So maybe I’m on a chocolate mint kick this year.

Okay, who am I kidding, I’ve been on a chocolate mint kick my entire life. I blame it on my dad. When I was a kid, we used to get a peppermint patty every time we went to the gas station. We drove around A LOT, so that’s a lot of patties. Oh delicious.

So is it any surprise that when one of my coworkers brought these cookies in, it was love at first bite? And they were immediately at the top of my cookie list for this year? No, I don’t think so. I will note that these could have been mintier for me, so if I make them again, I’ll add more peppermint. Because can you have too much peppermint?

Soft and Chewy Chocolate Mint Cookies
From Taste of Home Holidays

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

In a microwave or heavy saucepan, melt butter and chocolate; stir until smooth. In a bowl, beat sugars and egg; add buttermilk and peppermint extract. Beat in chocolate mixture.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; gradually add to sugar mixture. Let stand for 15 minutes or until dough becomes firmer.

Drop by tablespoonfuls 3 in. apart onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 350° for 8-10 minutes or until edges are firm. Cool for 2 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.

This weekend was the seventh edition of the Ratskellar Holiday Party, our big annual celebration of the holidays, good cheer, and friends.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve lived in this house long enough to have SEVEN holiday parties here. How did that happen? It feels like yesterday that we–committed uptown Baltimore people–moved to Southeast. There are lots of jokes in Baltimore about people who live in Southeast–we don’t like to go north of Orleans or East of President, we would rather DIE than go to Federal Hill, and we think Southeast is the best place to live in the city. The longer we here, the more true these things are. No denying.

But back to the party. The really important thing for you all to know about the Ratskellar party (other than its awesome) is that it’s the impetus for my annual cookie baking bonanza. And this year was no different! There were many, many tasty cookies, many of which I want to share with you. But I want to start off with one so simple, you should really make a batch tonight and share it with your coworkers tomorrow, and they’ll think you’re some kind of candy making genius!

All for about 10 minutes worth of work! Really! Try it please!

Chocolate Peppermint Crunch Bark

Ingredients:
2 bags good semisweet chocolate chips (I used Ghiradelli)
1/2 package Famous Chocolate Wafers, crushed
4 crushed candy canes
4 oz white chocolate, melted

Directions:

Place chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl. Using the microwave melt the chips, stopping every 30 seconds to stir the chips. The chips should take about 2 minutes. Once they are mostly melted, stir until smooth. Spread the melted chocolate on a baking sheet lined with foil. Sprinkle the crushed chocolate wafers and candy canes evenly over the chocolate. Place melted white chocolate in a zip top bag, close the bag and snip off one corner. Pipe the white chocolate over the spread chocolate mix.

Refrigerate for one hour, or until chocolate is set. Break apart. Store in an airtight container until you’re ready to serve.

Twas the week before Christmas and all through the house…

Pandora was playing Christmas music–it must be cookie baking time!

This year, thanks to our weekend in Florida, my annual cookiepalooza in preparation for the Ratskellar Christmas Party was seriously condensed. To one day. Yikes! Somehow I survived, and at the end of the day I had four types of cookies, candy, and some of the most amazing brownies ever (but you’ll have to wait until next week to hear about the brownies).

My favorite of this year’s cookies? Snickerdoodles–which are a cookie I always love, but never seem to find time to make in between satisfying everyone else’s annual cookie requests. But this year, I decided to make room for my favorite. Maybe because I’m still punishing training my body for the half marathon . Or maybe just because I wanted to!

Snickerdoodes
Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Cookies

I like this recipe for snickerdoodles because unlike a lot of recipes, it doesn’t call for cream of tartar, which is something that I typically don’t have. Good thing, because I might need snickerdoodles more than just at Christmas time!

Ingredients:

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp coarse salt
1 cups (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350. Combine flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Put butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Mix in eggs. Reduce speed to low; gradually mix in flour mixture.

Stir together cinnamon and remaining 2 tablespoons sugar in a small bowl. Shape dough into 20 (1 3/4-inch) balls; roll in cinnamon sugar. Space 3 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until edges are golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks. Cookies can be stored between layers of parchment in airtight containers at room temperature up to 3 days.

I don’t know about you, but after that cheesecake, I’m ready for something a little bit healthier. But just a little bit, because we’re still in the midst of cookiepalooza!

