Bring on the Cookies 2015 Edition

This year's Christmas cookies! I was able to use my gingerbread skyline to decorate the plate, which I thought turned out really cool! I will have to remember that for future years.
This year I didn't spend a ton of time making Christmas cookies, although I gave more away than I ever had before, which was fun. I made (going L to R starting at the top):
1. Chocolate Crinkles - it just isn't Christmas without these
2. Homemade Marshmallows (if you've never made homemade marshmallows, do it NOW - coolest science experiment out there, and tasty too)
3. Gingerbread Cookies (this recipe makes A TON - as in 3 gingerbread houses, a gingerbread skyline and about 3 dozen cookies - so unless you want to make this many cookies, half it for sure)

4. Orange/Cranberry macaroons - use this basic recipe and add zest of one orange, and dried cranberries to taste (about half a cup is fine)
5. Spritz
6. Mini Chocolate Chip macaroons (they taste like Mounds bars) - same basic recipe as above. Substitute almond flavoring for vanilla, and stir in about 1/2 cup of mini chocolate chips
7. Fudge (I tried a new recipe. It was super-goopy. I don't recommend it. I'm not linking it.)

Bonkers for Cookies

Here is the annual post on what I baked for Christmas.
I went a little nuts this year.  For some reason, I had it in my head that I had to make a whole bunch of cookies.  I wanted to make a few deliveries.  This year, I attempted toffee and it was fabulous.  I also made three different batches of peanut butter fudge.  I am totally hooked on candy-making.
Here is the list:
1. Chocolate Crinkles - my childhood favorite Christmas cookie.  This recipe comes from the original Betty Crocker Cooky Book from the 1960s.  They were indeed as good as I remembered.  The cookie batter is even better.
2. Almond Meltaways - this was a pinterest find.  I give them a meh.  They were kind of boring.
3. Oatmeal Carmelitas - I got this recipe from a college acquaintance.  They are another favorite of mine. (I use walnuts and instead of caramel candies, I use a jar of caramel topping mixed with a couple tablespoons of flour.)
4. Russian Teacakes - Also an old favorite.
5. Gingerbread Cookies - Every Christmas, I like exactly one gingerbread cookie.  So I made a batch that required a ton of flour.  This pretty much describes my unexplained insanity this year.  Be warned that this recipe makes A LOT of dough - it is easily halfed.
6. Peppermint cookies - I modified a recipe I found on pinterest and I LOVED them.  I am posting it here so that I can make it again next year.
7. Peanutbutter Fudge - As mentioned above, I made quite a few batches of this in an attempt to try to perfect the recipe.  I figured it out and it is FABULOUS.  Love it.
8. Toffee - It does require a candy thermometer, but aside from that, it is SO easy.  The one problem I had was that I couldn't get the chocolate to stay on top of the toffee.  I must research this.

And here are the recipes:

Peanut Butter Fudge
(This makes a 9x13 pan of fudge.  This is A LOT of fudge.)
Chocolate Layer:
1/2 cup butter
4 cups sugar
1 can evaporated milk
1 tsp vanilla
18 large marshmallows
16 oz. chocolate (I used a big ol' block of Trader Joe's dark chocolate)

Peanut Butter Layer:
1/2 cup butter
4 cups sugar
1 can evaporated milk
1 tsp vanilla
18 large marshmallows
12 oz. bag of peanut butter chips
4 oz. chocolate chips
A big scoop of your favorite peanut butter
1/2 cup finely crushed salted peanuts

For both layers, follow these directions.
1. In a saucepan, heat butter, sugar and milk to a boil, stirring constantly.  Boil on medium for 8 minutes.  (If it starts to brown before 8 minutes, get it off the heat FAST.) Remove from heat, add vanilla, marshmallows, stir fast to melt.  Add chocolate (or chips and peanut butter) and again stir to melt.   
2. Make chocolate layer first, after combined, pour quickly into a greased 9x13 pan.  Touch it as little as possible.
3. Make peanut butter layer second, and pour on top of chocolate layer.  Again, touch as little as possible, but smooth it out.  Press peanuts into the top. 
4. Let cool completely and cut into approximate 1" squares.

Peppermint Cookies
(HERE is the original recipe)

1 cup butter

1 cup powdered sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

red food coloring (optional)

1 bag of Andes' candy cane chips
Crushed candy canes (optional)

 

Preheat to 350.

