Dec. 01--A holiday cookie may begin with a mix of butter, sugar and flour. But its soul comes from the children, family and friends who shape, bake and embellish those ingredients with vanilla, chocolate, spices, fruits, nuts, brightly colored sugars and icings.
And its heart? The sweet memories and everlasting friendships they create.
You need only read through the essays that accompanied more than 100 entries in this year's Chicago Tribune Holiday Cookie Contest to understand how many of these recipes are much more than lists of ingredients. They are cherished legacies passed with love from one generation to the next, from one neighbor to another.
A legacy such as the one Erna Steinbrenner offers family and friends when she bakes up Erna's crescents, this year's first-place winner. She's been baking the nut-filled cookies regularly since she made them for her husband's church choir in 1973, increasing the number of batches to accommodate the sweet tooths of her husband, two sons and their families. "I'm so pleased that the cookies are still enjoyed 40 years later and loved by another generation," she wrote in her essay.
And there are Meme Baynes' lose-your-friend lemon bars, the second-place winner. The quirky name? Seems that a friend, Chris, requested the recipe, the request slipped Baynes' mind, time passed, said friend seemed miffed (or was she?), so as Baynes wrote: "I turned my kitchen upside down looking for it, and I finally found the recipe and sent it to her."
For third-place winner Ron Gaj, his creative spin on a nut tartlet, dubbed holiday cup, was inspired by the cookie-baking frenzy of his childhood. "In my view, activity in the kitchen became the epicenter of goodness just after the Thanksgiving holiday when my mother along with some of my aunts would begin the tradition of making holiday cookies," he wrote. "My all-time favorite were pecan tassies."
Such stories and cookies brought honorable mentions for two more bakers.
"Home baking is the best part of my holidays," said 86-year-old Aelita Kivirist, in the essay accompanying her entry, Latvian Alexander cake bars. "But my favorite cookie means so much more to me than just another yummy recipe. I immigrated to this country from Latvia in 1950. ... Baking this cookie connects me to my homeland far away."
The other honorable mention winner, Susan Stone, wrote about her recipe this way: "Every Jewish holiday, my Grandma Esther made these succulent apricot coconut delights. She would carefully shmeer the jam on each stretch of dough, sprinkle on the ingredients, eyeballing it of course, roll up the logs of filled dough, and bake. When the cookies were out of the oven, cooled, cut, put carefully on the silver tray covered with doilies, sprinkled with the inevitable powdered sugar, she would look at all of us around the table and say, in her best Yiddish, ess gesundheit. Eat in good health! And we did."
This year's contest, in its 28th year, came with a first: Readers helped pick the finalists, casting some 4,200 votes online and sending the top 25 vote-getters into the finals. Those cookies were then baked by culinary students at Kendall College (see sidebar for more on the process) before the winners were chosen by a panel of Tribune food writers and other staff members, along with guest judges, James P. DeWan, a culinary instructor at Kendall and writer of the monthly Prep School column for Good Eating, and confectioner Ginna Haravon, owner of Chicago-based Salted Caramel (saltedcaramel.net). Here are the winners' recipes and their stories.
And to quote Grandma Esther: Eat in good health!
1st place: Erna Steinbrenner
"I can't believe my little cookies won," said Erna Steinbrenner, of Downers Grove, when we called to tell her she'd taken first prize.
The recipe was given to her by an aunt when a 19-year-old Steinbrenner arrived in America from Europe in 1956. She lived first with that aunt and an uncle in Florida before moving to Chicago a year and a half later. "What did I have? A suitcase, that's all," she told us. "And the recipe."
She met her husband Leo on a blind date set up by mutual friends more than 50 years ago. The crescent baking began in earnest in 1973. "I had a husband, two sons, one dog, one parakeet and a part-time job as a seamstress but baking was my passion. I liked to adapt old world family recipes to better fit our busy family," she wrote in her essay. "These cookies are the most requested dessert at family gatherings. 'Did you bring the cookies?' is the question I'm immediately asked. I'm still doubling the recipe and mailing them to my grandson at college."
Her advice to bakers: "I like them a little smaller because then you can have maybe a second one." And you don't want to put too much flour because then it gets hard and the cookie is not the same."
2nd place: Meme Baynes
Meme Baynes has always loved baking, especially when there are kids around to join her in the kitchen. "I'm the last of six children in a big baking family," the Grayslake mom told us when we called to tell her she'd won second place with her lose-your-friend lemon bars. "My dad cooked a lot, so my brothers learned to cook too."
It was her mother Wilma who nurtured the family's love of baking in their Elkhart, Ind., home. "At Christmastime, she would make probably close to 12 different kinds of Christmas cookies. We had a big front porch that we would use as a refrigerator and we would make all the cookies and keep them all out there," said Baynes, customer marketing manager with Keurig Inc. "And keep the dogs from going out there."
