Christmas
1676 recipes found
Mashed Butternut Squash
Mashed squash makes a versatile side dish throughout the fall and winter, since it goes with just about everything. It’s perfect with roasted meats like duck, chicken or pork loin. Don’t mash too much though — leave it on the chunky side.
Black Pepper and Bourbon Caramel Chews
Soft caramels are not inherently elegant, but these are thanks to a gentle sprinkle of black pepper and a dash of bourbon. The recipe does require a candy thermometer.
Eggnog
Homemade eggnog is simple, a recipe for novices, as long as they can whisk. Where many eggnogs go wrong is that they rely more on cream than on alcohol. It’s not a liquid dessert. It’s a drink, whose coarse edges are muted with cream and eggs. “The Joy of Cooking” has a recipe that hits all the right points, some of them in excess. Made as is, the drinker is apt to experience a brief moment of jolly followed by blacking out. For my adaptation, I cut some of the cream with milk and cut back on the alcohol just a touch so one could finish a glass while still holding onto it.
Crown Roast of Pork with Fennel and Lemon
Black-and-White Cookies
There is no reason to settle for a stale shrink-wrapped cookie from the produce market. This classic New York cookie is easy to make.
Crisp Roast Duck
A golden-skinned roasted duck is a festive main course for any special meal. In this recipe, the bird is doused with boiling water before being scored all over. The boiling water helps pull the skin taut, making it easier to score in a crosshatch pattern. That, in turn, allows the fat to render out as everything roasts. The result is a perfectly cooked duck with pink, juicy meat and burnished, crunchy skin. Serve the bird as is, or with some kind of sauce — either sweet or pungent — such as cranberry sauce, salsa verde or a spicy soy dipping sauce. And save the duck fat at the bottom of the pan. It will keep for at least three months in the refrigerator and is excellent on roasted vegetables, especially potatoes.
Cranberry Linzer Torte
This version of Linzer torte, a classic Viennese pastry, has a dough with a high proportion of ground hazelnuts and almonds. It is usually filled with a raspberry or apricot jam, but cranberries make it a perfect Thanksgiving dessert. The secret to rolling a dough made with nuts is to keep chilling it if it becomes difficult to handle. Linzer torte keeps up to a week if well-wrapped, and also freezes well, before or after baking.
Spiced Holiday Pralines
Living in the South, Elizabeth Choinski has seen plenty of pralines in her time, flavored with the likes of chocolate and coffee. But she had never come upon pralines imbued with the classic spice flavors of the holidays. So she made her own, mixing cloves and cinnamon into the pot. The resulting pralines are superb: aromatic, creamy as they melt in your mouth, then crunchy from the nuts.
Almond Spritz Cookies
A holiday classic found in nearly every cookie box, these almond-flavored treats are buttery, crisp and all too easy to eat by the handful (fear not, this recipe makes a lot). Spritz cookies also keep well, for up to two weeks stored in an airtight container at room temperature. If you don’t have a spritz gun, you can use a pastry bag to form them. Or, for more rustic versions, skip the pressing altogether. Chill the dough for an hour, then roll out 1-inch balls, placing them 1 ½ inches apart on the baking sheets, then use a fork to flatten them. A sprinkle of colored sugar makes everything pretty.
Bohemian Spritz
While Americans content themselves with Rudolph and Frosty, rural Austrians revere a more outré member of the holiday pantheon: Krampus, the malevolent goat-horned demon. A pre-Christian holdover, he wields birch branches and rusty chains, enacting a sort of good cop, bad cop routine with Old St. Nick. The Bohemian Spritz (a creation of Vandaag's Katie Stipe) is a light, fizzy wine drink with compellingly arboreal undercurrents, provided by pine and elderflower cordials. It is ideal for welcoming the long nights, for putting the Krampus back in Christmas.
Roast Duck with Orange and Ginger
For a festive occasion, a burnished whole duck makes quite an impression — fancier than chicken and more elegant than turkey. Roasting the duck is not so difficult to do, but it can be smoky; to be on the safe side, dismantle your smoke alarm and turn on a good exhaust fan. (If your oven has a convection fan, don’t use it; that way you avoid unnecessarily sputtering fat blowing about.). Seasoning the duck ahead and leaving it in the fridge overnight helps to deepen the flavor and keeps work to a minimum the following day. This one is seasoned with orange zest, along with fair amount of ginger and five-spice powder, which gives it a marvelous perfume; serve it with mashed butternut squash.