So, for your consideration–Raspberry Thumbprint cookies, one of my all time favorites. What makes these healthier? Well for starters, almond meal, which gives the cookies their distinctive almond flavor (along with a splash of almond extract) and also provides body and a bit of protein, always good for helping you to fill up when you’re noming away at holiday parties. Second, the flour in these is whole wheat, and who doesn’t love whole wheat? And finally, when you top these with no sugar added raspberry preserves, you’re adding just a kick of fruity sweetness without all of that added sugar. Fantastic.

As an added bonus, these cookies could easily be made vegan, since they are egg-free. Earth Balance is such an easy substitute for that one lonely stick of butter! And if you’re doing your holiday baking with little ones this year, this is another kid-friendly recipe. I guarantee they’ll LOVE smashing their thumbs into all these cookies!

And did I mention that they taste really, really good?

Whole Wheat Raspberry Almond Thumbprint Cookies
Adapted from Pinch My Salt

After Thanksgiving I had half a bag of almond meal leftover from making Dorie’s All Spice wonder. So for the December holiday baking, I vowed that I would find a recipe to make use of the rest of the bag. I didn’t use quite all of it, but wow, were these cookies a good use! I only made one tiny variation to the recipe–I added about a tablespoon of milk to help the dough come together in my mixer. Again, if you were making these vegan, you could easily use soy or almond milk.

Ingredients

• 1/2 C. butter (1 stick)
• 1/3 C. lightly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 t. almond extract
• 1 C. whole wheat flour
• 1/2 C. toasted almond meal or flour (toasted ground almonds)
• Raspberry jam

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Using a mixer, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. In another bowl, whisk together flour and almond meal then add to butter mixture and blend well. If your dough doesn’t come together, add one tablespoon of milk.

Put cookie dough in refrigerator for 30 minutes (I skipped this step).

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper; roll teaspoonfuls of dough into balls and place on baking sheet; make an indentation with your fingertip in the center of each ball.

Bake for 15 minutes or until the edges are just slightly brown. Let cool on wire rack. When cookies are cool, fill with raspberry jam. If you don’t have a pastry bag, you can put the jam in a zip top bag and cut off a tiny piece of one corner, then squeeze the jam out of the cut corner.

Yield: approximately 2 dozen cookies

As an aside, we’re expecting our first major snowfall of the year here in Baltimore this weekend. As always with these nor’easter style storms, our accumulation depends on where the storm tracks, but since the storm is going to hit on a Saturday, I’m rooting for 12 inches of instant winter wonderland! Woohoo! I’m already tuning up my Rosemary Clooney voice for a very stirring rendition of White Christmas with Noel (my very own Bing) on Saturday night! So do a little snow dance for me!

Welcome back cookie lovers! Today’s cookie is something completely new to me, but after making it just this once I know it’s a keeper. And I think it might be a little bit magic.

Why magic? Because it’s the simplest cookie to make–you don’t need softened butter, or refrigeration, or anything–but it’s so good! And it’s incredibly versatile, and could be dressed up or down in a million different ways. Do you have kids? This might be the perfect cookie to make with them, especially since the dough is egg-free and therefore 100 percent safe to munch on while you cook. Not that the threat of salmonella ever keeps ME from enjoying some fresh cookie dough.

It also satisfies my need for crispy and crunchy sugar cookies without all of the rolling. Cause when time is tight in the weeks leading up to the holidays, the prospect of rolling 8 dozen wafer thin sugar cookies can just seem waaaay too daunting. At least for me this year (sorry Mom)! Maybe after the holiday, but not before!

Vanilla Dreams
Adapted from King Arthur Flour’s Bakers Banter Blog

I’m a little bit in love with King Arthur Flour’s online operation. I’ve loved their flour for years, but a few months ago I discovered the website, and the Bakers Banter Blog, and I was really hooked. It’s quite a slick operation they have going on over there–they show you a fantastic recipe, and then they offer you a place to buy the key ingredients on their website. It’s fantastic! And totally addicting! The key ingredient for this recipe was baker’s ammonia, which I couldn’t find locally and didn’t have enough time to order from KAF. So I made this recipe with baking powder, but it still turned out wonderfully crunchy. Check out the King Arthur post for more ideas on how to trim these cookies.

