This is the Super Bowl of Christmas cookie swaps.
Gathered around my dining room table are five of the best bakers in the Akron, Ohio, area. They have each brought five dozen cookies _ four dozen to swap and one dozen for me.
For most of the bakers, it is their first cookie swap. "But my cookies have been to plenty of them," observes Nancy Fay of the Bake Shop in Ghent.
Yes, these are the scrumptious cookies that many people buy, arrange on a plate and try to pass off as their own.
The table is heaped with boxes and bags from Vincent's Bakery and Pallotta's Pastries of Cuyahoga Falls, the Medina Pastry Co. of Medina, West Side Bakery of Akron and the Bake Shop in Ghent (Bath Township).
At a time when many bakeries are cutting corners by using frozen commercial dough, these bakeries are among the few that still make cookies the old-fashioned way, from scratch.
"It's so labor-intensive," says Mike Pallotta, who restarted the family bakery business five years ago after graduating from culinary school.
Pallotta has brought tiny tart-like cookies with a shortbread crust, almond-paste filling and a candied cherry on top. He made up the recipe himself.
Pallotta's great-grandfather was the founder of Crest Bakery, which the family sold 20 years ago.
"Being Italian, everybody baked at Christmas," Pallotta recalls. "We'd just have tons and tons of cookies. After my grandfather retired, he'd bake 200 pounds of cookies just for at home."
Nick Massoli of Vincent's Bakery sits behind a pile of boxes filled with delicate butter cookies in a rainbow of flavors. They are made from the same recipe that his father, Vincent, used at the shop 44 years ago.
"My dad made that recipe and I haven't changed it," Massoli says.
We open a box and pass around the cookies. They melt on the tongue.
More cookies are passed around and tasted _ big, crescent-shaped Meringue Moons from Barbara Talevich of West Side Bakery, buttery, pinwheel-shaped Bumble Bees from Fay and cinnamon-dusted walnut crescents from Nadia Belletti of the Medina Pastry Co.
The cookie swap is happily deteriorating into a cookie-eating orgy.
Belletti learned to make the Cinnamon Crescents in her native Croatia. Belletti began her dessert catering business five years ago, and now makes 14 kinds of Christmas cookies for holiday party trays.
Talevich says the shortbread-like base for her Meringue Moons are "my absolute favorite cookie from my childhood." Her mother, Mary Nicoloff, made enough at Christmas to treat the whole neighborhood in Firestone Park.
"She would make up tons of cookie trays and we'd deliver them to the neighbors," Talevich says.
Her mom made round cookies, while Talevich cuts the dough into big crescent moons. Talevich adds another frill _ she tops the cookies with meringue and sprinkles them with nuts before baking.
Fay has brought cookies from her childhood, too. She passes around colorful bags of cookies as she explains that her mother baked lots of pies, but not many cookies. Her Bumble Bees _ rich spirals of dough encasing a caramellike filling _ are made from scraps of pie dough.
The Bumble Bees aren't for sale at the Bake Shop. They're strictly a family tradition kept alive by Fay and her brother and four sisters, all partners in the bakery. Fay's sister, Betty Boyles, is the baker. The helpers are Pat Fitch, Maryanne Krejci and Dick Fulton.
Although the cookie is made with pie crust, it indeed tastes more like a cookie than a pastry. Most families have a similar recipe for using up leftover pie dough. What makes this one special is the addition of loads of brown sugar that caramelizes in the oven. The cookies truly are scrumptious.
Swapping and munching cookies brings back memories of Christmases past for the bakers. Talevich helped her mother bake cookies, while Massoli helped his dad.
"I can still see myself as a little girl sitting at the counter," Talevich says. "She'd sit on one side and I'd sit on another and we'd make cookies."
As a child, Massoli did his cookie-baking at the family shop.
"My dad used to put me on a can so I could reach the bench to cut them out," he says.
Although they make tons of cookies now _ Talevich will bake 73,000 tea cookies alone this month _ these pros haven't lost their taste for Christmas cookies. I have the crumbs for evidence.
