Christmas Cookies

I am one of those people that really prefers to wait until December 1st to start embracing the holidays. I have long been determined not to get sucked into the madness in November.

And so it goes against my inclinations to reference Christmas in this column, considering it is still very much November (until Monday, anyway). But as I get older -- and busier -- I am becoming increasingly schooled in matters of practicality. There are only three pre-Christmas weekends in December and, realistically, they’re a write-off for many of us already. Cocktail parties, brunches, shopping missions, getting the tree up.

I am thus giving myself permission to think (and write) about Christmas in November. Because there has to be time for baking, which is, perhaps, one of the things I like best about the holidays. And it’s no fun if it’s rushed.

Holiday baking is probably the most loaded of all Christmas traditions. Every family has their legendary treats. In my family, there are a few items that make an annual appearance, most notably my mom’s famous chocolate-covered almond bark. I have eaten it every year since I can possibly remember, but only developed a true appreciation for it when I first made it myself a few years ago -- and literally scarred myself for life in the process. (A third-degree-burn-inducing blob of beyond-boiling sugar on the hand).

One of my new favourites is the sugar cookie, which is fun to tart up with icing and sparkles. I say “favourite” now because I have yet to undertake that project this year. It always seems like a great idea until it’s midnight and I’m covered in hardened green icing and picking up silver dragees off the living room carpet.

That and the cookies never look as lovely as I imagine they will when I begin. Some of that has to do with artistic talent (which I can do little to fix) and some of it has to do with creating the perfect icing (which, happily, I can). Thank goodness for science.

Last week I paid a visit last week to Yvonne Zensner at The Cake Box (www.cakebox.ca), who I thought would be the ideal person to offer some tips.

Zensner and her staff make picture-perfect cakes and cookies at their very-busy downtown Kitchener shop, which opened about 18 months ago. They also run decorating classes that, in her words, “teach you the techniques you’d see in Martha Stewart magazines that you don’t know how to do” -- how to bake and store the cookies, how to make icing that sets, how to tint it and so on.

Here are some of Zensner’s best tips -- and an icing recipe you can use with your own favorite sugar cookies.

- Be sure to chill the dough before rolling and cutting shapes to get clean edges. Keep a close eye when baking your cookies to ensure you get a soft inside and a crispy outside. (I also noticed that Zensner’s cookies are made nice and thick to stand up to all that decorative fare -- so don’t roll your dough too thin).

- Always use gels or pastes to tint your icing. “The colours are so intense that you need very little,” Zensner says. Liquid food colouring will interfere with the icing’s consistency.

- Use a thinner icing for “flooding” cookies (giving them an all-over base). Let it set, and then use a slightly thicker icing to pipe on details. If you’re using very dark colours for flooding, let the icing set overnight before you add detail or the colour will bleed.

- Zensner and her staff use sandwich baggies for piping -- they fill them up and snip off the corners. “Never fill the bag more than halfway,” she advises. “A third is best. You can control it better.”

- Hold the piping bag with the palm at the top and squeeze down, not from the middle. (Like a tube of toothpaste).

- If you’re adding sprinkles, be sure to do it when the icing is still wet.

Decorator's Icing

Zensner recommends you use a stand mixer to make this, if you can -- it has that extra oomph. Using meringue powder gives the icing that “beautiful, glossy look,” and is child-friendly and safer for pregnant women than recipes that use egg whites. A hint of lemon juice cuts the sweetness. This will make a fair bit of icing so you may want to try halving the recipe to start. You can always make more. Tint as desired.

1 kilogram confectioners sugar, plus more set aside

2 tbsp meringue powder


1-1/2 cups water


a squeeze of lemon juice (optional)

Mix above ingredients until smooth, shiny and pure white. This can take a good five minutes. This icing will be a thicker consistency. Set some of it aside for piping on fine detail. 

Slowly add a spoonful of water to remaining icing and blend until desired consistency. The ribbon test is a good indicator: run a knife through the icing. If the line disappears before five seconds, you need more sugar; if it remains after eight seconds, add more liquid. 

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Rose Murray

It should come as no surprise that Rose Murray’s latest book, A Taste of Canada: A Culinary Journey, includes many references to Waterloo region. Not only because Murray herself lives in Cambridge, but because, as she recently told me, this area holds an important place in the overall food culture of our country.

“It came naturally,” she said of including references to her home region in the book, like shout-outs to Barrie’s asparagus farm and Cambridge’s Portuguese groceries, and a recipe inspired by a breakfast pizza made at the U of W School of Architecture’s cafe.

“It’s not that I tried to make it important,” said Murray, who’s currently touring around Western Canada promoting the book. “Waterloo region definitely has prime agricultural land. It’s one of the best growing areas around. It’s a great food area. There’s the influence of German settlers and we’ve even got the fun things that come from the population of Newfoundlanders in Cambridge.”

Murray, who got her start writing about food for an Owen Sound weekly newspaper when her children were small, has written for a variety of national publications over the years, including the Globe and Mail and Canadian Living. She’s published several cookbooks and for years has appeared every month on CTV Kitchener’s noon show, talking about seasonal ingredients, where to get them and how to use them.

