THE W4D COOKIE BOX!
Nothing Says 'The Holidays' Like Our Tried-and-True Collection of Cookie Creations!
Hiiiiieeee! If you’re like us, you’re one sweet treat away from becoming a Sugar Plum Fairy. That means you’re doing December right! Real talk: have the cake, drink the drinks, and eat the damn cookies!! ‘Tis the season to do what you want. Need some ideas to get your cookie on?
Well honey, the W4D Cookie Box is here for you!
We’ve culled together our favorite cookie creations to create the ULTIMATE W4D COOKIE COLLECTION so you can bake up the best cookie box on the block!
10-year Chocolate Chip Cookies - Santa loves a classic, and this one will make sure he leaves you an extra prezy is under the tree.
Brown-Butter Pumpkin Cookies - If you’ve ever craved a pumpkin pie, nutty brown butter, and warm gingerbready spices all rolled into a crispy-chewy cookie, these are for you. A top tier cookie!
Cookies ‘n’ Cream Bourbon Balls - Like a cake pop for adults—the name says nostalgia, but the taste is nuanced with dark cocoa flavor, pecans, vanilla, and a hit of hooch.
Gingerbread Blondies - Gingerbread without having to roll and cut cookies? Yes please! These blondies are heady with holiday spices and spicy with ginger. Like potato chips, Santa won’t be able to eat just one.
Salted Brown-Butter Cereal Bars - If you’re looking a treat (that happens to be gluten free!) that comes together as fast as you’ll devour it, make these updated rice krispie treats. *Read how to make ‘em below!
Polvorones Rosas - This traditional technicolor Mexican cookie will brighten up any cookie box! Lightly flavored with almond or vanilla, these are like the best—and most festive—sugar cookies you’ve ever eaten. *Read how to make ‘em below!
Perhaps you think we’re missing something? Don’t worry, mama. We’ve got more cookie and bar recipes for you!
SALTED BROWN BUTTER CEREAL BARS
AU: You may be thinking that we don’t make anything without brown butter… and you’re not entirely wrong! At least not when it comes to cookies. What can we say? It adds flavor and dimension unlike any other.
Browning your butter (and/or adding toasted milk powder) to these nostalgic treats makes them 10 times better than what you remember, I promise!
EK: You are soooo right!! When you are a kid the one-dimensional sugar + crispiness is enough to love, but as an adult, I need more… and that’s exactly what those caramelized ingredients add. It goes from “this is OK” to “this is exceptional!”
AU: I also added corn flakes to the mix, and the crispy corny addition did not disappoint. These come together in 10 minutes, and they’ll be gone just as quickly!
AU: If you want a new back-pocket dessert (that also happens to be gluten free!), these Brown Butter Cereal Bars (aka Rice Krispie Treats) come together in no time. And frankly, does one really NEED to let them cool completely? Rhetorical questions aside, browning the butter, adding some toasted milk powder (optional), and plenty of flaky sea salt update these nostalgic treats into something that tastes really special. Feel free to mix up the additions: crushed pretzels, M&Ms, or peanut butter chips would all be welcome. Try to bite into one of these without smiling. I dare you.
POLVORONES (aka The BEST Sugar Cookie You’ve Ever Eaten)
EK: My favorite sugar cookie is one that is relatively new to me. I discovered it a few years ago during a visit to San Antonio, Texas, for a pre-holiday holiday! If you have been there you know that the city is fun, colorful and delicious.
The Mexican influence is everywhere—especially in the local food—as roughly 60% of the population is of Mexican descent. Among the fabulous food that I ate included the best breakfast tacos from Pete’s Tako House. I chose bacon, egg, and cheese because that’s my standing order, but what made them outstanding were the tortillas. They were fresh made-from-scratch “Grandma’s Flour Tortillas” that were light and fluffy and not pasty—definitely the best flour tortillas that I have ever tasted.
AU: I went to Pete’s Tako House on a recent trip to San Antonio, at your suggestion… and as a Texas boy, it sure hit the spot!
EK: After breakfast, they gave us big pink cookies. At first, I was a little skeptical of the thick pink cookie with a raggedy edge. But then I took a bite, and it was dense and chewy inside and crisp on the outside with just enough sugar to make it sweet, and every so often, a bit of salt to make you want to take another bite. Before I knew it, I wanted another cookie.
My tastebuds and my baking gene was curious. Now I needed to learn about these cookies, and make them for myself. I didn’t have to ask more than one person what the big pink cookie was. They are very popular in San Antonio, and as ubiquitous there as the sugar cookies that I grew up with. The pink cookies were Polvorones Rosas, or Mexican Pink Sugar Cookies.
I searched the web and read the recipes, and the cookies that seemed the most like what I had enjoyed in San Antonio came from Estaban Castillo’s blog, ChicanoEats.
AU: There are at least four cookies in the Mexican Pan Dulce Universe that go by “Polvorones.” The powdered-sugar-coated ones (often called “Mexican Wedding Cookies”) are a favorite, too!
EK: The Polvorones Rosas are simple and I had everything I needed on hand. I decided to make my cookies red, pink, and green in honor of the Christmas holiday. If you want a saturated color, it is essential to use the gel food color. The liquid food color will add too much liquid, and make the batter wet. The Wilton Gel Food Color in the little pots are my favorite because you can stick a toothpick in the color and add more as you need, little by little.
