The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Amaretti

 

The upcoming Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, Chocolate Amaretti Torte, includes Amaretti cookies in the ingredients list. 

The store I went to didn't have any - not the kind Dorie recommended and not any other kind, either - and yes, if I'd started looking earlier (I'm such a procrastinator) I might have found them at Whole Foods, or I could have ordered them online.  But I figured I could just go ahead and make them, as other TWD members have done.

Now...I don't usually read the P & Q (Problems and Questions) section on the TWD website.  I just don't think to.  But for whatever reason, I did this time.  And - now this was before I went grocery shopping - I saw that a few people had made their own Amaretti cookies, and somewhere in there I thought I'd seen a recipe or mention of making the cookies with almond paste.  So, since I couldn't find the cookies, I bought two tubes of almond paste.  Then when I got home and looked up the recipe, it didn't call for almond paste.  It called for almonds.  Clearly I am going senile.

Anyway, I poked around online and found a couple recipes and ended up combining elements of a couple of them. 

So here's my version of an Amaretti cookie recipe.

8 oz almond paste

1 cup superfine sugar

2 egg whites

1 tsp almond extract

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.

Break up or cut up the almond paste and put that in the food processor along with the sugar. 

Process until well combined.  Add the extract, and then the whites in a couple of additions, processing and scraping down the bowl in between each addition.  Process until smooth.

Using a piping bag fitted with a large (1/4") tip,

fill the bag with the almond paste mixture and pipe 1" rounds on two parchment lined sheet pans.  (You could also use teaspoons to spoon the mixture onto the pans.)

I baked these for 15 minutes at 300, then dropped the temp to 250 for about five minutes, then shut the oven off and left them in for another 20-25 minutes.  I wanted the cookies completely dry and crisp, so I had checked them after about 15 minutes by removing one cookie, letting it cool, and then breaking it in half.  It was still a tiny bit chewy in the center, so I left the cookies in a bit longer until I had them the way I wanted them.  Crispy and delicious. 

Coconut Shortbread Cookies - Disguised As Sea Life

 

A couple of weeks ago we received Christmas gifts from some friends of ours.  They swung by the house with a bag of wrapped goodies and left quickly so as not to play host to any of the yucky germs that were in residence at the time.

Christmas in March?  Sure, why not? 

I received, in part, a set of seven sea creature cookie cutters (which includes a dolphin, as you've no doubt figured out on your own) and a cookbook entitled Best of the Best:  the best recipes from 25 of the best cookbooks of the year.  It's put out by the Food & Wine magazine people and includes recipes from notables as Jamie Oliver, Bobby Flay, David Pasternack, Alice Medrich, and Kylie Kwong.

On this most recent Saturday morning, when, at long last, everyone in the house was healthy again, I found the recipe for these Coconut Shortbread Cookies, decided they'd work well with the sea creature cutters, and proceeded to whip up a batch.  I should have doubled it.  They're pretty tasty.

But that comes later.

 

The recipe is by Jill O'Connor, author of Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey, and was created exclusively for this compilation.  Thanks, Jill!

As you can see above, it's a pretty simple recipe with very few ingredients.  Quick and easy to prepare.

   

Here's what you need - coconut, butter, flour, confectioners' sugar, vanilla, and salt. 

First, you place your room temp butter in the bowl of your mixer.

 

Then you add in your sifted confectioners' sugar...

 

(which has been measured out by your able assistant, if you've got one)

 

And then you beat together the butter and sugar together until they're pale and creamy.

 

Then you add in your vanilla...

   

And then you take the remaining ingredients (flour, coconut, salt) which your little assistant has whisked together...

 

and you add those to the butter mixture and blend just until everything is combined.  You form that dough into a ball and refrigerate for at least an hour.  Or, if you're pressed for time, as I was, you can take your chances after half an hour.

 

I rolled the dough out to between a quarter and a half inch thick and cut out an assortment of sea creatures.  The dough isn't the easiest to work with when you've got cookie cutters with narrow parts, like the base of a tail.  But with patience and a skinny knife, you can make it work.

 

While the cookies were baking, and smelling very, very good in the process, and while, because of the delicious aroma, Alex was moaning and whining in agony "When can I eeeeeeeeeeat one?  I'm staaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrvvvvvvvvvvvvvving!" because of course we only feed him once a week, food prices being what they are, Julia and I put together the royal icing in a variety of mouth-watering hues.

