Ten Best Christmas Cookies

BEST OF THE TASTY CHEAPSKATE



I'm having a cookie-baking party on Saturday. We'll be making some of these. Because they're the best.

1. Chocolate Sugar Cookies (that hold their shape). If you, like me, really want to like sugar cookies because they're so pretty and festive and traditional, but you just can't because they always taste like dry sugary lumps of flour coal, this recipe might be for you. Flavorful, beautiful, chocolate. Need I say more. (pictured above)


2. Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies. So so good. If you don't like Marciano cherries, no worries. You can top these with other delights.



3. Molasses Curls. Pretty (this picture is NOT doing them justice), delicious, and not very difficult, these are Christmas in a crisp. Not interested in rolling a cookie and filling it with billows of whipped cream (have you no soul?), you can make their flat sisters, Cinnamon Oat Crispies (which has a simple GF adaptation).


(Molasses Curls)


(Cinnamon Oat Crispies)


4. Chocolate Cookies with Orange Sugar Edges. Sophisticated and amazing. These are one of my all-time favorite cookies.

5. Seven Layer Cookies (Magic Cookie Bars, Dolly Bars). The best. Easy enough for an 8-year-old to make. (Also, why have these not gotten a photo re-do. Seriously. I make them EVERY year. We must eat them too fast.)




6. Molasses Crinkles. My favorite ginger/molasses cookie. And I've made quite a few.




7. Dutch Almond Bars. These remind me of The Netherlands and Christmas all wrapped up in a pretty box together. Also, SO easy. You mix, like, five ingredients with a spoon, pour in a pan, and bake. Done.




8. Katie's Chocolate Sandwich Cookies. These will melt you into a puddle of sweet agreement and holiday love. If you'd like, you can roll the edges in peppermint.

9. Speculaas/Speculoos. A traditional Dutch/German cookie. All the spice cookie goodness with the soft chewiness of an American cookie. Right here.




10. Easy Double Chocolate Cookies. And in case you crack under the cookie pressure. (Don't. It's gonna be alright), just make your favorite Chocolate Chip or Double Chocolate Chocolate Chip recipe and throw in some holiday M & M's.




Well, folks, you can definitely see how my photography skills have evolved over the years...

My daughter might be manning a teen/tween table making the easiest ever cheater gingerbread houses.



Merry Christmas!!!

(My favorite salad recipes coming January...)

Christmas Dinner (dumb easy style)

Guess what? For Christmas, I have no desire to do mini-Thanksgiving. I don't want to cook all day. If I do anything all day on Christmas, I hope that it's nap. Um, I mean, spread Christmas cheer and neighborly-ness to the weary and down-trodden. Or at least not scream at my kids. But also, hopefully, take a nap. My point (you didn't realize I had one, did you?) is that I like to keep Christmas dinner super simple.

Here's how:

1. This roast. In the crock pot. 6 hours later you eat. Done and done. It's all you really need, honestly. You can totally stop here. But just in case you don't want to, below you'll find a few more quick suggestions.
2. Croissants. Okay, these look hard and they do take forethought, but the actual hands on effort is minimal. I don't make them every year (in keeping with my absolute laziness policy on Christmas), but they're kind of fun if you want to. And sometimes I do.

3. Mock champagne. Again, tap water works fine is napping is your only Christmas wish. But this is pretty dang easy. Another idea. Take club soda and add apple juice concentrate for an easy homemade Martinelli's.
3. Cookies. From the stash in the freezer or your neighbor or whatever for dessert.

Molasses Curls

 Hello world. 

My newest young adult novel, Grey Lore, is out on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble!!! 

You can find the hardback HERE 

The paperback HERE

The Kindle version HERE 

Or if you're a Barnes and Noble fan, find it HERE

To celebrate, Zinnie (one of the characters) and I have created a new recipe. Kip wanted to call it lots of, um, interesting things. Cream burrito, Fluffy snaps, and Molassy Fluff were among those monikers not to make the final cut. But you can call them whatever you want. 

What's amazing about these cookies is... well, everything. They're super fancy and beautiful, but not outrageously difficult. They're perfect for Christmas (just like my book #shamelessmarketing). They are amazing fresh and that is how they're meant to be eaten--with a crispy outer cookie and that fluffy cream in the middle. But I left a few in the fridge and the cookie softened. Then it became something of an icebox cake--a perfect molasses-y, gingery icebox cake. And that little accident was just as delicious as the original cookie (maybe even more so). So pipe these fresh for a party. But don't be afraid to eat your leftovers either. 

