• Creader19 on February 16, 2024

  A gorgeous book that makes a great gift. Lots of good recipes.

Notes about Recipes in this book

• Chocolate cookies with peppermint cream cheese frosting [Spencer Lawson]

  • SpatulaCity on November 05, 2024

    Delicious chocolate cookie and dreamy peppermint cream cheese frosting. I loved these. My husband scraped off all the frosting and preferred them plain. But if you love cream cheese frosting as I do, these are a win!

• Chocolate peppermint crinkle cookies [Edd Kimber]

  • Saltbun on December 23, 2025

    I didn’t have superfine sugar, so swapped for granulated. Even if a little different from what the author intended, the texture and flavor still turned out really nice

• Classic sugar cookies [Emily Hutchinson]

  • SpatulaCity on November 05, 2024

    A respectable, nice, soft sugar cookie.

• Tiramisù frangipane thumbprint cookies

  • SpatulaCity on November 10, 2024

    These are special cookies! I realized too late that it called for Dutch Process cocoa, and there only version of that in my cupboard was Black Cocoa. Also I had espresso granules and not coffee granules. But still, these turned out to be quite a delicious, not too sweet, adult cookie.

• Speculaas rum balls

  • hillsboroks on January 01, 2023

    This was a very easy but very eye catching Christmas cookie to make. I used Steenstra’s Almond St. Claus Windmill cookies from Michigan. I had tasted them before when traveling and loved their flavor so I ordered a big box of them from Amazon. My husband doesn’t like white chocolate so I melted a couple of Green and Black milk chocolate bars and dipped half of the frozen balls in milk chocolate and half in white. But when we started tasting them our friends all preferred the white chocolate with the spice cookie interior. The decorations are a bit fiddly but really make these cookies stand out on a cookie tray. You do have to work very fast to put the little leaves and berries on before the chocolate sets up. I have now added a set of culinary tweezers to my wish list.

  • SpatulaCity on November 05, 2024

    For us these were too sweet and gooey. But I love the flavor of speculaas!

• Eggnog brûlée cookies [Spencer Lawson]

  • SpatulaCity on November 10, 2024

    Found these to be bland and not reminiscent of Eggnog. Needs more spiciness and density to the cookies.

• "Food for the gods" bars

  • SpatulaCity on November 05, 2024

    These are a blondie bar loaded with dates. Overall good, but very sweet and almost too buttery. Our turned out quite a bit darker than the picture, so not sure if I made a mistake in preparing.

• Five-spice cranberry jam thumbprint cookies [Rebecca Firth]

  • SpatulaCity on November 05, 2024

    Really liked this recipe. The spicy cranberry is a surprise and nice change up from the standard fruits. Neither the cookie nor jam were too sweet which we appreciated. It is important to make the thumbprint before chilling or the dough will crack.

• Pearl sugar ginger cookies

  • hillsboroks on December 11, 2024

    These are the best ginger cookies I have ever made. The spicing is just right, the outer cookie has lovely crunch while the inside is a bit soft and chewy. They look pretty too with the pearl sugar and will definitely be on my holiday cookie trays.

• Spiced cranberry-white chocolate blondies

  • SpatulaCity on December 10, 2024

    Good but as with other bar recipes in this book, very sweet! I used unsweetened cranberries, and reduced the brown sugar by 10% weight and that helped a bit. Used white chocolate chips to save on prep time. Next time I’d add orange zest to the mix. To help the sweetness in the icing I added in some cream cheese and reduced the powdered sugar. Came out nice! Would be good to chill before slicing for cleaner slicing.