I love food blogging and Twitter. Twitter is my latest addiction. If I hadn’t signed up for Twitter I would never had received an invitation from Andrea to participate in baking a collection of recipes from Gourmet.com. Gourmet has complied cookie recipes from 1941-2008 for the holidays! Each of us choose 12 cookies to bake and will present our cookies over the next 12 days. That’s a lot of baking, but I couldn’t resist. The trick is to do recipes in batches so your are not stressed each day. I also don’t want to be stressed about my bank account so I have tried to pick recipes where I have most of the ingredients on hand. But after a day of baking, I will have to stock up some more. What am I going to do with all these cookies you ask? Give them away to friends, family, etc all boxed up nice. How’s that for holiday cheer!
My first recipe is from December 1951 ,Navettes Sucrees( Sugar Shuttles).I have to say thus far this is one my favorites.Not to sweet and a little elegant cookie. They are called sugar shuttles because they look like a part that holds the thread on a sewing machine. Well if they say so. I love how the dough is dipped in egg whites and then rolled in sugar giving it a gentle crunch. Some of the older recipes don’t list the ingredients first and this caused some confusion for me at times.But Gourmet. com clearly states on each recipe that they have left the recipes unchanged and they are how they were originally printed.I’m sure some housewives back then where cursing them out! I had some issues with this recipe. I had to add an additional 2 tablespoons of butter, as the dough was dry. And I forgot to butter the parchment on the first batch. They turned out perfect! However the last batch I baked on buttered parchment. Those kind of caramelized and burned on the bottom so I recommend you just place them on parchment. Thankfully there were not many in that batch.With all the richness and over indulgence this holiday,these cookies are simple , wholesome , and satisfying while not being to rich nor sweet.
Be sure to visit my other baking friends and see what they chose to bake for the holidays from Gourmet.com.