Now, a little about my book. 

Grey Lore is really not at all about baking. It’s about  a girl whose mother dies so she’s whisked away to live with an aunt she’s never met. It’s about a boy who’s lived in fourteen states in the last three years. It’s about wanting to fit in and not fitting in at all. It’s about trying to find your place with people who care. Also, it’s about werewolves (because you were getting that from the rest of my description, right?) It’s about a sleepy little town buried in secrets, a town that starts to wake up as Ella and Sam discover things about their pasts and themselves.

But a lot of cookies get baked too. That’s because one of the main characters, Zinnie, seems to subsist only on cookies and herbal tea. In my first book, Grey Stone, she brought us these amazing Cinnamon Oatmeal Crispies.

In the companion book, Grey Lore, Zinnie is back, albeit somewhat changed. Her cookies are back too, although you can see they’ve altered over the years as well.

Some things grow even better with time.

Here’s a scene where Zinnie and Sam meet and make cookies (of course).

She got up and hobbled to what looked like a very old stove to retrieve the next batch of cookies. “You may call me Zinnie,” she said, even though Sam hadn’t tried to call her anything. “Now, what is your name?”

“Sam,” he said, clearing a spot for the cookies she was carrying.

The cookies were thin little things, like puddles on the pan. If Sam had pulled them out of the oven, he would have thrown them all in the garbage.

But the old woman didn’t. She handed Sam a dish towel, which he put on the table so Zinnie could set down the hot, flat cookies.

“Help me out, dear,” she said. Expertly, Zinnie took a cookie and, using the handle of a wooden spoon, she rolled the flat cookie around the handle so that it formed into a small cone while it was warm. She looked at Sam, waiting. “Give it a try,” she said, handing him the spoon. “It’s not that hard once you get used to it. And after we’re done, we’ll fill them with cream.”

Sam spent the next thirty minutes rolling delicate cookies into even more delicate tubes and then piping them full of whipped cream. By the time they were done, he was surprised to look out the window and see blue sky surfacing.

Zinnie smiled. “Go on, now, the rain has cleared. Every Friday I make cookies. Come whenever you want.”

Sam stood slowly, unsure of what to say.

“Go on,” she said. “I bet if you leave now you’ll catch the rainbow.”

Sam left, and as soon as he walked through the gates, there was a rainbow—doubled up—one stream of colors sitting fat above another. Tornado country—it had its perks.

Molasses Curls

 (Zinnie and I would like to thank Pioneer Woman for her inspiration for these cookies, though neither of us is big on brandy, so it had to be adapted) 

Cookies: 

1 stick (1/2 C) butter

½ C molasses

¼ C sugar

¼ C brown sugar, packed

2 tsp vanilla

¾ C flour

1/8 tsp salt

¼ tsp ginger

Filling:

2 C heavy cream

1/3 C sugar

1 T vanilla

1 T cream cheese, softened to room temperature (this acts as a stabilizer)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Put butter, molasses, brown sugar, and white sugar in a skillet. Allow butter to melt, stirring constantly with heat proof whisk or a wooden spoon. Allow mixture to bubble and cook for one minute.

Remove from heat and add in the flour, ginger, and salt. Stir together quickly, then stir in vanilla.

Drop ½ tablespoon FAR APART on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper or a silicone pad. You’ll only fit about 6 cookies on at a time. They will spread A LOT.

Bake for 10 minutes. They should be bubbly and flat. Ours always ran together a little no matter how hard we tried to get them not to.

Remove from oven. Allow to cool three minutes. They should be pliable, but not stretch when you pull them off the pan.

Drape over cannoli mold (or the large metal handle of a whisk, which is what we used; anything thick and round will do; we used the handle of an ice cream scoop as well). It will drape over the edges and you’ll kind of form it into a cylinder shape. Set on parchment paper sealed side down and allow to cool completely. You have to work kind of quickly so they don’t get too brittle, but don’t panic. It’s not too hard.

Allow to cool and set completely.

Meanwhile, make whipped cream. Combine cream, sugar, vanilla, an softened cream cheese in a large bowl. Whip until stiff peaks form.

