TRADITIONS

So, it's the 28th of December, and we don't have any Christmas decoration in the house.
I love Christmas, to check all the lovely decorations, the delicious recipes, the handmade gifts, the gigantic dinners. I check it all for months, and I always, invariably, inexplicably, do nothing.
No decorations.
No special dishes.
No handmade gifts.
No dinners.
I'm no Grinch. I'm just purely, genuinely, lazy.
I mean, I've even collected some ideas for handmade gifts, and one of them -the hot chocolate kit- is basically suggesting that yes, I give the chocolate, but could you please make it yourself?
And I didn't even prepare that.
Nevertheless, there is one thing that is bound to happen every Christmas, no matter what.
The only thing that actually made it to become one of our, well, our Christmas tradition.
I suggest you make it one of yours as well.


This is the recipe we used, taken from Weekend Bakery which, so far, proved being the very best.
Although, we kinda went crazy with the spice mix, totally changing all the doses. We just kept the cinnamon overload but then, for example, put almost as much cardamom, which I love. And skipped the aniseed powder cause.. I just don't know what that is.
In any case, you just can't go wrong.

SPICE MIX:
6,5 gr cinnamon
2 gr ground cloves
1,5 gr grated nutmeg
1 gr ground white pepper
2 gr aniseed powder
1 gr ginger powder
1/2 gr ground cardamom (pff, 1/2 a gr...)

COOKIE MIX:
225 gr all purpose flour
115 gr butter -room temperature-
130 gr soft brown sugar
7 gr baking powder
2 TBS milk
3 tsp spice mix
pinches of salt

DIRECTIONS:
1- Mix together flour, baking powder, spice mix and salt.

2- In a separate bowl, mix together butter and sugar. Add also the milk and knead with your hands until smooth.

3- Add the flour mix to the butter mix and knead it into a ball. Wrap it in plastic foil and leave it in the fridge for at least half an hour, so that all the ingredients mix together and soak into one another.

4- Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it from 2 to 7 mm thick (the thicker the easier, the thinner the crunchier)

5- Preheat your oven at 165°, cut your biscuits and bake for 16-18 minutes. To us it took a bit longer but, from minute 15 on, keep an eye on your cookies, 'cause they burn fast.

Well, I'm not always that lazy.
Wish you all some lovely holidays and new-found traditions.

CHOCOLATE THUMBPRINT COOKIES

Maybe it’s Christmas getting closer, or maybe it’s just  the explosion of cookies pictures I see everyday on beautiful blogs, or maybe it’s just that we’re all addicted at a certain extent to butter and chocolate. Especially when they show up together. Ok, me, I am addicted to it.

In any case, you can deny it, but I know I’m not alone.

Anyway, whatever the reason, I’ve been in a thumbprint mood for days. I’ve seen pictures of these decadent cookies in perfectly circular shapes, decorated with pecans and overflowing with chocolate and caramel, looking so wow that my mouth gets watery just at the thought of them.

So of course I couldn’t try those as a first attempt at thumbprint cookies.

So, mine have no pecans, and no caramel. But they do have chocolate. And almonds. Oh-yes-they-do. And they taste awesome.

INGREDIENTS (makes 14 big cookies): 

150 gr unsalted butter
½ cup confectioners sugar
¼ teaspoon salt

1 ¼ (well, more or less. As we know) flour

1 cup sliced almonds

100 gr dark chocolate

50 additional gr butter (I misinterpreted the original recipe so, this massive amount of butter got even bigger. Sorry Martha. Well, not really.)

(By the way, this is really all you need. Once you’ll be having your cookie bite melting in your mouth, come back, re-think about how fast and easy was to make them. Now you can be even happier.)

DIRECTIONS:

In a bowl mix together butter, sugar and salt, and mix them with an electric mixer on medium speed for about 2 minutes. Well, in any case, until smooth.

Add the flour and beat again. Don’t worry if everything looks like a big bowl of crumbles. It’s fine.

Add also the almonds and knead everything with your hands. (Isn’t it just great to squeeze all that butter in your hands?)

2Now preheat oven at 350°F/180°C. In the meanwhile, form little balls with your crumble-dough and set them nicely onto the oven plate.

3-  When the oven will be perfectly warm, put your amazing-cookies-to-be in, and leave them for about 10 minutes. Then take them out and press your thumb on top of the cookies (no, use a spoon, or a cork, or whatever you want but, seriously, they’re gonna be hot. I know they’re called thumbprints. You’re safe, I’ll tell no one.) to create a nice and cozy hollow for your chocolate. Put back in the oven and leave them until they’ll be golden-brown on top, say… 7 more minutes? 8?

In the meanwhile, set two pots, one over the other, on the fire, filling the one under with water. Let’s say enough to reach the bottom of the one on top. In this one, mix together the chocolate and the 50 gr of butter, stirring from time time until you get a superinviting cream. Please don’t eat it. you will need it for the cookies.

When your cookies will be ready, take them off the oven, fill the hollows with chocolate, decorate the tops with some almonds and let cool down… and then eat loads!

(Don’t forget to finger-clean the chocolate pot.)