Christmas cookies continues...

Here comes another Christmas treat in my cookie series.

Pinwheel Cookies

Zebra cookies

Gifting home baked cookies is the great way to celebrate these holidays. But why settle for one type of cookies when you can easily have many ?

One base recipe +   Some   magic   =    Bourbon biscuits    Choco cookies    Pinwheel cookies    Zebra cookies

Doesn't the above equation reminds you the old chemistry class or Maths Theorem class ?
This is the secret formula for my Christmas cookie treats. By keeping the bourbon biscuit recipe as my base recipe I did little variation and did 3 more kind of cookies. Thanks to Nithu's kitchen, the Bourbon biscuit now got two more little sisters, Pinwheel cookies and Zebra cookies.

For both the cookies, I used two coloured cookie dough with single recipe.

Ingredients : One layer -- the chocolate layer the ingredients same as the choco cookies. Second layer -- Plain one, except the cocoa powder and instant coffee. Preparation  : --- Prepare the two separate dough as mentioned in the choco cookies. Don't make the dough  more soft. Play with water and make sure all the crumbs are held together and knead the dough. --- Wrap both the dough separately and refrigerate it for an hour. *** Click here to find the recipe and the method to prepare the dough Method - for Pinwheel cookies --- Preheat the oven to 350 F --- After an hour, take both the dough out from the fridge, unwrap them. --- Take either one of the dough, divide the dough into two equal parts. Roll one dough to 3-4 mm thickness on a parchment paper and make approximately  10" x 8 " rectangle. --- Follow the same  procedure for another color dough and make another rectangle. --- Place rolled white dough on to the chocolate dough, press gently to make an even layer. --- From one end, start rolling the rectangle dough tightly and form a log. Wrap the log and refrigerate again for an hour. --- Follow the same step for the rest of the dough. --- Take the dough and cut 1/4 inch thick slices. Now you can see nice two coloured swirls. --- Place them on the cookie sheet and bake it for 10 - 12 minutes. --- Once baked, cool it and put it in air tight container.

I did not roll tightly the first set of dough and also did not refrigerate it. So the dough was little flimsy and I was not able to cut the log properly. This led me to Zebra cookies.

Here comes the method for making these cookies. --- Since the log was flimsy I was not able to cut the dough log in proper round. So I cut the log  to 1/2 inch  plus thickness. --- Then cut the 1/2inch dough vertically, flattened it and formed a round shape. I got uneven color on the flattened uncooked cookie. --- Made some impression using the fork, sprinkled some raw sugar. Placed on the cookie sheet and baked them at 350 F at 10 - 12 minutes.

These cookies were a big hit, my husband still asks me how I made the patchy effect on the Zebra cookies and the double swirl effect on the Pinwheel cookies.

Christmas choco cookies

When I think of Deepavali, the first thing strikes my mind is the fresh smell of new clothes, next comes the smoke of crackers and different kind of sweets and savories. When I think of Christmas, it is decorations, Christmas tree, exchanging gifts and baking delicious cookies and cakes. It is just 4 days to Christmas and I like to drive through to see the light decorations in the night. It is very nice to see the houses, malls and the streets decorated with hundreds and thousands of lights.

My holiday celebration started from the Thanksgiving day. Windows are decorated with the cute multi coloured  LED lights and a kutti Christmas tree as a center piece of attraction. As a final part of the celebration, here comes the Christmas treat.

Baking cookies and cakes at home is a holiday tradition. Ginger bread, sugar cookies, butter cookies and cookies cut into various shapes related to holiday themes, fruit cakes... So many varieties.

Choco cookies

Infact, these choco cookies are ' little sister ' of the Bourbon biscuits, which I tried from Nithu's Kitchen. I used the same recipe, instead of filling the cream in between the two biscuits I used it to decorate on top of each cookie.

Ingredients : 1 cup -- All Purpose Flour 1/4 cup -- Butter 1/2 cup -- Sugar 1/2 tsp -- Instant Coffee Powder** 1/2 tsp -- Baking Soda 1/2 tsp -- Baking Powder 2 tbs -- Cocoa 1/2 tsp -- Vanilla Extract 4 - 5 tbs -- Milk ** Instant coffee powder is optional. But always try to use instant coffee are freshly brewed coffee when you are using chocolate in any recipe. This will enhance the chocolate flavour more. Method: --- Preheat the oven to 350 F. --- Mix the sugar and butter along with the vanilla extract. --- Sieve all the dry ingredients (Flour, Coco powder, Baking powder, Baking soda) except the instant coffee. --- To the dry mixture, add the instant coffee. If using fresh brewed coffee, you can add along with the sugar butter mixture. --- Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients and mix well. If required add milk half to one tsp at a time to the mixture and form a dough. --- Take the dough and roll them to 3- 4 mm thickness on a plastic sheet and cut them according to desired shape and bake it at 350 F for about 12-15 minutes. --- Once the cookies are out, cool them completely before doing any decoration on it.

This is a very simple cookie. To have a celebration touch I decorated these cookies with the store bought Icing tube, resembling the snow effects.

Homemade frozen roti

Are you a kind of person, who does preparatory works on weekends and do a little work on weekdays, specially when it comes for food?

My Chita Mami used to do lot like this when I was staying with her in Chennai. She will cut all the vegetables required for the week, prepare Idli / Dosa batter ready, sometimes she also make Milagu kuzhambu, puli kachal, tomato thokku for Monday's lunch. This preparatory work always make our work easy. She is very smart and fast and in 1.30 hrs she will make sambar / Rasam, curry, sadam for lunch, breakfast. Also pack 3 set of lunch boxes, get ready herself.  Everything used to be very easy and fast because of the already cut veggies.

Frozen roti is one such thing.

Though I am not lazy to cook and have plenty of time, I still have the frozen roti in stock for those emergencies. This will be very handy whenever we come home late and are either too bored or tired to cook. I used to buy my supply of frozen rotis from the grocery store. While it was cheap and convenient, it felt a bit 'heavy' and I could never eat more than 2 rotis in a meal. I then realised why shouldn't I try the same at home.

Ingredients :
Roti dough - prepare as per your taste
12" x 12" size Cut Polythene sheets
Some oil

Method :
--- Make the roti dough and press the rotis as usual.
--- Take a  polythene sheet, oil it on a side. Place the roti on oil side.
--- Brush some oil on the other side and place ne more polythene sheet.
--- The pressed dough should be sandwiched between the sheets.
--- Make as many roti as you want and repeat the same procedure.
--- Put all the sandwiched rotis in a ziplock bag and throw it in the freezer.

This will stay upto 2 months, I tried many times.

Whenever you want to cook, these rotis are no need to be thawed. Just take it from the freezer remove the sheet and put them on hot pan and cook it. If you keep it out then it will stick on to the sheet.