Who doesn’t love a good truffle? They make excellent gifts and perfect potluck desserts, but what if you don’t want to fiddle with all those ingredients? Then you make Oreo truffles. Easiest thing in the world.

Simple Oreo Truffles

Makes 2 dozen

32 Oreo cookies (you can use any similar cookie with icing)
8 oz. cream cheese
1 c. dipping chocolate
Sprinkles, royal icing, or other decorations

Crush the Oreos. I found this easiest to do by placing them between two cutting mats and using my rolling pin to bash them, then roll them into fine crumbs.

Mix with the cream cheese until you have a smooth mixture. Pop it in the freezer while you prepare the chocolate.

Melt the chocolate according to the directions. I used chocolate specifically for making choco-bananas, so it required very little heating.

Roll the Oreo dough into 1″ balls and dip into the chocolate. A fork makes this much easier. Decorate as desired . . . other recipes I saw called for a sprinkle of Oreo crumbs, but they kind of looked like someone ashed their cigarette on the truffle, so I preferred the drizzle of royal icing.

Serve in paper cups for candy and everyone will love these melt-in-your-mouth sweets!

Set the truffles on wax paper and stick in the fridge to harden once you’re done.

I’ve always admired those gorgeous cookies on the covers of Women’s Day and Martha Stewart Living Magazine . . . so I decided to try making some this year. Making Christmas sugar cookies is a beautiful tradition that my mother started with me and I’m happy to carry on with my own kids. My mom even sent me the cookie cutters that we used when I was little, so they are being used by the third generation of little hands this year!

These cookies are super fast and easy to make, no chilling time needed. You can decorate these tasty cookies with buttercream frosting, piping gel or, like I did, with royal icing and the flooding technique. But first the recipe, which you might recognize from this post.

Christmas Sugar Cookies

makes 3 dozen

4 c. flour
1.5 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs
3/4 c. butter, melted
2 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cream sugar and eggs together with vanilla. Pour in butter while stirring.

Beat in flour and baking powder. Roll out on a floured surface to 1/4? thickness.

Cut out your cookies and bake on an ungreased baking sheet for 12 min. or until golden brown. Let cool before you ice.

Royal Icing

Makes approx. 2 cups

2 egg whites
2 Tblsp. water (if cooking)
2-3 c. icing sugar, sifted

In the top of a double boiler, mix water, egg whites and 6 Tblsp. of sugar. Beat on the low setting of your hand mixer as you heat it. The egg whites need to hit 160° to be safe, so you will need a candy thermometer. The beating will foam everything up, that’s totally normal.

Once the mixture reaches 160°, you can remove the icing from the stove and beat in the remaining sugar until the icing is thick enough to pipe.

Divide your icing into as many small bowls as you want colors. Add food coloring (I find these gel colors work best) and mix well.

Now, place a spoonful of icing into a Ziplock or sandwich bag and snip off the end to create a tiny hole. You need to pipe around the edge of each cookie, like so. (please excuse the botched star point, a tiny someone was trying to pinch the cookie while I worked!)

You’ll need to do this with all the cookies, using the appropriate colors. I suggest covering the icing bowls while you work, since the icing tends to set up fast.

For more elaborate cookies, you may need to outline different areas in different colors.

Next, add a little water to each icing color in the bowls and stir thoroughly. You want the icing to run just a little, but not too much. It should be the consistency of honey for this step, which is called “flooding”.

Drop some icing onto your cookie.

Now, spread the icing right to the piped edges (which will by hard by now) with a toothpick until smooth. If the icing stays in peaks or holds toothpick marks, it’s too dry and needs a little more water.

The end result should be smooth and clean, like this.

Of course, there’s no need to stick to single colors. While you can pipe in details ahead of time, it can be difficult to spread the icing around them. I found it worked better to drop the runnier icing onto the cookie once I had finished flooding it.

Here’s an example. . . the red streamers were piped ahead of time and the yellow dots were added while the icing was wet. You could also pipe additional details once the cookie has dried overnight.

For more interesting details, try using the toothpick dipped in another color to draw in the icing.

Or, stream lines of another color (or two or three) across the iced cookie, while the icing is still wet, then cut through it with your toothpick for a psychedelic look . . . like this Easter bunny that somehow snuck into our batch of Christmas cookies!