 

Yum!  Teal!

 

Once the cookies had cooled sufficiently, the kids and I gathered 'round the table to play.

(And for those of you concerned with Alex's growling tummy, yes, he got to sample a cookie before we started decorating the rest of them.)

These are Alex's works of art:

 

And this is Alex eating some cereal, because a boy cannot live on cookies alone.  At least not if Mommy's around to stop him from trying.

   

Inspired by the adorable photo in this post, I did a bunch of dolphins and that was enough for me.

Julia had done a bunch on her own, but then wanted to try to make some like mine, using a paint brush.

In order to create the look of my dolphins, I just piped the icing on either in stripes or concentric circles or stripes and dots - whatever struck my fancy as I was makikng them.

Next, to achieve the swirly or tie-dyed looks, I dipped a small paintbrush in water and just brushed the top of the iced cookie go gently drag some of the color into the adjoining color.  I rinsed the brush off frequently so the colors wouldn't get muddy looking by the end of the process.  I used a dot of black for an eye, and that was it. 

 

 

 

I showed Julia what to do, and she made a few painted swirly creatures herself.

 

We've still got a lot of icing left over.

 

I should probably make more cookies.

 

You know, just so the icing doesn't go to waste.  Because waste is bad.

And decorating is fun!

(The cookies themselves are pretty tasty, too!)

Alex's Cookies

 

The kids stayed home on Thursday because the powers that be in this school district decided it was too cold out for the schools to be open.  The day was supposed to be super cold, windy, and somewhat snowy.

I saw a few flakes meander by the window in the morning, but that was about it.

Ah well.

Since we were home, I decided lots of baking was in order.  I figured I'd bake some bread (which I did) and some cookies.

Alex asked for chocolate chip.

I started looking through cookbooks, just to find a cookie recipe I hadn't tried yet.  And I found my launching pad in the pages of The Sweeter Side of Amy's Bread, by Amy Scherber and Toy Kim Dupree.  Published by Wiley, this was a free copy I'd received within the last month or so, and I hadn't done much with it other than to look through the pages and drool occasionally.

Amy's Bread began in a former fish market in Hell's Kitchen in 1992 and has grown now to include two other retail locations besides the original location.  Famous for both savory and sweet items, this book focuses on the cookies and cakes and pastries.

I found a recipe for "Kitchen Sink Cookies" which, as the name suggests, produces cookies packed to the gills with all sorts of chunks and chewy bites.  I took the basic recipe and asked Alex what he might like in his cookies besides the chocolate chips.  I told him his options and he chose pecans and dried cranberries.  I used chocolate chunks instead of chips, and, ta-da!  Alex's Cookies.  I also chose not to make the enormous cookies Amy's recipes call for.  Each recipe bakes a dozen large cookies or, in the case of the Kitchen Sink, two dozen.  Large.

I have small children, with medium-sized mouths.  Big eyes, but not as big bellies.  I didn't want a mess of partially eaten cookies on my countertops.  So I made small cookies.

If you'd like to follow the original recipe, you can find it on page 127 of The Sweeter Side of Amy's Bread.  Or you can email me if you'd like and I'll email it to you.

Here's the recipe for my variation on the Kitchen Sink cookies.

 

(The boy cracks me up.)

Alex's Cookies

Ingredients:

1  2/3 cups all-purpose flour

2  1/4 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

1  1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp Kosher salt

2 large eggs

1  1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup semisweet chocolate chunks

1 cup toasted, chopped pecans

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed

1/2 cup granulated sugar

And here's what you do...

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

2.  In one bowl, combine the flour, oats, baking soda and salt.  In another bowl, combine the chocolate, nuts and cranberries.

 

(It's nice when you have a helper.)

 

3.  In the bowl of your mixer, cream together the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy.  (And if, like me, you're using brown sugar that's become semi rock-hard, you might want to use a food processor first.)

 

4.  Combine the eggs and vanilla and add that to the butter/sugar mixture.  Mix well. 

 

5.  Add in the flour mixture in stages, and be careful not to overmix.  Stir together until the flour and other dry ingredients are just barely combined with the wet ingredients.

