Vanillicious.com – Easy Desserts

Vanilla Biscuits

A simple, basic cookies recipe, that can never be wrong. These cookies can be served as is, but can also be served in more interesting manners:

- You can serve the cookies with dips, such as lemon curd, smooth Berries Purée, cream cheese frosting, vanilla custard, chocolate genache and more.

- You can make sandwich cookies, by filling them with one or more of the above dips. This might take a little longer than just serving along with some dips, but this suggestion (and the following one) is a nice exercise in relaxation, creativity and can be a lot of fun, too.

- You can coat or decorate the cookies with a simple flavoured icing. Just mix icing sugar with a little bit of naturally flavoured liquid, such as freshly squeezed lemon juice, raspberry juice (that’s a good use for the liquids from frozen raspberry packs). If you wonder how much liquids, I can just say I always start with one tbsp, and add as much icing sugar as it can absorb. The ratio can be more that 1:3 (liquid:icing sugar) and the texture – a little bit thicker than a double cream. Once mixed, set aside for 15-20 minutes before applying on the cookies.

Few tips regarding the preparation:

- The easiest way to prepare the dough is by using a food processor. It’s OK if you don’t have one, just use your fingers. It’ll take few more minutes, but will end up with the same cookies.

- If you shape your cookies in different sizes, I recommend you’d bake them in more than one batch. In each batch bake the shapes that are similar in size.

Happy baking and decorating!

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Gingerbread cookies

This post is being published in a super-late manner. I initially planned to present you with this recipe way in advance , so you can enjoy it during the holidays. Seems like this Christmas, this recipe is going to be useful for the more spontaneous ones. Though it’ll always be useful for the years to follow. And besides, you can have gingerbread cookies all year long. There’s nothing wrong in re-living the holidays spirit!

The following recipe will provide approximately 50 cookies. The cutters I used were 7-8cm long (the tree and leaf shapes).

If you wish to decorate your cookies, the beginners’ way is by icing it. Icing is generally used as a simple top coating on a cookie. It makes a beautiful top coating, which can be considered as decoration. You can’t, however, decorate with it in the traditional (and more advanced) sense of piping with it, for example.

To create the icing, simply combine icing sugar with a little bit of liquid and food coloring. I used small portions of white, red and green icing. Each of the three icing mixtures contained 1 tbsp water, approximately4 tbsp of icing sugar and few drops of food colouring. If still too liquidy, add some more icing sugar. Allow the icing to rest for 15-20 minute. After decorating the cookies, allow to rest again, before you start enjoying them, as it will harden as it dries.

Disclaimer: I do not encourage the consumption of artificial food colouring in any shape or form and take no responsibility for such consumption.

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Alfajores

There are many recipes for Alfajores,  these wonderful, Argentinian sandwich cookies, and this recipe is probably the best one I came across. Preparing the cookies is very simple. However, you might want to free an hour of your time for filling and decorating the cookies.

These alfajores are amongst the simplest cookies to prepare but they taste so amazingly sophisticated! and the way they melt in the mouth is just yum! Need I say more? You should already be preparing the cookies! (Or at least on your way to buy the ingredients. Or preparing the dulce de leche. Now, go!)

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Maple pecan cookies

Once I was at a friends house and couldn’t stop eating the cookies she baked. I made sure the cookies were right next to me the whole evening. By the end of that evening, I went home with a box full of those cookies.

The next day, when I had friends over and nothing to serve with their tea, I had no choice but offer some of the precious cookies. They liked it and with each and every cookie they ate I felt something deep inside me. I think I was grieving…

Anyway, few months later I found a recipe online and the outcome is similar to my precious ones. I hope you like it as much as I do.

Click here to read up this recipe!