The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Almost Back

Hi,

I know, posting has been very light this past week or so.  Sorry about that.   I'd intended to get back to some sort of regular writing schedule before now, but it didn't happen.  This is the first time I've actually had time off (okay, I'm unemployed, but still) with my family that didn't have to do with any of them being sick.  It's been an actual vacation, of sorts.  And so I've...vacated.  Kind of.  We've been mainly living off of holiday leftovers until last night, and I've done as little around here as possible.  I've sat around reading.  I've napped.  I've played Free Cell on the computer til my eyes hurt.  I've done little art projects with the kids.  I haven't baked a single cookie.  (okay, I used up the puff pastry dough left over from the pain au chocolate, but that doesn't count in my mind, since the dough was already made.)

I almost baked bread yesterday, but I never got around to it.  I took a two hour nap instead. 

Part of this is because Julia hasn't been well (okay, so that blows the no-kids-were-sick-in-the-taking-of-this-vacation) - she'd had a tick bite about a month ago and then two weeks later her ear got swollen and red.  They put her on an antibiotic, which seemed to do the trick, but then within the last week she's been waking up crying (really crying, not just whining) and said her ear hurt.  I brought her back to the doctor this past Thursday, and now she's on another antibiotic - one they use to combat lyme disease.  I still don't think it was a deer tick, but better safe than sorry.  She's been waking up in the middle of the night a few times, very weepy, very clingy, very much in need of lying on the couch in the middle of the night with mommy and watching cooking shows.  I haven't had a decent night's sleep in a while now.  But finally, last night, the improvement seemed to begin.  Because though she woke up, she wasn't AS miserable.  Just had to go potty, and have some juice, and watch a bit of a cooking show before going back to bed VOLUNTARILY.  And she woke up early this morning, but still - it was a lot better than it has been.  So looks like the new meds are working.  Her ear looks better, and the red splotchyness that had started between her ear and eye on the left side has diminished.  So - GOOD.  It's a two-week prescription.  Hopefully that will knock it all out of her system.

So that's one part.

And I think the other part of my lethargy has been the combo of holiday prepwork (fun) and the end of my employment at a job I've had for a long time. 

I felt kind of...I don't know.  In limbo.  Falling.  Floating.  Lost.  Scared.  Relaxed.  Worried.  In a panic.  Depressed.  Excited. 

All kinds of stuff.  But initially it was mostly the draining feelings.  The OHMYGODNOWWHATAMIGOINGTODO?????? feelings.  The "I'm a loser" feelings.  Yeah.  They can drag on you and make it hard to want to take a shower each morning.

But I started feeling a little more positive about things yesterday.  The better feelings started to kick in.  The re-realization that this is a huge OPPORTUNITY for me, if I approach it that way, and that yes, despite my not infrequent feelings of uselessness, I DO have some creative abilities that I SHOULD be making better use of.  And that the main thing, really, is to (this is the hardest thing for me) believe in myself.  It's corny and cliched (clicheed?)(a cliche), but it's true.  My biggest obstacle is my own self doubt. 

It helps, for me, to develop a sort of rebellious, "oh YEAH?!" kind of mind set.  I don't know why.  But somehow, it motivates me if I have something to prove.  So, I'll use that for a while.  I can't sustain it forever, but it's a good way to kick start myself.

I'm still on vacation, in my mind.  I'll finish that up once the school year starts and we have our daily routines again. 

And then?  Onward.

Unbearable Cuteness

I mean, really.

Next?

I planned on making two more batches of cookies today.  Shortbread and probably biscotti.  I figured that would do it as far as having enough cookies to give out to everyone. 

I was nearing the finish line - already had cookies packed up for a few of the neighbors.  Just had two more for Bill's side (meaning an emphasis on the German cookies) and three tins for my side (meaning all the broken cookies - JUST KIDDING EVERYONE!) and that would be it.

So I figured I'd do the two tins for Bill's side first, since I knew I had all of those cookies available.  Packed them up.  Done.

And I looked around...and...hmmm...this...this is really weird...um...Bill?  Um...I think...I think I have enough.

It was a painful admission.

I don't even know why.  Maybe because it was so unexpected.  Maybe because my entire existence this past month has been all about COOKIES AND COOKIES AND OH YEAH, MORE COOKIES and now, if I don't have cookies to bake...then...who am I???

But fear not, for I still have plenty of other kitchen stuff to do.  We'll have people over on Christmas Eve AND Christmas day, all of whom will be ravenous, I'm sure.  So on Christmas Eve, which will be with Bill's side of the family, we will have sauerbraten, spaetzle, red cabbage, broccoli casserole, some sauerkraut (not homemade - I have some in the freezer), and a loaf of pumpernickel bread, which I will bake tomorrow.  And for dessert, a huge springerle cookie (by big, I mean bigger than a dinner plate) made from the mold you see below.  I bought it several years ago from House on the Hill and I make one every year. 

I just checked their website - the mold is 13  1/2 inches in diameter.  It's big.  And it's beautiful.  It's very detailed, and sometimes hard to get all the dough pressed in deep enough (without it getting stuck) to get all that detail to show in the finished product.  But it's fun to try, and even if it isn't perfect, it's still fun to trot it out.

I'll also (fingers crossed) be making pain au chocolate to have on Christmas morning.  I buy these Callebaut semi-sweet chocolate sticks and this year I'm using the recipe that King Arthur Flour sent along with them.  It's basically a chocolate croissant.  So...yum.  If I make them tomorrow, then I can just reheat them Tuesday morning.