 

 

6.  With a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, mix in the chocolate, pecans and cranberries.

7.  Scoop out balls the size of a 2 tablespoon measure (If you don't have one of those, a very heaping tablespoon works fine.) and place them 2 inches apart on a baking sheet.

 

 

8.  Bake for 12-14 minutes, rotating pans halfway through.

They go well with milk.

 

Just ask Alex.

 

Citrus Biscotti - Chocolate Glaze Optional

 

I love this biscotti recipe.  I think I may have seen it on an episode of Giada De Laurenti1s' show, or I just happened upon it on the Food Network website while looking for biscotti recipes. 

Anyway, the recipe is hers, and you can find it here.  Go now and print yourself a copy.  Trust me.

I made a batch of these during my pre-Christmas cookie frenzy, except I made them smaller than usual - in other words, instead of dividing the dough in half and making two logs, I made four skinnier logs.  (I realize if you've never made biscotti you may be going "Huh???  Logs???" and for that I apologize.  I'm always putting the logs before the dough.

This recipe combines two wonderful elements - cornmeal, which gives the biscotti an extra crunch, and citrus in the form of lemon and orange zest. 

First up, it's important to select the right kind of citrus.  Here to help us is Scratchy.

 

Don't be shy - smell the citrus - it should smell fresh and, well, citrusy.  Lemons should smell like lemons, and clementines should smell like clementines, which is to say, pretty much like oranges.  In the photo above, Scratchy makes sure the clementines are acceptable.

They are.

 

The dough goes together easily - combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt together.  Then combine eggs and sugar in another bowl...add the zests to the dry ingredients and then add THAT mixture to the egg/sugar mixture.  See?  Easy.

Now, to make the "normal" sized biscotti, you'd divide the dough in half and form a log with each half of dough on a parchment-lined sheet pan.

 

But as I mentioned earlier, I divided the dough into quarters and made four skinny logs on two parchment-lined sheet pans.

The logs don't have to look perfect, they just need to be uniform (pretty much) in width.  You sort of form the dough into a loggish shape, then press it down a bit to flatten, then kind of draw the dough out further, length-wise, then pat it down again.  You want it nearly as long as the baking sheet and about half an inch thick.

 

Kind of like that.  Then you do the other quarter of dough, and then you do the other two on the other pan.

Bake these for about half an hour at 325 degrees F, or until golden and just firm to the touch.  Rotate pans (if you're doing the mini-biscotti version) half-way through the bake time. 

When the biscotti are done with this first bake, remove them from the oven and allow them to cool about five minutes or so.  They need to set up a bit, and they need to cool enough so you can handle them.

 

Once you can handle the logs, you need to slice them up.  Use a serrated knife, and slice the logs on the diagonal, so the cookies are about half an inch in width.

 

Then you place the pieces back on the baking sheets, cut sides up/down (rather than perching upright like they are above).

You know, when I first ever read that instruction, whenever it was years ago - to place something "cut side down" (it may have been in a cinnamon bun recipe), I spent WAY too long wondering WHICH cut side they were talking about.  How was I supposed to KNOW which cut side was the REAL cut side that needed to face down?  What if I got it wrong?  Would it drag down my GPA?  Would it go on my PERMANENT RECORD????  Back then I didn't have children, so my brain was free to obsess over trivia like that.  Thank goodness times have changed and I can obsess about the really important stuff.

Back to our show.

Once all the biscotti are sliced and placed with the correct cut sides down (just kidding) on the baking sheets, pop them back in the oven and bake for another 20-25 minutes. 

Place on wire racks to cool.

Now, I like them plain.  I don't need chocolate on my biscotti to be happy.  So I was originally (when I made these last month) going to leave them as they were.  But other people (i.e. my husband) think that they are too plain and need chocolate (I'm talking about the biscotti, not the people), so as a compromise, I drizzled melted bittersweet chocolate on half of them.  And from a visual standpoint, the ones with the drizzle look more interesting.  And, of course, you can also dip them in chocolate rather than just drizzle.  Whatever makes you happiest.

And if you like cornmeal, and you like biscotti, and citrus, I think these will make you happy, regardless of your chocolate preference.

Again, if you want the recipe, go here. 

Enjoy!

Lime Thumbprints and a Lime Tart

 

These are the cookies I set out to make.  I'd found it in Martha's magazine, and you can also find the recipe online here.  They're actually supposed to be Key Lime Thumbprints, but the Key limes I bought didn't last too long and I ended up using regular limes.

