Hanukkah Cookies

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" Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights begins at sundown on December 4th and we are making some sweet trips today to get ready for the 1st of 8 wonderful nights. And joining me in the studio are the authors of Cookie Craft, the fabulous book, Valerie Patterson and Janice Fryer."

" Hi!"

" Thank you so much for coming in today and bringing your wonderful cookies. They look almost too good to eat, but they're delicious too."

" They are delicious. Yes. Absolutely."

" And you're gonna show us how to make them today and it looks intimidating, but it can be really simple."

" It's not hard at all. Everything that you see here you can pretty much get at your local cookshop and just the icing, and some other really basic, easy techniques."

" And these are the tools you need. You need some pastry bags; you have some colored sugar, which you can color yourself at home-"

" Absolutely."

" and the instructions are in your book, very easy to do, the cookie cutters, and it looks like a mustard and ketchup-"

" Yes, yes [unk]"

" dispenser is here and you're gonna show us how to use those in just a minute. But first, you're explaining to us that you can color your dough beforehand, right?"

" Yes, absolutely. It makes a great impact to have color dough. It's very easy. Just with food color from the supermarket and it's the first easy tip that we can tell you for Hanukkah to make a nice blue base for your cookies."

" And they're so gorgeous. And this is how they turn out afterwards?"

" Yes."

" Right over here?"

" Yes."

" And you want to put the lines on then, before you put it in."

" Yes, this is called the impressing. And one of these is pressing a design into the dough to"

" all you do is, you know, slide one on top of the other and you bake it just like that, no pressing. It bakes in maybe 30 seconds more than it would take to bake a plain cookie, but the results are really great and simple, simple, simple for that easy, beautiful cookie."

" Alright, and Janice, we're gonna actually do a little piping right now."

" Yes, yes. It's really easy, and if you've never done it before, it's really-"

" And I haven't."

" easy and don't be afraid, really."

" Okay."

" So, just take that and then just gently squeeze."

" Okay."

" And while-"

" And you sure to follow the lines here,"

" Just follow the lines."

" which makes it so easy, to just-"

" Oh! There we go."

" And if you don't have lines, it's pretty easy. So, yeah. Oh my god! I can't believe that's the first time you're doing it."

" This is not-"

" But that's how easy it is. And you know, with the instructions in the book, you know, it tells you how to hold the pastry bag."

" Oops! I missed a little spot. Here we go."

" And what do we say that mistakes?"

" Mistakes you get to eat. So-"

" You got to eat your mistakes [unk]."

" This is so easy. And you're gonna show us another technique at the same time as I'm decorating this. What is this called?"

" Yes, this is called flooding. And basically, all you do is take a squeeze bottle filled with some looser icing and just, you know, basically, squeeze it on to the cookie. I also like to take a little bit of spatula and move it into the area, and then, you just let it dry."

" Okay. So, you put a line around the edge-"

" Yes."

" to starch so that it'll stay right in your lines."

" Yes, with the piping."

" Oh! And that makes it sort of nice, smooth, frosting over the top."

" Yes. Yes."

" Fantastic."

" So, then you can decorate it when it dries later. It'll dry very hard and then you can add embellishments later."

" Okay."

" And basically, with that technique and that technique, you know, you can create any of these cookies."

" And look at how absolutely gorgeous these are. You have the Manors, the stars of David, the Dreidels, absolutely beautiful cookies-"

" Thank you."

" that could be of, you know, a display for center piece of a table or you can make this great little gift bags that you could give to someone as a parting gift for your party."

" Absolutely."

" Oh! They're so beautiful. Thank you so much ladies for coming in, Janice Fryer, Valerie Peterson. The book is Cookie Craft and it's a must have, not only for Hanukkah, but you have every, if Christmas cookies and everything else [unk]."

" Every holiday. Yeah."

" You have to have to sit home if you play to do any baking. Thank you so much ladies."

" Oh! Thanks for having us."

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" ."

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