- Hi guys today, I'm gonna show you
a really cute and delicious Christmas cookie idea
to package up and send off to friends and family,
that you may not be able to be with this time of year.
I'm calling it my whole in my heart Christmas cookie,
because that's kind of how I feel right now.
Not being able to be with my extended family and friends
over the holiday season.
Now, if you like this idea
but you don't celebrate Christmas,
you could totally use this concept on a different design.
In fact, I really like the little house cookie cutter
and put a heart inside of that,
to signify that your household is missing somebody
this time of year.
So we're gonna begin with the chocolate cookie dough first.
So I'm using salted butter because I'm here in the States
and our salted butter is just more flavorful than salty,
but if you live outside the States,
I would probably use unsalted.
Then we're also gonna add a cup and one quarter of sugar.
We need enough sugar with these cookies
because we're gonna to use a full cup of cocoa powder,
just so they're really rich and chocolatey.
And that cocoa powder is unsweetened.
Okay, and now we're just gonna beat this up.
(machine whirring) and you just wanna beat it up
until it's nice and fluffy.
And then we're also gonna add one egg,
and then you also wanna add one and a half teaspoons
of pure vanilla extract.
Okay, then at this stage you wanna scrape down the bowl,
just making sure all of your butter
and egg has been incorporated.
So for our dry ingredients,
we are gonna be sifting them
because we're working with cocoa powder,
which can be pretty lumpy.
So, we'll start with one cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
into the sifter.
And if you can get one like this,
that has like a little lip onto it,
it's pretty handy for holding on top of the bowl.
And then we're also going to use two cups of flour.
So we can sift that.
And if you sift it together,
then that way it's kind of pre mixed.
Then at this stage, we can also add our baking powder.
So we're gonna do just a quarter teaspoon.
And you can go in with a spatula
and just press it into the sieve,
and that will help
break up any of the remaining clumps you might have.
Then we are also gonna add,
three quarters teaspoon of salt, in it goes.
Then we can whisk the whole thing together
and make sure it's nice and combined.
That easy.
Then we are going to add the dry ingredients
into our butter mixture, a few spoonfuls at a time.
And these dry ingredients will go everywhere
if you are not careful.
So I say, start at a very low speed
and then work your way up.
(machine whirring)
Just 'cause you have the flour and the cocoa powder,
so you don't want a big,
dust storm on your hands.
Scrape down the bowl as needed.
And in the final beating,
you just wanna keep beating it together
until it starts to pull away from the sides
and look more like a dough.
Takes a few turns, but it'll get there.
Okay, so once the dough is ready,
we need to refrigerate it for,
I would say a minimum of two hours,
overnight is even better.
So what I like to do is split the dough in half,
because it makes a fair amount,
and then that way you're keeping one dough refrigerated
and rolling out the other.
If you put it all into one big parchment paper,
then you have to roll the whole thing out.
And I find that it starts to get to room temperature
before you can cut all the cookies
and then you have to refrigerate it.
So this way I think splitting it in half or even quarters
is the way to go.
All right, so this looks good.
Now we're just gonna wrap it up.
And I think it does help
to use a full sheet of parchment paper,
and you'll see why when we go to cut them out.
Because I like to cut out the cookies
on the parchment paper,
and then that way you don't have to use any flour
or cocoa powder to cut them out.
So that's basically the chocolate cookie dough.
The vanilla cookie dough is almost exactly the same recipe,
except for the fact,
you're not gonna be using the cocoa powder
and you're going to be using more flour.
So the full recipe is in the description,
or you also can head to my blog,
entertainingwithbeth.com to print it out.
But I thought we'd spend the time
doing something a little bit more fun,
which is the cutting, the baking and the decorating.
So let's get to that.
Okay, our dough is all nice and chilled.
So you wanna roll it out
until it's about an eighth of an inch thick.
And then I find with cut cookies,
it's always best to try to roll it out
the least amount of times that you can get away with.
(laughs) just because the more that you roll it out,
the warmer the dough gets
and then you have to refrigerate it again.
So I try to roll out a large piece
and then try to get as many cuts as I possibly can
out of the one piece.
All right, let's see.
So I have my little Christmas cookie cut-out,
and I am just going to go right up to the edge, again,
making sure that I use as much of this dough as I can
in one cut.
There, and then you just wanna place it
on a parchment lined cookie sheet.
So let's do this part first.
So we're gonna get all our little trees on there.
Then once you've gotten as many trees as you can
out of that first roll,
go ahead and turn it back into a ball.
Wrap it up in the parchment paper and keep it in the fridge,
because you probably won't go back to this one for a bit
because now, we wanna work on the vanilla dough
to put it in with our cookies.
Okay, so now I have this little tiny heart cookie cutter,
which is gonna work perfectly
in the center of our little trees here.
Basically what I'm gonna do,
is cut two of the hearts.
Its usually, pop it out on the other side like that,
or you can use a skewer if you need to.
Okay, now I will like cut Christmas cookies are some work,
but I'm telling you,
they are so charming and so much fun to make.