Anyway, first I made the cookie dough and rolled it into balls.

I doubled the recipe, because I love lime and I figured everyone else would (or should), too. 

I par-baked the cookies, as directed, and then spooned the filling into the little hollows and finished baking.  I ended up making 142 cookies, (according to my notes) but I ended up with a lot of leftover filling. 

And since I figured that was enough cookies, and also since, for me, the ratio of cookie to filling was too skewed in favor of the cookies, I figured I'd make a tart with the rest of it.  I used some of my short dough surplus to make the crust.

Maybe I made my cookies wrong - not enough of a thumbrint for the filling. 

I don't know.  But I was, in the end, glad for the leftover filling.  The tart was yummy.

 

Especially with a generous dollop of whipped cream on top...

     

(Of course you can use canned whipped cream, or use a mixer, but really, it's very quick and easy to do by hand.  Just get a wide metal bowl and whisk in a loop - into the bowl and up and around and in and up - or even back and forth - as fast as you can.  It will thicken.  Oh, and use your bigger arm muscles to do this, not your wrist.  Especially if you have carpal tunnel issues.)

 

You want some, don't you.

 

I thought so.

Candy Cane and Chocolate Meringues

 

Kind of like candy, not really a cookie, these are crispy on the outside, a bit chewy on the inside, and went over well with everyone who tasted them - at least here in my little world.

I wanted to include several wheat-free items in my cookie baskets this year, primarily because my cousin's wife has realized she has an intolerance for gluten, and I didn't want her to lose out on the sweets.

So, in addition to the Almond Stars/Moons that I make every year, I made these and another batch of morsels that I'll get to in another post.

I used candy canes and chocolate, but you could leave out either one and they'd still be tasty.  Meringes are easy to make, and they're fun to play around with, ingredient-wise. 

Here's what I concocted:

I used 4 room temperature egg whites, 1/4 tsp cream of tartar, and 1 cup of sugar, 2 oz bittersweet chocolate (or you could use mini chocolate chips) and 6 small candy canes.

First, I chopped up 2 oz of bittersweet chocolate...

and crushed 6 small candy canes.

 

   

 

I whipped the whites til they were at the soft peak stage, added the cream of tartar (it helps strenghten the whites) and then, with the mixer still running, slowly added in the sugar.  I kept whipping them until the peaks were firm but not dry.  

Once the whites were ready, I just folded in the crushed candy and the chocolate and then spooned the mixture out onto parchment lined sheet pans.

I baked them at 300 for about 20 minutes.  At that point, when I tasted one, the outside was nicely crisp, and the inside was like a marshmallow.  I was tempted to leave them like that - they were really good - but I wasn't sure how long they'd keep like that without getting softer, so I put them back in the oven at 200 for another 20 minutes and that gave me a chewier center that I figured would store longer.

After they'd cooled and dried, I drizzled them with melted bittersweet chocolate.  And that was it. 

See?  Simple!

Farmer Hats 2008 - A Success Story

 

Last year I referred to these as The Bane of My Existence.  The reason was because no matter how perky the cookies looked when I shaped them, after baking, they were flat.  And the story was that my late mother-in-law's mother, when she baked them, they stayed up.

The outer cookie is basically a butter cookie, only a little sturdier.  The inner part is a meringue with ground almonds.  The thing is, the meringue isn't strong enough to hold up the cookie dough, and so in the heat of the oven, they fall down.

And they look like this:

 

I tried different tactics...changed the oven temperature...refrigerated the cookies overnight...changed the length of baking time...but it didn't matter.  They still flopped.  And the fact that, according to Bill's uncle, once upon a time somewhere and somehow, they had stood UP, was festering in my brain.  That's right, festering.

And then last May, in the comments section of that post, "Interested in Baking" suggested I use pre-made marzipan instead of the meringue.

Hmmmm.  Marzipan.  A form of almond paste.  Almonds, sugar...in some versions egg white.  And it was dense.  More likely to hold up in the oven - and hold up the dough.  I kept that in the back of my mind.

And this year - I bought a little package of almond paste at the grocery store and tried it out.  (Why almond paste and not marzipan?  Don't know.  It wasn't a conscious decision.  Marzipan generally has a higher proportion of sugar, but that wasn't a factor in my decision.  I just reached up and plucked a box from the shelf.)