A Taste of Canada is a book, she said, that “it was about time” she wrote -- one that decidedly celebrates our homegrown cooking and ingredients. “We’re modest about what we have in the way of resources and the ideas that we have that come from other countries,” she said.

The book is traditionally organized by category (fish, desserts, vegetables, etc.); each recipe is prefaced by a chatty, anecdotal intro that reveals its Canadian roots. There are also menus included (A Midsummer Grill, A Prairie Brunch) and stories and features about Canuck regions and ingredients.

The tome wouldn’t have been complete, she said, without a contribution from her late friend and Waterloo region legend Edna Staebler, whose summer fruit shortcake recipe is included in the book.

“She was one of the first journalists in Canada to talk about the Mennonites and local food and regional food,” Murray said. “There were others, but she was one of the first, and she really brought Waterloo region to near mythical status in terms of cuisine.”

Murray grew up on a farm near Collingwood where the family grew their own vegetables, raised their own meat, and otherwise sustained themselves on what was grown around home. That upbringing has influenced her philosophies about food, including a desire to eat seasonal, local foods.
But, she said, just as her family purchased sugar and other imported ingredients when she was a child, she feels it’s important to supplement those foods we can find locally with treats that come from afar.

“I don’t think we should only have local ingredients,” she said. “I think that trend is here to stay -- I hope so. It’s good to support local farmers, for sure, and fresh food is more nutritious if it doesn’t have to be imported. But we shouldn’t deprive ourselves of those wonderful things like mango or chocolate or coffee, either.”

Though she’s travelled across Canada throughout her life, doing so while doing researching the book reinforced for her just how diverse our food cultures are from region to region, whether they’re innate or borrowed from immigrants.

“It’s time we had a few more books that celebrated our good food and the culture we have here,” said Murray. “It’s so diverse. Every region has something different about it. We wanted to have a book that gave Canadians a taste of their own food.”
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The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

The first recipe I remember confidently making on my own -- my very own little go-to classic -- was the chocolate chip cookie. The recipe came from my mom’s Betty Crocker cookbook, which she’d received as a new bride in the early ’70s, and I had it more or less memorized by the time I was 12. My mom still has the book, and, to this day, it opens naturally to that buttery, floury page. Page 134, I believe.

When it comes to the chocolate chip cookie, everyone has an opinion about how to make it. More butter, less flour, a certain type of chocolate. Growing up, my girlfriends and I spent many after school hours watching Y&R while devouring one friend’s mom’s classic recipe. She’s still making them for us to this day (though the occasion is typically a little more special than just “after school”) and they are still exactly the same in flavour and consistency as they were 20 years ago. This is owed to a secret that neither mother nor daughter will ever reveal. We’ve all tried to guess, but they’ll never give up the goods.

Last summer, the New York Times ran a lengthy feature on the chocolate chip cookie, outlining the crucial criteria for the perfect specimen by way of interviews with highly respected bakers and pastry chefs.
In the end, they were able to narrow the deliciousness down to several crucial factors.

First, the dough has to be made ahead of time and left to rest in the fridge anywhere from 24 to 72 hours. This, the experts maintained, allows the dough to “fully soak up the liquid -- in this case the eggs -- in order to get a drier and firmer dough, which bakes to a better consistency.” Ultimately, it resulted in a richer, browner and more caramelized cookie.

Size, they insisted, also matters. There’s a reason bakeries make big, greedy six-inchers. The larger sized cookie allows for “three distinct textures.” The outside inch is crunchy. The dead centre is gooey and soft. In between is the sweet spot, where the two textures mix.

As for the chocolate, the New York bakers preferred high-quality imported brands like Callebaut or Valrhona, with a cacao content of at least 60 per cent. Not chunks, preferably, but thin disks. And, the ratio of chocolate to dough, they agreed, should be no less than 40 to 60.

Then there’s the salt. A pinch of fleur de sel on top before baking creates that irresistible salty-sweet dimension. And, of course, the Warm Rule. All cookies taste better straight from the oven.

Below is what they came up with as the consummate recipe. It’s adapted from one by New York bakery owner Jacques Torres and incorporates all the agreed-upon crucial factors from those consulted.

I first made it for friends at the cottage this summer and I kid you not when I tell you that, without knowing the back story, people were commenting, “This is the best chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever had.”

There’s nothing picky or difficult about these, really. Good quality ingredients make all the difference, though, and they’re worth seeking out. Visit a gourmet food shop for chocolate disks or chips that are higher in cacao content; with a little poking around, they can be found. The same goes for fleur del sel -- I used Maldon, which is relatively easy to get.

This recipe, which makes about 16 five-inch cookies, calls for a mix of cake and bread flour which I didn’t bother with. There was no explanation as to why this was necessary, so I went with unbleached white flour instead -- and had great results.

