From Lemon Butter Curls to Gingerbread Blondies, 7 cookies to make your holidays more delicious
New York Times Cooking unveils show stopping cookies and videos for our annual Cookie Week. This year's class is especially dazzling, with chewy gingerbread blondies, buttery lemon swoops and spicy hot chocolate crinkles, to name a few. Check out these recipes, then make one — or make them all.
Technicolor Cookies
Cookies artfully decorated with royal icing are a holiday classic, but their fine details and beautiful colors can take hours to achieve. Not with these gorgeous cookies. Once the icing is made and stained, it takes only a few minutes to decorate. The icing is simply poured over the cookies, a technique inspired by the one used to pour swirly colors of mirror glaze over smooth cakes. (For a quicker alternative to royal icing, simply dip or drizzle the cookies with melted chocolate.) No two cookies will be the same, and that's a big part of the charm. Underneath the exterior is a crisp, satisfying shortbread flavored with heaps of bright orange zest and quintessential winter spices.
By Samantha Seneviratne
Yield: About 48 cookies
Total time: 1 hour, 30 minutes, plus 7 hours chilling and setting
For the cookies:
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups/320 grams all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom or 1 teaspoon freshly crushed cardamom
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal)
3/4 cup/169 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup/200 grams granulated sugar
2 tablespoons freshly grated orange zest (from about 2 large navel oranges)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg, at room temperature
For the royal icing:
6 cups/680 grams powdered sugar (1 1/2 pounds)
6 tablespoons/50 grams meringue powder
