Krisztina Maksai - European Cookies for Every Occasion

2013 by Krisztina Maksai

Photography Marton Szita, except where noted

Photography Doug McClintock: cover, pages 1, 26, 55, 60, 73, 89, 92, 97, 102, 110, 115, 118, 123, 134, 142, 165, 176, 184

Photography Amanda Richmond: pages 147, 150

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013937227

E-book ISBN 978-0-7624-5070-1

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

Edited by Geoffrey Stone

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To you,

the dear reader,

whoever you might be,

I wrote this for you.

Contents

E ver since I could remember, I have had a sweet tooth. Although I was born in Romania, my family moved to Germany when I was three years old. My first memories of sweets are of street fairs and typical small-town baking sales in Germany. The cakes and cookies mesmerized me. I felt trapped in a spell of their sugarcoated sweetness. We moved often when I was growing up, and living in different countries broadened my horizons.

When I was eleven, I baked my first cake for Easter. It was an apricot-mascarpone German mole cake. From that point on, I fell in love with creating delicious cakes and desserts. Any opportunity I have to bake, I take it. If someones birthday or a holiday is coming up, the first thing I do is surround myself with books and magazines on baking. I spend hours looking at the pictures and reading recipes to get ideas for creating the best desserts for the occasion.

By the time I turned seven, my family had moved to Hungary, exposing me to another interesting culture. All the countries where I lived and visited had one thing in common: cookies for Christmas. While their form and tastes vary from country to country, they all are delicious and beautiful treats. The possibilities seem endless: filled or topped, sprinkled or glazed, decorated with chocolate or with fruit. That is why my biggest passion is cookies. One Christmas season several years ago, I stepped into the world of delicious small pastries of different shapes and fillings and the most incredible flavors. A few cookie recipes caught my eye, so I decided to bake them. So fragile and small, they were cookies you could eat in just one bite. While that baking experience was not an immediate success, I had so much fun doing it. The decorations were so precise, I was essentially painting each cookie, and my family reacted as though I had offered them pieces of edible art.

Since then, I have baked many different kinds of cookies for Christmas. Now, when my name comes up among family members or close friends, it always makes them think of the cookies and cakes that I bake. After a while each Christmas I would try to break my own record. How many different kinds of cookies could I bake? Two years ago, I broke my personal record by baking twenty-seven different types of cookies. I worked on the cookies for two or three weeks. I baked at night as a relaxing way to pass the time, but the only downside was all the dirty dishes! Fortunately, I have an incredibly caring and sweet grandmother. She would chase me away from the sink filled with mountains of unwashed dishes, saying, Leave it up to me, I am a professional! I gave her a smooch on the cheek and went happily back to making cookies.

I realized very quickly that baking is like learning how to drive or learning a new language. With practice, you will improve. I believe that anybody can do it with an accurate recipe, precise instructions, and a few baking tips. Of course, in the beginning the result may not be perfect, but dont give up. Everybody made mistakes at the beginning, even the professional confectioners. It will get easier. You will learn from your mistakes, and eventually you will become confident enough to alter recipes to your own tastes.

The more recipes you try, the more confidence you will have to attempt difficult or fancy cookies and desserts. Soon your loved ones will call you the master of baking. After all, if you were able to learn how to read or write, baking will be a piece of cake!

I hope my book will erase the mysteries of baking and encourage you to replicate the recipes for yourself. And more importantly, I hope that you will soon develop your own little edible masterpieces. The only things you need are your will, determination, and time!

I wish you all the delights and happiness I have found in baking!

You dont need many baking tools to make these cookies, but with the right ones, achieving the best results will be much easier. However, if you dont have all the tools, dont worry; you can always look for substitutes in your kitchen. Improvisation in cooking is everything.

1. MIXING BOWLS (plastic, ceramic, or glass) in a variety of sizes.

2. SPOONS AND FORKS to stir, fill, or decorate.

3. PASTRY SPATULAS to remove cookies from the pan without breaking them. If you dont have one, a flat-bladed flexible knife or a cheese cutter is a good substitute.

4. FLOUR SIFTER to decorate the finished cookies evenly with confectioners sugar.

5. COOLING RACK to allow air to circulate around the cookies so they will cool quickly and evenly.

6. ELECTRIC MIXER with two types of beaters: regular beaters to mix, beat, and whip, and dough hooks to knead dough.

7. PARCHMENT PAPER to prevent cookies from sticking to the pan.

8. CUTTING BOARDS (wooden or plastic) to roll out dough and cutting dough.

9. TOOTHPICKS to use for decorating

10. ROLLING PIN (wooden or stone) to roll out cookie dough.

11. ELECTRIC SCALE to measure ingredients. These recipes will be more successful if you use a scale instead of measuring cups.

12. BAKING SHEETS or cookie pans to bake the cookies.

13. COOKIE CUTTERS to cut out different shapes. The basic cutters you will need are round, star, and heart shaped. But the more shapes you have, the more distinctive your cookies will be.