First, I made the cookie dough and cut out a bunch of rounds and set them on parchment-lined sheet pans.

Then I unwrapped the almond paste and cut it into pieces  and rolled those little pieces into balls.

 

Then I put a ball onto each cookie dough circle and folded the sides up to make the tri-corner shape.

 

And then, after chilling them in the fridge for half an hour or so, I baked them at 325 degrees F for about 20 minutes.

And - GUESS WHAT!

Oh, well, I guess you already know that because of the first picture of this post. 

THEY STAYED UP!

 

So I'm all kinds of delighted with this result, and I want to thank "Interested in Baking" for that suggestion nearly 7 months ago.  THANK YOU! 

I do, however, miss the crunchy-nutty texture of the original meringue filling.  So I'm thinking of kneading ground almonds into the almond paste (or marzipan, if I use that instead) for next year's batches.  Or maybe I'll try that out sooner.  You know, just to be sure.

If you'd like a printable version of this recipe - with both versions of the filling, just to be fair, you can go here.

Almond Stars (in theory) 2008

  

I goofed these up this year.  I did.  Me, myself.  I would love to say I don't know what happened, or blame it on oh, weak protein strands in the egg whites or something, but that would be lying, and I can't do that. 

Everything was fine at first. 

 

I measured out my almonds, hazelnuts and zest-of-one-lemon and ran them all through the food processor together.

 

Mmmm...fragrant!

And then I whipped up my egg whites.  I even added a pinch of cream of tartar this year to stabilize the meringue.  A LOT OF GOOD THAT DID ME!  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

   

Nearly as pretty as snow, huh?  Egg whites and powdered sugar.

 

And then...like magic...meringue.

 

And then it's just a matter of folding in the ground nut mixture...

 

 

and then into the fridge to chill for a bit.

And there's where I caused the ruin of this year's almond stars.  I didn't just leave the batter/dough/whatever you'd call it in the fridge for a bit.  Or even overnight, which is acceptable.  No, I left it in there for two nights.  And I think, during that time, the strength and structure of my meringue got tired and gave out.  The mixture still looked fine, but it just wasn't right.  It seemed...wetter...when I rolled it out.  And when I tried to place the stars onto a cookie sheet, they didn't hold their shape - they just became mushy blobs.

But again, I am leaping ahead.

To roll these out (when you don't leave them in the fridge too long), you sprinkle granulated sugar down on your counter instead of flour. 

 

And then, working with small amounts at a time, you gently roll out the meringue dough to about a quarter of an inch thick and then cut your stars out and place them on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

That's the plan, anyway.  And then you lightly brush them with an egg white wash before baking.

But when you're me, and you do something stupid like leaving the mixture in the fridge for two days, then you switch gears and just spoon dollops of meringue onto your parchment and bake little almond...moons, I guess.

 

 

Let these cookies (whatever shape they are) cool on the parchment completely, and then, to remove them, carefully pull the parchment over the edge of the pan to loosen them and keep pulling slowly until you can successfully remove the cookie without breaking it.

 

Here's what they look like on the back, in case you're interested.

 

They taste just fine - nutty and light and crispy with a little bit of chewy center.  They just look incorrect.  You can eat them as-is, or you could sandwich two together with some melted chocolate.  Or nutella, maybe. 

Whatever you do, though, use the dough sooner than I did, so you actually get stars, like you're supposed to.

 

If you'd like to see last year's post, in which I didn't do so well either, but I did better than this year, plus at the very end there's a picture of the PREVIOUS (2006) year's cookies which were amazingly done CORRECTLY, then click here.

And if you want a printable version of this recipe, so you can attempt these yourself and do better than I've done and then write to me and LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH...then click here.

White Lebkuchen 08

 

Twenty seven and a half dozen of these cookies.

I really don't know how or why that happened, but no matter. 

It's Sunday, the 21st, and I've shipped out tons of cookies and given out more...not that many cookie baskets/plates left to distribute, and still...I have TONS of lebkuchen left.  Next year I won't make 4 batches.  What was I thinking??

Anyway.  I've posted about them before, of course, when I made them last year.  So this year's post is more of a pictorial story rather than an illustrated narrative.  At the end of the post, I'll also have a link to the printable recipe.  I've been trying to set those up in conjunction with the posts.