Combine butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add egg and vanilla and again stir until fluffy.  Add food coloring if you feel like it.  Add flour and salt and stir until combined.  Chill dough for 15-30 minutes.  Remove dough from fridge, and roll into a big log with about a 2" diameter.  Slice into about 1/4" thick discs.  Bake for about 10 minutes.  Cool on wire rack.

In a double boiler, melt entire bag of candy cane chips until smooth and fairly runny.  Gently frost cookies with melted chips.  Sprinkle with crushed candy canes.  Let frosting cool and harden.

 

Baking for One

A terrible thing happened to me.  Yes, ME!  My son's pediatrician asked me to lay off the dairy for a week or two to see if that might improve the tiny (well, he's not tiny) one's disposition and penchant for barfing.  Ever since he was born I have been keeping my low blood sugar regulated with copious amounts of cheese and I have the most amazing sweet tooth while breastfeeding.  Did you know that practically all chocolate sold in stores contains some sort of dairy?  Milk fat, milk protein, lactose, butter, etc. It is making my life difficult.  And yes, this is all about me.  On top of this, my husband is attempting to diet, so when I have a sugar craving, I need to keep it to a single portion.
Awhile ago, I found this very handy idea on pinterest: a single-serving chocolate chip cookie recipe.  It can be found HERE.  I have now tested it with both coconut oil and canola oil instead of butter.  I recommend using less coconut oil if you need dairy free - perhaps by as much as half.  It makes for incredibly rich, slightly crunchy cookies.  I actually preferred the canola oil substitute and the ratio remains the same.
I love to experiment with recipes.  I tweak everything to test the limits of a recipe and see if I can make something I like even more.  This time I chanced upon something truly wonderful AND dairy free.  Here is some incredibly rich, fudgy goodness:
Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 Tbls canola oil
2 Tbls white sugar
1 egg yolk
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp milk (I used almond)
pinch of salt (kosher)
1 Tbls cocoa powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup flour
2 Tbls chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.
In a small bowl, mix oil, sugar, egg, milk and vanilla thoroughly.  Add all dry ingredients and mix until combined.  Add chocolate chips and mix again.
Bake for about 9 minutes.

Note 1: I bake these on a small pampered chef stone - which happens to be the perfect size for exactly three cookies, which is what this makes.
Note 2: These would be great with coconut oil, but cut it by half.
Note 3:  I discovered a brand of chocolate chips that does not have any milk in them: Guillard. 

Enjoy!

Being Green is Easy

Around Valentine's Day, I was trying to come up with a decent recipe for red velvet sugar cookies but due to a couple of *interesting* experiments, I never really came up with anything share-worthy.  I decided to try my luck just once more with green instead for St. Patrick's Day.  I was sure I had a shamrock cookie cutter but when I went to cut out the cookies, I discovered I was wrong.  So, I made a bunch of green frogs instead.  A perfect way to cater to the 4-and-under crowd.  The bonus was that I had purchased some edible sugar eyes (by Wilton) awhile ago and decided to use them.  I think these are perhaps the cutest sugar cookies I have ever made and so simple since I did not frost them.  I can't wait to try these eyes again around Halloween with bats and ghosts.  Here's the recipe (based on Mary's Sugar Cookies in the Betty Crocker Cooky Book):

Festive Frog Sugar Cookies
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 cube of butter (8 Tbls) softened
4 oz. cream cheese softened
1 Tbls cocoa powder
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond flavoring (or mint flavoring might be nice instead)
2-1/2 cups flour (I used bread flour for about half of it)
1 tsp soda
1 tsp cream of tartar
A liberal squirt of green gel food coloring

Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar.  Add egg, flavorings, food coloring and mix well.  In a separate bowl, mix all dry ingredients together.  Add to sugar mixture and mix until combined.  Refrigerate for at least one hour.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Roll out on a lightly floured surface to about 1/4" thick (thinner if you like crispy cookies).  Cut with cookie cutter, place about 1" apart on an ungreased baking sheet.  Sprinkle with baking sugar and bake about 6-7 minutes until set but not browned.  Right when the cookies come out of the oven, press two edible eyes firmly into cookies.  This batch made exactly 44 frogs...and my sons ate the remaining dough bits.

