Happy holidays! Whatever you and yours may be celebrating today — even if it’s just a day off — I hope it’s warm and wonderful.
I figure you already have your dinner plans sorted out, so today I’ll just focus on two other important holiday meals: a big breakfast for a crowd and sugary snacks for after dinner, when you’re relaxing on the couch and need a little something sweet.
I’ll start with the snacks: My colleague Becky Hughes made the brilliant observation that these cinnamon toast cookies are essentially dessert croutons, and now I need them even more. Ali Slagle’s recipe calls for sliced white bread (crusts off, of course), sugar, cinnamon, salt and butter, and about a half-hour of your time. The result is buttery, crispy and caramelized-sugary. Tumble the cookies over ice cream, drown them in milk or — as I plan on doing — cram as many as will fit into your mouth before sharing the rest.
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Cinnamon Toast Cookies
I would also like some Grinch-greedy handfuls of Naz Deravian’s kettle corn, the Platonic ideal of a salty-sweet snack. Cookies, I think, are a snack food; these soft and chewy sugar cookies from Samantha Seneviratne balance the sweet with salted butter. The comments are ecstatic: “This recipe is bonkers good.” “This recipe is a historical event. I’ve never eaten let alone made a better sugar cookie.” As someone who polished off a dozen of these cookies in 24 hours, I joyously concur. Pair one (or five) with a whiskey sour and you have a very excellent holiday nightcap.
For that aforementioned crowd-pleasing breakfast, there’s Melissa Clark’s spinach and Gruyère casserole, which you can — and, ideally, should — prepare ahead of time. The eggy custard needs several hours to permeate the bread fully, but if you’re starting the casserole in the morning, no worries: It’ll be a fantastic dinner. Serve with Ali’s oven bacon, a.k.a. the best way to cook bacon for a bunch of hungry holiday guests.
Sorry, I lied. I do have a dinner suggestion for you: these braised chicken thighs with sweet potatoes and dates. Based on tsimmes, the classic Ashkenazi dish of sweet potatoes, carrots and dried fruit (and sometimes meat) typically served on Rosh Hashana and other Jewish holidays, Melissa’s recipe yields a sweet, savory and tangy one-pot meal. It does need a good long simmer on the stove, but that’s OK — you have some cinnamon toast cookies to eat.
Once more, from me (and New York Times Cooking) to you: Happy holidays!
The post We Won’t Go Until We Get Some Cinnamon Toast Cookies appeared first on New York Times.
