🤖 AI Summary
Overview
This episode dives into the New York Times' annual Cookie Week, exploring creative holiday cookie recipes, baking tips, and festive entertaining ideas. Melissa Clark and Vaughn Vreeland share insights into this year's cookie themes, answer listener questions about holiday baking, and discuss broader holiday cooking and hosting strategies.
Notable Quotes
- If you're going to call it Cookie Week and you want to include brownies, it's going to make more people happy. Therefore, it is a cookie.
- Melissa Clark, on the debate over whether brownies qualify as cookies.
- What is baking? What are cookies? They're fun.
- Vaughn Vreeland, on the joy of holiday baking.
- Definitions change. A cookie is a sweet little thing that you pick up, a small bite of something delicious.
- Melissa Clark, redefining the essence of cookies.
🍪 Cookie Week Origins and Themes
- Cookie Week began in 2020 as a virtual cookie exchange to foster connection during the holidays. It has since evolved into a major annual event.
- This year's theme, But Make It a Cookie,
transforms unexpected flavors into cookie form, such as gingerbread latte cookies and popcorn bucket cookies.
- Melissa Clark's Vietnamese coffee brownie and Vaughn Vreeland's popcorn bucket cookie showcase inventive approaches to holiday baking.
🎄 Holiday Baking Tips
- Melissa Clark recommends using versatile base doughs like shortbread to create multiple cookie varieties by altering flavors and shapes.
- For cookies that last longer, opt for recipes with spices or chocolate, as their flavors deepen over time. Airtight containers and parchment layers are essential for freezing cookies.
- Savory alternatives to holiday cookies include cheese straws with pimento cheese or spiced nuts with rosemary and lemon zest.
🍹 Signature Holiday Drinks
- Vaughn Vreeland suggests spiced apple cider as a versatile drink base that can be spiked with rum, bourbon, or vodka.
- Melissa Clark recommends making infused simple syrups, such as rosemary-lemon, to elevate punches or non-alcoholic sodas.
- Batch cocktails, like cranberry-orange Manhattans, are ideal for hosting, but avoid shaking carbonated mixers like ginger beer.
🍖 Festive Main Courses and Entertaining Ideas
- Braised dishes like lamb shanks or short ribs are perfect for holiday meals, as they can be prepared ahead and are nearly impossible to overcook.
- Creative party favors include personalized horoscopes or conversation starter questions at each place setting.
- Melissa Clark plans to make osso buco with a gremolata topping, while Vaughn Vreeland opts for her beef Wellington recipe, a family favorite.
AI-generated content may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon as a sole source of truth.
📋 Episode Description
The first week of December at The New York Times is known as “Cookie Week.” Every day, for seven days, our cooking team highlights a new holiday cookie recipe. This year’s batch features flavors that aren’t necessarily traditional holiday ones — or even, for that matter, flavors. Instead, they draw inspiration from family night at the movies, drinks like Vietnamese Coffee, and perhaps most surprisingly, an Italian deli meat.
In this edition of the Sunday Special, Gilbert Cruz talks with Melissa Clark and Vaughn Vreeland from New York Times Cooking about this year’s cookies, and they answer questions from readers about how to navigate cooking and baking during the holidays.
Background Reading:
These 7 Cookies Will Be the Life of Every Party
Melissa Clark is a food reporter and columnist for The Times.
Vaughn Vreeland is a supervising video producer for NYT Cooking and writes the “Bake Time” newsletter.
Audio produced by Tina Antolini and Alex Barron with Kate LoPresti. Edited by Wendy Dorr. Engineered by Rowan Niemisto. Original music by Daniel Powell and Diane Wong.
Photo credit: Rachel Vanni for The New York Times.
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