Cherry Almond Cups
FILLING:
3{ cups sugar
1{ lbs. almond paste
1 cup egg whites (about 8 whites)
DOUGH:
3 cups unsifted cake flour
1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter
2/3 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
{ tsp. Vanilla
30 candied cherries, cut in halves
Sliced almonds for garnish
For the filling: Place sugar and almond paste in a food processor and mix thoroughly. Transfer to a mixer bowl and beat in egg whites on medium speed for 2 minutes. Cover and set aside.
For the dough: Place cake flour, butter and sugar in a mixer bowl. Beat on low speed until well mixed. Beat in egg yolks and vanilla. Wrap dough in plastic and chill for 1 hour.
Roll dough to [-inch thickness on a lightly floured board. With a 2\-inch round cutter, cut out circles of dough. Fit dough circles into lightly greased mini muffin tins to form cups.
Fill each cup full with the almond-paste filling. Place a few sliced almonds on top. Garnish each with half of a candied cherry.
Bake at 350 degrees for 15 to 18 minutes. Cool in pans before removing.
Makes 60.
X X X
Meringue Moons
2 lbs. butter, softened
1{ cups powdered sugar
{ cup egg yolks (about 8 yolks)
2 tbsp. Brandy
2 tsp. Vanilla
2 tbsp. baking powder
10 cups flour
2 egg whites
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
With an electric mixer, beat butter on medium-high speed for 10 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally, until very light and fluffy. Add powdered sugar and beat 5 minutes longer. Add yolks, brandy and vanilla; mix well. Add baking powder and flour a little at a time, mixing to form a soft dough.
Roll dough on a lightly floured work surface to ]-inch thickness. Cut into crescent shapes or circles with a cookie cutter.
In a clean bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. With a teaspoon, mound a small amount of beaten white in centers of cookies. Dip in nuts, meringue-side down. Place about {-inch apart, meringue-sides up, on parchment-lined cookie sheets.
Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes. Remove with a spatula and cool completely on wire racks.
Makes about 8 dozen large cookies.
X X X
Bumble Bees
Pastry for a 10-inch pie
1 tbsp. melted butter
1 tbsp. granulated sugar
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
Roll out pastry as for a pie crust, to about [-inch thickness. Brush pastry with butter. Sprinkle with granulated sugar, then brown sugar, then cinnamon. Cut into {-inch-wide strips. Roll up jelly-roll fashion. Place on greased baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes, until light brown.
Makes about 12 to 14 cookies.
X X X
Cinnamon Crescents
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
{ cup powdered sugar1
{ tsp. Vanilla
2 cups flour
} cup chopped walnuts
1 cup granulated sugar
3 tbsp. cinnamon (or to taste)
Cream butter, powdered sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer until very light and fluffy. Mix in flour and nuts to form a soft dough. Pull off pieces of dough and shape into logs about 2{ inches long and 1 inch wide. Form into crescent shapes on ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 325 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes. Remove from oven and roll in mixture of granulated sugar and cinnamon. Cool.
Makes 48 cookies.
X X X
Vincent's Tea Cookies
3 lbs. Butter
1{ lbs. powdered sugar
8 cups unsifted cake flour, divided
1/3 cup nonfat dry milk
1 tbsp. Salt
{ cup egg whites (4 whites)
} cup water
1 tbsp. vanilla
Beat butter with an electric mixer until very light and fluffy. In another bowl, sift together the powdered sugar, 6 cups of the cake flour, dry milk and salt. Add to creamed butter a little at a time, beating well. Add egg whites to mixture and beat for one minute on medium speed.
Sift remaining cake flour and add to mixture alternately with water and vanilla to form a soft dough.
Spoon dough into a pastry bag fitted with a star tip. Pipe batter into 1-inch round or crescent shapes onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes, or until light brown. Remove from trays and cool.
Makes several dozen, depending on size.
X X X
PHOTO (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099):
HOLIDAY-COOKIES (Horiz) cookies from five bakers
X X X
Visit Akron Beacon Journal Online at http://www.ohio.com/.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
(c) 2000, Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio).
Visit Akron Beacon Journal Online at http://www.ohio.com/.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
Christmas cookies baked to perfection.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)
This is the Super Bowl of Christmas cookie swaps.
