugar - 3/4 tbsp.
- Ground cinnamon - 1 tablespoon
- Ground cloves - 0.5 tsp
- Honey - 0.5 tbsp., Ground nutmeg - 0.5 tsp.
Gingerbread Cookies:
- Put butter, honey, sugar in a saucepan and put on medium heat.
- Melt the contents, stirring constantly. At the same time, make sure that it does not boil. Then remove the pan from the heat.
- Sift all the spices and send them to the hot honey mixture.
- Also sift flour with baking soda and baking powder through a fine sieve.
- Add flour in small portions to the honey mixture and knead the dough so that it lags behind the sides of the pan.
- Beat the eggs lightly with a fork and add to the dough.
- Stir the dough, roll it into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap and leave in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
- Place the dough on a work surface and roll out into a 5 mm thick layer.
- Cut out cookies from the dough and place on a baking sheet at a distance of 3-4 cm from each other.
- Place the baking sheet in a preheated oven to 170 ° C for 15-20 minutes.
- Cool the finished cookies on a wire rack.
- For the glaze, combine the whites with the icing sugar and whisk until thick.
- Then pour in the lemon juice and stir. The mass will become white, plastic, but not fluid. Add a few drops of food coloring if desired.
- Transfer the mass to a pastry bag, paint the products and leave the cookies until they solidify.
Spruce cones cookies
Sweet Cones made from shortcrust pastry are not only tasty and beautiful, but also easy to prepare from available ingredients.
Ingredients:
- Butter - 50 g
- Wheat flour - 100 g
- Salt - a pinch
- Sour cream - 1 tablespoon
- Boiled condensed milk - 3 tablespoons
- Powdered sugar - for decoration
Cooking the Spruce Cones Cookies:
- Chop the cold, not soft butter into small pieces and place in a deep bowl.
- Sift the flour and add to the butter with a pinch of fine salt.
- Grind the food into small crumbs.
- Then add the sour cream, which serves as a link, and mix everything until smooth.
- Wrap the dough with cling film and send it to the freezer for 15-20 minutes.
- After this time, grate the sand base on a coarse grater.
- Spread the shavings in a thin layer on a baking sheet, which is sent to bake in a preheated oven to 180 ° C for 10-12 minutes.
- Cool the resulting ruddy crumb and transfer to a deep bowl.
- Add condensed milk to the baked crumb and stir to form a viscous mass.
- To form a cookie, cover a narrow coffee cup or glass with cling film and lay out the sweet mass.
- Form an oblong cone-shaped cookie and send the dessert to a cool place.
- Before serving, carefully remove the products from the container and sprinkle with powdered sugar.
Shortbread cookies with icing
Natural shortbread cookies are a great option for New Year's baked goods. Cooked at home, it fills the kitchen with an unrivaled aroma. And the snow-white icing on the cookies looks like snowflakes.
Ingredients:
- Flour - 300 g
- Butter - 200 g
- Egg yolks - 3 pcs.
- Vanilla sugar - a pinch
- Sugar - 50 g per dough, 2/3 tbsp. for glaze
- Egg whites - 2 pcs.
To make frosting shortbread cookies:
- Melt the butter and cool to room temperature.
- Combine butter with sugar and beat with a mixer.
- Separate the whites from the yolks, and add one yolk to the mass. Continue whisking the food until smooth. The mass will increase in volume and brighten.
- Add sifted flour to whipped yolks with butter and knead the dough not too long so that it does not become too dense, otherwise the cookies will become hard, and not tender and crumbly.
- Roll out the dough into a layer 3-4 mm thick and squeeze out shaped cookies using special metal molds.
- Place the cookies on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake in a heated oven at 160 ° C for 10-15 minutes until golden brown.
- Cool the finished baked goods and cover with a glaze made from whipped proteins with sugar. The protein cream should turn out to be fluffy, airy and sugar should completely dissolve in it.
Chocolate chip cookies
The classic European recipe for chocolate chip cookies with the addition of nuts. You can use cocoa powder as a chocolate filling, and any nuts are suitable: walnuts, hazelnuts, cashews …
Ingredients:
- Flour - 350 g
- Butter - 200 g
- Vanilla sugar - 2 tsp
- Sugar - 150 g
- Eggs - 1 pc.
- Cocoa powder - 3 tablespoons
- Baking powder for dough - 1 tsp.
- Walnuts - 100 g
Cooking Chocolate Nut Chip Cookies:
- Mash butter with sugar and vanilla white.
- Add eggs and stir until smooth.
- Sift flour through a fine sieve, mix with baking powder and cocoa.
- Combine dry with oil mixture and knead the dough.
- Add finely chopped walnuts.
- Roll out the dough into a layer 5-7 mm thick and cut out the figures with molds.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and lay out the figurines.
- Send the products to an oven preheated to 180 degrees and bake the chocolate chip cookies for 10-15 minutes.
Lemon Orange Cookies
New Year is the smell of tangerine, orange, spices … But these products can not only be consumed in their own form, but also prepare New Year's pastries with them, for example, cookies. Products can be used independently, decorate a Christmas tree or presented in a beautiful box as a gift.
Ingredients:
- Flour - 250 g
- Butter at room temperature - 70 g
- Brown sugar - 80 g
- Egg - 1 pc.
- Dried ground or fresh orange peel - 1 tsp.
- Lemon dried ground or fresh zest - 1 tsp.
- Soda - 0.5 tsp
- Ground cinnamon - 1 tsp
Making lemon orange cookies:
- Chop the butter into cubes, combine with sugar and eggs. Beat the food with a mixer until smooth.
- Add sifted flour mixed with baking soda and dry citrus zest to the food. If using fresh fruit, wash the orange and lemon and grate the zest on the finest grater.
- Knead the dough, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate.
- Roll out the dough with a rolling pin to make a 7 mm thick layer.
- Squeeze out any cookie shape and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
- Turn on the oven, heat it to 180 ° C and bake the cookies for 10 minutes.