"Grandma Grump is what she named herself so we called her that," Baynes said. In fact, Grandma Grump's peanut butter drizzles helped Baynes win second prize in the Tribune's 2006 cookie contest.
Her passion for baking hasn't slowed. While husband Tim may be "king of the grill," kids Tim Jr., Sarah and Kevin all baked, "Kevin's not much of a baker but he loves to eat. He's our test kitchen," she said. And 10-year-old Emma? Yes, she loves to bake and cook.
Any advice to new bakers? "It's something my mom taught me: If you have to make a lot of something, it's always easier to do a bar because you just make one pan then cut it up as opposed to doing batch after batch after batch."
3rd place: Ron Gaj
When third-place winner Ron Gaj was growing up in Chicago near 18th Street and Ashland Avenue, he lived with his mother, aunt, uncle and grandparents.
"My mother had four sisters, and my chief job was to lick the cookie bowl clean," he told us, when we asked him about his cookie baking expertise. "My mother would give me those round cookie cutters making those very basic sugar cookies. I remember that. Making the stars or the snowman or the Christmas tree."
Gaj, who is retired from his technology consulting business and now lives in Hawthorn Woods with Geri, his wife of 40 years, continued to hone those skills during a stint in the U.S. Navy when he lived off base ("I lived in an apartment with two other guys, and the deal was I cooked and they cleaned."), in a program at a Chicago culinary school and by regularly baking breads. "Particularly now when it's getting colder, when you can fire up the oven now and it's not uncomfortable. I do dinner rolls, baguettes, once in a while a brioche."
His tweaking of a classic pecan tassie was inspired, in part, by his aunt, who would add a small amount of chocolate to the original recipe. "Fast forward, now some 60-plus years later, retired and drawn to the kitchen more and more, I find myself every holiday season making all of those cookies and more. My spin," he wrote in his essay, "is simply a variation of my favorite with the focal point being the combination of dark chocolate and raspberry."
"Everybody mixes an orange liqueur, a Grand Marnier, with chocolate, and it's the same thing, over and over," he said. "I tried B and regular brandy. That was just making the cookie boozy, and that's not what I was looking for."
An old friend suggested raspberry, and it worked -- OK, admits Gaj: "I probably made 12 batches of cookies before I got it right."
Kendall students elbow deep in flour
If you bake 600 or so cookies in a day, you are going to have a few tips. So we headed to a kitchen at Kendall College recently where seven culinary students were busy mixing and baking and decorating the top 25 vote-getters in the Chicago Tribune's Holiday Cookie Contest.
Louis Dourlain, executive chef of events at Kendall College, headed up the baking team of Daniel Rodriguez, Connor Bartel, Dain Kim, Yongmin Lee, David Sin, Stephen Finney and Madison Steinkamp. The group had spent the previous evening measuring ingredients for each of the 25 recipes then assembling each recipe's ingredients on a stainless steel tray. (In chef-speak, that's mise en place.)
The next day, while the students baked, we asked Dourlain for some keys to successful cookie baking.
--"Make sure you're really following the directions of the recipes," he said. "Some cookies come right out of the mixer and go right onto a cookie sheet then right into the oven." Others, he added, may need to be chilled in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or longer.
--Why chill? "The main reason is that you want to get that butter hard again," says Dourlain. If you take the butter, beat it up with the other ingredients then bake it right away, you can end up with a flat cookie because the butter is practically melted. Depending on the cookie recipe, that chilling period gives the ingredients time to come together.
--Room temperature matters: Kendall's kitchens are 68 to 70 degrees. "Home kitchens for the most part become warmer than an industrial kitchen due to ventilation. Very powerful vents can control the temperature better compared to most home vents above the oven. ... If this kitchen is 5 degrees colder than the kitchen they're cooking at home, that will make a difference."
--Flour temperature matters too: Make cookies with cold flour and it may not have enough baking time to reach the temp needed to properly brown.
Watch a video of the Kendall students baking the cookies and the judges going through their paces, at chicagotribune.com/cookievideo.
Erna's crescents
1st place: Erna Steinbrenner
Prep: 40 minutes
Chill: 3 hours
Bake: 25-30 minutes
Makes: 36 to 45 crescents
Vary the nuts, suggests Steinbrenner, who uses walnuts or pecans, and roll the dough nice and thin. "If you don't roll it out enough, the cookie will be too thick," she says. "You want to see the nuts and cinnamon." She also says the well-cooled and glazed cookies freeze well. "I just let them drip nicely then stack them with waxed paper and freeze them. This way you have them all the time." The test kitchen found the dough very easy to work with.