And I'll be up early Tuesday.  We're having roast beef and yorkshire pudding, and the last couple of times I've had Christmas at my house, instead of roasting the beef, I've browned it on all sides (it's a 5 rib roast - rather unwieldy, but I like a challenge) and then put it in a 200 degree F (yes that's correct - two hundred degree) oven and cook it "low and slow" - about half an hour per pound.  So, it's a 12.5 pound hunk of cow, so it's going to cook around 6 hours, give or take.  And before that, it should sit out at room temperature for a few hours.  So if we eat around 2, I need to get it in before 8, and so it needs to come out of the fridge between 5 and 6.

After the beef is done, I'll take that out of the pan, jack up the oven temp to around 400 or something (I have to look it up) and bake the yorkshire pudding in the drippings from the meat.  Probably two pans' worth, since I'll eat an entire pan myself if given the opportunity.

Anyway - the meat comes out gorgeous this slow-cooked way.  I'll try to remember to take pictures just to show you HOW gorgeous. 

Bill's going to grill a couple of chickens for the non-red-meat-eating members of the family, and we'll have a variety of side dishes as well. 

And that's the scoop.

Don't know how much posting I'll do over the next couple of days, so in case you're wondering where the heck I am, now you know.  I'm in the kitchen.

Last Day (at work)

Nope - sorry - no cookie recipe last night.  I packed up more cookies to give out, including assortments for the kids' teachers, and after I got the kids in bed and did the dishes and FINALLY wrote out (most of) my Christmas cards...I was done.  I flopped on the couch and watched something on TV with my husband about how the Grand Canyon was formed (did you know it was aliens what did it?  Just kidding.) - and then I fell asleep.

So today is my last day at work at the place I've been for the past 11 or so years.

I think I'll need to pick up a box of tissues on my way in, since I don't have any at my desk.  I just have a feeling it will not be a dry-eyed day.

But also, I have Christmas shopping to run around and do on my lunch break, and maybe on the way home, too.  Bill's picking up the kids from daycare today so I don't have to worry about that.

But still.  I have to take stuff home with me today from my desk.  Pictures of the kids.  Coffee mugs.  Stuff in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet that I've accumulated - I'm not even sure what's in there or what I'll actually keep.  And a huge prayer plant that did well at work because the cat couldn't chew on the leaves.  Not sure where we'll put that here....there is no safe place.  Oh well.  We'll figure that out.

Sorry this is an uneventful post.  I'm trying to just not think about stuff too much yet. 

So instead - a few pictures. 

I had done a post about Short Dough not too long ago.  Here are a couple of cookies I'd cut out for ME (not the kids) to decorate.  I really love doing this sort of thing.  I wish I'd had time to do a bigger variety, but that didn't happen this year. 

Anyway - I did angels...

And one of my favorites - cows.

I'm calling them Ho Ho Ho Holsteins.  No I'm not really.  But I could. 

I think they're cute.  And I love cows.  And why should reindeer get all the Christmas festooning?  Just because they can fly and all....

I'm babbling.  Time to get the kids moving along, I think.  Get this day going. 

I'm sort of dreading it, to be honest. 

Cookie? No, thanks.

I was dropping some cookies off at the UPS store yesterday and one of the employees asked if I wanted a cookie.  There was a large tray of cookies out on the table in the middle of the small room.  About 2/3 of the cookies were gone.  Looked like peanutbutter cookies and snickerdoodles.

Anyway, they guy had finished helping a customer and went back to his thermos of coffee and a half-eaten peanutbutter cookie behind the counter.  "Would you like a cookie, ma'am?"

I am resigned to "ma'am." 

I laughed to myself and politely declined the cookie offer. 

No, really.  I've had my fill.  Thanks anyway.

Today I'm bringing them a small selection of my cookies.  They're really nice people in that office - I've been shipping cookies out of that office for the past couple of years now and they're mostly the same group of employees and the manager.  So.  I'm sharing.

I have shipped all the cookies I'm going to ship.

Today we have our Christmas party in my dept at work.  I'm bringing in Butternut Squash and Roasted Garlic Bisque - which is a fabulous winter vegetable soup that I've been making around the holidays (usually Thanksgiving) for a number of years now.  Try it.  It's easy and it's yummy and it's got roasted garlic in it, so how can you go wrong there?

Anyway, it should be a good day of eating. 

I've still got Christmas shopping to do, some of which I'll attempt on my lunch break today, and more tomorrow.  Oy.  No matter how much I think I'm in good shape, prep-wise, I always end up feeling like I'm running around desperately during the last few days before the holiday.  But oh well, it will get done.

I've still got cookies to plate up and hand out to family and neighbors.  Last night I was putting together some trays and I got this insane thought that I just don't have enough.  It happens every year, despite the stacks of plastic boxes filled with cookies in the dining room.  I still worry I will run out and someone will go cookie-less.

I told Bill last night that some misguided part of my brain believes that I need to have enough cookies to feed every recipient for a week.  I don't know where that came from, but there it is. 

I still have cards to send out too.  AAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH.  I don't know when I'll get them done. 

Well, enough of the whining.

I don't have a cookie recipe to post today - my apologies - it's just been so nuts these last several days that I am not prepared this morning.  Hopefully tonight, but I can't promise anything.

So in the meantime, here are a few pictures I've taken recently.  They're mostly my kids.  Julia's eye will not be pink in the pictures, in case you were worried.  Or hopeful. 

Julia, by the way, is very much the little mommy lately.  She has four baby dollies (all of them apparently are warm enough without clothing on, as Mommy Julia has removed said clothing long ago and who knows where it all ended up.)  And there's also her pink elephant - her favorite stuffed animal and companion and germ receptacle.

The other day Julia and her elephant were sitting on the couch watching something on tv and suddenly I heard, in a small, cramped voice that came from the corner of Julia's mouth "shut up."  Immediately, Julia's eyes flew open and her mouth made a large "O" of astonishment.  "Did you hear that?" she asked.  "Elephant said a bad word!" 

