Christmas cookies come in all shapes, sizes and ingredients from the traditional sugar cookie cut-outs like Weibel makes to sandwich cookies, no-bake cookies, linzer cookies, twisted dough cookies and even design cookies made from store-bought cookies.
The key to avoiding the crunch and making soft Christmas cookies is taking them out of the oven just before they’re done because they continue baking even after set on the counter to cool.
That’s Christmas cookie advice from Kristina G. Weibel, owner of Kristina’s Kafe and Bakery in Belchertown.
She sells hundreds of soft, made-from-scratch sugar cookies, hand decorated with soft, buttercream icing in traditional shapes like Christmas trees, snowmen, snowflakes, Christmas presents and ornaments along with gingerbread men and women.
“They’re a specialty of ours,” she said, noting that the gingerbread cookies are especially popular.
“We go out of our way to do quite a variety, and they’re quite artistic,” Weibel said. “A lot of people like to get them because they don’t think they could do them as well, and also a lot of people work so it’s convenient” to purchase the holiday treats.
Though a few cookies are reserved for Christmas Eve snacks for Santa, most make their way to the table for dessert, into a lunchbox for school, into a package for a gift or cookie exchange or out of the cookie jar for a tasty snack long before Dec. 25.
So you need to have a lot on hand.
Weibel uses a recipe that yields more than 300 cookies per batch, made in her 30-quart mixer. She and a friend spend evenings decorating them as they chat and watch television. No two cookies are exactly the same, but sometimes Weibel finds a pattern she likes and repeats it. Some ideas come from magazines, some are mood driven and some the women create. “It’s neat,” she said.
The finished products sell for 95 cents to $2.50 depending on the size.
Weibel takes special orders and also makes cookies for other holidays; Christmas and Halloween are her favorites because of the variety of shapes.
Christmas cookies were popular in Europe by the 16th century; the Dutch brought the tradition to the United States in the 17th century. When cookie cutters became available in American markets in the late 19th century, cookie recipes that used them began that to appear in cookbooks.
Today Christmas cookies come in all shapes, sizes and ingredients from the traditional sugar cookie cut-outs like Weibel makes to sandwich cookies, no-bake cookies, linzer cookies, twisted dough cookies and even design cookies made from store-bought cookies.
At Second Street Baking Company in the Turners Falls section of Montague, cut-out sugar cookies are the most popular Christmas cookies, but customers enjoy other offerings like pecan thumbprints with raspberry preserves in the middle, star-shaped linzer cookies with fruit filling, nut shortbread cookies rolled in powdered sugar and candy-cane shaped cookies made from twisted sections of red and white dough.
New this year will be a three-to-four-inch high decorated Christmas tree cookie made from sugar-cookie stars of decreasing size layered to form the three-dimensional tree.
Second Street’s Christmas cookies sell for 85 cents to $2.95 depending on the size and decorative quality.
The bakery sells Christmas cookie platters and dessert platters with Christmas cookies along with truffles, peanut butter balls, bars and brownies.
According to Laura J. Puchalski, owner, Second Street sells more than 1,000 Christmas cookies. She sees more and more customers buying Christmas cookies rather than making their own, because of their busy schedules.
“I’m finding a lot more people are coming to us to bring homemade-quality desserts” home or to holiday functions, she said.
With two convection ovens with four or five shelves, the bakery can efficiently produce large quantities of Christmas cookies. They account for about a quarter of Second Street’s holiday offerings—which include cakes, pies and breads—Puchalski said.
At La Fiorentina Pastry Shops in Springfield, Northampton and East Longmeadow “everyday” cookies are popular at Christmas, said Anna Daniele, an owner. They come in a variety of types including butter, almond, coconut, chocolate and jelly-filled.
The shops also offer a variety of specialty traditional treats like fruit-flavored marzipan; diamond-shaped cookies coated with chocolate called mostacciolo; small balls of fried dough coated with honey, hazelnuts and orange zest called strufoli; and hard cookies with hazelnuts called rococo.
Prices vary from about $2 each to $15 a pound, depending on the treat.
La Fiorentina also sells edible almond brittle baskets filled with the specialty cookies and topped with marzipan. They sell for $55-70.
“If somebody has everything…that’s a unique gift and something special,” Daniele said.
After all, food—especially holiday cookies and treats—can be a sweet gift for others, or for oneself.