Gathered around my dining room table are five of the best bakers in the Akron, Ohio, area. They have each brought five dozen cookies _ four dozen to swap and one dozen for me.
For most of the bakers, it is their first cookie swap. "But my cookies have been to plenty of them," observes Nancy Fay of the Bake Shop in Ghent.
Yes, these are the scrumptious cookies that many people buy, arrange on a plate and try to pass off as their own.
The table is heaped with boxes and bags from Vincent's Bakery and Pallotta's Pastries of Cuyahoga Falls, the Medina Pastry Co. of Medina, West Side Bakery of Akron and the Bake Shop in Ghent (Bath Township).
At a time when many bakeries are cutting corners by using frozen commercial dough, these bakeries are among the few that still make cookies the old-fashioned way, from scratch.
"It's so labor-intensive," says Mike Pallotta, who restarted the family bakery business five years ago after graduating from culinary school.
Pallotta has brought tiny tart-like cookies with a shortbread crust, almond-paste filling and a candied cherry on top. He made up the recipe himself.
Pallotta's great-grandfather was the founder of Crest Bakery, which the family sold 20 years ago.
"Being Italian, everybody baked at Christmas," Pallotta recalls. "We'd just have tons and tons of cookies. After my grandfather retired, he'd bake 200 pounds of cookies just for at home."
Nick Massoli of Vincent's Bakery sits behind a pile of boxes filled with delicate butter cookies in a rainbow of flavors. They are made from the same recipe that his father, Vincent, used at the shop 44 years ago.
"My dad made that recipe and I haven't changed it," Massoli says.
We open a box and pass around the cookies. They melt on the tongue.
More cookies are passed around and tasted _ big, crescent-shaped Meringue Moons from Barbara Talevich of West Side Bakery, buttery, pinwheel-shaped Bumble Bees from Fay and cinnamon-dusted walnut crescents from Nadia Belletti of the Medina Pastry Co.
The cookie swap is happily deteriorating into a cookie-eating orgy.
Belletti learned to make the Cinnamon Crescents in her native Croatia. Belletti began her dessert catering business five years ago, and now makes 14 kinds of Christmas cookies for holiday party trays.
Talevich says the shortbread-like base for her Meringue Moons are "my absolute favorite cookie from my childhood." Her mother, Mary Nicoloff, made enough at Christmas to treat the whole neighborhood in Firestone Park.
"She would make up tons of cookie trays and we'd deliver them to the neighbors," Talevich says.
Her mom made round cookies, while Talevich cuts the dough into big crescent moons. Talevich adds another frill _ she tops the cookies with meringue and sprinkles them with nuts before baking.
Fay has brought cookies from her childhood, too. She passes around colorful bags of cookies as she explains that her mother baked lots of pies, but not many cookies. Her Bumble Bees _ rich spirals of dough encasing a caramellike filling _ are made from scraps of pie dough.
The Bumble Bees aren't for sale at the Bake Shop. They're strictly a family tradition kept alive by Fay and her brother and four sisters, all partners in the bakery. Fay's sister, Betty Boyles, is the baker. The helpers are Pat Fitch, Maryanne Krejci and Dick Fulton.
Although the cookie is made with pie crust, it indeed tastes more like a cookie than a pastry. Most families have a similar recipe for using up leftover pie dough. What makes this one special is the addition of loads of brown sugar that caramelizes in the oven. The cookies truly are scrumptious.
Swapping and munching cookies brings back memories of Christmases past for the bakers. Talevich helped her mother bake cookies, while Massoli helped his dad.
"I can still see myself as a little girl sitting at the counter," Talevich says. "She'd sit on one side and I'd sit on another and we'd make cookies."
As a child, Massoli did his cookie-baking at the family shop.
"My dad used to put me on a can so I could reach the bench to cut them out," he says.
Although they make tons of cookies now _ Talevich will bake 73,000 tea cookies alone this month _ these pros haven't lost their taste for Christmas cookies. I have the crumbs for evidence.