AU: They’re great, inexpensive, and a little goes a looooooong way. Plus, you’re just not going to get the punchy hues with liquid food coloring.
EK: The cookies that I baked using Estaban’s recipe were even better than the ones I tasted in San Antonio. They are light and crispy on the outside and soft and airy inside like the cookie version of the best flaky biscuit.
Lightly sweet, they are rolled in sugar before baking and need that extra bit of sugar on the outside to balance the dense vanilla cookie. Some of the bakeries in San Antonio roll the cookies in cinnamon sugar—and you could try that—but I kept it plain like the recipe stated.
The only substantial addition I made was adding a little almond extract to the dough because I like an almondy sugar cookie. As someone who is new to this cookie, I think that they would also be good with lemon or orange extract, but if you are a vanilla purist, or someone who loves the traditional Polvorones Rosas, you should omit the extra flavorings.
PLZ ACCEPT COOKIES: RULES TO BAKE BY
EK: If a mouthwatering photo of a cookie inspired you to make it, and your version of the recipe looks completely different from that photograph, don’t despair! That’s the way the Cookie Crumbles, or Flattens, or Ripples, or anything else that you think might make it “imperfect.” The bottom line is don’t worry about the way it looks, worry about how it tastes. If it taste great, it’s a great cookie!
There are so many variables when baking. The specific ingredients all matter. European butter vs. American butter, the heat of one oven to the next…dark baking pans vs. light colored baking pans. It’s enough to make your head spin!
In fact, Anthony and I had that exact thing happen to us this week.
AU: We did! I made your pumpkin cookies (which are PHENOMENAL btw!), and was not getting the crackled top like yours… Plus, mine were spreading flat as pancakes. After a few long discussions together, we discovered several variables that resulted in cookies that did NOT look like the photo below…
AU: One, I was baking the cookies on a baking steel in the oven. This is often a good thing, as it helps a baked good cook faster and evenly, but when you’re baking a cookie with SO MUCH BUTTER, it’s too hot too fast.
The other thing we discovered is that I was using Kerrygold butter, which is more like a European (Irish) butter—it has a higher fat content than American butter.
EK: And I used good ol’ Land-O-Lakes when I developed the recipe! Because there is more water in “American” butter, a.k.a. it is not nearly as rich, the cookies are a bit fluffier and cake-like in the center.
But when Anthony’s cookies turned out thinner and chewier, I made a batch with Kerrygold to see if that was the reason. My cookies also turned out thinner and chewier—and richer—from the more flavorful butter. They are just as delicious, more like a pumpkin ginger snap than the original cookie that I created but some may say even better!
AU: I felt like a crazy person!! I kept screaming “Why can’t I get those pretty crackled cookies like yours?!” Mine were more like puddles—like the viral chocolate chip cookie where you bang the cookie sheet on the counter during baking. But the pumpkin cookies are still one of my favorite cookies I’ve tasted all year!
EK: In case you think that this is just an issue for home cooks and once-a-year bakers, you are wrong. This is an ongoing conversation among professional pastry chefs. So much so that a professional pastry club in San Francisco inspired a book about this phenomena called The Baker’s Dozen. The inspiration occurred when the whole group made the same lemon meringue pie and brought it to a meeting—there were as many different versions of the pie as the bakers who brought them.
Here are some tips to make your cookie baking experience fun and stress free:
If the recipe calls for specific ingredients, use those for best results
Set out your butter out to soften the night before you plan to bake
If your dough doesn’t need to rest in the fridge, preheat the oven before you mix the dough. And keep heating the oven for at least 15 minutes past the time that your oven indicates it has reached the temperature. The temperature drops every time you open the oven door, so keep it closed as much as possible.
If you are baking 2 cookie sheets at the same time, rotate them front-to-back and switch them from upper-middle to lower-middle racks during cooking. As a rule of thumb, it will take longer for them to bake (than if you bake one sheet pan at a time).
Bigger isn’t always better. Shape raw cookie dough in the size of a large walnut for generous-but-not-gigantic cookies. The exception to the rule is Anthony’s PERFECT Chocolate Chip Cookies with the fabulous chocolate wafers in them.
If using a convection oven, reduce the temperature by 25ºF
Use parchment paper or a SilPat silicone baking mat to line your pan.
Measure carefully—too much flour will make your cookies tough. Measuring with a kitchen scale helps prevent this.
Measure everything—set everything in place or mis en place—before you start mixing and DO NOT OVERMIX. If your cookie dough is too light and fluffy, a.k.a. has too much air in it, they can rise in the heat of the oven and fall when you take them out.
When mixing cookie dough, never use the high setting on a stand mixer—slow and steady wins the race.
Chilling the dough makes a difference. If the recipe instructs you to chill the dough, do it.
Cool cookies on a cooling rack or on the cookie sheet to finish baking like the Brown Butter Pumpkin Cookies.
Thanks for this excellent collection of holiday cookies and tips. The Brown-Butter Pumpkin Cookies and Gingerbread Blondies are definitely calling my name! Merry Christmas to you both!
One caution about the Rice Krispie treats. I have a GF coworker & I luckily thought to verify that Rice Krispies are GF. They aren’t! They have malt syrup in them. So if you need GF treats, you need to use one of the several GF crisped rice cereals out there. Whole Foods carries a couple.