The Cookie Buffet: Pumpkin Bread Bites

I've never attempted a pumpkin cookie before, even though autumn is my favorite season, and nothing screams "Fall" more loudly than pumpkin-flavored goodies. Most of the time, I content myself with pumpkin pie, but I knew from the beginning that I'd definitely want to include pumpkin cookies in the cookie buffet at the shower.  I found a Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe on the FoodNetwork online courtesy of George Duran. I tweaked the recipe a significant amount, changing the amount of sugar, spice, and pumpkin.

The Cookie Buffet: Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

I decided to include a gluten-free selection in my shower’s cookie buffet, for one of my best friends and bridesmaids, Rachel, whose dietary needs necessitate gluten-free living. Now, I wasn’t sure how to go about making gluten-free cookies, but luckily my main man, Alton Brown, came to the rescue with this gluten-free chocolate chip cookie recipe. I can not say enough good things about Alton Brown in general, or this recipe in particular. Believe it or not, these cookies taste pretty much like any other chocolate chip cookie, no mean feat considering that there is not a smidgen of wheat anywhere in sight.

Alton’s secret, so I am told, is through his choice of alternate flours and their proportions. His recipe calls for a combination of brown rice four, tapioca flour, corn starch, and xanthan gum, which comes as close to recapitulating the taste and texture of wheat flour as you can get…without actually using wheat flour.

The Cookie Buffet: Pierniczki

Because I had included Greek cookies in my cookie buffet, I figured it was only fair to include some Polish ones too -- the only problem was that I didn't know of any! A little research online, and I found what seemed to be the perfect cookie choice: pierniczki, a Polish ginger-honey cookie. These are traditional Christmas cookies. They are also traditionally rolled out and cut into shapes with a cookie cutter, but I decided to bypass that and convert the recipe into a drop cookie dough. In order to do that, I adapted the flour to fat ratio of one of Paula Deen's ginger cookie recipes, and tweaked it into a pierniczki dough that could be dropped by a cookie scoop.

The Cookie Buffet: The Greek Cookies

When I finally decided to do the cookie buffet for my bridal shower, I knew that I had to include some Greek cookies to honor my heritage. My favorite Greek cookie of all time, finikia, is a honey-dipped spice cookie perfect for autumn, but believe it or not, I've never gotten around to making them before. I usually just make the rounds of local Greek festivals to get my fill. So, because I didn't feel like debuting yet another new recipe (I already had 2 other new cookie recipes planned), I decided to stick with what I know.

In my house, we make two kinds of Greek cookies, mostly around the holidays: koulourakia and kourambiedes. I forgot to take pictures while baking, so I included a later pic of koulourakia as an example of the traditional shape. The pictures of the cookies in the basket below are the ones from my shower.

The Cookie Buffet: Details

I knew fairly early on that I wanted a sweets buffet as part of my bridal shower. Well-coordinated candy buffets have such a stunning effect, that I fell in love with the idea of a Halloween or autumn themed candy buffet, something gorgeous like this or these. But, budgets are always an issue, so I downgraded to the idea of a Halloween candy buffet, for the reason that there would be plenty of Halloween candy around in the middle of October, so it would be easier and more economical. I was right on this point, it would have been cheap (relatively) and easy, but something about the concept of a Halloween candy buffet 2 weeks before Halloween still wasn't sitting right with me. And then I hit upon a great idea, and I have no clue why I didn't think of it earlier: a cookie buffet filled with homemade cookies!


This had all the elements I wanted: homey, rustic, baked, etc etc. And although I love baking anything and everything, cookies make me especially happy. So I chose my cookie types and got to baking, starting about 3 weeks before my shower. And I had to figure out a way to turn this: into the cookie buffet of my dreams!