After all have cooled completely, use a frosting piping thing (or a Ziploc bag with a small hole cut out of the corner like we did in our apparently insufficiently stocked kitchen). Pipe the whipped cream into the cookies.

Trouble Shooting:

-Once we let our cookies cool too much and they were too brittle to form into cylinders. Life went on; we ate them anyway.

-Since you have to make these in batches, your batter will cool as you wait. That’s not a problem. Just scoop it onto the cookie sheet when it’s its turn and it will spread and bubble as it should.

-When we were folding these, they were very greasy and that worried me, but then the grease went away and wasn't a problem. So don't stress if they seem greasy. 

-As I said above, if you want these to be as they are supposed to be (crispy cookies), you need to pipe them right before eating, but they are so divine soft that if they sit in the fridge, your life might just become a little bit fuller. 

 PRINTABLE RECIPE

Easy Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Generally, I really hate dessert recipes that "cheat." I pretty much loathe all cake box recipes, for example (yeah yeah, haters gonna hate) as well as things made with cinnamon rolls in a tube or Jello in any form (ugh, Jello, why?). But this. For this I will break all my rules. For this perfect and dumb easy cookie, I will add a box of instant chocolate pudding into a regular cookie dough and have some of the best double chocolate chip cookies you will ever taste. I'm not sure what dark magic that pudding uses, but it gives the cookies that moist, fudgy consistency, yet still lets the butter shine through and has a little crisp to the edges. Fool proof every-time-perfect cookies. #welovedarkmagicbutonlyincookiesandmaybefantasynovels

On over HERE I've got a triple chocolate cookie recipe that is amazing in every manner, yet a pain in the bootyttocks to make (it is still forgiven due to its utter awesomeness, but it's not a lazy afternoon cookie). But these. These are simple, yet with the perfect flavor, perfect texture and consistency. Perfectness (yes, I know it's not a word; what of it?). Plus ease.

I got the recipe from my good friend, Becca, who baked them for December's book club, thereby making the universe completely happy. So add some Christmas M&M's to these things and make the people in your life happy.

Easy Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 10 minutes/batch
Cost: $.4.90
butter: 1.35, brown sugar: .20, white sugar: .05, eggs: .20, cocoa: .15, chocolate pudding mix: .85, flour: .20, chocolate chips: 1.90

1 C (2 sticks) butter, soft or a tiny bit melted
1 C brown sugar
1/2 C white sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
a little less than 1 tsp baking soda
a little less than 1 tsp salt
1/4 C cocoa
1 small packet instant chocolate pudding mix (NOT cook and serve)
2 C flour
2 C chocolate chips (or 1 C chocolate chips and 1 C M&M's)

Preheat oven to 375. (You're going to drop the temperature to 350 after you put the cookies in.)

Cream butter and sugars. Add vanilla and eggs. Add soda, salt, cocoa, and chocolate pudding mix. (Note: You may want to stir those powdery cocoa ingredients in by hand at first, so you don't get a puff of chocolatey powder in your lungs and die or at least cough and then have to clean all the walls near your mixer.) Add the flour. Mix until combined, then add chocolate chips and M&M's.

Put in preheated oven, drop temperature to 350. Bake for 9-10 minutes.

Refrain from consuming them all and then blaming science, or at least social science for forcing upon you this experiment on impulse control. Give some to Santa for goodness sake. Or, well, maybe a few of your neighbors if Santa also has poor impulse control.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Zinnegael's Cinnamon Oat Crispies (aka Cinnamon Lace Cookies)

Just in time for the holidays I have a perfect recipe for you.

And a perfect book to go along with it.

Grey Stone

In Grey Stone (the young adult fantasy that I wrote that was released this summer), there's a witch named Zinnegael. She likes to bake and has lots of extinct cats as friends, and the king can't kill her even though he can kill whoever the heck he wants. And did I mention Zinnegael likes to bake? So I stole one of her recipes. It was the right thing to do.

These are soooo good and soooo sweet. They're easy to adapt to gluten-free if that's something you or one of the people on your cookie list is needing this year. They are a thin little cookie that spreads and caramelizes at the edges. Since they spread so much, a batch of batter goes a LONG way and you get a bunch of cookies from them (which actually makes them cheaper per cookie if the cheapskate in you is looking for a way to gift a lot of people something buttery and sweet without breaking the bank. It also makes them less heavy and filling than many holiday cookies. I'm not going to call them diet food, folks, but they're not intensely calorie dense either since they're so thin). You can drizzle them in chocolate or not. You can fill them for an oatmeal cream pie effect. You can even add orange rind or almond extract or coconut flakes for awesomeness. I used cinnamon. Because that's what Zinnegael does.