I think when you get them all done,
they're really gratifying.
You just have to plan ahead,
and make the dough the night before
and then do all the cutting and baking, the day of.
and maybe give yourself another day
for the decorating and sending.
So with cut cookies,
it's also important to keep the dough chilled
so that their shapes will be preserved.
So I actually, while I was rolling this out,
just put these in the freezer just so they could firm up.
And then we're gonna go back
to our little mini heart cookie cutter.
And we are just going to cut out,
I'm gonna start with two hearts.
And put the little vanilla hearts inside just like that.
It's kind of like working with Play-Doh (laughs)
You just have to play around with it and smoosh it in there,
And then as it bakes,
they'll sort of fuse together and it's so cute.
Okay, then we're gonna put these in the oven
at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for just 12 minutes.
Then working with the same vanilla dough,
I'm gonna use a little bit bigger of a heart cookie cutter.
This is kind of why I like the set
'cause you have a lot of different sizes to choose from,
and it's good for Valentine's day too.
We are just going to cut out as many as we can.
I like to include eight in each little cookie packet.
Now the thing with cut Christmas cookies,
is you really wanna bake them according to their size.
So these little hearts are smaller than the Christmas trees,
so they're better off baking separately,
otherwise they would be done
before the Christmas cookies would be done.
Okay, then for the little house,
I'm gonna use this cookie cutter.
See, it's just an outline of a house
but I think it's really cute,
especially when we're gonna cut out the heart inside.
So we'll leave two of the hearts plain like this
as little cutout silhouettes,
and then I'm gonna fill the other two hearts
with the chocolate dough, so cute.
Okay, and then we're gonna bake these
at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 13 to 14 minutes.
Now we're gonna make the larger hearts
that we're gonna use as the coordinating cookies.
And then these are also gonna go in
at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about eight to nine minutes,
and then all of our cookies will be baked.
Okay, so our cookies are all baked and ready to go.
You can see our little Christmas trees
are now fused with the hearts.
To package our cookies up,
I've chosen this really pretty red tint.
Then I'm just gonna fill this with a little of this raffia.
I think it helps protect the cookies if you're shipping them
so that they don't rattle around.
And it also just makes the tin look fuller
and a little bit more generous.
You're just gonna stack up your Christmas trees like that
and pop them in one of these little plastic bags.
Then I'm gonna fasten this
with a little bit of bakers twine.
And then we're gonna put the hearts
in their own separate bag.
And then we can put the lid on the tin,
and see the nice clean edges the tin creates,
I just love these tins, I think they're so great.
And then, I'm just gonna keep this real simple.
I love the white grosgrain ribbon
because to me it just, I don't know,
sort of reminds me of snow.
And then for a little classic touch,
we're gonna add some faux evergreen.
I just love the combination of faux evergreen,
red and white.
I think it's such a classic combination,
that's always in style.
See, how cute is that?
I would love to get this (laughing)
Okay, now for our gift tag,
I love this little gift tag set that I found on Amazon,
because it comes with three different types of tags
and they're in different motifs.
So there's a little reindeer,
there's a Christmas tree and a snowflake.
And then it also comes with raffia tie.
It also comes in red too,
so you could choose to use the red.
I actually buy both
and then I mix and match throughout the season.
And what's fun about it is,
you see, it has just like a nice cutout,
so it sort of works with the theme of our cookies.
And then when it's hanging against the box,
you kind of can see the red.
And then I like to write a little message on one side
and then keep the other side plain,
I just think it looks prettier that way.
There, all ready for gifting.
Okay, then for our little house cookies,
I think something that's really festive,
but isn't so Christmassy
would be more of like a winter theme.
So for that,
these boxes actually come in this beautiful rose gold.
So I'm gonna be using those.
And then for our bakers twine,
I'm actually just gonna use the raffia
that came in with the tags
because hey, we have it anyway, right.
Waste not, want not.
So we have our chocolate hearts,
but then we also have the little hearts
that were cut out from the cookie.
And you can bake those off too
and kind of mix and match, which I think is fun.
So I'm gonna do six of the chocolate hearts
and then four of the vanilla hearts,
just so I make sure they all fit in here.
You can pop on the lid.
And then for our decorations,
I really love this beautiful sort of mauve ribbon,
which I think looks really pretty against the rose gold.
And then for a little decoration,
you can use these beautiful silver snowflakes,
which I thought were so pretty.
And then these beautiful little silver branches,
which almost look like they're frostbitten.
Then you can go ahead and use the gift tag
that came with the little gift set.
I like the snowflake one.
And there you have it.
Okay, you guys, I hope you give one of these cookies a try
and send them to somebody.
I think it would be great either to tend to grandparents
or for grandparents to send to grandchildren,
friends, relatives, sisters, brothers,
whoever is on your list,
and whoever you are missing at the moment.
I know it will totally make their day.
All right you guys, I'll see you back here next week
when we are going to tackle our Christmas menu,
game plan and all.
All right, I'll see you then.