Cherry Almond Cups
FILLING:
3{ cups sugar
1{ lbs. almond paste
1 cup egg whites (about 8 whites)
DOUGH:
3 cups unsifted cake flour
1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter
2/3 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
{ tsp. Vanilla
30 candied cherries, cut in halves
Sliced almonds for garnish
For the filling: Place sugar and almond paste in a food processor and mix thoroughly. Transfer to a mixer bowl and beat in egg whites on medium speed for 2 minutes. Cover and set aside.
For the dough: Place cake flour, butter and sugar in a mixer bowl. Beat on low speed until well mixed. Beat in egg yolks and vanilla. Wrap dough in plastic and chill for 1 hour.
Roll dough to [-inch thickness on a lightly floured board. With a 2\-inch round cutter, cut out circles of dough. Fit dough circles into lightly greased mini muffin tins to form cups.
Fill each cup full with the almond-paste filling. Place a few sliced almonds on top. Garnish each with half of a candied cherry.
Bake at 350 degrees for 15 to 18 minutes. Cool in pans before removing.
Makes 60.
X X X
Meringue Moons
2 lbs. butter, softened
1{ cups powdered sugar
{ cup egg yolks (about 8 yolks)
2 tbsp. Brandy
2 tsp. Vanilla
2 tbsp. baking powder
10 cups flour
2 egg whites
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
With an electric mixer, beat butter on medium-high speed for 10 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally, until very light and fluffy. Add powdered sugar and beat 5 minutes longer. Add yolks, brandy and vanilla; mix well. Add baking powder and flour a little at a time, mixing to form a soft dough.
Roll dough on a lightly floured work surface to ]-inch thickness. Cut into crescent shapes or circles with a cookie cutter.
In a clean bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. With a teaspoon, mound a small amount of beaten white in centers of cookies. Dip in nuts, meringue-side down. Place about {-inch apart, meringue-sides up, on parchment-lined cookie sheets.
Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes. Remove with a spatula and cool completely on wire racks.
Makes about 8 dozen large cookies.
X X X
Bumble Bees
Pastry for a 10-inch pie
1 tbsp. melted butter
1 tbsp. granulated sugar
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
Roll out pastry as for a pie crust, to about [-inch thickness. Brush pastry with butter. Sprinkle with granulated sugar, then brown sugar, then cinnamon. Cut into {-inch-wide strips. Roll up jelly-roll fashion. Place on greased baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes, until light brown.
Makes about 12 to 14 cookies.
X X X
Cinnamon Crescents
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
{ cup powdered sugar1
{ tsp. Vanilla
2 cups flour
} cup chopped walnuts
1 cup granulated sugar
3 tbsp. cinnamon (or to taste)
Cream butter, powdered sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer until very light and fluffy. Mix in flour and nuts to form a soft dough. Pull off pieces of dough and shape into logs about 2{ inches long and 1 inch wide. Form into crescent shapes on ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 325 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes. Remove from oven and roll in mixture of granulated sugar and cinnamon. Cool.
Makes 48 cookies.
X X X
Vincent's Tea Cookies
3 lbs. Butter
1{ lbs. powdered sugar
8 cups unsifted cake flour, divided
1/3 cup nonfat dry milk
1 tbsp. Salt
{ cup egg whites (4 whites)
} cup water
1 tbsp. vanilla
Beat butter with an electric mixer until very light and fluffy. In another bowl, sift together the powdered sugar, 6 cups of the cake flour, dry milk and salt. Add to creamed butter a little at a time, beating well. Add egg whites to mixture and beat for one minute on medium speed.
Sift remaining cake flour and add to mixture alternately with water and vanilla to form a soft dough.
Spoon dough into a pastry bag fitted with a star tip. Pipe batter into 1-inch round or crescent shapes onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes, or until light brown. Remove from trays and cool.
Makes several dozen, depending on size.
X X X
PHOTO (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099):
HOLIDAY-COOKIES (Horiz) cookies from five bakers
X X X
Visit Akron Beacon Journal Online at http://www.ohio.com/.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
(c) 2000, Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio).
Visit Akron Beacon Journal Online at http://www.ohio.com/.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