Dough:
2 sticks (1 cup) cold unsalted butter
2 cups flour, sifted
1 egg yolk (saving egg white)
¾ cup sour cream
Filling:
¾ cup granulated sugar
¾ cup finely ground walnuts
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Glaze:
2 cups confectioners' sugar
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 For the dough, cut butter into flour with a pastry blender or a fork. Add egg yolk and sour cream. Mix well by hand. Shape dough into a ball, sprinkle with flour and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill, 3 hours.
2 For the filling, combine sugar, walnuts and cinnamon in a bowl. Set aside.
3 Heat oven to 350 degrees. Divide dough into thirds. On a lightly floured surface, roll each portion into a 14-inch circle. Brush circles with lightly beaten egg white. Sprinkle filling evenly over circle. (Do not over-fill or the filling may seep out and burn.) Cut circle into 12-15 wedges. Starting at the widest end of each wedge, roll to form a tight crescent, bending slightly into a crescent shape.
4 Gently transfer the crescents to parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Bake the crescents until golden brown, 25-30 minutes.
5 Meanwhile, combine the glaze ingredients in a bowl; mix until smooth. After baking, transfer crescents to a wire rack with parchment paper underneath it; cool slightly. While crescents are still warm, spoon glaze over them.
Nutrition information per crescent (for 45 crescents): 102 calories, 6 g fat, 3 g saturated fat, 18 mg cholesterol, 11 g carbohydrates, 1 g protein, 2 mg sodium, 0 g fiber
Lose-your-friend lemon bars
2nd place: Meme Baynes
Prep: 25 minutes
Bake: 45 mintues
Makes: 24 (2-inch) squares
"Everybody wants to put that cream cheese frosting on as soon as they take them out of the oven, but you can't," says Baynes. "You want to let them cool and then put it on. The big thing is, there's so much flavor in them, I cut them into teeny little pieces -- so you can just eat a 1-by-1-inch square or a 1-by-2-inch square." We cut them into 2-inch squares, but you can cut them smaller.
Crust:
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups flour
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
Filling:
4 eggs
2 lemons, juice squeezed, zests finely grated
2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Frosting:
1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
3 tablespoons heavy cream (or more to get desired consistency)
3 ounces cream cheese
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 For the crust, heat the oven to 350 degrees. Cut the butter into flour and sugar in a food processor or mixer, or with a pastry blender. Pat into a 9-by-13-inch pan; bake, 20 minutes.
2 For the filling, beat eggs in a bowl; add lemon juice and zest. (Save a small amount of zest for garnish or zest curls from a third lemon). Add sugar, flour and salt; mix together. Pour over baked crust; bake at 350 degrees, 25 minutes. Cool before frosting.
3 For the frosting, combine butter and sugar in a bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients to achieve a smooth consistency. Spread over cooled bars. Garnish with lemon zest. Chill until set; cut into 1-inch bite-size squares or about 2-inch squares, cleaning knife often because it gets pretty messy.
Nutrition information per bar (for 24 bars): 299 calories, 13 g fat, 8 g saturated fat, 65 mg cholesterol, 44 g carbohydrates, 3 g protein, 76 mg sodium, 0 g fiber
Holiday cups
3rd place, Ron Gaj
Prep: 30 minutes
Chill: 1 hour
Bake: 25 minutes
Makes: 2 dozen
"Don't think you can put in more raspberry liqueur," says Gaj, "because it will bubble over." To line the cups with the dough, we found it easier to roll out the dough to 1/8-inch thick, then cut circles using a cookie cutter (about 2 1/2-inch diameter); a wine glass also works. This allows you to tuck the pastry evenly into the muffin pan.
Pastry:
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
3 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup flour
Topping:
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
1/4; cup flour
Filling:
Semi-sweet chocolate chips (you will need about 7 1/2 ounces)
1 small bottle raspberry liqueur (you will need about 4 ounces)
1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans (about 1/4-inch pieces)
Confectioners' sugar
1 For the pastry, blend together the butter and cream cheese with an electric mixer; slowly add the flour, beating between additions. Once combined, transfer to a bowl; refrigerate, covered, 1 hour.
2 For the topping, place the butter, brown sugar and flour in a food processor; pulse until crumbly. (You can also do this with a pastry cutter or your fingers.)
3 Heat the oven to 325 degrees. To assemble, scoop 1-inch diameter balls of the pastry; place in an ungreased nonstick mini-muffin pan. (The cup size should be about 1 ¾-inches wide by 7/8-inch deep.) Press dough evenly against bottom and sides of each.
4 To each cup, add about 8 chocolate chips, 1/2; teaspoon raspberry liqueur and 1 teaspoon chopped pecans. Sprinkle each cup with 1 teaspoon topping. (You will have extra topping.)
