A Seasonal Sugar Coma! Readers Send in Their Favorite Holiday Recipes
Traditional holiday sweets — for Wondercaders, by Wondercaders!
We asked, you delivered — here are just a handful of the holiday sweets recipes y’all sent in. Remember, we always want to hear from you! So be sure to email us thoughts, recipes or just to say “hi” at nph@wondercade.com.
One of my favorite “Christmas” cookies has a peanut butter sugar cookie dough, wrapped around a mini-Snickers (square, bite-sized) before being baked, then drizzled with melted chocolate. I found the Snickers cookie recipe in a newspaper a LONG time ago. I looked on the Snickers website, and this recipe is not included there, so I’m not really sure where it came from. I am a recipe collector by nature, and one year found myself off work for two months leading up to Christmas while recovering from surgery. I had nothing else to do, so I started baking cookies to give to friends and family for Christmas. I ended up with over a dozen different cookie varieties, with 48 to 72 cookies per recipe! These were a particular favorite among the different cookie types, and I have been making them ever since. — Donna F.
Snickers Cookies
Servings: around 60 cookies
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Ingredients
- 2 sticks of butter, softened
- 1 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- ½ tsp. salt
- 2 13-oz. packages of Snickers miniatures (the little cube-shaped ones)
- 1 package semisweet chocolate chips
Directions
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1. Cream together the butter, peanut butter and sugars on low to medium speed until light and fluffy.
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2. Add eggs and vanilla until thoroughly combined.
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3. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Slowly add to the butter mixture until thoroughly combined. Cover and chill dough for 2 to 3 hours.
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4. To make cookies, unwrap the Snickers miniatures (the little cube-shaped ones) and scoop dough using a small cookie scoop and flatten. Place 1 Snickers in the center of the dough, then wrap the dough around the candy until it is completely covered.
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5. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes at 300°F on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Let cookies cool on a baking rack or wax paper.
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6. To finish the cookies, melt the semisweet chocolate chips in a double boiler or a microwave-safe bowl on high for 30 seconds at a time, stirring frequently until smooth. Drizzle cooled cookies with melted chocolate, then dust with powdered sugar.
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My holiday cookie tradition was pizzelles. They are not as popular as Italian wedding cookies or biscottis (my mom also did these as well), so I’ve made Italian wedding cookies and cake-batter blondies as an adult as well. Here is a recipe for pizzelles from my mother, via her mother-in-law. —Bob H.
Pizzelles
Servings: around 40 pizzelles
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Ingredients
- 3 eggs, beaten
- ¾ cup sugar
- ¾ cup butter, melted
- 1 ½ cups flour
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 2 tsp. pure vanilla
- 1 tsp. anise extract
Directions
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1. Add and beat ingredients together in the order listed in the ingredients list.
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2. Drop by rounded spoonful onto center of pre-heated pizzelle maker.
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3. Close lid and immediately start timer, or cook at light temperature for about 30 to 60 seconds.
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4. Use a fork to remove from pizzelle maker. Allow to cool flat on a paper towel.
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5. Dust with powdered sugar and store in an airtight container.
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Polish-American Christmas traditions were a massive part of my childhood. Starting the day after Thanksgiving, Polish Christmas carol albums were mixed in with Perry Como and Mitch Miller on the record player, and my mother started planning out the massive 13-course Christmas Eve feast, including arranging for Lake Erie perch and imported mushrooms and opłatek, a blessed wafer that is shared out by the family patriarch with the traditional wish of “health, wealth, happiness” except the unmarried girl cousins would sometimes get the wish “health, wealth, and a husband.”
As elaborate as our Christmas Eve was, I looked forward to Christmas Day at my maternal grandparents. Busia made a ham, and that was fine, but she also made chruściki.
Chruściki are a Polish pastry very unlike the Christmas sugar cookies and thumbprints my mom made. They are dough strips that are cut and twisted, then deep-fried and dusted with powdered sugar. That powdered sugar dusting down the front of my dress gave away my snitching a few before dinner every year. They used to be fried in lard, but by the end of the ’70s Busia used Crisco. Once I was a married woman I was allowed into the kitchen to see how they were made, because hot fat was deemed too dangerous for men or children. — Mary W.
Chruściki
Servings: around 24 to 36 pieces (depending on how thinly rolled)
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Ingredients
- 2 cups flour
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 tsp. sugar
- 1 tsp. salt
- 3 tbsp. sour cream
- 1 tbsp. vodka or vinegar
Directions
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1. Mix the yolks, sugar, salt, sour cream and vodka together, mix into flour.
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2. Beat with a rolling pin for 20 minutes, then roll out very thin. Cut into rectangles, cut a slit in the middle, twist.
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3. Fry in hot fat until brown. Dust with powdered sugar.
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4. If you want to skip the 20 minutes of beating, because your Christmas wasn’t that stressful, you can mix it in a stand mixer with a dough hook, let it run for 10 minutes on med-low, let rest for 15 minutes, then roll out.
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And favorite holiday treat? Root beer float cookies!! I’m happy to share the recipe as it’s a huge hit with everyone I know! Here it is…enjoy! —Barbara K.
Root Beer Float Cookies
Servings: around 3 dozen cookies
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Ingredients
- ¾ cup butter, softened
- ¾ cup light brown sugar
- ¼ cup sugar
- 1 small box instant vanilla pudding mix, dry, do not prepare
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp. root beer concentrate
- 2¼ cup flour
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1-2 cups white chocolate chips
Directions
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1. Cream butter and sugars together.
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2. Beat in instant vanilla pudding mix well.
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3. Add eggs and root beer concentrate and beat until well incorporated.
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4. Add flour and baking soda and beat until well incorporated.
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5. Stir in white chocolate chips.
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6. Roll into 1-inch balls and place on greased cookie sheet.
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7. Bake at 350°F for 8-10 minutes.
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8. Try not to eat them all in one sitting!
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