Cookie Monster!

Hi, Y'all,

The weather outside is frightful (ok, I'll stop here, time for carols is definitely over, but you get the picture). Our doggie wants to stay in his bed the whole day, and I feel him, but can't help it. But to make life sweeter, cookies were invented. Well, in Germany cookies don't categorize as dessert like in the US for example, they are a treat mostly for Christmas time - at least the homemade ones. But in my opinion (and in the opinion of that large coffee chain with the white on green logo) cookies can and should be enjoyed throughout the whole year. Although I must say, I prefer my small cookies which disappear with one or two bites over these palm-size cookies.

Therefore please find something to make your mouth watery...

Here are - arranged with love and atmosphere - my usual suspects, e.g. vanilla crescents and hazelnut macaroons (detailed pictures below). 

Furthermore, I made Nutella cookies aka reindeer noses for all neighbors in the house. Of course, there was one cookie with red frosting in each parcel :-) 

They were packaged in TetraPak with a crocheted border. That way you could - if you wanted to - reuse the former milk cartons as pencil holder, storage container or flower pot.

Besides these staples I always want to try something new. This time I chose orange clouds and jam stripes. The orange clouds turned out beautiful and were delish, but I wished the orange flavor to be more prominient. S'pose to take more orange zest next time. 

The jam stripes are ideal for batch production :-) As you might know, my cookie decorating patience is strictly limited. To embellish single cookies devotedly with sprinkles, frosting and whatnot - that's not my thing. They have to taste good, look pretty and have to be done quickly and easily at the same time. Therefore, I had to try them. At first you make long flat rolls with your dough and place them on your baking sheet. Then carve a channel into the dough and fill it with jam (I took the second last jar of my homemade grape jelly). 

Bake that and spritz some melted chocolate on top. In theory you could leave that step out, but I like the cracking chocolate when you take a bite. And the combination of fruit and chocolate is a match made in heaven!

Afterwards cut the strands into stripes and you are done! And for me personally, that is the perfect dough/jam ratio - there are other cookies where you glue two layers of dough together with jam, and most of the time, there is not enough jam in between for my liking. But if you take more jam, it spills out. These cookies are the perfect workaround for that problem! 

And while baking, I have to add the last cake I made. Hubby and I binged some Netflix baking shows lately, and an Italian cheesecake left us highly interested. I know the German and American cheesecakes but Italien was new - so I had to test it. There are varieties galore but I opted for a version with amarettini cookies, apricots and quark/curd cheese (thus no ricotta or other form of cream cheese). Was pretty awesome! 

With that said - enjoy your time and cookies!!!