Ingredients:

• 2 to 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon baker’s ammonia or 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 cup unsalted butter
• 2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• coarse or granulated sugar for topping, optional (I used red and green sprinkling sugar to create a festive look)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 300°F. Lightly grease (or line with parchment) two baking sheets.

Combine the vanilla, baker’s ammonia, and salt in a very small bowl. Stir to dissolve the ammonia; the salt won’t fully dissolve. Combine the vanilla mixture with the butter and sugar, and beat till smooth. Mix in the flour; the mixture will seem quite dry at first. But just keep beating until the dough comes together. If it seems like the butter has clumped to your mixer blade (this happened to me) scrape the butter off the blade and cut it into piece to facilitate the mixing.

Break off small pieces of dough (about 3/4 ounce). Roll the pieces into balls and if you’re using sprinkling sugar like I did, roll the balls in sugar at this point. Space them on the prepared baking sheets, leaving 2″ between them.

Bake the cookies until they’re a very light golden brown around the edges, about 25 minutes. Remove them from the oven, and transfer them to a rack to cool. Store in an airtight bag or container to maintain that crunch–it’s the best part!

Welcome to Cookiepalooza 2009! The week each December when the Ratskellar kitchen is totally overtaken by cookie baking, and as a result the blog is too! So if you’re scared by any of these things–sugar, butter, vanilla extract, baking powder–it’s probably best if you click away now!

Alright, I’m hoping some of you are still with me.

Up first in this year’s Cookiepalooza lineup, Gingersnaps. But first, a confession. I have an unspoken rule about baked goods. I don’t do store bought. Call me a baked good snob, but in my book, if it’s processed, it’s probably not worth it. It’s the only way I’ve been able to balance my desire to be healthy and my sweet tooth.

But there is one MAJOR exception to this rule–gingersnaps. Particularly the Whole Foods 365 Gingersnaps. You know the ones I’m talking about, orange bag, zip top? Well, they’re like my personalized addictive substance. I buy a bag, and I start with just a few, then a few more, and 24 hours later I’m wondering where the whole bag went. It’s danger in a resealable package.

So when I was putting together my master cookie list this year–one of my hardest tasks each year is to keep the list down to a manageable size–I had one goal. Find a gingersnap recipe that rivaled the Whole Foods ones. That I made from scratch, at home, with no scary ingredients. Bonus points if it didn’t taste like cardboard after 24 hours like some gingerbread recipes I know.

Ginger Spice Cookies
Adapted from Bon Appetit, March 2000 via Epicurious

I searched far and wide, but after pages and pages of Google hits, I decided to go with this recipe on Epicurious. Why? A couple of things. First, it used crystallized ginger pieces, which I knew were a key component of the Whole Foods cookie. Second, these cookies were not light on the spice–nothing with a whole teaspoon of cloves can be called mild–and I love me a spicy gingerbread! And third, the recipe has nearly 300 ratings on Epicurious, and 96 percent of them said they would make them again. That many foodies just cannot be wrong.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup chopped crystallized ginger
• 1 cup (packed) dark brown sugar*
• 1 1/2 sticks butter, room temperature
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup mild-flavored (light) molasses*

*I used light brown sugar and dark molasses, but everything seemed to turn out okay! So just use what you have on hand!

Directions:

Combine first 6 ingredients in medium bowl; whisk to blend. Mix in crystallized ginger. Using electric mixer, beat brown sugar and butter in large bowl until fluffy. Add egg and molasses and beat until blended. Add flour mixture and mix just until blended. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly butter 2 baking sheets. Spoon sugar in thick layer onto small plate. Using wet hands, form dough into 1 1/4-inch balls; roll in sugar to coat completely. Place balls on prepared sheets, spacing 2 inches apart.

Bake cookies until cracked on top but still soft to touch, about 12 minutes. Cool on sheets 1 minute. Carefully transfer to racks and cool. (Can be made 5 days ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.)

The result? Well although we only were able to sample one since the batch only made about 3 dozen cookies, and we’re saving those cookies for parties and such, we thought these were fantastic! WAAAY better than Whole Foods! And as a bonus, in Noel’s words they “made our house smell like Christmas.” Always a fantastic way to kick off the holiday baking!

Stay tuned for more Cookiepalooza posts!