Oh - and in addition to my addled decision to make 4 batches, I also (and honest, I'm actually pretty good at math) managed to...um...octuple the quantities for the candied orange peel and candied citron.  Yes.  OCTuple.  And of course, I didn't realize that right away, either.

I was all busy thinking about how clever I was because instead of chopping up all the candied orange and citron by hand, I'd just throw them into the food processor in batches, along with the almonds in the recipe (which need to be ground up).  So I opened up all the little 4 oz containers of candied stuff, dumped it all into a big bowl, and put the almonds in another bowl. 

I scooped some of the nuts into the food processor, buzzed them up a bit first, and then added some of the candied peel.

 

I processed that a bit until it looked like this:

 

I was pretty pleased with myself...until I was about halfway done and it occurred to me that there was an AWFUL lot of this stuff, quadruple batch or not.  And then a horrible, ugly light bulb flashed on in my head.

Oh.

See, in a single batch, the recipe calls for 1 cup of almonds, 1/2 cup of candied citron and 1/2 cup of candied orange peel.  Those candied things are sold in 4 oz packages, which is equal to 1/2 cup.  So, for one batch, you need two containers - one each of orange and citron.  Now, I don't know exactly how this happened in my head, but I think it went something like this.  I was quadrupling the recipe, right?  So I'd need 4 times the basic amount.  So, if I'd been thinking straight, I'd need 4 half-cup containers of orange and 4 half-cup containers of citron.  A total, therefore, of 8 containers.  Somehow, somewhere, I screwed that up and thought I needed 8 little containers of EACH kind of peel.  And then my brain was further tormented at the store because there were only 7 containers of orange.  WHAT TO DO?????  I ended up getting 7 of orange, 7 of citron, and 2 of lemon.  So...16 containers...8 cups...not the ONLY 4 CUPS I really and truly required.

Measure twice, cut once, folks.  Learn from my addle-pated mistakes.

Oh, and so here I was with way too much assorted candied peel, ground up with the right amount of almonds, which was the amount needed for 4 batches, but only half of what I'd need for the 8 batches.  And too late to separate out the almonds - they were already mixed in with the peel.

So.  I divided that whole mixture in two and froze one portion to give (probably) to a friend of ours who loves lebkuchen.  He'll also be getting a LOT of the lebkuchen I made, so he'll be pretty well set for life, I'm thinking.

Anyway, to the remaining blend of peel and almonds, I added in enough ground almonds to bring all the proportions into balance and harmony.  Finally, I was ready to get going.  I think I wasted a good hour on all that lunacy.

Oh, and the other thing...since there's so much stuff in these cookies, and the dough is rather stiff to work initially, I decided to mix the dough in 4 separate batches.  So I measured everything out accordingly, and had all my little groupings of ingredients along one side of the counter.  Batch by batch, I made my lebkuchen and wrapped and refrigerated the dough as I went along.  Later that day, I started the cutting and the baking.

The dough is rolled out 1/4-1/8 inch thick, depending on your preference.  The thicker dough yields a chewier cookie, which is how I make them.

This year, in another bold move, I used a fluted-edged cutter instead of a plain one.  I know.  I'm such a maverick.  Heh heh.

 

I started out with a cutter about 2 1/2" in diameter, and then, because I like to make more work for myself, I switched to a smaller one.  About 1 1/2" or so.  Maybe a bit bigger.  But still.  Smaller.

I ended up with 46 of the larger cookies, and - hold on to your butlers - 284 smaller ones.  TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FOUR.  I need my head examined.  So...that's a total of almost 4 dozen larger cookies and...let me see...mumble mumble mumble...carry the one...TWENTY-THREE AND TWO-THIRDS DOZEN of the smaller cookies.  Apparently I am planning to distribute a cookie to everyone in the contiguous United States this December.  I'm well on my way.

Anyway, once they'd all baked and cooled, I packed them away in plastic containers and did the glazing part another day.

For the glaze, it's just a mixture of confectioners' sugar and hot water, whisked and whisked until smooth and shiny.

 

In the past, I've used a spoon to smear the glaze on the cookies.  Then, for the past couple of years, I've dipped the cookie in the glaze and allowed it to drip off a bit before setting the cookie on a rack to allow the glaze to dry.