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

Being Experimental

Last night, I decided to make some cookies with my boys.  I just wanted to make a quick half-batch of chocolate chip cookies - no refrigerating of the dough (the kids are all about instant gratification), not many cookies to have to eat later.  Now, all you chocolate chip cookie lovers out there probably know all of the important factors in baking a really good chocolate chip cookie and I didn't really have time for any of them, but don't shrug off my accidental discovery.  It made for some excellent cookies.  Back to my story.  I threw in my 1/4 cup of soft, but not melted, butter and my quarter cup of each kind of sugar and then realized that it isn't possible to split an egg in a very effective way.  Shoot.  I didn't have anymore soft butter and I was trying to keep the dough a little cooler so I wouldn't have to refrigerate it, so thawing frozen butter was not really an option.  Hmm...I've got some greek yogurt that needs to get used up?  Yep.  Let's do it.  So I substituted half of the required butter for 0% fat greek yogurt.  I had to compensate by adding a bit of extra flour.  In the end, the dough is not quite as delightful to eat on its own - probably mainly because I'm not a yogurt fan - and the cookies don't spread quite as much as traditional chocolate chip cookies. However, these are absolutely soft and wonderful.  I would definitely throw a dollup of Greek yogurt into my cookies in the future. It was a welcome discovery. 

Less-Guilty Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/4 cup butter softened
1/4 cup 0% fat Greek yogurt
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar packed
2 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 Tbls cornstarch
2/3 cup wheat flour
1 cup white flour
12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cream butter, yogurt and sugars until well-blended.  Add vanilla and egg, mix thoroughly.  In a separate bowl, combine all dry ingredients.  Add dry ingredients to egg mixture.  Blend until just combined.
One other trick I highly recommend: chill the cookie sheets.  Add chocolate chips and mix by hand.
Drop cookie dough on ungreased, chilled cookie sheets (helps reduce spreading).  Bake 9-10 minutes until set but not crisp.  Makes about 20 cookies.

If you're more a fan of raisins than chocolate chips, I'm thinking this recipe could be pretty good with cinnamon, a little bit of oatmeal and some raisins instead.

Big Christmas Cookie Round-up

Finally getting around to posting about cookies...
Due to unforseen chaos in our household the week before Christmas, I didn't end up with lots of time to do my annual Christmas cookie baking.  I had bought all kinds of fun supplies and didn't end up using any of them.  I had also intended to make a really super-awesome gingerbread house from scratch and had lots of stuff for that too and it never happened either.  Alas...some years are just like that.
This year I made seven fairly simple treats - a few were old favorites, a couple were new.  Here's what I made:

1. Homemade marshmallows with toasted coconut.  This is the one treat my husband actually begs me to make every year.  If you've never made marshmallows, it's a fun science experiment and they are also incredibly easy and they taste so good.

2. Double-chocolate Sable Cookies.  They are chocolate-sandies, basically.  They were really easy to make, sadly only made barely two dozen.  They tasted great fresh out of the oven, but lost their sandy texture almost instantly.  Good flavor but I'd give them a "meh."

3. Russian Tea Cakes.  An old stand-by.  It sounded good.  I was sad it only made about 30 cookies.  I must remember to double the recipe next time.

4. Spritz.  I always seem to make pink flowers when I make spritz.  I love how festive they make a plate of cookies look.  This year I meant to make a green-Christmas-tree batch too, but time ran out (or rather, my will ran out).  Another classic.  I make them every year.  I love my battery-powered cookie gun that a friend gave me a few years ago.  (psst. I just noticed while searching for the link for the recipe that there is such a thing as eggnog spritz.  Intriguing???)

5. Ginger Chewies.  I always make at least one ginger-cookie and it is usually a variation of this one.  It turned out great.  The only change I made was adding lots more ginger (2 heaping teaspoons) and rolling them in turbinado sugar instead of regular white sugar.  My only complaint was again: it only made two dozen.  I tend to give out lots of holiday cookie plates (this was a weak year for us) so when I bake, I need the recipe to make more like 4 dozen cookies.  Remember to double...

