(fun music)
- Hi, everyone, I am Jason Barrows with jerryjamesstone.com
and today we're gonna make an icebox cookie
for the Christmas holiday.
It's going to be cranberry, ginger and orange
and I'll show you exactly how to make it and here we go.
(fun music)
So the first thing that we're gonna do
is we need to take our cranberries and our sugar
and we're going to process them in the food processor.
We want the cranberries to be broken down a little bit
to little bits.
We don't want it to be like a puree.
Just small enough so that when you bite into the cookie,
you're not eating into a big cranberry.
Okay, so we're all set there.
We're just gonna take this out, put it into a bowl.
So we're just pouring our cranberries and sugar into a bowl
and then the next thing we're gonna do
is we're gonna add all of our dry ingredients
in a stand mixer.
So I'm adding in my flour and then our granulated sugar,
little bit of salt 'cause I'm using unsalted butter,
some ground ginger.
Okay, I'm just going to give that a spin.
All right, next step
is we're gonna actually put in our butter next
and the reason why we're not putting in our butter in first
is we don't wanna cream the butter.
As a shortbread, you don't really want to work it too much.
You want it to be nice and tender.
So that's why we're adding the butter second.
We're gonna mix that not till it's completely incorporated.
We still want some chunks of butter in there
because we're gonna be adding in some other ingredients
and we don't wanna mix that too far.
So your dough should look like this.
It should just have some coarse pieces of butter in there.
Kinda rough dough, not smooth yet.
We're gonna be adding in our cranberries
that we processed in the food processor, our vanilla extract
and our orange zest and then we're gonna mix this
until it forms a cohesive dough
and that should take about 15, 20 seconds.
So I'm gonna divide my dough into two piles here
on top of a piece of parchment paper and what I'm gonna do
is I'm going to form these into cylinders, into logs
just with your hands.
I kinda just pinch it as I go along
just trying to make sure that it's the same diameter
just to make it a little bit easier
and then what we're gonna do
is we're gonna take the top of the parchment paper
and we're gonna flip it over the top like that.
We're gonna take a ruler
and we're gonna push that up against the bottom of the dough
and we're gonna push away from us.
We want the dough to be very tight through here
and by doing that,
it's actually going to spread the dough out further
and make it nice and compact
and kind of just a nice uniform log.
All right, so we're gonna just roll
the rest of the parchment paper over so we have a nice tube
and we're just going to take that, put that right inside.
What this does is it retains the shape of your dough
as it's resting in the fridge.
So if you were just to put this in your fridge
and just put it on the shelf, it's gonna have a flat bottom.
No one likes flat bottoms.
So just make sure that you put this in a nice tube,
stays nice and round, round is what we like.
So we're gonna put that into the fridge
for a couple hours at least.
The next step, what we're gonna do
is we're going to roll the dough in sugar
so we want this to be somewhat firm
just so that when we roll it, it keeps its shape.
So we're just gonna put these in the fridge
and then we'll do that next.
So our dough has rested in the fridge
for about a couple hours.
It's nice and firm.
We're going to take a small pan.
We're going to roll it in sugar.
I'm using turbinado here.
You could use sanding sugar.
You can use regular sugar, whatever you got.
It's all gonna be good.
I like turbinado because it's just gonna give it
kind of a deeper flavor
and just a nice crunch on the outside.
So we're gonna roll this in the sugar just back and forth.
You wanna apply some pressure
just to make sure that it actually sticks inside the dough.
Otherwise, it'll just fall off when you cut it
and then you won't have that nice,
crunchy sugar on the outside that we're looking for.
If you find a bald spot,
you can move your sugar around a little bit
and just kinda roll back and over it.
Just wanna make sure that you cover most of it.
Okay, now that that's finished,
we're going to slice and bake our cookies
to about a quarter inch rounds.
So now we're gonna put these on our prepared baking sheet.
I'm using parchment here.
You could also use a Silpat.
Just make sure that there's something
between the cookies and the pan.
So we're gonna put these cookies
in a preheated 350 degree oven for 12 to 15 minutes.
You don't want too much color on these.
Just until they're set.
So we're gonna put these in the oven and here we go.
So when you take your cookies out of the oven,
you can leave them on the sheet pan
for about five or six minutes just to let them set,
just kinda chill out for a bit
before you put them on a cooling rack.
Just make sure they're nice and cool before you enjoy them.
There you have it.
Some fun Christmas cookies for the holiday season.
If you have any comments or questions, please let us know
and we'll see ya next time.
Thanks.
(fun music)
So it's gonna be nice and easy.
You can make it ahead of time and it will save.
All right.