5 Bake until the pastry is nicely browned, about 25 minutes. Cool before removing from pan. Dust with confectioners' sugar.
Nutrition information per cup: 136 calories, 9 g fat, 5 g saturated fat, 15 mg cholesterol, 12 g carbohydrates, 1 g protein, 14 mg sodium, 1 g fiber
Apricot coconut delights
Honorable mention: Susan Stone
Prep: 40 minutes
Chill: 30 minutes
Bake: 45 minutes
Makes: about 3 dozen cookies
"My Grandma put in the kitchen sink," says Stone. "I like to play with the ingredients."
Dough:
2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sour cream
2 cups flour
Filling:
1/2 to 3/4 cup apricot preserves
1 heaping tablespoon orange marmalade, plus more if needed
1 tablespoon brandy
About 1 cup golden raisins or chopped maraschino cherries or halved dried cherries
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut, or more as needed
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, optional
Confectioners' sugar
1 Cream butter in a bowl with an electric mixer. Add sour cream. Mix well. Add flour slowly, beating just until it disappears. Form dough into a ball (with floured hands if necessary); press into a disc and cover with plastic wrap. Chill in the refrigerator, at least 30 minutes.
2 Heat oven to 350 degrees. Cut dough into 4 pieces. Roll out each into a rectangle, about 1/4; inch thick. It will be about 8 inches by 11 inches.
3 Combine 1/2 to 3/4 cup apricot preserves with 1 heaping tablespoon orange marmalade and the brandy in a small bowl. Stir to combine. Spread each dough rectangle with a think layer of the mixed jams, leaving a little space at the edges. (Do not overfill or the jam may seep out and burn; mix up more preserves if you run out. You may have leftover preserves.) Sprinkle on the raisins or cherries, plus the coconut and walnuts, if using. (You may not use all of these fillings.) Roll into tight logs from the long edge. The logs will be about 2 inches wide.
4 Put the logs, seam side down, on parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Bake, until they are light brown, 40-45 minutes. Don't be alarmed if some jam leaks out. Cut into 1 1/2 inch cookies on a diagonal. Allow to cook, then sprinkle with confectioners' sugar.
Nutrition information per cookie: 114 calories, 7 g fat, 4 g saturated fat, 18 mg cholesterol, 13 g carbohydrates, 1 g protein, 8 mg sodium, 0 g fiber
Latvian Alexander cake bars
Honorable mention, Aelita Kivirist
Prep: 20 minutes
Bake: 30 minutes
Cool: 6 hours
Makes: about 54 (2-inch-square) bars
"By sharing a taste of my heritage through Alexander cake, I remember my roots with each cookie batch I bake," Kivirist wrote in her essay. "But my favorite one to bake for is Liam, my grandson so dear. A hug for grandma brings the greatest holiday cheer." The step of flipping a whole cookie sheet layer of crust over onto the filling seemed a daunting task, but it worked without a kitchen incident. The bars freeze well.
Dough:
4 sticks (1 pound) butter
1 cup granulated sugar
5 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Filling:
1 jar (12 ounces) seedless raspberry jam
¾ cup red currant jelly (one 10 ounce jar)
Glaze:
2 cups confectioners' sugar
Juice from half a lemon
4 teaspoons hot water
1 Heat oven to 400 degrees. For the dough, cream together butter and sugar in a bowl with an electric mixer. Mix the flour and baking powder together in a separate bowl. Gradually add flour mixture to the creamed mixture until incorporated; don't over mix. Dough will be very stiff.
2 Form dough into a ball; cut dough ball in half. Spread each half evenly onto an ungreased baking sheet (standard half sheet; 13-by-18 inches). It is important to make sure the dough is even so it bakes evenly. Bake 1 crust, 15 minutes.
3 While the first sheet is baking, mix raspberry jam and red currant jelly thoroughly together in a small bowl. When the first sheet is nicely browned, remove it from oven; spread the jam/jelly mixture evenly in a thin layer over the hot baked bottom crust. Then bake the second crust, 15 minutes.
4 While the second crust is baking, make the glaze: Mix confectioners' sugar, lemon juice and hot water together until smooth.
5 When the second crust is nicely browned, remove the baking sheet from the oven. With the crust still in the pan, immediately flip the layer over the bottom crust. Adjust the top layer, still in the baking sheet, until it is lined up with the bottom layer. Then remove the pan. (Pressing on the pan gently helps the crust release.) Immediately spread the glaze over hot cake. Cool in pan for at least 6 hours. Cut into bars, about 2-inches square, or a size you prefer.
Nutrition information per bar: 163 calories, 7 g fat, 4 g saturated fat, 18 mg cholesterol, 25 g carbohydrates, 1 g protein, 11 mg sodium, 0 g fiber
jhevrdejs@tribpub.com
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