It’s holiday baking season!!! The best time of the year!!!
Yeah yeah, I have been nonexistent on this bad boy for a majority of the year, but that’s life! When you buy a house, change jobs AND find out you’re pregnant, my little passion project that is this blog seems to go to the backburner. Or, well, into storage, where it gathered a lot of dust and you only remember it when you’re busting out the Christmas decorations mid-November…
All of this being said, I’m going to do my best to post on here as often as I can! Seeing as I am no longer working in a bakery, I actually miss doing it a lot! I’m no longer drained from 2am wake ups, my feet don’t hurt from standing on them all day long in a bakeshop, and I actually have true weekends now, so I’m going to enjoy this life as long as I can until the baby boy comes in February, and get back into this wonderful world of baking!
Now that y’all are up to speed with my personal life, let’s talk COOKIES! I love a cookie, especially a holiday one. The flavors are incredibly inviting, the options are endless, and they are simple. That’s exactly what I love around the holidays. You can bake up a million different types of cookies, fill platters with them, gift them, bake them all day long and feel accomplished, plus, they’re easy! Sure, if you’re hand cutting them and decorating them with piped icing, that takes some time, but overall, they’re the most loving and forgiving of desserts!
I first made these chai spiced snickerdoodles for my work Halloween party (and won 1stprize I might add!) and decorated them with some buttercream and spooky eyes for that mummy look. When I put these out, all I could think of was uhhh HOLIDAY COOKIE STAPLE! They’re soft, they’re filled with the perfect blend of spices, they’re cozy, I could go on. These chai spiced snickerdoodles are also light enough to not give you that belly ache when you eat a few after dinner, or for a snack…see, perfection.
The recipe is a nice creamed cookie method, and you have TOTAL control over what spices are added! Also, black pepper? Yep—that’s in chai! So it’s in these babies, too. If you want more or less of something, of course, that’s up to you and your taste buds. Also, the chocolate drizzle is another optional addition to these, but it’s a nice touch to the sweet outside of the cookie to put something slightly rich yet not overwhelming on them, so I promise that you won’t regret that drizzle!
WELL! Happy holiday baking season, let’s spend this next month turning up in the kitchen, belting out your favorite holiday tunes, putting lights in every open space, and just being full of joy and happiness (and cookies…)!
ingredients
Butter—13 oz, or 1 ½ C
Brown Sugar—8 oz, or 1 C
Eggs—2
Vanilla—2 tsp
Flour—15 oz, or 3 C
Baking Soda—1 tsp
Baking Powder—1 tsp
Salt—½ tsp
Cinnamon—2 tsp
Black Pepper—1 tsp
Maca Powder (optional)—1 tsp
Sugar—½ C
Cinnamon—1 ½ TBL
Ginger—1 tsp
Cloves—½ tsp
Nutmeg—1 tsp
Black Pepper—¼ tsp
Semisweet Chocolate—8 oz, melted
process
In the bowl of your mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add in the eggs and vanilla, and mix until combined. Scraping down the sides of the bowl is necessary for this step.
In a separate bowl, sift together all of the dry ingredients (from flour-maca powder).
With the mixer on low, slowly add in the dry ingredients to the creamed ingredients.
Mix until combined, scraping down when needed.
Wrap and transfer cookie dough into the refrigerator for a couple of hours.
When you are ready to bake cookies, preheat your oven to 350 F.
In a small bowl, combine the sugar and spices.
Roll your cookie dough into 1.5 oz balls, or about 2 TBL worth of dough—of course you can make these as small or as large as you’d like!
Roll each ball into the sugar spice mixture and place on a baking sheet lined with a Silpat or sprayed with nonstick spray.
Bake cookies 12-15 minutes. They will be slightly browned on the edges, with a nice soft center, this will be what keeps them so soft.
Place on a cooling rack until ready to coat in chocolate.
When you are ready to drizzle chocolate on these cookies, melt your chocolate (I like a nice 70%-80%) either in the microwave or in a double boiler over the stove.
To drizzle, you may either use a piping bag, a spatula or a spoon to drizzle as much or as little chocolate as you’d like over these cookies.
Allow to cool before storing. These can be stored at room temperature up to a week!
Recipe makes 2 dozen cookies.
Bon Appétit!