Food + Drink

Our Favourite Christmas Recipes: Part Two

Part two of our holiday baking series will be sure to get your creative juices flowing.

“White Cherry Chip Cookies”

I love this recipe because my family loves eating them. I adapted it from another recipe one year around Christmas when I had finally finished writing exams. That the cookies came out in Christmas colours was a happy coincidence.  -Vicky

2 cups of all-purpose flour
2 tsps of baking powder
½ tsp of salt
½ cup of shortening
¼ cup of milk
1 egg
1 cup of white sugar
2-3 tbsp of vanilla extract
A handful of maraschino cherries, cut into quarters

  1. In large bowl, cream shortening, sugar, egg, milk, and vanilla extract. Mix well after the addition of each ingredient. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt; blend into sugar mixture. Fold in chopped maraschino cherries. Cover and chill for 2-4 hours.
  2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Drop dough by tablespoon-fulls onto ungreased cookie sheet about 1½ inches apart.
  3. Bake for 12-15 minutes. Let cool.
*BAKING HACK: You can skip chilling the dough, and the cookies come out tasting just as good!

“Chocolate Mint Cookies”

This was another recipe that I adapted for the Christmas holidays. Lacking those delicious Girl Guide mint cookies, I made these for my mom and me. Little did I know that everyone else would love them too. It’s now one of my favourite things to make and gift to people—take an old glass jar, fill it with these cookies, and top the lid with a bow. The recipients were more than thrilled when I did this last year.  -Vicky

1 cup of margarine
Scant ¾ cup of superfine white sugar
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
2 tsp of vanilla extract
2 ¼ cups of all-purpose flour
¼ cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
2 cups of mint chocolate chips

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Mix butter and sugar well, then beat in yolk and vanilla extract. Sift together flour, unsweetened cocoa, and pinch of salt into the mixture. Stir in mint chocolate chips until lightly combined.
  3. Shape mixture into tablespoon-sized balls. Put them on a greased cookie sheet well apart and flatten slightly. Note: The dough will be very crumbly before you shape them into balls.
  4. Bake for 12-15 minutes. Let cool for 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a cookie rack.
*BAKING HACK: If you don’t have mint chocolate chips, you can throw in 1-2 tbps  of peppermint extract. The difference? With the mint chocolate chips, you get a stronger mint flavour but only when you bite into a chip. With the peppermint extract, the mint taste runs all the way through the cookie and makes the dough softer even after baking.
*BAKING HACK: The cookies don’t bake outwards at all, so you can put them as close together as you want to bake more cookies at a time without compromising the shape of your cookies.

Leave a Reply