Verona, as we all know, loves to eat from appetizer to dessert and, ladies and gentlemen, we are headed into the best time of the year for desserts: cookie time.
We all have our favorite holiday cookies. Grandma’s gingersnaps and spritz, mom’s pignoli, pizzelle and mocha-nut butterballs (seriously, how could you not like a cookie called butterball?). But there are also the cookies that we eagerly await from neighbors and friends. Italian love knots and strufoli come to mind.
And so, Verona, this season we are going to do a virtual cookie exchange. The cooks of MyVeronaNJ.com will be sharing their favorite recipes (with butter and without), and we hope you will share yours. We’ve put together an easy way for you to send us yours, but you do need to follow one important rule: If your favorite recipe was written by somebody else, like, say Martha Stewart, we need a link to the recipe online. If we just reprinted the recipe, we’ d be violating Martha’s copyright, and we don’t imagine she’d be happy.
We’re going to kick things off with a cookie that is definitely not for the kids, though it will probably make Santa happy: Bourbon Balls. They’ve got a rakish, Mad Men air about them, probably because they contain real bourbon and they don’t need any baking. There are dozens of recipes for bourbon balls all over the Internet; this one comes from the recipe box of my mom, Catherine Citrano:
Bourbon Balls
Ingredients
3 cups crushed vanilla wafer cookies
1 cup confectioner’s sugar, sifted if possible
3 tablespoons Dutch cocoa
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup finely chopped walnuts or pecans
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup bourbon
What”s Next
Line a tray with waxed paper.
Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the corn syrup and bourbon. Stir this into the dry ingredients.
Scoop out small amounts of the dough and roll into 1-inch balls. Put them on the wax paper-lined tray and let them rest for an hour. Store in air-tight containers. Makes about 4 dozen.
To share your cookie recipes all you need to do is use this form.
