Christmas Cookie Recipes and an Easy Delicious Salmon Dinner

As I've mentioned before, the women at my church meet the first Tuesday of every month for an Enrichment Night.  This one, in addition to hearing from a featured speaker, we were asked to bring two dozen homemade Christmas cookies to share, eat (along with really good hot chocolate), exchange and provide the recipe.  I can never choose one kind of anything when I am asked to bring just one of something so I made two kinds of cookies.  One is a family Christmas tradition recipe that I have made since high school when my mother first introduced it - I loved it,  I wrote it down, and I've made it every year since.  The other recipe is one I made out of a new cookbook I just acquired called Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan.  This book is her take on French desserts and sweets; it's a great read and I can't wait to bake just about every recipe in it.  The cookie in the picture above is from her book - mine looks different from hers (which you'll see soon) because my sanding sugar is colored.  They are popular in the Lille area of France, are a bit more cakey and tender than American sugar cookies, and they are quite simply tasty.

Here are the recipes and pictures:

French Style Sugar Cookies (Palets de Dames)

9 T. unsalted softened butter
2/3 cup sugar
¼ tsp salt
2 large eggs
½ tsp vanilla
1 ¼ cups flour

Icing
1 cup powdered sugar
1 - 3 T whole milk or cream (start small, increase milk as needed)
a few drops fresh lemon juice

Beat the butter, sugar and salt until smooth and creamy.  Beat in eggs one at a time, 1 minute each, then the vanilla.  It might look curdled but it will be fine once you add the flour.  Beat in flour until just combined.  Chill dough for at least one hour until firm.   Scoop dough with very small ice cream scoop or with your hands and roll into small balls.  Bake 375 on parchment lined baking sheets for 9 minutes or until slightly brown around edges.   Cool completely.  Spread icing on cookie with back of a teaspoon and give a little swirl as you lift.  It should look smooth.  Sprinkle on coarse sanding sugar, any color.  Again, these are a cakey type sugar cookie famous in the Lille area of France.

Cocoa Thumbprint Cookie (one of my family traditional Christmas cookies)

2 sticks soft unsalted butter
1 1/3 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
¼ cup milk
1 t vanilla
2 cups flour
2/3 cups cocoa powder
½ tsp salt
Optional – add chopped chocolate to dough

Beat butter and sugar together, add eggs, milk and vanilla.  Mix together dry stuff then beat in.  Chill dough 1 hour.  Roll in balls onto greased or parchment lined sheets and press your thumb into each to make an indention.  Bake at 350 10 -12 minutes – don’t overbake!

Fill each cookie in the indention with your favorite vanilla frosting recipe.  Sprinkle with
colored sugars.

Dorie's cookies from the book are perfectly round and she made a runnier icing and used clear sanding sugar - they will taste the same though, surely.  ;)

These cookies are so chocolatey and tender yet sturdy.  They are super good with a chocolate buttercream as well!

I just want us to keep looking at these cookies

The cookies start arriving at Enrichment Night

Here are some of us munching, sipping and listening to our awesome speaker - if you see people on phones, they are looking up scriptures the speaker is referencing  

Now for dinner - easy, super healthy and delicious - we ate this tonight.

 - Honey-Soy- Sesame oven Roasted Salmon with Vegetable Confetti Barley.

For the Confetti Barley - 

3/4 cup uncooked barley

16 oz. pkg of frozen stir fry vegetables

2 T toasted sesame seeds

Fill medium large sauce pan with enough salted water to cook your barley in - bring water to a boil, add barley, return to boil then reduce heat and cover and cook 27 minutes.  At that point, add your frozen veggies to the pot and let it cook about 3-5 minutes until done but not mushy.  Drain the whole pan of its water, pour into a serving dish, add a dollop of butter if desired, salt and pepper and the sesame seeds.

While the barley cooks, place 4 - 4 oz salmon fillets, or one whole big salmon steak, whatever you have, in a baking dish.  In a bowl mix together:
3 T honey
1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
2 tsp sesame oil
1/4 t crushed red pepper
1/4 cups chopped scallions or chives

Reserve 4 T of this and set aside.  Pour the rest over the salmon and bake in a 400 degree oven anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes until it is flakey.  Divide the barley/veggie mix onto your plates, add a filet or section of salmon and spoon on the reserved sauce and a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds.  Salt and pepper to taste - yum!!

After you put the veggies in the barley they cook together a few minutes - drain off water

I tossed all this after I added the sesame seeds

The salmon steak before I spooned on the reserved sauce

What did you do with your leftover turkey and carcass?  I made a huge pot of turkey soup - I simmered the carcass for hours with onions, celery, pepper corns, sage, tarragon and bay, salt and pepper and then I fished out all those boiled veggies, bay leaves and peppercorns, then added chopped carrots, chopped sweet potato, left over turkey meat, brought this to a boil, then down to a simmer until the veggies were half done and tossed in whole wheat egg noodles.  When the veggies and noodles were done I made a roux of flour and heavy cream with some broth and poured that in and heated the whole pot through, added salt and pepper to taste and turkey soup!  I gave a tub of it away today to a family that just had a baby, along with homemade rolls, salad, and chocolate loaf cake.  The rest of the soup is in the freezer for future meals.

Thanksgiving Turkey soup on its way to the freezer

Now I'm off to Planet Fitness so I won't eat cookies that I brought home from Enrichment Night that are tempting me.  Toodles!