Jazzing up slice-and-bake cookies without icing

If you have a favorite plain, refrigerator-style cookie – or bought a package of slice-and-bake cookie dough – and want to jazz the cookies up without resorting to frosting or icing, Lynne Kasper in NPR’s The Splendid Table has some excellent ideas in How to make store-bought slice-and-bake cookies more gourmet:

“There are two approaches: the before-baking list and the after-baking list.

Before baking:

• Do jam gems: Spread cookies with different jams and top with sweetened coconut.
• Christmas window cookies are topped with crushed sour ball candy (easy to do in the food processor). They melt in baking to look like stained glass. All sorts of patterns and colors are possible.
• For Mexican bites toss together chocolate morsels, crushed salted almonds, a little cinnamon and a generous dash of powdered ancho chili (optional). Top cookies halfway through baking.

After baking:

• Make half moons by dipping cookie rounds halfway in dark chocolate.
• Buttery s’mores are two cookies sandwiched with a marshmallow and heated in the oven long enough to soften. Once cooled you could dip them in chocolate too.
• Create Vienna wheels by sandwiching apricot jam (spiked with lemon zest) between cookies, then roll the sticky edges in green sugar sparkles.”

Enjoy!

Photo courtesy of Scarygami on Flickr