Every year Gourmet Magazine has cookies on its cover for the Christmas Issue. And every year, Marketman seems to have a self-destructive gene that compels me to make several of the suggested cookies hoping that they will come out looking like the magazine cover. 
Some years I am sorely disappointed. I am not a great baker, I have shakey hands and I do not have the patience for pastry work. But hope springs eternal and it never fails…it’s almost as if the challenge is laid out as soon as my December Gourmet Issue is delivered to our front door. Forget for a moment that we live 10,000 miles away from Gourmet’s test kitchens and ingredients sources and that our local butter sucks big time. Forget that I am not a great baker. Forget that they have stylists up the wazoo being paid $500 to $1,000 per day working on their cookies and photo shoots. Forget all that because this year either they are making simpler cookies or I am getting luckier, because I think this batch came out looking pretty good, don’t you??? And they slot perfectly into this year’s red and white color scheme.
Up top, one of my cookies laid ON TOP of the Gourmet Magazine page. I ended up with about 30 specimens and I only discarded 3 or 4 that were awful. The key is a 
runny icing, not something I am used to working with, and a little bit of imagination. If you want the recipe for the ginger cookies and the instructions for icing, get the Gourmet December Issue, or they may have published it on line. There are other intriguing Christmas cookies in this year’s line-up that I may get to try before the 25th, including damson plum pinwheels and some chocolate crinkles… These cookies are great for Christmas presents, or place car holders or just laid out in a nice flat basket on your coffee table… they smell good and they look great, at least in my biased opinion!
13 Responses
Stunning Christmas cookies! They are multi-taskers too – with that loop on top of them you can hang them on Christmas tree, by the ceiling or by the hallway and then enjoy them as a treat with coffee or hot chocolate after Christmas. The power of Butter has done it again. Move over Gourmet Magazine cookies, here comes Market Manila Cookies.
Those are very pretty cookies…seems almost a shame to eat them.
Ganda! ganda!
nice nice nice! they look too good to be eaten! :D
Those are really good looking cookies! I’m not sure I’d have the patience and artistry to pull those off. One of the reasons I started cooking/baking was because I wanted to “create” without necessarily having to dabble in “art.” =)
ang ganda!
MM, from whom did you inherit your “patience and preserverance” gene? Hats off to you and kudos! I could not believe my eyes, you actually baked and decorated them. I ALWAYS dreamed of making those cookies and hanging them on the Xmas tree but every time I think of how complicated they are, I just give up. You are indeed unbelievable. :-)
You are bloody brilliant,MM!
MM your cookies ROCK !!
soo pretty! merry christmas marketman!
Maria Clara, yes the cookies have many uses…unfortunately, in the humid Manila weather, I would be worried about hanging them (I tried) as it is possible after a few days the pressure will break the cookie at its weakest link. In a dry winter environment, this would not be a problem. For the red dye, I just used the nice concentrated gels, not the watery dyes in bottles. Marga, you should have heard the number of expletives I was letting lose while in the middle of trying to decorate the cookies…I thought they would be a disaster. What this post illustrates is that they are actually doable…I am definitely not a very patient person…
too good to eat yet too good to pass.. hehehe!! yummy!!
oh man! these are pretty christmas cookies! darn, i’ve missed my december issue and didn’t get to see these! nice! i hope i have enough time (and courage) to make some myself…