 

     

This year, I came up with another method that I like even better.  I painted the glaze on with a little cheap-o 1" brush you can get at the grocery store along with the other kitchen tools.

 

 

 

I left the cookies out to dry overnight, and then packed them back up in the containers again.

 

Well.  Most of them.

 

If you'd like to see the original lebkuchen post from last year, go here.

And if you'd like a printable version of this recipe (without all the mistakes I made this year), you can go here.

A Weekend of Cookies and Snowmen

 

It was a fun, busy, chaotic weekend.  This is the weekend BEFORE this current one.  I'm late in posting. 

On Friday I baked off the rest of the short dough I'd made, in a variety of kid-pleasing shapes:  snowmen, trees, reindeer, bells, angels, cats, birds, and squirrels.  Yes, squirrels. 

But because I never think there will be enough, I had to make more.  Plus it's nice to have a variety of flavors.  Originally I was going to make gingerbread cookies, but then, in my email, I got a link from Epicurious to "25 Days of Christmas Cookies."  So I clicked through the slide show, and came right back to the very first one in the group:

Chocolate Roll-Out Cookies.

I skimmed through the recipe, thought it sounded like what I wanted, and printed it out.  And that's when I noticed it.  The name in the top left-hand corner.  The recipe was published in Gourmet Magazine in December 2007.  And guess who wrote it?  Yep.  The Ubiquitous Dorie Greenspan.  I had to laugh.

And then I had to make the cookies.  I doubled the recipe, because, you know, that whole "might not be enough" thing.  And the dough - the dough smelled fabulous.  Good enough to eat right then and there, but I thought of the kids who were coming, and I refrained.

But really.  Cocoa powder AND melted bittersweet chocolate in the dough.  You can't go wrong there.  Oh, and a bit of cinnamon, too.  This recipe is a keeper.

With this dough, I cut out teddy bears, lions, more angels, bunnies, guitars, snowflakes, dogs, and cows.  Yes, cows.  In two sizes.  I love cows, and my cow cutters are actually stored with my December holiday cutters, not the animal cutters. 

 

All the kids present had a great time decorating (and eating) the cookies, both on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning before it was time for them all to go home.

Oddly enough, I didn't take any pictures of the kids' finished cookies, which was rather stupid of me, because those are way more entertaining than the stuff I did.  Ah well.  Here are a few pictures from Saturday's decorating party...

 

This is my nephew, Calvin.  Despite his advanced years (he's 16), he seems to really enjoy doing stuff like this with the kids.  Later on, he taught them to play Guitar Hero.  He's great with children.

 

 

And, of course, we all know Julia and Alex. 

 

And this, this is Natalie, my niece.  She is an AWESOME cookie-decorator.  I mean, they all do/did a great job, but Natalie just really has a knack for it.  She made a teddy bear with a little sweater on him that LOOKED like a real sweater. 

Saturday night, Bill made paella for dinner.  It was phenomenal.

 

The next morning we awoke to snowfall.  Alex and his friend Jack, who slept over, were the first ones awake, and the first ones to look outside.  They came in and told me, and I sent them downstairs to tell Calvin and Natalie.

After breakfast, everyone went outside to play in the snow.  There wasn't a lot of it, but there was enough for a mild snowball fight and the construction of three snowmen.

 

 

   

 

 

 

All in all, a pretty near-perfect weekend.

Oh, and just to keep things on a baking theme, here are a few pictures of the cookies I decorated.  Because, you know, it's all about me.

  

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

Oh, and in case you're wondering about that not-decorated little cow in the front...look closely.  He's got an eye.  A little tiny clump of cocoa powder, probably.  Anyway, I felt he didn't require any further embellishment. 

And then I ate him.

All in all, a great weekend.

German Butter Cookies 08

     

I love these little cookies.

They're soft and buttery and dangerously easy to consume in large quantities without noticing until the cookie jar contains nothing but crumbs.

The dough comes together quickly and easily - just a matter of combining butter and sugar, eggs, flour and "1 knife tip Baking Soda" and then refrigerating for a couple of hours before rolling out.

 

Even after you chill it for a few hours, the dough will still be somewhat soft and sticky and tricky to work with.  You can roll it out between sheets of plastic or waxed paper if you want to, or just dust your board and rolling pin lightly and frequently with flour. 

