At Christmas time, I invariably end up on Main Street. It’s my favourite street for gift-shopping. If truth be told, it’s also my favourite street for breaks and meals pre, mid and post gift-shopping. On Saturday, I had an extra incentive for heading out that way. The Winter Farmers’ Market had their first-ever baking exchange and I had the perfect recipe: Dorie Greenspan’s Speculoos.

I started the recipe Friday night, making the dough and chilling it overnight. The dough was a little crumbly when I was rolling it out, but by morning it was easy to handle. I worked quickly to cut out shapes and get them onto the pan, before the dough softened too much. When the cookies came out of the oven, I sprinkled them with sanding sugar. The best part, though, was testing one. I was so surprised at the crispness of the cookie. I never really expected it to measure up to the crunch of its commercial cousins. Other recipes I’ve tried were never more than crisp-ish. These would be perfect with coffee, especially if you indulged in a little dipping. I can also see the appeal of turning them into sandwich cookies with nutella or dulce de leche filling.

I only needed two dozen cookies for the swap, so I packaged them quickly (using an image I’d found online for the tags) and headed for the Market. I dropped off my cookies and did some shopping while I waited for the swap to begin. Cleverly, the organizer had set up paper bags with participants’ names on them and put our cookies inside. Since we’d all brought two packages of a dozen cookies, we couldn’t have a sample of each kind. Instead, we were invited to pick two bags, making sure they didn’t have our own names on them. I love the grab bag concept. I was pleased to find myself in possession of Roberta LaQuaglia’s Cherry Cornmeal Cookies and Jennifer Zuk’s Chocolate Oatmeal Maraschino Cookies. I’ve tasted them both and can attest that they are delicious. The rest are earmarked for holiday celebrations. Thanks to Robyn Carlson of the Market for organizing the swap – I’m already looking forward to next year’s!

On Tuesday, I’ll let you know what I got up to after the swap as I headed down Main Street.

We’re doing things a little differently again for the month of December. We’re still posting weekly, but people are free to post this month’s recipes in any order. You can find many other blogged descriptions of this month’s FFWD recipes here: LYL: December 17