Two of her little baby dolls spent the entire night in time out (on the ottoman in the basement) and when I asked why, Julia informed me that "They said a bad word called shut up and stupid."

Those - shut up and stupid - are Julia's favorite cuss words, and in order to say them without getting in trouble, she has figured out that if elephants or babies say them, she's not at fault, especially if she is just as outraged as us taller people.

And a couple nights ago I was in the kitchen working on cookies (what else?) and she came in with the smallest of her apparal-challenged children, held the doll out to me and said, in a thoroughly I've-had-it-up-to-here tone "Here.  Take her.  She did poop."

(Look, Ma!  No neck!)

Okay...now my other child.

Another night while I was working on some cookies...I was just icing an outline on the cookies, and Alex came up to say goodnight on his way to bed. 

He stared at what I had done so far and then asked "Mommy, aren't you going to decorate them with beautiful detail?"

His vocabulary frightens me a little.  He trots out these unexpected words and phrases and I just stare at him - where did you come from??

And then he starts making monkey sounds (Curious George) and everything falls back into place.

Okay, I've got to get moving.  Have a lovely day, and I'll try to put up a cookie recipe tonight.  Sorry I've been slacking!

If it's not one thing...

...it is, of course, another.

I'm home today because Julia has

                                                "I"

Yes, that's right.  Pink eye.  Only one is pink at this moment.  I'm hoping it just stays that way.  I mean - only one, instead of two.  No, I don't want her eye to STAY pink.   

Although...given the color and her girly-girl nature (sometimes, when she's not brandishing firewood at her brother), it would probably be sort of appropriate.

Anyway, I'll be back here at some point later this morning, once I've brought Alex to kindergarten.

In the Cookie Jar: Biscotti with Candied Ginger, Mini Chocolate Chips and Almonds

Okay, have to hurry this morning, are you ready?

First, set your oven to 325 degrees F.

Here's your ingredients:

1/2 cup of unsalted butter

1 cup plus 2 T granulated sugar (separated into a half cup and a half cup plus the 2 T)

3 eggs, separated

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

3 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup whole almonds

1 cup mini chocolate chips

1 cup diced candied ginger

Got all that?  Good.

Now - first, in your mixing bowl, cream together the butter and a half cup of the sugar until light and fluffy.

Add in your egg yolks and vanilla and combine well.

Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt, and gradually add that in, too.  The mixture will seem dry and crumbly, but that's okay.

Now.  In another PERFECTLY CLEAN AND DRY MIXING BOWL, with A PERFECTLY CLEAN AND DRY WHISK ATTACHMENT, pour in the egg whites and beat them...

until soft peaks form.  Gradually add in the remaining sugar and continue beating until you have stiff peaks.

In a large bowl, fold the whites into the flour mixture,

and then fold the nuts, chocolate and ginger into that.

Knead the dough on a board briefly

and divide in half.

Shape each half into a log and set on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.  Press down to flatten a bit.

Bake these for about 25-30 minutes, or until they start turning golden brown and are firm to the touch. 

When done, remove the pans and allow them to cool slightly.

Drop the oven temperature to 300 degrees F.

Put one loaf on a cutting board, on an angle to you, and slice into half-inch wide pieces.

Place these back on the baking sheet and then repeat with the other loaf.

Place the loaf pans back in the oven and bake for another 15 minutes or so until dry and crisp.  Allow to cool on the baking pans.

Try not to eat them all in one weekend.

Twenty Minutes

I set the kitchen timer for twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes, so I could just check my email and write a post about biscotti or torrone or gnocchi or something before the day gets too far under way.

Twenty minutes, before it would be time to get the kids cleaned and dressed and ready to go see Santa later this morning where I work.

Twenty. Lousy. Minutes.

Twenty minutes of "uninterrupted" time.

Because, unless I'm the only human in the house, I have no "uninterrupted" time.

I put "uninterrupted" in quotes like that because it's not a real word, a real concept.  It's all theoretical. 

But I persist.

I get my laptop and my wireless card and my recipe notes and my cold coffee and sit on the couch and go into one of my email accounts.

And Bill decides he's going to fix the storm door NOW, rather than after we get home.

And Julia comes upstairs FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN I AM SITTING QUIETLY TRYING TO DO SOMETHING OF MY OWN.  I already cooked them all breakfast.  I was already up at 3:30 with Julia and then Alex joined us at 4:21 and so it's already been a long day of needs and wants.

And now Julia has to go potty.

And Bill is taking the window part out of the storm door.

And Julia "I'm DONE!" needs me to turn the water on so she can wash her hands because she's too short, even on a stool, to reach the faucet.

And where does Bill decide to bring the window that he's fixing the frame of for the storm door?

Right into the living room where I am!!

So he can TALK TO ME ABOUT WHAT HE'S DOING AS HE'S DOING IT.

And then Julia wants to show me the two "Little People" that are playing together - apparently Mary and one of the Wise Men like to wrestle.  Hmm.  I'm just going to ignore that.

And then "AHA!"  Bill has been successful in some fashion.

He needs to TELL ME!

So he does.  "The screen was bent and you know there was no way it was going to be fixed and the directions weren't quiet accurate for this door, they weren't matching up, and screen screen screen fix and bent and there was just no way" he is shaking his head "just no way" and I am staring at him without changing expression as he becomes more emphatic at the just no wayness about the screen or something - and to be honest, I wasn't listening, I was just wondering how long he would continue to talk and talk and tell me about the door and the screen and didn't I say I just wanted twenty minutes, TWENTY STINKING MINUTES, just to do what I wanted to do????

He reiterated - "There was NO WAY that screen something something something."

And he looked at me with that expectant expression, waiting for me to be equally up in arms about the screen and its issues.

And I just burst out laughing. 

And he thought it was because of the screen.