Cookies are good for everyone. So is the book Grey Stone. But it's especially good for fantasy lovers, especially those in the 10-16-ish age range. So if you've got one of those kids on your Christmas list this year, hop on over to Amazon (or Barnes and Noble) and order your copy today. If you get the hardback, it ships for free. Now check that off your list, Santa.

Grey Stone

https://www.amazon.com/Grey-Stone-Jean-Knight-Pace/dp/1939156831/

Zinnegael's Cinnamon Oat Crispies (aka Cinnamon Lace Cookies)
adapted from Add a Pinch
Makes 50-ish cookies
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 5-8 minutes
Cost: $2.25 (that's $.04 per cookie. I didn't even realize how cheap these actually were till doing the math)
butter: 1.25, sugar: .50, oats: .25, egg: .10, other stuff: .15

For gluten-free adaptation, use a gluten-free flour or skip it altogether. You may also need to use oats that haven't been grown or harvested with wheat or gluten-y foods.

1 C (2 sticks) butter
2 1/4 C brown sugar
2 1/4 C rolled oats
3 Tbsp flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon baking mats. You must do this. Don't skip it or these will not come off.

Heat butter and brown sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon  until butter is melted and mixture is smooth. Stir in oats, flour salt, cinnamon, egg, and vanilla.

Drop the batter by the teaspoon or half tablespoon onto the baking sheets (did you notice how little those scoops are. They must be little; they are going to SPREAD and if you use too much you will have one huge pan-sized rectangle of cookie at the end).

Bake to 5-8 minutes until the edges have browned (you can make these blonder, but they crumble more easily).

Allow to cool. Then remove from parchment paper.

Store in airtight container. These will last well for several days and freeze wonderfully.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Chocolate Sugar Cookies That Keep Their Shape

I'm gonna be honest here. When I saw these on Pinterest, I didn't think they'd work. If they did work, I figured they would be chalky and dry and gross. Nope and Nope and Nope. They're delicious--almost Oreo-cookie-esque  (my humble opinion is that they're better than Oreo-esque). And they absolutely DO keep their shape. My old boring sugar cookies (which I've never managed to perfect btw) just got butt-kicked to the curb.

The secret? It took me a sec to figure it out when I looked over the recipe--we're always blaming butter and what-not for cookies spreading. But no. This has more butter than you'll care to admit and plenty of sugar too. Lots of cocoa? Check. But. But. NO LEAVENING. I mean, it's so obvious, right? If you want a cookie to keep it's shape--you don't add the agent that will make it poof up. As an added bonus, removing the leavening from your cookies is going to keep the flavor more pure because when you add leavening to a baked good, it reacts (which is what makes it leaven and all) and that sometimes causes a flavor change. I don't notice this flavor change in most baked goods, but you know where I do notice it? Sugar cookies. That's why I always love the dough of standard sugar cookies, but end up not really liking the actual baked cookies of standard sugar cookies--the leavening has reacted and created a flavor that I dislike in sugar cookies. Not in these babies. No leavening means no weird taste/aftertaste. These are delicious.

(See those lines, people. This is a cooked cookie. I always wondered why cookie cutter makers even made cookie cutters with those lines that would inevitable blur out in the baking process. Now my lined cookie cutters have new purpose. They thank you, new sugar cookie recipe.) 

And, you know what, I'm totally going to try this with my normal sugar cookies--I'm going to see what happens when I take the leavening out. Will the finished product taste just as good as the dough? Let's hope so.

For now, I give you these fabulous chocolate sugar cookies. Not only are they fabulous tasting and un-spreading, they're super simple with only a few ingredients. And they really do taste a lot like the chocolate parts of Oreo cookies. So, naturally, if you want them to taste even more like an Oreo cookie, you're going to frost them with this like we did. You're welcome.

You can also add mints if you want to. Especially for the cookies that your frosted ugly (but delicious) style. 

