There’s something about cookies at Christmas. You might drag out one of Grandma’s old recipes to bake once a year. The familiar smell coming from the kitchen takes you back to your childhood home. A taste of something you haven’t had in forever brings back long-forgotten memories.
It’s the power of the Christmas cookie. Take a bite, close your eyes, and savor it. Suddenly, you’re a kid again.
For the past 30 years, Mary Ann Esposito has hosted PBS’s “Ciao Italia,” cooking up all sorts of goodies that share her Italian heritage. Cookies were of particular importance to her family, as her mother and grandmother started their holiday baking the day after Columbus Day.
Wait—they baked Christmas cookies in October? Well, that’s what freezers are for. Since they were making about 20 different kinds of cookies, her family couldn’t wait until the last minute. Then a week before Christmas, the cookies were put in boxes.
“My dad would put them in the old blue station wagon, and he would drive them around and deliver them to people,” Esposito recalled. “Fast forward, when I got married, I started this tradition all over again.”
It was important for her to make sure the annual baking fest would go on for future generations.
“I wanted to keep my mom’s cookie traditions alive, and when I had my children, I wanted to pass the tradition on to them,” she said. So it’s Christmas in October for her as well.
Esposito uses a mix of old traditional family recipes and some of her own. Her favorites include fig-filled Sicilian cuccidati, her mom’s sour cream dried cherry cookies, chocolate pepper cookies, and “all kinds of biscotti,” she said.
Tools of the Trade
This might surprise you: Not all cookie sheets are created equal. And the bad cookie sheets will actually “tell” you. Esposito says you shouldn’t skimp on something so foundational.Paper Isn’t Just for Wrapping Presents
In addition to quality cookie sheets, Esposito relies on an old friend of the baker: parchment paper.“When I bake cookies, I always line the baking sheets with parchment paper,” she said. And its usefulness isn’t limited to the actual baking step.
“If I’m doing a rolled cookie, like a sugar cookie, where you have to put flour down on a board and then roll [the dough] out, and you’re all upset because it’s all sticking everywhere—well, if you put the dough between two sheets of parchment paper and then roll over the paper with your rolling pin, you’re not going to have that problem,” she said.
It’ll make your life and cleanup a lot easier.
Temperature Is Key—Even Before You Turn On the Oven
If you’re getting a sudden urge to bake cookies right now—stop. There’s a simple but very important thing to do before you start. And it might take a while.Get everything to room temperature.
“Unless you’re doing some sort of a puff pastry, everything should be at room temperature,” Esposito said. “The butter should be at room temperature, the flour at room temperature, the eggs at room temperature.”
This is particularly important for making sure ingredients are evenly mixed and incorporated into the batter.
Get the Butter Right
Speaking of butter, always use unsalted: “Unsalted butter is fresher butter, and in Italy, everyone uses unsalted butter,” Esposito said.And if the recipe calls for you to cream together the butter and sugar, remember there’s a difference between creaming and just mixing.
“The word ‘creaming’ is really important when it comes to baking. I don’t care if you’re baking cookies, or you’re baking a cake. You need to cream the butter and the sugar until you cannot feel or hear any grittiness in the base of the bowl.”
Get a Scale
No, not to find out how much weight you’ve gained during the holidays. A kitchen scale will help you more accurately measure ingredients and get consistent results.
“In Italy, of course, everything is [measured by] weight. We don’t do that here. It’s not in the American tradition to weigh anything,” Esposito said. “But if you really wanted to be accurate about how something was going to come out, then I would use a scale.”
Don’t Waste the Good Stuff
When you’re done mixing and cleaning up, you might notice some ingredients still in the measuring cups. A simple trick will make sure you get every last drop.Take Advantage of Convection
It goes without saying that you should always preheat the oven to get perfect cookies. But if your oven has a convection feature, use it.“Convection gives much more even heating throughout the baking process. It’s moving air around in the oven and heat in a more uniform way,” Esposito said.
She added that some ovens have hot spots, so convection baking is good for cookies.
Fair-Weather Cookies
If you live in a part of the world where a white Christmas is just a song and you spend your holidays in shorts and T-shirts, you need to consider the types of cookies you’re baking. Humid weather is not good for certain cookies, especially those that need to be crisp. And avoid cookies with nuts.Want Something Easy?
Don’t have a lot of time or patience for holiday baking? Esposito suggests making biscotti, as they’re the easiest cookies to make. The word biscotti means “twice cooked,” so they’re baked in a log, taken out of the oven and sliced, then baked again until they’re hard and crunchy.Nothing Beats Homemade
The bottom line is that homemade cookies are true gifts from the heart.“They will go out to people who we love and admire, or who’ve done us a favor, and that is a Christmas gift,” Esposito said.