And then Julia came over and watched me type and hollered "RED LIGHT!" at me so my fingers would stop, but I RAN that red light and kept typing, because these are MY TWENTY MINUTES even though the timer went off two minutes ago but I figure I used up time helping Julia with the faucet and Bill with the listening.

And then Bill is bringing the window back to put it in the door thing, and while he's gathering his stuff for that, Alex comes up "Mommy?  C'n I have some juice?  Where's Mommy?  Mommy - c'n I have some juice?"  And Julia is making a stuffed animal bunny hop on my head, and Bill is talking again but I think it's to himself this time.

And now, my twenty minutes are long gone.

I wonder if they were ever here.

Words You Don't Want to Hear...

I was opening a box of unsalted butter in the kitchen.

Alex was in the dining room cutting out the peacock I'd just drawn for him.

Julia was also in the dining room.  She'd wanted me to draw a leopard for her to cut out, even though her scissor skills are not yet as her brother's.

Anyway.

I'm peeling open the end of the box.

And I hear an annoyed three years and almost five months old voice complain:

"Mommy, I'm trying to cut my hair and it's not coming off!"

Yeah.

And I dashed into the room and there, on the dark green tablecloth, were many 4-inch lengths of her beautiful golden blonde tresses. 

Not so many that it's very very obvious.  She didn't cut her bangs.  She cut a chunk from the hair which hangs in delicate layers on the left side of her face.

Now she's got delicate layers on one side, and a sharp gash on the other.

I guess, in a way, it suits her.

Because Getting Help is Not a Sign of Failure

It is a sign of strength.

An enormous thank you to Heather for writing this post and many others like it.

She says it all perfectly.  Go read it.

Lollipop

So That's How He Does It

The other morning Alex and Julia were squabbling about something downstairs.  I was in the kitchen working on cookies (what else?) and Bill went down to shush them after a while because there seemed to be no end in sight and we were tired of listening.

He went downstairs and, because it is December, trotted out the old "Santa's watching you!" tactic.  He used that warning voice, intended to subdue them with the fear of coal in their stockings.

And Alex said, skepticism creeping into his sweet little boy voice, "How can he be watching everyone all the time?  He's need to have a thousand heads!"

Morning Frost

Glisten

Last night's rain became this morning's ice.  After Bill left for work I went outside and took a few pictures...and then after I brought Alex to kindergarten and Julia to daycare, I brought the car seats back to the house so Bill could pick up the kids later, and then I slid around on the icy driveway and slipped on the frosted grass in the back yard to explore and capture more of this "wintery fairyland..." 

In the Cookie Jar: German Butter Cookies

These cookies are in the same family as sugar cookies, but they are softer and richer.  Very simple to make, too, and only 6 ingredients to worry about. 

Shall we?

You will need the following:

1 pound of flour

12 ounces granulated sugar

1/2 pound of unsalted butter

4 eggs

1 knife tip of baking soda (yes, you read that right)

And the rind of one lemon.

I'll skip down to the unusual one first.  The knife tip measurement.  Basically it's just a little tiny bit of baking soda.  Hardly any.  But some.  I used a regular old table knife.

(The baking soda sort of slid down the knife as I took this picture.  And that's DOUBLE the knife-tip measurement, because when I was taking these pictures, I had doubled the recipe.  I don't really know why I doubled it - it's not like I don't have plenty of cookies already....)

All set?  Okay.

Combine the flour and baking soda in one bowl, put your butter in a mixing bowl, and have the other ingredients measured out and ready nearby.

To make the dough:

Cream together the butter and sugar until light.  Mix in the lemon zest.  Then add some of the flour mixture...half the eggs...more flour...the rest of the eggs....the rest of the flour.  Mix together until just combined, but don't overwork it.

Because of all the butter and eggs, this is a very VERY soft dough.  You won't be able to knead it into a ball at this stage - it's way too sticky.  Just scoop it out of the mixing bowl and put it in a zip lock bag, press out the excess air, and put it in the fridge for at least an hour.

See how squishy it is?

Once you're ready to roll out the dough, you'll need a good amount of flour to dust your work surface with and to prevent your rolling pin from sticking.  As you roll out the dough, keep picking it up off the board and tossing a bit more flour underneath. 

Use whatever cookie cutters you want, and bake in a preheated 300 degree (F) oven.

Now, when Bill's mom made these, at least as I remember it, she used these really small cutters - a snowman, a stocking, a tree, and an angel.  So those are the ones I use when I make them to send out to the family.  But you can use any size cutter - you'll simply need to adjust the baking time accordingly.

The little ones I used here took about ten minutes.

And the last instruction in the recipe is to brush the cookies with egg wash before baking.  I don't remember, but I think the first time I made these, I used a whole egg mixed with a bit of water and brushed that on.  But it wasn't right.  It didn't LOOK right.  The right way, is just to brush with the yolk.  I figured that out through trial and error, and knew I'd got it right when the cookies came out of the oven with pale yellow stripes or blotches on them.

I took pictures (really?  no!) as I went along, partly because, well, that's what I do.  But also because I love these tiny little cookie cutters.  Take a look....

tiny snowmen...

...tiny stockings...

...petite angels...

...and tiny trees...

Tiny, soft bites of gold.  It's so very easy to eat a lot of them!

In the Cookie Jar: Chocolate Candy Canes

These were an experiment using a cookie recipe I'd found in a collection of holiday cookie recipes a bunch of years ago.  I liked these chocolate cookies because texture-wise they are kind of like shortbread.  They do not contain eggs.  They are easy and versatile.  And they taste really, really seriously chocolatey.

Here's what you will need:

4 cups all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt - sifted together.

1 pound unsalted butter, room temperature, and cut into small pieces.

And you will need 1 and 1/2 cups granulated sugar, and 2 teaspoons of vanilla.  (Sorry, didn't take pictures of them.)