Chocolate Sugar Cookies That Keep Their Shape
from Sweetopia
Makes 3 dozen
Prep time: 10 minutes
Chill time: 1 hour
Cut time: depends on whether it's just you and the elf on the shelf or if you're including your children in this process; just don't start too late at night with young kids or you'll be ready to rip off some Santa cookie heads in a mad rage before the evening's over. Not that I know from experience or anything
Cook time: 6-8 minutes unless you make these babies thick (which you CAN do because they don't spread--hurray)
Cost: $2.00 (or about $.06/cookie
butter: 1.00, sugar: .20, egg: .10, flour: .20, cocoa: .40, vanilla: .10

1 C butter
1 C sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 C flour
3/4 C cocoa
1/4-1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix butter and sugar until combined, but you're not going to "cream" it per se (you're not going to beat it until you get a bunch of air in and its light and fluffy because you're trying to avoid that with these cookies).

Add egg and beat in. Add vanilla and beat in.

Combine flour, cocoa, and salt. Beat these into the wet ingredients. Again--don't overmix--just beat until it's combined and kind of clumping together.

Take it and roll it into a ball. Wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour (or longer).

When you're ready, flour the table (flour it well, friends) and then roll out your dough. It can be thin or thick--we went for medium and did ours about 1/8 inch thick.

Place on cookie sheet as you get them done. Then place the cookie sheet in the fridge for 10 minutes (Note: This was part of the directions from the original recipe; It was meant to help them hold their shape more perfectly. I followed it for my first two pan-fuls and then ran out of steam and just threw the third pan in the oven when I was done cutting. I did not notice a perceptible difference between the chilled and not-chilled cookies, so if you want to check your anal-retentive at the door, feel free.)

Bake for 6-8 minutes. If your cookies are quite thick, you'll want to add a couple more minute.

Remove from oven. Let cool for about 10 minutes, then take off of cookie sheet (leave too long and they kind of stick and get harder to remove).

Frost or decorate as desired. We had to do this the next day since by 7:30 that night, I was ready to behead some Santas. We used my favorite Vanilla Butter Frosting. You should too. Unless you're dieting. In which case, shame on you for even reading this post, you food porn pervert.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Easy Lollipops

You guys know I'm not Princess Crafty, right? If you don't, then I'm going to assume that you are legally blind. At any rate, for our Mom-run preschool, I had the letter 'L' and I always say nothing says Love Like Lollipops. Okay, I never say that, but wouldn't it be great if I did for letter L week. Anyway, I was looking on the internet for "Easy Lollipop" recipes and, folks, I was not finding easy recipes. I was finding the types of recipes that need a candy thermometer and lollipop molds and silicone sheets and--do you know how hot melted sugar gets--hotter than preschool-level hot--that's how hot.

So I turned to a little book I got my own preschooler for Christmas. It's called, Candy Aisle Crafts and is lovely. We got it from the library and Emma was obsessed with it. She'd look through the pictures and make requests. For weeks. Until I finally had to return it and she was sad. So I bought her her own for Christmas (shhhh). Now, in all honesty, some of the ideas in the book are what I like to call "sheer lunacy" (making polar bears from marshmallows types of things), but others--like the entire section on using hard candies to make simple lollipops--I must in all humility refer to as "sheer brilliance." You take hard candies (crushed or whole) and you arrange them over a lollipop-esque stick (we just used skewer type sticks), and you bake them and they come out all glued together and abstract art-ish and fabulous. The kids can help; they can arrange their candies in any old way they please. And then you pop them in the oven till they melt together. And then they cool. And that, my internet friends, is an easy lollipop. A kid-help-friendly lollipop. A lollipop that is easy to Like and Love and Lick and Linger on.

It is also a lollipop that can be easily and whimsically adapted to the holidays. To be honest, I'd choose one of these over a gingerbread house any day. With these I get almost no parental work and your kids still get the sugar orgy. Win!Win?

You can use them to decorate, to craft/eat with your kids, or to give as gifts if you have hard-candy loving friends. 

Here's what you do:
1. Preheat oven to 275.
2. Cover your baking sheet with a piece of parchment paper. If you do not do this, your candy will stick and you will hate your life for at least several hours afterwards (possibly even a whole day).
3. Arrange your candies. Use any old stick you've got. We used skewers. You can use whole candies, or crush them. Naturally I opted for whole ones since crushing/breaking candies sounded like a lot of messy work.

