(cheerful music)
This year I'm actually celebrating the holidays
here in Montana and it's the first Christmas
I'm not going to be spending with my own family.
I'm going to be shipping some delicious cookies
to everyone that I know.
Nothing says happy holidays
like homemade cookies and a handwritten card.
I'm going to show you one
of my favorite holiday cookie recipes
that is so easy to send to friends and family
no matter where they're celebrating this year.
All right, so let's get started
making our Vanilla Spice Shortbread Cookies.
First thing we're gonna do
is we're just going to mix-up our dry ingredients.
One teaspoon of fennel seeds and one teaspoon of anise.
(seeds crunching)
We're just kinda like crush 'em up a little bit.
Dried orange, cardamom, two and a half cups of flour.
Perfect.
A little bit of nutmeg. (grater scratching)
You can't have holidays without the nutmeg.
Nice, warm, nutty spice.
A little bit of salt.
Give that a shake. (bowl scrapping)
So, that's our dry ingredients.
(upbeat music)
We're gonna throw two sticks of butter
and you want to make sure your butter is room temperature
when you start making these cookies.
(mixer whirring)
So, I'm just gonna slowly add in one cup of sugar
to our two sticks of butter.
Sour cream, (mixer whirring)
a little bit of vanilla
and then all of our dry ingredients.
(mixer whirring)
There we go.
This is how you know the dough is done,
when it all comes together in a ball.
Pretty soft right now
which is exactly what we're looking for.
So, we're just gonna cut this in half
and all I'm gonna do is just roll it out a little bit,
I'm just trying to get it to 10 inches.
Then all you wanna do is just wrap it really slowly,
make sure it's nice and tight.
(paper rustling)
And then here we go, ready for the freezer
and whenever we're ready to ship a package
all you gotta do is pull it out of the freezer,
slice it up and throw it in the oven.
(scene whooshing) (upbeat music)
So I let this dough chill for a little bit,
it's nice and firm now.
Slice it up into like half inch rounds
and I'm just going to grab a sheet tray,
I lined it with a little bit
of parchment paper (paper rustling)
so it doesn't stick
and I'll just pop our little shortbread cookie doughs
right onto this sheet pan.
I have an oven set at 350 degrees
and I'm gonna cook these for 12 to 15 minutes.
Throw all those cookies in the oven,
I'm gonna get started on our topping.
A little bit of sugar, half a teaspoon of cinnamon.
(spoon tapping)
And then you just want to set that aside
and while these cookies are baking
I'm going to start writing my holiday cards.
This holiday season, things may be a little bit different
but they don't need to be less merry.
Since I won't be spending the holidays
with my parents this year
I'm going to include a Hallmark holiday card
and a cookie care package.
A card can brighten someone's day with a meaningful note
so you can share more merry.
Check out hallmark.com
so you can see what cards can do this holiday season.
(scene whooshing)
The timer just went off so I'm going to check our cookies
and see what they look like.
(cheerful music)
Nice golden brown edges, still a little pale in the middle.
They should be warm to the touch but not hot.
Um, you can just take them out using your hands.
Toss the cookies one at a time in the cinnamon sugar.
So, put a bunch of cupcake liners inside of our tin.
Now, I'm just gonna fill each of those with couple cookies.
And I'm going to add a little bit of holiday flair!
(cheerful music)
I'm going to show you a chocolatey version
and since I'm sending it to you,
I should add something to make it
a little bit salty, a little bit fun.
Um, so let me get started here.
In this stand mixer I'm just going to put in
two sticks of softened butter.
You want to make sure it's super soft, by the way,
like, check out how soft that is.
A tablespoon of sour cream,
so a little bit of sour cream went in there
and then one cup of sugar. (mixer whirring)
I'm just gonna turn that on
and let that all kind of come together.
While that's mixing up
I'm going to sift together our ingredients.
We're using cocoa powder here.
You always wanna make sure that you sift your cocoa powder,
especially if you live in like a humid environment
and it has a tendency to get really-
That's right, it sticks.
clumpy, right? Exactly, yeah.
Half a teaspoon of salt, forgot about that.
Now, I'm just gonna pick up this sheet of wax paper.
Yeah, if you put all that in a bowl
and you try and put the bowl next to the other bowl,
they hit each other, it goes everywhere.
It's pain in the butt.
Once it kinda comes together, which this one is,
it'll start to like pull away from the sides of the bowl.
That way you know it's kind of ready
for all of your mix-ins.
Dark chocolate, little bit of milk chocolate.
Um, I chopped it up a little bit, too.
So a half a cup of each
then a half a cup of chopped, salted pistachios.
You mix that up, you let that come together,
divide the dough in half
just like we did with the Vanilla Sugar Cookie
and then you roll it up. (laughing)
And, honestly, if you're not gonna mail something
you could just give them a log of cookie dough.
I would love that.
So, this is what our dough looks like once you slice it up.
You put a bunch of those on a cookie sheet
with parchment paper- Right, just like before.
and bake that in the oven.
Here's our cookies already finished.
Gorgeous!
Just beautiful.
And I put a little bit of salt on top for you, Rach,
cause they know that you like that.
I'm gonna pack these up
and send it with this little holiday card.
Look how cute that one is. Oh, I love it!
Isn't that one fun.
(scene whooshing) (bells chiming)