You'll also need some sort of icing (I had some leftover royal icing from the cookie decorating that day) and about 8-10 small candy canes.

Okay.

Combine the butter and sugar in your mixing bowl and cream til light and fluffy.  Add the vanilla, and then add the flour mixture and combine on the lowest speed, scraping down the bowl every so often, until the flour is completely incorporated.

Scrape the dough out of the bowl, flatten and wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

While the dough is chilling, set out some baking sheets and line them with parchment paper.

Then get those candy canes, still in their little plastic wrappers, and place them on a dish towel on the counter or a table top.  Fold the towel over the candy canes, and then beat the s*** ...beat the p*** ...beat the heck of them with a meat tenderizer or a hammer or a rolling pin or a baseball bat or something along those lines.  Then discard the torn and useless plastic packaging from the candy canes.

You want to pulverize them as much as possible.  I should have hit these a bit more, in fact.  But it was an experiment.  At this point, I really wasn't sure how I was going to use them.

Okay, after an hour, get your dough out of the fridge and get your pans ready, and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Using your fingers, pull off a chunk of dough around the size of a ping pong ball, or maybe a bit bigger.  Roll this into a ball, and then roll the ball into a rope, about a third of an inch in diameter, or about 6 inches long.  Curve one end of this rope so it resembles a candy cane shape, and place this on your cookie sheet.  Keep going like this until you've filled the cookie sheet.  Leave space between the cookies because they will spread a bit while baking.  Put the cookie sheet in the fridge for about ten minutes before baking - this will prevent them from spreading a LOT. 

(That's my little step - by - step illustration for you.)

Bake each batch of cookies for about 15-20 minutes or until firm.  Let cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes, then let transfer the cookies to a cooling rack to finish.

Once they're cool, you want to put some white icing in a piping bag and draw the candy cane lines on the cookies.  I did a few of them one-at-a-time, and while they looked nice, I needed to move things along.  So I put a bunch of cookies on a rack like you see above, and put the rack over a baking pan.  Then I just piped the icing onto the cookies in a series of diagonal lines.  It's a lot quicker then the individual approach.  You could also, if you don't have a piping bag, either use a zip top plastic bag and cut a small hole in one corner and pipe that way, OR you could just drizzle the icing with a spoon.  So many options.  Find the one that works best for you.

Now, once you've drizzled or piped the icing on, get your crushed candy canes and sprinkle some across the cookies where the icing is.

   

Now, it also just occurred to me that you could have a shallow bowl of the candy canes and take the cookies and press them, icing side down, into the crushed candy and have it stick on that way.  But you'd need a lot more candy for something like that.  Leave the cookies out so the icing will dry and harden before you pack them away, otherwise they'll stick to each other.

However you apply the icing and the crushed peppermint, you MUST try one immediately.  If you like chocolate and mint, I think it's a pretty good bet you'll like these.

As my son is now fond of saying - "Eat!  Eat!  MangiaMangiaMangia!"

I Need MORE Flour. And Butter. And Eggs.

Yep.

Well, I didn't get as much done yesterday as I'd planned, but I'm off to a good start today - in fact, to be honest, the only reason I'm typing anything right now is to allow myself time to drink my coffee while it's still hot, without my hands covered in flour or egg or anything.

Not that I get a lot of gunk on my hands while I'm baking.  I try to be a tidy baker.  But if I'm making cookies, I tend to get wrapped up in that and forget to drink my coffee.  Or eat lunch.

Yesterday I made the butter cookie dough (Bill's mom's recipe) and the outer dough for the "farmer hats" (another of Bill's mom's recipes) and so today I just need to bake off the butter cookies, make the filling for the farmer hats, fill them and bake them, make the almond stars.  And make other stuff. 

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of the morning making cookies for the kids to decorate, because the neighbor across the street was going to come over with her two boys, but that ended up not happening, so...ah well.  My kids decorated some cookies, so they had some fun.

At one point I turned the corner to look into the dining room, where they were busy decorating, and saw my little girl, with the end of the piping bag of pink icing IN HER MOUTH, and she was squeezing the other end of the bag.

I wasn't holding my camera at that moment - sorry.  I just yelled out "HEY!" and she jumped and dropped the icing bag and in the same motion, picked up a cookie and took a bite.  She's a quick thinker, that one. 

Tonight I PLAN to post a cookie recipe or two, but that involves sitting down, and if I sit, forget about anything else getting done today.

Anyway, for your entertainment this morning, here are some non-cookie pictures....

The Push is On

This weekend is the BIG cookie weekend.  I want to get the rest of the German cookies done so I can ship them out next week to Bill's relatives, plus get enough of other things done so I can ship cookies out to MY friends and relatives who live out of state.

So, here's the list:

farmer hats

almond stars

butter cookies

(those are the rest of Bill's mom's recipes)

AND

mexican wedding cookies

pecan diamonds

shortbread

biscotti

and - for the first time - torrone, which, okay, is not a cookie, it's a candy.  But whatever.  I want to make it.  So I have all the stuff, and we'll see how it goes.

And that's the game plan.

I'll be back tonight (I think) to let you know how it's going, and I will also show you these fabulous chocolate cookies that I made last weekend.  I might make more of them, too.  And possibly more springerle, because I just never feel like we have enough.  Especially since my son will devour them on sight.

Okay, gotta go clear all the unnecessary clutter out of my kitchen so I can get this show on the road.

And Speaking of Cookies...

How cool are these?

In the Cookie Jar: Gingerbread Cookies

The recipe I use for Gingerbread Cookies comes from a cookbook I bought years ago entitled The Complete Cookie Book, by Elizabeth Wolf Cohen.  It was a Bargain Book at Barnes & Noble when I bought it, and according to their website, it's gone.  But if you find a copy kicking around somewhere, grab it.   It features recipes from all over the world, and over the years I've tried out quite a number of the recipes and they've all been good.