Use room temperature eggs and butter and consider weighing your ingredients (instead of using measuring cups) for greater accuracy. And don’t forget to plan ahead; your dough needs at least 24 hours to veg in the fridge and do its thing. Trust me, it’s worth the wait.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 cups minus 2 tbsps (8-1/2 oz) cake flour

1- 2/3 cups (8-1/2 oz) bread flour

1-1/4 tsp baking soda

1-1/2 tsp baking powder

1-1/2 tsp coarse salt

1-1/4 cups unsalted butter

1-1/4 cups (10 oz) light brown sugar

1 cup plus 2 tbsp (8 oz) granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 tsp natural vanilla extract

1-1/4 bittersweet chocolate diks or feves, at least 60 per cent cacao content

Sea salt

1. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

2. Using a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.

4. Scoop six 3-1/2 ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.

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Healthy Haven

Buying well-raised meat -- from reputable farmers who can tell me how the creatures who end up on my plate have lived and died -- is a commitment I’ve made for myself of late. On the whole, it’s been easy. But, as I’m discovering, it’s hard to be spur of the moment.

Buying in bulk and having a well-stocked freezer helps. But I’m not always that organized. On a recent cold and dreary Wednesday night I felt a sudden need to whip up shepherd’s pie -- but no ground meat handy. The farmer’s market was not an option, and I wasn’t about to make an emergency trek to the farm gate in the near-dark. So I skulked into the supermarket and bought a couple of pounds of generic ground beef. The pie was tasty; but having made a commitment to buying healthily-raised meat, (and knowing nothing about what I’d just bought or where it came from), I was feeling disappointed in myself. Convenience had won out.

Since then, Kitchener has welcomed the arrival of The Healthy Butcher, and picking up a pound of quality ground beef from a butcher you know after work is suddenly easier. This is the third store for owners Mario Fiorucci and Tara Longo, a married couple from Toronto who have had enormous success with their stores on Queen Street West and, more recently, Eglinton Avenue. 

The Kitchener location is part of the new, 12,000 square foot Healthy Haven, just off of Victoria Street on Bruce, overlooking the expressway. The open-concept market was the brainwave of David Ehrenworth, owner of the David’s Gourmet shops in downtown Kitchener and North Waterloo. He was looking to open a third location, and was interested in the old Cowan Insurance building, but the space was too large. Why not share the space with other vendors, he thought, and, within a matter of days, he found several interested parties. Fiddleheads, a well-established local health food store, was first on board. Next came Gerald Kara of Kara’s Smart Foods, who, along with his father, specializes in produce and has a long history at the St. Jacob’s market.

“They thought about it and were missing meat and fish, and they had heard of us so they gave us a call,” Fiorucci says of Ehrenworth and partners Jenn Arsenault and Kim Ziegler-Boril, who co-own Fiddleheads. “We originally said no, because we had just opened the Eglinton store, but we gave in because they had such a passion for what they were doing and they shared our philosophy for food and retail. It was a good opportunity and it’s a world-class store. It’s a great mix, these four retailers under one roof.”

Indeed, the Haven, which opened in late October, makes for a unique shopping experience. The four retailers are in one open-concept store, each in their own section, but with a single cash check-out.

You can pop by to pick up all the necessities for a lovely meal -- veg from Kara’s carefully-selected supply, meat or fish from the butcher (including over 50 varieties of housemade sausage and burgers), organic dairy, grains and legumes from Fiddlehead’s and pretty much anything else you can dream up from David’s. It’s also a good spot to source out a hard-to-find culinary item (duck fat, say) or to sit in the cafe area and have a latte, lunch or a scoop of ice cream. In the future, says Ehrenworth, they plan to have an outdoor patio and a learning room that features various clinics.

“It’s about good food, more than anything,” Fiorucci says of the owners’ shared philosophy. All meat at The Healthy Butcher, for example, comes from organically-raised animals on Ontario farms. Their goal, he says, is not just to educate people on eating local and organic, but to introduce them to the concept of nose-to-tail eating.

“It’s not just boxes of loins that we’re selling,” he explains. “That’s what sells, that’s what’s tender, but a cow’s not a walking loin. With every 40 pounds of striploin, there’s 600 pounds of everything else. Our deal with farmers is we buy the whole animal.”

As a result, Fiorucci says he tends to price prime cuts (like rib eye steaks) higher, whereas non-prime cuts (like ground beef) are comparable to supermarket prices. “We try to encourage people to look aside. Prime cuts are a nice treat, but there’s so much more than that.”

Fiorucci believes we need to get away from eating large quantities of cheap meat and instead move toward eating smaller quantities of high-quality meat. Despite having been warned that KW shoppers are “price-conscious,” Fiorucci says that, so far, the clientele here are proving more knowledgeable than in Toronto.

“People understand organic and what we’re trying to do,” he said. “They understand they’re going to be paying more. There’s been no one I’ve had an argument with about price. Maybe it’s because here, people are much closer to agriculture and to farming than they are in Toronto.”

The Healthy Haven, at 25 Bruce Street, is open Monday to Wednesday from 9 to 7, Thursday and Friday from 9 to 8, Saturday 9 to 5 and Sundays noon to 5. Check out their website for more information at www.healthyhaven.ca.
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