Tip: If you are doing something more complicated, like the train in the very first photo, don’t do what I did and pipe icing of different colors for each section. It creates a gap between the two colors. Instead, pipe in one color, then have the other color join it, but never pipe two lines side by side.

Enjoy! These cookies need to harden for a few hours, then you can pack them on top of each other and give them away . . . if they survive that long!

I wanted a cookie that was super simple, super delicious and looked great to boot, so I came up with these handy little cutout cookies. They use a sugar cookie dough and jam filling that lends a sweetness making it unnecessary to ice them. That means these can go from bowl to plate and be ready to serve in less than half an hour if you move fast!

These tasty jam cutout cookies are so good that I’ve already had to make two batches, the first ones were gone before I could plate them to take to friends!

Jam Cutout Cookies

makes 3 dozen

4 c. flour
1.5 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs
3/4 c. butter, melted
2 tsp. vanilla extract
about 1/2 c. jam of your choice

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cream sugar and eggs together with vanilla. Pour in butter while stirring.

Beat in flour and baking powder. Roll out on a floured surface to 1/4″ thickness.

Cut out your cookies. They can be round, heart, star shaped, etc. I used a bento cutter to cut the small star out of all the tops.

Place the plain cookie bottoms on the greased baking sheet. Dollop about one tsp. of jam in the middle.

Then moisten one side of the cutout tops with a finger dipped in water and place on top. Sprinkle with sugar to finish.

Bake for 12-15 min. Serve.

What could be more Christmassy than gingerbread houses? My sons recently enjoyed decorating their very first houses with a couple of friends and everyone had a blast. It’s really quite easy to whip up your own batch of gingerbread, whether you use it for houses or regular cookies. This recipe uses honey rather than molasses, but you can substitute the dark syrup if you want for a stronger taste.

Gingerbread

Makes enough for 4 small gingerbread houses or about 18 cookies

1 c. honey
1/2 c. oil
2 eggs
1/2 c. sugar
4 c. flour
1 Tblsp. allspice
1 Tblsp. ginger
1/2 Tblsp. baking powder

Pre-heat the oven to 250°.

Beat eggs and honey until smooth. Add sugar. Incorporate oil and remaining ingredients and let chill for 6-8 hours. (If you’re in a hurry like I was, just pop the dough into the freezer for an hour or two, until it’s firm).

Roll the dough out to 1/4″ thickness and cut into desired shapes. If you are making gingerbread houses, make your pattern out of cardboard ahead of time. My houses used two pieces that were 3″ square as walls. For the front and back, I used the wall pattern, drawing a peak above it. The roof was a little wider than the peak and about 1/2″ longer than the walls to allow overlap.

When arranging the pieces on a non-stick baking sheet, it helps to even the edges with a rule or they will be wonky as they bake.

Bake at 250° for 15 min. then turn the heat up to 350° for another 30-40 min or until golden brown. The lower baking temp will help set the cookies in the right shape, without warping them. If you need to do two batches, lower the temperature after you take the first batch out. Leave the oven door open for 10 min. to help the heat dissipate and then start with the second batch.

Assembly

To assemble the gingerbread houses and decorate them, you’ll need royal icing. Now, this traditionally calls for raw egg whites, but you can heat them to be sure that no salmonella is alive in the eggs. If you buy pasturized eggs, don’t worry about the heating step and just mix the sugar and egg whites. Since I live in Guatemala, the eggs here are not very safe and I prefer to heat.

Royal Icing

Makes approx. 2 cups

2 egg whites
2 Tblsp. water (if cooking)
2-3 c. icing sugar, sifted

In the top of a double boiler, mix water, egg whites and 6 Tblsp. of sugar. Beat on the low setting of your hand mixer as you heat it. The egg whites need to hit 160° to be safe, so you will need a candy thermometer. The beating will foam everything up, that’s totally normal.

Once the mixture reaches 160°, you can remove the icing from the stove and beat in the remaining sugar until the icing is thick enough to spread.

Now, spread a little on the lower edge of your house front and stick it to a tinfoil covered board. You can prop it there with a can but if you hold it for a minute, it will set as is. Then just use icing to stick the remaining pieces together, holding them in place for a moment. The royal icing sets up very fast when exposed to the air.

Now it’s your turn!