Anyway, here we go.

You will need (for one batch):

3  1/2 cups of flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1  1/2 tsp ginger

1  1/2 tsp cinnamon

1  1/2 tsp allspice

1 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp finely ground white pepper (use black if you don't have white)

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

1/2 cup molasses

1 egg

First, sift together the first 8 ingredients

Next, cream together the butter

and the brown sugar

until light and fluffy.

Next, add in the egg(s)

and molasses

to combine.  And then, with your mixer on the slowest speed, add the flour mixture and combine.

Scrape this out onto a lightly floured board and shape into a ball (or something like a ball).

Divide this into two or three smaller pieces, wrap in plastic and flatten somewhat.  Refrigerate for a couple of hours or up to 2 days. 

When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Line a couple of baking sheets with parchment if you have it, or lightly grease the pans instead.

Roll out some of the dough to about a quarter inch thick on a lightly floured board, and cut out your cookies.  (In this picture, my niece, Natalie, is cutting out cats and squirrels.  Before that, I'd done teddy bears and pine trees.)

Arrange the cookies on your pans about an inch apart (yeah, I know, that's not an inch in the picture.  Sorry!)  With a pastry brush, lightly dust any excess flour off of the cookies.

Bake for about 10-12 minutes.

Let cool on a rack, and then decorate with royal icing or whatever kind of frosting you like.

I remember when I was a kid, my mother would just use some raisins for the eyes and buttons for the coat when she made gingerbread men.  That works, too.  Use your imagination.  I bet dried cranberries would be good, too.

Mini-me

The normal routine is this - after work, I go pick up the kids at daycare, come home, they take off their coats and hats and shoes and go play or Alex does his homework if he has any, or they watch a bit of a DVD while I go change out of my work clothes and into (usually) my pajamas.  Bill, if he's not working, is there and either gets Alex going on his homework or plays with them or whatever.

Anyway, that's pretty much the routine.  I need to change out of work stuff and get into comfy home stuff before I can fully become Wife/Mommy/At-Home Me.

Yesterday Bill was working late, so I got home with the kids and Alex immediately put his coat on the hook, put his sneakers in his bin, and asked to watch The Grinch.  Julia took off without a word, and I heard her upstairs walking around probably gathering stuffed animals to bring back to the basement or something like that.

I got Alex settled - no homework - and was about to go upstairs to find my jammies, when Julia appeared, without her sneakers, and wearing a pair of pink stretchy pants instead of the black ones with snowflakes she'd had on earlier.

"I changed," she said.  And then she headed downstairs to watch The Grinch with Alex.

In the Cookie Jar: Short Dough

This is a very simple and versatile dough that I learned to make while I was at Johnson & Wales.  You can use it for cookies, or even for crusts for no-bake pies or cookie bars.  Like I said - it's versatile.   Why is it called a "short" dough?  It has to do with the texture and structure of the final product.  A short dough of any kind (think shortbread) is kind of brittle and crumbly.  It's not chewy.  It has a high proportion of fat and sugar and little in the way of binding ingredients - like egg - to keep it intact once you bit into it.  The other thing, with this recipe, is the use of cake flour instead of all-purpose flour.  There's a lower protein content in cake flour, so as you work it, it's less likely to develop the gluten strands that give a loaf of bread its structure.  So the finished product is light and brittle and melts in your mouth.

In the baking classes I took while I was at J&W, the recipes are called formulas.  And that's the thing about baking - it's more of a science than cooking.  Much of the time, it's all about proportions.  If you can learn the proportions, or ratios, of ingredients in a recipe, you're set for life.  Okay, I exaggerate.

But this dough is a perfect example of that.  The ratio is 1:2:3, sugar, butter, and cake flour, by weight.   There is also a little egg in the recipe - 'scuse me - the formula - but it's not entirely necessary and it's not part of the main ratio.  If you're using, say a half pound of sugar, then you only need about 3 ounces of egg...which is about an egg and a half.

Anyway, here's what I did with this one.

Let's begin with the ratio - 1:2:3. 

I used 1 lb of sugar,

2 lbs of unsalted butter,

3 lbs of cake flour,

and 6 ounces of whole eggs - about 3-4 eggs, depending on the size.

And for some additional flavor, I added the zest of a lemon.

Next time around, for this much dough, I'd probably up that to two lemons.

So here we go...

You want the butter to be room temperature before you begin.  If it's not, cut it into pieces and put it in your mixing bowl.  With the paddle attachment, beat the butter until it's soft.  You'll need to scrape the bowl and paddle down several times during the process, but at least it's better than sitting around staring at the cold butter and trying to will it to warm up.

First, after you've measured out everything, combine the softened butter and your sugar in the mixing bowl until they're light and fluffy.

Now add the eggs, and blend well.  Have patience - it's hard to combine fat and water.

Then add the lemon zest and the cake flour...

As you add the flour, use the lowest setting on your mixer, otherwise you'll have flour everywhere.  Run the mixer until the flour is just incorporated, then stop and add some more.  If you're making a large batch, like I was, you may have to finish working in the flour in a larger bowl...

Just take your time and if you need to, flour your hands and knead the flour into the rest of the dough that way. 

When you're done, form it into a ball

- or divide it into smaller balls - then press flat and wrap tightly in plastic wrap.

Refrigerate the dough for an hour or so to firm it up.  Then, when you're ready to make cookies, get your cookie cutters ready, roll out the dough on a lightly floured board and start cutting. 

If your kitchen is on the warm side, put the baking sheets with the cookies on them in your fridge to chill some before baking.  Otherwise the cookies will basically melt and spread out on the pan.  If they're really cold when you put them in the oven, they'll hold their shape better.

