Day 1 … Cream Cheese Wreaths

Here we go … Day 1 of the 12 Days of Cookies, 2017 edition also known as “One Dough, Twelve Cookies.” By now, maybe you’ve made a batch or two of the basic butter cookie dough from the last post or have considered it. This is good. This is very, very good. It’s a simple dough with just 6 common ingredients that you probably have in your house, right now at this very minute. You could make a batch of dough today! Then you could start right off with a childhood favorite of mine: Cream Cheese Wreaths.

This one falls firmly into the family of spritz cookies; buttery cookies that were extruded into fat little blobs of indistinguishable shapes by an ancient cookie press called into service once a year. There were always a few moments of panic because it was never where we thought we left it. (Screaming at each other while looking for the cookie press is part of our cherished family holiday tradition. Very common among cookie baking families.) My mom would make a cream cheese dough while I dug out the big tub of sprinkles and decorating sugars that were god only knows how old. We had all the decorations … red and green sugars, confetti sprinkles, chocolate jimmies and the very best of them all, the silver balls (known in fancier circles as “silver dragées”.) These were hard little tasteless nuggets of silver coated sugar and I LOVED them. I’m quite certain I have elevated levels of mercury in my system due to mass amounts of childhood dragée consumpution. Damn straight.

After we spritzed out trees and snowflakes and other blobby things and drowned them in sprinkles, my mom would switch the cookie press to the small star and squeeze out short ropes of ridged dough we’d carefully shape into rounds. Early on, we’d press one of those glacéed neon red fruitcake cherries for the holly berry and cut up “leaves” from the green gumdrops we’d pick out of the multicolor gumdrop mix. (This was before you could buy bags of just red and green gumdrops. How did we survive?) Later on, we switched the “cherries” to cinnamon red hots and it was a vast improvement because let’s talk truth: those cherries are hideous.

If you don’t have a cookie press, a pastry bag and an open star tip will work just as well if the dough is soft and at room temperature. Or you just hand roll out ropes of do. Maybe nip at them with some scissors to make leafy like shapes (I just made that up but it could work.) These cookies, for all their ease and simplicity, are very close to the original recipe as best as I can recall. Soft and tender with just a little bit of tang, they bring up many happy memories of Christmas baking sessions.

Please note: this year I’m giving you options to make a lot of cookies or just a few. If you want to bust out a big batch, use half of the base dough. If you want just a few, say 18 or so, use just 1/8 of the base dough. And if you want something in between, ¼ of the dough makes a nice amount. Just follow the chart below for the quantity you desire. Easy.

STRESS THERAPY BAKING FACTOR: HAPPY GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PASTS. For a lot of people, this is the classic holiday cookie. It certainly is on my list. I love that the wreaths are so very seasonally appropriate, adding just the right festiveness to your holiday cookie platter. It’s one of the fancy group that you put on the top of box or the center of the platter to set the right tone with just a little dazzle. And if you like glacéed cherries and spearmint gumdrops, by all means use them. I’ll admit, they do look very Christmas-y.

2016 One Dough/12 Days of Cookies lineup: Butter Rum Bars, Candied Ginger Spice Buttons, Coconut Lime Sticks, Cranberry Pistacho Coins, Dark Chocolate Mocha Sandwich Cookies, Hazelnut Buttons, Jam Thumbprints, Mexican Chocolate Crinkles, Pecan Triangles, Peppermint Crisps, Rosemary Apricot Shortbread, Russian Tea Cakes

2017 One Dough/12 Days of Cookies lineup:
One Dough/12 Days of Cookies lineup

CREAM CHEESE WREATHS
The key to nicely shaped wreaths is to use steady pressure to pipe out a nice, even ropes of dough and then to form them gently into pretty, little rounds. It takes a few to get the rhythm down so if you don’t like what you’ve piped out, scrape it up and re-use. No harm, no foul.

Basic butter cookie dough – recipe here

1. Preheat oven to 325°F and line several sheet pans with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.
2. In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the basic butter cookie dough and the cream cheese on medium-low until fully incorporated.
3. At this point, the dough can be frozen up to 2 months tightly wrapped. Let come to room temperature before proceeding.
4. Fit the canister of a cookie press with the open star disc (you can also use a pastry bag and an open star tip) and fill with room temperature cookie dough.
5. Press out ropes of cookie dough to form 2” circles, pressing the ends together very lightly to adhere.
6. Place one cinnamon candy on the seam and a bit of green decorating sugar on each side to represent leaves/holiday greenery.
7. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are pale golden brown.
8. Let the cookies cool completely on the sheet pan. Store tightly covered for several days.

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