4. Bake. Start with five minutes, and check, although if you're using hard Starlight mint style candies like we did, you can probably start checking at 8 of 9 minutes. Our lollipops took about 12 minutes total, but you do want to check yours if you're using different types of hard candy (say Jolly Ranchers) because if they melted too much they'd spread all over everywhere.

5. When they've melt-molded to your satisfaction, take them out, let them cool, and then they're good for eating, or using as decorations, or giving away.

Note: Try to use similar types of hard candy--say all Jolly Ranchers or all round mints. Why? Because different hard candies have different melting points and if they're not matched somewhat evenly, then some will be super spread when the others haven't begun to budge. We did try a bag of assorted candies and all had generally the same (or close enough melting points except the Werther's-style candies).

Note: Know that they shatter. After preschool, I found myself sweeping and mopping my floor. So don't let your kids wander around chomping on these unless you want peppermint speckled carpet for the holidays.

Note: If you plan to give them away, you may want to parcel them up in parchment paper for classic Christmas prettiness and for unstickiness.

Yule Log with Vanilla Sponge Cake, Caramel Cream Filling, and Chocolate Frosting

Yup. Looks like a log. With yuliness.

I've never made a Yule log before. The whole idea of rolling up a cake has just always seemed too fussy and disaster prone for me to want to mess with. But when we got a cookbook called Baking with Kids from the library and there was a Yule log in it, well, after the kids saw it, I didn't have much choice.

And the fact is that I did everything within my power to mess up this dessert and it still came out tasty and log-shaped. By which I mean--if I can do it, so can you.

For this recipe, you're going to make a simple sponge cake. I realized something when I made it--sponge cake--sponge cake is what a Twinkie is supposed to be. Sure, a Twinkie is an Americanized, processed version of the sponge cake, but that's what it's supposed to be. Anyway, I'd never made a sponge cake before. It's an airy, yet dense-ish cake that uses a lot of eggs and is very very simple to make. On it's own, it seemed kind of European--by which I mean not intensely sweet. Don't worry. Because I'm an American, darn it. So I filled it with caramel cream. Which is definitely one of the best concoctions I have ever discovered in my cooking journey and the thing I would ask for in my stocking if a) it wouldn't be a crazy mess and b) it wouldn't cause me to gain 400 pounds. And then we frosted it with Kip's fudge frosting.

Now a few things are important to make this log successful. I'm going to give detailed instructions with the recipe, but let me give you a head's up. First, you need to roll the cake up (unfilled) while it's hot. I know that sounds a little counter-intuitive, but it works. You cover it with parchment paper, you roll it up. And then when it's cool and ready to fill, you unroll it and fill it and it rolls right back up because it's in a shape and it wants to be rolled. However, if you try to roll it when it's cool, well, you simply can't, so don't try.

Second, the caramel cream is not really firm enough to be the filling. I was really mad at Martha Stewart for this for a few minutes, but then I tasted it and sort of forgave her, but let me take a small minute to rant and say that celebrity chefs have NO excuse for turning out ANY recipes that absolutely do not work in every way that they are supposed to work. These chefs have money and staff and just everything. Their recipes should be perfect in every way. So when Martha simply tells me to fill my log, I don't expect it to ooze out the ends of the log. But it did. As a result, I had to plug my log. When you make your cake you need to cut off part of the end so you have two little bits to plug the ends of your log. Or find a different filling (the original book recommended Nutella and that would have been nice too--and easy), but I have to tell you that for all its ooziness, this filling is incredible. Incredible. Still, Martha, shame on you and your fake posed pictures of food that was clearly not made with this recipe.

Third. This recipe calls for an 8x12 jelly roll pan. I didn't have that and used a 9x13 inch pan and it worked fine.

Fourth: Everything has to have time to cool--the cake and the caramel for the filling. So don't try to whip this up in an hour or two. It won't work. You need to start 4 hours ahead of time so things get cool enough.

Yule Log with Vanilla Sponge Cake, Caramel Cream Filling, and Chocolate Frosting
adapted from Baking with Kids (cake) and Martha Stewart (filling)
makes 1 9x13 cake worth of logginess
Prep time: 15 minutes cake, 40 minutes filling, 7 minutes frosting
Cook time: 10 minutes (cake)
Cooling time: 4 hours
Cost: cake: $.80, filling: $2.50
sugar: .10, eggs: .40, butter: .20. flour: .10
cream: 2.00, sugar: .25, sour cream: .25

For the Cake:

1/2 C plus 1 Tbsp sugar
4 large eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 Tbsp butter
1 C all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 400.

