Cake Talk: December at the Bakery

It's December. That magical time before Christmas when the bakery turns into a cookie factory.

My obsession for Christmas cookies (and baking in general) harks back to San Jose, California circa 1968 and the house on 17th Street where I lived with my parents and four brothers and sisters. I was about ten, and we didn't have a lot of money. That year we made cookies to give as gifts.

Lots and lots of cookies. It was a very old house, and we had one of those old fashioned white enamel ovens with a very small door that baked unevenly, but we didn't care. We mixed most of the doughs by hand, from family recipes or ones we found in the Betty Crocker cookbook.

We had one of those cookie guns to make spritz cookies, which were everyone's favorites, but we also made sugar cookies and dream bars and chocolate chip cookies and russian tea cakes. Food coloring, sprinkles and powdered sugar were all over the floor, and we didn't finish baking until well after our normal bedtime.

So seeing all these cookies on platters makes me happy. At the bakery, our platters come in small (10-15 cookies), medium (20-25 cookies) and large (30-35 cookies).

Besides the platters, we sell lots of individual cookies.

These are almond spritz cookies.

And these are one of our many varieties of truffles. These babies are white chocolate mousse piped inside a dark chocolate shell. And topped with chopped pistachios and white chocolate drizzle.

Some of the shortbread cookies we make for the Christmas season include holly, snowflakes, santa hats, christmas trees, packages, ornaments and snowmen.

And pointsettias.

A new cookie this year is the caramel nut bar. It's a shortbread base topped with a light caramel mixed with pecan halves, salted cashews and pistachios. We found the recipe in the December issue of Sunset Magazine and adapted it a bit. And just about anything that is good, is even better when dipped in chocolate...