Almond candy cane cookies
Many hands help make holiday cookies. That’s true when you’re gathered with family and friends and vats of colored icing. It’s true when you’re running a contest for cookie recipes, when it takes thousands of readers, dozens of cooking school students and five hungry judges to choose the best. And, it turns out, that’s even true if you’re one of the winners.
This year’s Holiday Cookie Bake-Off attracted nearly 200 recipe entries. More than 7,000 votes were cast by readers on our Facebook page. We took the top 50 vote-getters to the folks at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Pasadena, and students and faculty there baked them all off.
L.A. Times Food Editor Russ Parsons, Deputy Food Editor Betty Hallock and Times Test Kitchen manager Noelle Carter spent one Saturday morning tasting every single one along with Lachlan Sands, dean of Le Cordon Bleu, and one of his students, Katherine Berg.
Last Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times Test Kitchen was jammed with happy bakers and their helpers for the photo shoot for today’s cover story. But none of them was happier than Nicole Cleghorn, who flew in for the event from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.
Her husband is a staff sergeant stationed there, and she follows the Times Food section online. So when she learned that her white chocolate turtle cookies were chosen among our 10 favorites in this year’s contest, she planned to email us a photograph.
But then her friends came through. One, whose husband travels a lot on business, donated enough airline miles to get her a free ticket. Five others chipped in enough cash for a couple of nights in a hotel. And so Cleghorn was able to join the nine local winners in the Test Kitchen.
She brought a box of intricately decorated cookies she’d made at home and marveled at the turn of events. “That hotel!” she said. “My goodness, it has glass elevators and robes in every room.”
Amazing what great cookies -- and the hands of many friends -- can do.
Cookies
In the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl using a hand mixer, cream together the butter, shortening and sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, until incorporated, then add the almond and vanilla extracts. Add the salt, then slowly add the flour, a little at a time, until completely incorporated to form the dough.
Divide the dough in half. Cover and refrigerate half. To the other half, add enough food coloring to turn the dough a rich pink. Cover the other half; and refrigerate both pieces of dough about 30 minutes.
Heat the oven to 375 degrees.
Form the cookies: Take a heaping tablespoon each of the pink and white dough. Roll each piece into a strip, then take the two strips and place them side by side so they are touching each other. Roll them together so you have one uniform piece, red on one side and white on the other, then twist to swirl. Twist the dough to form the shape of a candy cane. Continue forming the cookies with all of the dough.
Bake the cookies on a cookie sheet until set, 6 to 8 minutes. Remove the hot cookies from the sheet carefully, as the “hook” of the cane can break easily; allowing them to sit on the cookie sheet for a minute or so after baking makes the removal a bit easier. Glaze while hot.
Glaze and assembly
In the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl using a hand mixer, beat the softened butter with the powdered sugar. Beat in the almond extract, then slowly add the milk. Add enough milk to create a glaze-like consistency (not as thick as frosting, but thick enough to coat the cookie). Glaze the cookies generously while hot. Feel free to add a second coating of glaze if you’d like!
The cookies are good warm, but they are actually at their best the second day, or after they have had time to really cool and properly set.
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