Spray an 8x12 inch Swiss roll pan or a 9x13 inch pan with cooking spray. Then lay parchment paper over the bottom (note: if you skip the parchment paper, you will want to murder yourself).

Melt butter and leave it there to cool while you do the rest.

Combine sugar and eggs. Beat for about 5 minutes or until they're lighter in color and a bit thicker.

Add vanilla.

Add flour and baking powder and fold in. I folded it and my cake came out perfectly, but folding does take a while if you want to get the flour lumps out. I was very tempted to beat the flour in and I felt like it would have worked fine. However, try this at your own risk. You don't want to beat the air out of the eggs mixture.

Drizzle butter in and fold it in.

Pour into pan and bake for 9-10 minutes or until you press the cake and it springs back.

Take out of the oven. Let cool for 1 (ONE) minute. Lay a piece of parchment paper on your counter and dump the cake onto that parchment paper. (This will work fine if you put parchment paper in your pan; if not, you're going to want to start stabbing things.)

Peel the top layer of parchment paper off (this will be the parchment that was in the pan while the cake cooked). Now, roll up that cake with the other parchment paper (the new one you dumped it onto; yes, I should have taken pictures; I was just so sure it wasn't going to work, but then it did). Be gentle, but firm. I rolled mine long-ways so I had a long roll. Roll it up, then let it sit seam-side down and cool COMPLETELY.

Do you see how it's been rolled with that parchment paper around it? That will make it easy to unroll when the time comes. 

For the filling: 

Note: you can use Nutella and make your life easier. You can. No one will judge you. This filling is fussy and time consuming. But I cannot emphasize enough how thoroughly awesome it is. This makes too much for the log and you'll have tons leftover with which to sabotage any healthy lifestyle habits you have, so consider that a bonus if you wish. 

1 1/2 C sugar

1/2 C water

1 C cream, warmed

1/4 C sour cream

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 C cream, whipped (yes, another C cream--this one you will whip)

Pour water into a pan. Pour sugar into the center of pan in a mound. You can gently nudge the sugar into the water so it soaks it up. Cover pan and let the sugar melt and the water boil. Eventually it will start to darken. Remove the lid and reduce the heat to low. Let the liquid darken until it is amber-colored.

When you reach that point, whisk in the cream. It will bubble and may seize (harden) a bit, but just keep whisking. You'll have beautiful caramel. Let this cool in the refrigerator (I put it in a separate dish; I don't want it to keep cooking in the pan.) until it's cool.

Note: That was a best case scenario. I messed mine up, but it still worked out. If your sugar re-crystalizes, that's annoying (it'll look like clumps of sugar in your pan), but just stir it patiently and smash any big lumps until it melts, turning dark. If it seems to be darkening before all your clumps are melting, take it off the heat, smash the clumps, then put it back on and keep repeating that as necessary. (Yeah, it's a pain.) When I was done, I still had some good lumps, but didn't dare leave it on the heat longer because I thought it might burn. So I just strained out the lumps and all was well. I put in in the fridge and let it cool.

When it's cool, add sour cream and vanilla.

Leave this to sit for 2 hours (yes).

When you're ready, whip the last cup of cream and then fold that into your cooled caramel mixture. It will be awesome and any mean words you said while you were fussing with your caramel you will take back.

For frosting:

Kip's fudge frosting

To assemble:

Okay, so your log is thoroughly cool. Unroll it and peel that parchment paper off.  It will still be sort of rolled up. Cut about 1 1/2 inches off the end (this is the bit of cake you'll use to plug the ends of your log).

Plop in some of your caramel cream filling. When you get enough in that it's threatening to come out the ends, use some bits of the cake you cut off and put them into the ends to sort of plug the ends. It sounds crazy and it was slightly annoying, but I liked that caramel cream enough to get over it. Add more cream until it fills your log.

Put the log seam side down on your dish.

Frost it to look log-like.  I had a pretty little topper and used that. You can use powdered sugar sprinkled on to look like snow, or candles, or figurines, or whatever you want.

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