Cultured Butter Cookies
These cookies are crumblier, crisper and more buttery in flavor than the typical cookie made with high-fat sweet cream butter. Which is exactly why you should make them.
Classic Prime Rib for a Small Crowd
This scaled-down version of the traditional holiday roast is incredibly easy to prepare. In addition to the beef, you need only red wine or stock, garlic, salt and pepper. Serve it for Sunday dinner alongside a pile of fluffy mashed potatoes and something green. If you're feeling ambitious, use the beef drippings to make Yorkshire pudding.
Chewy Chocolate Snowcaps
Dense and rich with the flavor of toasted pecans and dark chocolate, these cookies evoke brownies or fudge. They are made with egg whites for leavening and contain no flour, so they are a great gluten-free alternative. The batter comes together fast, although it will seem like the egg whites can’t possibly provide enough moisture. Just keep stirring with a strong spoon and a very thick batter will quickly materialize.
Shaker Lemon Pie
Thanksgiving often coincides with the arrival of all kinds of great citrus, which is why the chef Elisabeth Prueitt, of Tartine in San Francisco, offered this take on a classic Shaker lemon pie. Traditionally made from whole lemons, this version also incorporates blood oranges and cardamom, and it’s a bright, welcome addition to the pecan and pumpkin desserts this time of year. Start it the day before by slicing the fruit and leaving it to sit in sugar overnight, then mix it with beaten eggs the next day. At home, Ms. Prueitt uses her tangy all-purpose cream cheese dough, which also happens to be gluten-free, but you could use regular pie dough if you prefer. Baking the pan directly on the oven floor (or on a baking stone placed on the oven floor) helps ensure that it browns evenly.
Chocolate Coconut Pecan Tart
This dessert adds coconut and pecans to a buttery chocolate shortbread crust, which is baked it until the whole thing is glossy and crisp on top. It tastes a little like pecan pie and a little like a candy bar — which is to say perfect.
Linzer Trees
These are a reworking of an old “Joy of Cooking” recipe I learned from my friend in Atlanta, Allison Dykes. They are the precious stars of her holiday cookie plate. The dough can be slightly finicky but can be re-rolled and re-chilled several times so all the scraps get used. The ideal thickness is somewhere between an eighth and a fourth of an inch. They need to be thin but not so thin that the delicate cookie breaks. The roasted almonds can be ground in a food processor.
Cranberry Pecan Pie
Brandied Dried Fruit
The complex layers of flavor that develop from combining dried fruit, citrus, spices and brandy are the reward for an investment of time. And time does most of the work in this recipe, which produces brandied fruit that you can use in an array of dishes and drinks: A two-day soak will get you a fine infusion, but go for the full 14 to extract notes from each component. The spices need time to bloom, and the dried fruit skins plump as they are infused, absorbing the citrus’s bite and the brandy’s warmth. Use the fruit mixture in scones, cocktails and braised lamb. Or stir the drained fruit into muffin or cake batter, toss with bulkier fruit like apples or pears for use as a filling for hand pies, or serve as a relish to accompany lamb, pork or chicken. As an added bonus, the fruit mixture keeps in the refrigerator for months. Store in an airtight container and avoid adding any moisture to the jar by using only dry utensils to serve.
Evelyn Patout's Preserved Kumquats
Brown Sugar-Pecan Shortbread Cookies
Lovers of pecan sandies will adore these crisp, buttery treats that are a cinch to put together. The recipe is an adaptation of one developed by Dorie Greenspan for her book, “Baking: From My Home to Yours.” Not fond of pecans? Try hazelnuts or almonds instead.
Classic Sugar Cookies
Everyone needs a good sugar cookie recipe. If you can master the very simple technique behind this one dough, you have several variations at your disposal, most likely without a trip to the grocery store.
Orange Butter Cookies
The most common mistakes made by home bakers, professionals say, have to do with the care and handling of one ingredient: butter. Creaming butter correctly, keeping butter doughs cold, and starting with fresh, good-tasting butter are vital details that professionals take for granted, and home bakers often miss.
