Kringle want a Pringle? Yes, it's a potato chip cookie

Some people watch for Santa. Some people watch for the Great Pumpkin. Every year between Halloween and Christmas, I watch for "most desperate product pitch."

The all-time winner was the year a maker of canned black olives sent a Thanksgiving recipe for mixing sliced black olives into your mashed potatoes. Mmmmm. A big bowl of mashed potatoes with black circles at the one meal that brings all of your pickiest family members together. Bet that's a hit.

There's still time to get a worse contender, but the winner so far this year is Kringle-Spiced Pringle Cookies. It's a spiced cookie made from crushed Pringles and then sandwiched with a jam and ginger filling.

Salty, sweet and spicy. Who knows? It might be good. If you try it, let me know.

Kringle-Spiced Pringles Cookies 1 can Pringles "The Original"
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup fruit preserves (raspberry or mixed berry)
1/3 cup crystallized ginger, finely chopped (or 2 teaspoons powdered ginger)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place Pringles, flour, baking soda and spices in a food processor and pulse until the consistency of corn meal. Set aside.

Beat the butter and sugar until slightly fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat for 30 seconds. Pour in the Pringles spice mixture and mix for 1 minute. Refrigerate dough for at least 1 hour.

Drop by rounded teaspoonsful onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown.

Combine fruit preserves and ginger in a small bowl. Spread 1 teaspoon on a cookie and top with another cookie.


Photo: Hill and Knowlton

What was cooking, cookies?

Welcome to 2010. Whenever I get another holiday behind me, I take a minute to think about what I did and didn't do. I try to make note of which recipes I used, which cookies turned out really well, which version of collards I persuaded my collard-hating husband to eat.

So, since there is only 11 months until we face the holidays again, I'd like to know:

1. Which cookie did you get or make that turned out particularly well? Did you add something new to your repertoire?

2. Did you wish The Observer had given you directions for cooking collards for New Years? We skipped the lucky foods this year in favor of rounding up great recipes froim 2009. But there's always next year, so let me know if that's something we need to add.

What's Southern, cookie?

Working my way through my own stash of Christmas cookies this year -- bite-size cinnamon pecan shortbread, peppermint puffs, roll-out cookies with royal icing and a cashew-chocolate creation I haven't gotten to yet -- I started pondering whether there are Southern Christmas cookies.

So many choices of Christmas cookies reflect heritage. If your grandmother was Scandinavian or Greek or Mexican, your got-to-have Christmas cookie probably is too. And in the usual Southern way of thinking of things, if you are Southern, any cookie you make (or your mother made, or your grandmother made) is, by extension, Southern.

But are there Christmas cookies that really only show up in the South? I think of my grandmother's tea cake recipe as being thoroughly Southern, and yet I never make it at Christmas. It's too simple, too stripped-down, to hold its own on a platter with chocolate this and peppermint that.

There are certainly Southern cakes and Southern pies. But the only Southern cookie I could think of is the pecan tassie, which is really just a miniature version of a pecan pie. I'll put a recipe for that one below, just in case you need one more batch of something to bake on what promises to be a great holiday-baking weekend.

While you're baking, think it over and send me your nomination for a truly Southern Christmas cookie.

Pecan Tassies

From Cooking Light

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
Dash of salt
1/4 cup (2 ounces) reduced-fat cream cheese, softened
2 tablespoons butter, softened
2 tablespoons skim milk
Cooking spray
Filling:
1/3 cup finely chopped pecans
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 large egg white

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spoon flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Combine flour, sugar and dash of salt in a small bowl. Combine cream cheese, butter, and milk in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well-blended. Add flour mixture; beat at low speed just until blended (mixture will be crumbly). Press flour mixture into a ball.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead lightly 3 to 4 times. Divide dough into 24 portions. Place 1 dough portion into each of 24 miniature muffin cups coated with cooking spray. Press dough into bottom and up sides of cups, using lightly floured fingers.

Divide pecans evenly among dough-lined muffin cups. Combine brown sugar and remaining ingredients; spoon about 2 teaspoons over pecans in each muffin cup.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until pastry is lightly browned and filling is puffy. Cool in cups for 10 minutes on a wire rack. Run a knife around outside edge of each tassie; remove from pan. Cool completely on a wire rack.