6. Toffee Fudge.  This year I made two batches of fudge.  One batch a little earlier in the month of my Billion Dollar Fudge that I posted on the blog last year.  It is so good with the andes mint chips mixed in.  I was going to make the same thing the second time around, but my dear four-year-old hates mint (it's "spicy") and begged me to do something different.  So, nice mom that I am, I decided to experiment with Heath Toffee chips.  I also threw in a bunch of chopped pecans.  My review: the texture was great - nice and crunchy.  I'd say if you like your fudge more milk-chocolatey-sweet, you'd like this fudge.  If you (like me) like it more dark and rich and deep, you'd probably find this one too sweet.  Here's the recipe for those who are curious:

Crunchy Toffee Fudge

1/2 cup butter

4 cups sugar
1 can evaporated milk
1 tsp vanilla
18 large marshmallows
16 oz. chocolate (your choice: bars, chocolate chips, a combination)
1 package of toffee chips
3/4 cup well-chopped nuts (pecans or almonds preferably)
Butter a 9x13 pan, set aside.
In a large saucepan, bring butter, sugar and milk to a boil, stirring constantly.
Boil for 8 minutes - a good, strong, rolling boil - again, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat and add vanilla and marshmallows. Stir until melted.
Add in chocolate and stir until melted. Add half the bag of toffee chips and the nuts and stir just until combined.
Immediately, pour fudge into 9x13 pan, smoothing out evenly and quickly.  Pour the rest of the toffee chips evenly over the top, gently press in.
Let cool and set for a few hours, slice into 1" squares. Store in an airtight container.


7. And the baking-experience wouldn't be complete without a small disaster.  I also made a batch of those amazing chocolate thumbprints by Martha Stewart (which I made last year) except I decided to fill them with caramel (since I had a lot hanging around) instead of the chocolate ganache.  This turned out to be a huge disaster.  The caramel was stiff and not soft and chewy making the cookie difficult to actually eat AND when I packed them up into an air-tight container, I stacked them with waxed paper in between thinking the caramel was set (it was set when I touched it).  The caramel ended up sticking fiercely to the waxed paper and so I lost all but the top row of cookies.  You live and learn.

Blogging about food

I did not intend for this to be a food blog, and I promise to get to the architectural critique that I am sure you are all (umm...3 of you...) waiting for. I actually have a building in mind in my own neighborhood that I would very much like to discuss, but I am waiting for it to progress a little further before I go take pictures. The problem with blogging about local architecture is that I usually notice it when I am in my car and don't have my camera. While I might make a mental note to get back there, my life does not always allow me that privilege.
Anyway. Food. I have noticed that blogging about food is really popular right now. I confess to not being much of a foodie, although my husband and I do get great pleasure out of trying out new and interesting ethnic restaurants. I mostly view food as a vehicle to repower me so that I can get through the next few hours. If there was a "food pill" I'd probably be all over it. With my two little boys, I really don't have time to be a dinner-gourmet. I am lucky to get through cooking a meal without wanting to run far away from my kitchen. (Why is it that all children become whiny and attention-starved at exactly 5pm?) However, I do like to bake and I love to try new recipes and experiment so lately I have spent a little more time perusing food-ish blogs than I used to. One of these blogs is Picky Palate. She has some pretty amazing cookies/desserts on there and they are all quite accessible, one recently had only 3 ingredients - peanut butter, marshmallow cream and eggs. Yum.
My favorite treat is a chocolate chip cookie. I have always used the same tried-and-true recipe since I was a kid, but lately I have experimented with a couple of new ones. I had no idea what I was missing! My friend Heather has a lovely food blog and seems to like chocolate chip cookies as much as I do, so I tried out the Alton Brown recipe she posted. They were amazing! We loved them! Tonight I tried out an intriguing one I found on Picky Palate that uses vanilla ice cream. Since my husband had been a little grumbly about my grabbing low-fat ice cream, I decided to use it up. They turned out great. I particularly enjoyed eating way too much cookie dough. It was so creamy and had a really nice burst of vanilla flavor. The only critique I can give is that it disappears when they are baked. Here is a little photo-trip of my cookie-making evening...(her photos are WAY better than mine, by the way)

...and Ta-da!

Here are some great food blogs to check out in your spare time (in no particular order):
Picky-Palate
Sweet and Savory Tooth
Jim's Pancakes
Broke A** Gourmet
Smitten Kitchen
Cake on the Brain
The Endive Chronicles

...and for true entertainment, go here:
Cake Wrecks

What are your favorite food blogs?