#cookie magic

For kitchen witches, recipes make powerful spells. Cookies are one of the easiest and most effective ways to cast a spell. However, there is a drawback to all culinary magics: the eater is the recipient. For that reason, most magical recipes tend to be highly positive, with only the occasional foray into baneful magic.

I love to bake my intentions for the people closest to me into the food I give them. Caring for my loved ones is what led me to develop this recipe for fortification cookies. These delicious cookies are intended to warm, cheer, and strengthen you during the winter. They will bolster the recipient’s mood and take their mind off of the cold, if only for a while.

WARNING: These cookies have a long inactive time. The dough must be refrigerated for at least five hours, but preferably overnight. I always make my dough the night before I intend to bake them.

For the Filling:

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice 30mL

3 pounds apples Honey crisp, Golden Delicious, Cortland, or Mitsu

2/3 cup sugar plus more for sprinkling on the pie

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 pinch nutmeg

For the Dough:

2 1/2 cups flour plus more for rolling

4 tbs granulated sugar

1/2 tsp sea salt

16 tbs unsalted butter chilled

4 tbs ice water

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp all-spice

1/2 tsp ginger

For the Egg Wash

1 egg

1 tbsp cream

For the Caramel

1 cup brown sugar

5 tbsp butter unsalted

1/2 cup cream

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 pinch salt generous

Instructions

For the Caramel

Combine ingredients in small pot and heat over medium-low heat while whisking. Cook 7-8 minutes. You will notice when the caramel begins to thicken.

Remove from heat and set aside.

For the Filling

Once your apples are roughly chopped, put them in a bowl and add the sugar, spices and lemon juice. Toss them around to make sure they are evenly coated. Now in a large skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the apples and cook stirring until the sugar dissolves and it begins to simmer, about 2 minutes. Cover it up, reduce the heat to medium-low and cook until the apples soften and release most of their juices, about 7 minutes.

Strain the apples in a colander over a medium bowl to catch all the juice. Shake the colander to get as much liquid as possible. Return the juices to the skillet, and simmer over medium heat until thickened and lightly caramelized, about 8-10 minutes.

In a medium bowl, toss the apples with the reduced juice and spices. Set aside to cool completely. Chop into small piece once cool and return to bowl.

For the Crust

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt, and spices. Whisk together. Grate in chilled butter and drizzle in ice cold water. Mix using a fork. You can also  whiz together in a food processor.

Shape into two disks, wrap in plastic and chill for 20 minutes.

Crack an egg into a small bowl and add a tablespoon of cream them mix well and chill until ready to use for egg wash.

Roll your pastry dough out to about 1/4" thick. One half of the dough is for the bases and the other half is for the lattice tops. You will probably want to chill the dough for the lattice tops until just before cutting the strips and arranging on top.

Cut into circles.

Brush with caramel.

Add about 1 tablespoon of the apple pie filling to the center of each circle. Brush edge with egg wash.

Arrange the lattice top and brush with egg wash again.

Cut and remove excess with the same round cutter you used for the base.

Sprinkle with sugar (and cinnamon if desired) and bake at 350F for about 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

Video Link: https://youtu.be/jDXW12DYxnE

Makes: 12 cookies

Total Cook Time: 1 hr 10 mins

Ingredients

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 tablespoons plain yogurt

1 large egg, room temperature

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/2 cup old-fashioned oats

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a cookie sheet with butter and set aside.

In a standing mixer fitted with paddle attachment (can also use an electric mixer), mix butter and both sugars until fluffy, about 1 minute. Add in yogurt, egg, and vanilla extract and mix for an additional minute.

Add in flour, salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar. Mix on high for 30 seconds. Remove from mixer and fold in oats and raisins.

In a small bowl, toss together 1/2 cup granulated sugar and cinnamon. Scoop cookie dough into roughly 1/4 cup balls (2.5 inches in diameter), coat thoroughly in cinnamon sugar mixture, then place onto prepared cookie sheet, leaving 2 inches between each cookie. Push the balls down just slightly so they look like a hockey puck.

Bake cookies for 13 minutes. They will still look moist, but will continue to cook as they cook. Let cookies rest on cookie sheet for 10 minutes (this will crisp the bottoms and allows the cookies to rest!). DEVOUR.

Baker’s notes:

Produces more cookies if you make them smaller.

Such a large amount of sugar and cinnamon is not required. Instead, start out with a little bit of each, mix, and if you need more, make more of the mixture.

Seem to bake well in a toaster oven for 13 min.

Check out the role of lemons in historical and modern witchcraft practices. And why not try out my Lemon Cookie for Longevity recipe? #witchcraft #kitchenwitch #lemons

Greetings Ladles and Gentlespoons! If you are in a rush and want to Jump straight to the Recipe for my Lemon Cookies for Longevity, go right ahead! And if you are not a practitioner of magic, don’t worry, this dish will still taste magical! And before we get started, my book on on Southern Hemisphere Kitchen Witchery is now available for pre-order on Amazon and is being released on the 2nd…

Do any of you enchant your base ingredients (specifically things like flour) or have correspondences that you associate them with? I always see correspondence lists with herbs and seasonings and flavors but I feel like flour has a lot of potential too.

Idk, maybe it’s overkill/unnecessary, but I always feel like there’s something it could add but I’m not sure what. I’m thinking maybe a protection element or something that would boost the magic in the rest of it (for like an all-purpose flour) but I don’t know.

So I don’t know if this has been done yet, BUT here we go:

I really like to bake. Unfortunately I live in a dorm where ovens are not allowed so I can’t bake very often, but I’m home for the break and I made M&M cookies yesterday and was thinking of how you could use M&Ms to cast spells using cookies.

My first idea is color correspondence.*

Red for passion

Red and black (or dark chocolate M&Ms with the red shell) for anger

Gold and light/dark green for money/prosperity

Green for luck

Pink for love

Light pink, light blue, and white for children/childbirth (those were the colors of my first bedroom when I was a baby so I associate them with babies)

Green, blue, orchid, or gold for happiness

Orange for despair

Etc.

*Based on my own correspondences; feel free to change them however you see fit.

My second idea is guiding intent based on how the M&Ms are put in the dough.

So you’ve already chosen your color correspondences for your spell. Now decide if your cookies are going to be protection and positivity based or a hex, jinx, or curse.

For protection/positivity, put in the M&Ms whole. The candy shell can act as a shield to protect what’s inside. On that note, maybe include a line or something in your spell to say that if the M&M breaks open in the oven while the spell is charging, there is just too much goodness to be contained in the protective shell.

For hexes, jinxes, or curses, break the M&Ms before putting them in the cookie batter. (For instance, if you want to punish someone and want to give them bad luck for a period of time, crush up some green M&Ms either with a pan/book-burning anger-or a mortar and pestle-cold, accepting anger-depending on what kind of anger you feel). I would also recommend having a clear idea of who you’re cursing with a picture or tag lock to keep within your sight while you make the cookies, just so you don’t accidentally curse the wrong people (I like to think the cookies would benefit or harm whoever eats them unless you practically engrave your target in the cookie dough).

These are just my correspondences and ideas, so if you want to build off of this you can. Also if anyone wants the base recipe I use for my cookie dough, send me a message and I’ll happily post it.

I would use the baking process to charge the spell and then eating the cookies activates it.