Oh, yeah, and use a 350 degree (F) oven.  Depending on thickness, they'll take around 15-20 minutes to bake.  You want them to stay pale - barely golden on the edges is okay, but no more than that.

Next up...gingerbread cookies.

Printable Recipe!

Cookie Weekend

Last weekend my sister's kids were here to bake and decorate some cookies.  The fun part was the actual decorating, which we did Sunday morning. 

We made two kinds of cookies - a basic short dough for some, and a gingerbread dough for others. 

I don't have a lot to say - I'll just let the pictures tell the story...

So, um...can you guess which of my children decorated which reindeer?

This was the only batch I did by baking the sugar onto the cookies.  After that adventure, I just baked off the rest of the cookies and we used royal icing in a variety of colors to decorate the cookies.  Colored sugars were available, too, but for the most part everyone stuck with the icing.

You can make royal icing with egg whites and confectioner's sugar, but if you're doing huge batches and have no use for all the yolks - or you just don't feel like cracking eggs - buy a cannister of meringue powder and you're all set.

All you need is the meringue powder, confectioner's sugar, and water.  And a stand mixer helps, too.

There you go - just add water, combine slowly first so the sugar doesn't fly all over you and your kitchen.  Once everything's been mixed together, scrape the sides of the mixing bowl down, and then let 'er rip.  If the mixture is too thin, add some more sugar.  If it's too thick, add more water.  It's hard to explain how thick or thin you'll want it - you just have to try piping some and see how it looks.  If you're doing something very detailed and you want the icing to hold its shape, then you want it on the thicker side, but still thin enough so you won't immediately develop advanced carpal tunnel syndrome the first time you decorate a cookie.  Sometimes, though, you're filling in a large outlined space, and you just want the icing to spread out and cover the cookie.  Then, obviously, you want it thinner.

For Sunday's purposes, I really didn't mess around with the icing much.  It was thinner than I would have used, but it was just fine for my 4 young artists.

Here, Alex holds up one of his first gingerbread men, while Julia...mines for gold, apparently.  I hadn't noticed that when I was taking the picture.  My nephew, Calvin, is focused on his own work.  And my niece, Natalie, seems to be staring at her little girl cousin...just...staring.

Each kid filled up a cookie sheet with their creations.

I think Julia had the most cookies...but that was because of her minimalist approach....

Later on, when she was eating them, she'd bite off the parts that had the icing and hand me the naked remains..."I don't want this." 

Next up, Alex.  He had a blast.  I think he was the last cousin to put down the piping bag.

If Alex wasn't the last kid decorating, then it was Natalie.  She spent a lot of time creating each cookie...

See the two cats in the middle?  Those are their family's cats.  The black one is Ozzie.  He's your basic gorgeous all-black cat.  The other one is Tulip.  She's a petite calico, about 2 years old, and oh, yeah, she's kind of ditzy. 

Anyway - last up, Calvin.

He kept saying decorating was a lot of fun, and that made me happy because he's the oldest and I don't want him to feel like he's stuck doing little kid stuff with his little kid cousins.  Actually, to be fair, he's really great with them. 

And who wouldn't have fun painting with frosting? 

In the Cookie Jar: White Lebkuchen

2007:  This is another recipe I'd originally posted several years ago.  I'm updating it now with pictures and a few comments.  Also, just as an fyi, when I made the batch in the photos, I had tripled what's written below.  Anyway, here we go...

I believe the "white" simply refers to the glaze that tops these cookies...this recipe is copied directly from Elsa's black ringbinder, in her handwriting, with her notes, etc. I'll add my own notes at the end....

1 C almonds, ground

1/2 C orange peel (candied) 1/2 C citron peel (candied),

cut into small pieces

1/4 C cinnamon (scant)
2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp baking soda
4 1/4 C flour

...sifted together...

4 eggs

and 1/2 C sugar.

Stir sugar & eggs until foamy (1 hour by hand, 15 min by mixer)

Sift flour, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon into sugar mixture, add orange, citron and almonds, alternating using flour last.

Work on board to finish mixing

Let rest 1/2 hr. (or, if you're not going to do anything with it right away, wrap tightly and refrigerate.  Just remember to allow it to warm up before you try to work with it.)

Now, this year I had some problems with a couple batches of dough.  I think it's because I tripled the recipes and didn't spend enough time at the end making sure everything was combined well.  And I didn't pay attention to the texture of the dough in the process.  These two batches turned out on the dry side, as you can see from the picture above. 

It happens, so what do you do?  Well, what I did was to add small amounts of water to the dough, and work it (knead it) on the board until it was the right consistency.  It took some extra time, but saved me the frustration of trying to work with crumbly dough.

Anyway,  once the dough is workable, roll it out to the thickness you want - the thinner the dough, the crisper the cookie.  I make mine on the thicker side - about a quarter of an inch thick - because I like the chewy texture and because that's how Bill's mom made them.

(and see how mottled that dough looks?  That was the first batch I rolled out - without adding any water to it.  It was crumbly and difficult, and I was stubborn.  They came out tasting fine, but really, they don't make for a good presentation, do they?)

Anyway, cut out all your circles (or whatever shape you want - again, I am doing what Bill's mom did...just because.) - or let a child help do it...

and lay them out on a cookie sheet and bake 300 degrees for about 15 minutes

Cool - glaze.

I actually made them them one night and then packed them away and glazed them a few nights later.  Which is fine.

Glaze

1 3/4 C - 2C confectioners' sugar
4 T HOT water

Stir 10 minutes or until shiny

Bill's mom used to spoon some glaze onto the top of each cookie and sort of frost the cookie with the back of the spoon.  I've done that for the past several years, but this year I decided to try something different.

