Sticky Pockets & Jammy Bars

How time whizzes by! Holiday Cookies 2009 is just round the corner - 4 sessions only, on 10 October, 11 October, 24 October and 25 October 2009 ; for all inquiries, please call the school at +65 6479 8442 or email shermaycs@yahoo.com.sg - and I am very much looking forward to the preparations for it.

Much as I love them, who needs a Diptyque scented candle? If the holiday class preparatory periods seasons past are anything to go by, the toasty scent of Christmas spices, rounded out by a touch of sugar plums and a topnote of chocolate, will permeate my kitchen (and rest of the apartment really) in the coming months. Luckily, it is a sugar-and-spice scent I adore, and associate with all things nice, so I really couldn't be more thrilled! It is a joyous and uplifting scent, and I daresay one of the biggest reasons why so many of us who love baking in general, love holiday baking in particular!

Anyways, I wanted to put up some pictures of the bonus recipes and ideas included within the recipe pack, in addition to the core demonstrated recipes seen here. They include:

Sticky Date Pockets
A sticky date filling is encased by a friable cinnamon-and-vanilla scented pastry. The look of these (see picture at beginning of post) somewhat reminds of miniature mincemeat pies, and are in fact the ideal treat to proffer in lieu of those should you find yourself serving non-mincemeat eaters!

Zesty Raisin Stuffed Cookies
A raisin and candied lemon peel filling enveloped by lemon scented pastry, and a definite winner with lemon lovers.

Orange Marmalade & Cherry Bars
A crisp brown sugar-and-oatmeal crust is topped with a filling of orange marmalade and dried cherries.

Apricot Bars with Orange Blossom Water, Saffron & Pistachios
Flavoured with the merest hint of orange blossom water and saffron, this apricot jam filling is an intriguing one.

Nutella Bars
Once the knack of making the brown sugar oatmeal crust is figured out, what lies within can be any number of things, and an excellent reason to go shop for all manner of luxurious jams and preserves. But frankly, my favourite thing to do is to reach for the Nutella jar! Because one can never have too many thinly veiled excuses to indulge in lashings of the stuff, this is really a number for us Nutella fiends...

Holiday Cookies 2009 - Classes

I'll be teaching Holiday Cookies 2009, a demo class, at Shermay's Cooking School on 10 October 2009 (Saturday), 11 October 2009 (Sunday), 24 October 2009 (Saturday) and 25 October 2009 (Sunday) - the October schedule has all the necessary details. For all inquiries, please call the school at +65 6479 8442 or email shermaycs@yahoo.com.sg

Practice makes perfect, they say, and this applies as much to baking a cookie as it does to everything else one may wish to develop some semblance of proficiency at, be it playing Mozart's piano Concerto No. 15 in B-flat Major or pulling off some Nitro Circus-esque freestyle motocross double backflip. Hence the commencement of holiday-themed classes early on, because believe you me, the season will be upon us before we know it, and wouldn't it be nice to have squeezed in a couple of trial runs before the home-baked gifting begins? Anyone touched by the OCD all too well knows that one of the greatest ironies (and least-admitted truths) in life is that the appearance of effortlessness, of seemingly artless perfection, takes effort.

Anyways, before I digress too much...if only all manner of effort were as pleasurable to undertake as the effort undertaken to master a cookie recipe, I can only imagine I would be a whole lot better at a whole bunch of other things!

On the menu:

Pecan Snowballs
Also known as Russian Tea Cakes and Mexican Wedding Cookies, these delectable and delicate special occasion cookies, rich with butter and finely ground pecans, are the very definition of melt-in-the-mouth - most people find it virtually impossible to stop at one when it comes to these buttery morsels.

Basler Brunsli

Flourless, nuanced with spice and kissed with a touch of Kirsch, this scrumptious and utterly unique almond-and-chocolate cookie (using Valrhona Equatoriale Noire 55% Dark Chocolate and Valrhona Cocoa) is based on a Swiss Christmas specialty. The easy-to-handle dough, rolled out thickly, can be cut into any shape you fancy - I especially like little trees (see first picture of post) and stars.

Fig Pillows

If you aren't familiar with buccellati or cucidati, the festive cookie that's a Sicilian favourite, think of these as the haut de gamme cousin of the humble Fig Newton. A sumptuous and complex sticky fig filling - accented with spice and redolent of Marsala - is encased by a friable cinnamon-and-vanilla-bean scented dough, this fig bar really belongs in a league of its own.

Raspberry & Cranberry Crumble Bar Cookies

A crisp brown sugar-and-oatmeal crust topped with a filling of raspberry preserves and dried cranberries, this simple and simply delicious number is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

I'll put up another post soon with details on the Bonus Section with Extra Recipes, Ideas & Serving Suggestions. This includes:

Orange Marmalade & Cherry Bars

A crisp brown sugar-and-oatmeal crust topped with a filling of orange marmalade and dried cherries

Apricot Bars with Orange Blossom Water, Saffron & Pistachios

A crisp brown sugar-and-oatmeal crust topped with a filling of apricot jam flavoured with orange blossom water and saffron

Nutella Bars

A crisp brown sugar-and-oatmeal crust topped with a Nutella filling

Sticky Date Pockets

A sticky date filling encased by a friable cinnamon-and-vanilla scented pastry

Zesty Raisin Stuffed Cookies

A raisin and candied lemon peel filling encased by a friable lemon scented pastry