Traditional holiday cookies

Today’s babymoon guest post is by Eden from The Road to the Good Life.

I’m excited to be sharing two of my favorite traditional holiday cookies while PJ enjoys her babymoon: Spritz Cookies and Pecan Toffee Bars.

For as long as I can remember, whenever my grandmother visited us for the holidays she brought with her tins of home baked goodies. When my sister and I were old enough, my mom, my sister, and I would spend a day baking, taking breaks to watch traditional holiday movies, like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

This year my 19-month old toddler Gates joined the three of us in the kitchen. To make baking safer and more hands on for a toddler we modified the recipes a little. Because of Gates’ age, we didn’t want her near anything sharp or hot. We also wanted to avoid having her sample raw egg. While she was napping, we did all of the prep work, chopping pecans and cracking eggs. We then set out ingredients for her to measure and to add.

Gates was incredibly interested in what we were doing, her attention span for a task lasting over ten minutes. As we wanted to include Gates in the process as much as possible so we opted to use a wooden spoon and our own power to cream the Earth Balance and Maple Sugar Crystals and work the dough. If you’re not baking with a toddler you may want to use a mixer.

A quick note about the sweeteners I use when baking. I have hyperinsulinemia so when baking I use sweeteners with a low glycemic index (GI)–55 or below—for example, I substitute maple sugar crystals (GI of 54) instead of brown sugar (GI of 60). If you don’t have maple sugar crystals in your pantry, you can use brown sugar or cane sugar and molasses (ratio is 1 Tablespoon of molasses for each cup of cane sugar).

Pecan Toffee Bars

Pecan Toffee Bars are super easy to make and yield enough that you can indulge and still have enough to share with friends. This recipe makes approximately two dozen rich squares. If I’m baking these when it’s not holiday season, I’ll simply freeze the extra dozen and a half in an airtight container, separated with wax paper, and treat myself for the next couple of months.

While Gates helped make these cookies she didn’t get to enjoy the finished bars as I was worried she might choke on the loose pecan topping.

Ingredients

• 2 cups sifted unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 cup Earth Balance, softened
• 1 cup Maple Sugar Crystals
• 1 whole egg
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla
• 4 pieces, 99% Unsweetened Scharffen Berger Baking Chocolate Bar, smashed
• 1 cup candied pecans, minced

Instructions

Position a rack in the middle of your oven. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9”x13” metal baking pan and set aside. Cream Earth Balance and Maple Sugar Crystals together. When well blended, add egg and vanilla. Add flour about a 1/2 cup at a time and mix well. Spread in prepared pan and bake 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle smashed chocolate pieces evenly over the cookies. Return to the oven for a couple of minutes to melt chocolate. When the chocolate is melted, use a spatula to spread the chocolate evenly. Sprinkle candied pecans over the top of the chocolate. Cut the cookies into bars while warm. Cool in pan.

Spritz Cookies

Traditionally, Spritz Cookies are piped onto a baking sheet into holiday shapes using a cookie press. A cookie press requires a little more dexterity than a toddler has so we opted for rolling teaspoon-sized balls of dough, smashing them flat, and decorating by pressing the tines of a fork into the tops. This recipe makes between two and three dozen silver dollar-sized cookies.

Ingredients

• 2 cups sifted unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2/3 cup Earth Balance, softened
• 2/3 cup Maple Sugar Crystals
• 1 whole egg
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla

Instructions

Position a rack in the middle of your oven. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Cut two pieces of foil the length of your baking sheets and put aside. Sift flour and kosher salt together, set aside. Cream Earth Balance and Maple Sugar Crystals together. When well blended, add egg and vanilla. Add flour about a 1/2 cup at a time until the dough is crumbly. Refrigerate for half an hour.

Remove chilled dough from the refrigerator. Take a heaping teaspoon of dough and roll into a ball. Gently flatten and place on baking sheet. When the sheet is full decorate the cookies by pressing the tines of a fork into the tops of the cookies, turn 90 degrees and press again. Bake between 8 to 10 minutes or until cookies are a golden brown. Remove from the oven. Slide the foil carefully off your baking sheet onto a cooking rack. Let cookies cool before removing from foil.

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Growing up Eden’s family gathered nightly for meals, instilling in her the belief that the best place to tell a story is over a home-cooked meal around a dinner table and that any problem can be solved while sharing food. She launched The Road to The Good Life blog in 2006 to open her home and invite guests worldwide to join her while she explores the beauty of the seemingly ordinary to reveal the extraordinary. Eden write about home, food, family, and fashion and her mission to “define The Good Life with haves not wants.”