I dipped the top surface of the cookie in the glaze,

(of course, I'm doing this left-handed and holding the camera with my right...I'm right handed, so normally I would do the cookie-dipping with my right hand, and THAT experienced hand wouldn't look quite so stiff and awkward and shy about the camera.  So please bear with my left hand.  It's probably nervous.)

And then tilt the cookie up and let some of the excess icing drip off.  Then place on a rack to let the icing dry and harden.

Like so.  I let mine sit out overnight. 

And there you are.  When I packed them away again, I did a layer of cookies, then a piece of parchment paper, then another layer of cookies, and so on until the box was full.  It's not necessary, but I do it just to keep the cookies from sticking together.

Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Misc. notes....

Make one batch at a time - dough dries out quickly  (no kidding!  Or divide the dough and put some in the fridge, well-wrapped so it doesn't dry out.)

4 oz container of citron & orange peel = 1/2 C

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To glaze them, I just spooned some of the glaze onto each cookie and swirled it around a bit with the back of the spoon. The glaze never covered the cookie completely, when my mother-in-law made them, so that is the look I go for, too.

Elsa always cut these out in circles, and she used a specific juice glass, which she kept (and I have) in the cardboard box that she kept the important cookie-making supplies. The rim of the juice glass is about 2" in diameter.

Think about that bit of direction - "one hour by hand" - yes, that's what she did before she had a mixer to do it for her.

By "work on board" she meant knead the dough a bit. Not too much - you don't want the cookies to become tough. But you'll need to put a bit of muscle into it. The dough is pretty stiff.

Yes - that's a quarter of a cup of cinnamon in the recipe.

Let me know if you have any questions! And no - I don't remember how many this recipe makes...

What Resonates

When I wrote this post last week, I mainly just wrote it for myself as a way of tying some experiences together, and for my mother, whose father I'd written about in the post.  Many (well, many for my blog) people have commented on this post, and I am glad it has touched people. 

And then this morning I read this writer's post about a similar, but also very different, experience.  I thank her for sharing her story.  Go read for yourselves....

Shoosi

A few days ago I made tacos for dinner, but I'd also picked up a package of barbecued eel maki rolls from the little sushi area in the grocery store.

I believe I've mentioned this before, but in case you're new here, or in case I am mistaken in what I think I remember...my son, who is five and a half...LOVES SUSHI.  Loves it.  He can eat any adult under the table, particularly if we're talking tuna. 

Anyway, I picked the eel rather than anything raw because it had to wait in my car for an hour or so (I was shopping on my lunch break), and although it was pretty cold outside, I still don't mess around with raw fish.  So I just got the 8 piece cooked maki roll.  As long as it's eel, cooked is okay with my son.  Tuna and salmon and other fish must be raw. 

We had our taco dinner as a picnic on the floor in our basement living room (the one with the tv and most of the toys), and when I brought down the little plate with maki rolls on it, Alex's eyes grew wide and he seriously thought they should all be his for consumption.

We were able to convince him to share, but it took a lot of clever adult thinking and tricky verbal maneuvers to do so.

Anyway, the next day, when I was driving the kids home from daycare, Alex started talking in his "mature" voice.  This is the voice he uses to pronounce dinner excellent and to express boundless love for whichever parent cooked it.  It is the voice that goes with this face:

It's the food critic face.

So, with THAT voice, he told me that I needed to go to the store again and buy more sushi.  "This time, Mommy, you need to get ALL the sushi.  Because I love sushi.  I LOVE sushi, Mommy.  I could eat a hundred sushis." 

He went on like this at length.  He also told me that the sushi would be for "me and Daddy.  Because we love sushi."  And I said "Oh, yeah?  Um...I love it too, kiddo.  And so does Julia."   He actually GROANED with disappointment.  Julia, after agreeing that she liked sushi, took uncharacteristic pity on her brother and said "okay, no" - she didn't like it after all.  At one point Alex was so engaged in telling me how much sushi he could eat and how much he really really loved sushi, that his mouth couldn't keep up with his brain and he told me how much he loved "shoosi...shoosi...I mean sushi."  Seriously.  We can't go to a Japanese restaurant with him because we'd have to take out a second mortgage to keep him in tuna sashimi. 

So instead, we'll pick up a little something for a treat now and then, or sometimes we will by a good, sushi-grade piece of tuna or salmon, and Bill will put together a feast like the one we had last night.  My sister's kids spent a good part of the weekend at our house - 'twas the annual cookie-decorating weekend, more on that in another post - and my niece, in particular, loves sushi and sashimi, too.

Bill bought up a piece of tuna, a piece of salmon, some shrimp, avocados, and cucumber.  He made a batch of sushi rice, and got out the sheets of nori and one of our bamboo sushi mats and went to town....

That's Alex's hand up there at the top of the picture, presenting the feast to the camera or something.  He spots the camera in my hand and suddenly he's hosting an Iron Chef competition. 

And yes, look at all that food.  We ate and ate til we were stuffed.  Except Julia.  She had eaten so many cheese puffs before dinner that she really wasn't interested in much else.  She dissected a maki roll and picked out the salmon and avocado and cucumber, but that was about it for her. 

Alex, on the other hand, informed us within minutes that apart from the few pieces we had just placed on our plates, the rest was for him.  He said it so calmly, so matter-of-factly, that we all kind of stared at him for a moment before laughing.  To be fair, he ate more than I did.  I'm pretty sure he ate more than anyone.

Only two pieces of shrimp and 13 assorted maki rolls remained after we'd all finished and Alex had reluctantly left a lump of rice on his plate.  His belly full, he was forced to admit defeat.

For lunch today I cut up and cooked up the remains of last night's feast in some soy sauce, wasabi, sesame oil and rice vinegar. 

Alex refused to eat any.  "I don't like it when it's cooked," he said haughtily. 

He ate gingerbread cookies instead.