Holiday Baking

Although I mostly make only cakes these days, I was very excited to receive a request for four cookie recipes for someone to give away as holiday treats!

The first cookies were Lemon Drop Sandwiches which are meringue cookies
sandwiched with a sweet lemony frosting.... yum! I will preface this by saying
that I'm not a huge lemon fan and I normally don't like meringue much either but for some reason, these cookies are irresistable! You can't eat just one!

The second "cookie" is an Austrian Chocolate Walnut Bar. There is a crumb base covered in apricot preserves topped with a goeey chocolate walnut layer and covered in a sticky chocolate-rum frosting.

Then there were the macaroons... recently, I discovered French macaroons on a course at the Pacific Institute for the Culinary Arts and it was love at first bite for me. Before making them for the first time, I went to Thomas Haas in North Vancouver and bought some so I could see and taste what the finished product should be... and let's just say I fell "a little" short of the mark. They taste great (although not as good as the patisserie-bought ones!) but they do not look right at all. I will master this eventually and refuse to be beaten by a little French cookie!

First, there were the raspberry macaroons filled with raspberry preserves.
This is the second attempt at these... the first was dismal to say the least!
The batter came out so watery that it made one big flat wafer!

And then there were the chocolate macaroons filled with a bittersweet chocolate ganache... this was the second attempt at these ones as well. The first attempt at chocolate macaroons, they cracked all to pieces.

I'm going to wait a bit before attempting the macaroons again because I am tired of sifting ground almonds for now but there will be another attempt at some point I can assure you!