In the years that I've been making these cookies, I've always used the same tiny cutters that I remembered Bill's mom using.  An angel, a tree, a snowman, and a stocking.  It was important to me to keep things exactly the same as they'd been in the years before.

This year, I used some of those cutters and some other tiny ones.  I didn't use the little stocking - the tiny little loop part kept sticking to the inside of the cutter no matter what, and I just didn't feel like fighting with it.  So I used a little bell.  And a little musical note.  And, with the very last of the re-rolled scraps of dough, I used a star.

I brushed each cookie with egg yolk, as usual, and baked them for 12 minutes.

     

Julia wanted to get into the fun as well.  I was rolling these out last night, about an hour before the kids' bedtime, and so I told her to pick out six cookie cutters and she could make some for herself.

She chose a cow, a bell, a duck, a soldier, a penguin, and a lion.  After she cut them out, I painted them with egg yolk and let Julia decorate them.  She carefully placed the little tiny sugar trees and sprinkles on each cookie...well, okay, some more carefully than others.

 

I think somewhere Bill's mom is getting a HUGE kick out of Julia.

If you'd like the recipe and to look through last year's post about these delightful little cookies, click here.

And if you'd like a printable recipe, click here.

Springerle 08

 

I made 5 batches' worth of springerle this year.  Not all in one shot - I did one double batch and one triple.

 

And in the process, I made a little change in the recipe that Bill's mom had used when she showed me how to make springerle once upon a time.

But before I get into that, I just want to put in a plug for House on the Hill - a phenomenal source for springerle molds and other cookie-related fun.  If I had gobs of money to play with, I'd spend a happy portion of it shopping on their site.

 

(the only one not from House on the Hill is that 6-sectioned, hand-carved mold)

Anyway.  Like I said, I made five batches' worth of dough.  One entire batch (or most of it) went to the forming of this large (13" diameter) cookie, which we'll probably save for Christmas Eve:

 

I'm extremely pleased with how this turned out this year - so much detail, except here and there around the edges.  Yay!

This year I reduced the amount of flour when I made some of the dough (the triple batch, in case you're keeping track) and I found it was much easier to work with as I rolled it out and pressed it into the molds. 

  

The other change was to dust the molds with confectioners' sugar instead of flour. 

The current edition of Martha Stewart Living includes a recipe for spekulaas, a spicy, gingerbread-like cookie molded very much like springerle.  In the recipe, the directions call for you to dust the molds with confectioner's sugar so that the dough won't stick in the crevices of the mold.  Now, flour serves the same purpose, but the thing with flour is that when it gets damp, it morphs into glue, and once dry, it's a pain in the butler to get out.  Sugar, on the other hand, when combined with water, melts, which makes clean-up gloriously quick and easy.  So, thanks, Martha!

 

And while you're making your springerle, don't forget to trim the edges so you've got nice neat sides.  You can make a cute little dough creature thingy with the trimmings. 

Isn't cookie baking fun?

To see my original post on baking springerle, you can go here.

For a printable version, go here.

 

It's Decorating Day

This afternoon my kids, their best friends, and my sister's kids (who are roughly ten years older than mine, so they are my assistants in a way) will be decorating TONS of cookies I baked yesterday and am baking this morning. 

There will be royal icing in a proverbial rainbow of colors, all sorts of colored sugars and other sprinkley things, and at the end, a big mess and 6 trays of cookies - one per kid.

It should be a blast.

But right now, I'm up to my elbows in confectioner's sugar and cookie dough, so I must leave you for now.

Hope you're having a sparkling day, whatever you're doing!

Pfeffernusse - 2008

 

Tiny, crunchy cookies with huge flavor, these pfeffernusse, or "pepper nuts" last for ages and go well with coffee, tea, or a teeny cup of milk.

Pfeffernusse are part of the 6 different German cookies I bake every year, to keep my late mother-in-law's tradition going. 

I make these early in the game, because they'll last forever (as long as I hide them from the family). 

They're simple to make - just combine ingredients, chill the dough, roll it out to a quarter of an inch thickness, and cut out as many little circles as possible.

 

Then you let them sit, uncovered, in a cool, dry place (like my pantry, for instance, away from children and cats) for about 12 to 24 hours.  Overnight works nicely.

 

When you're ready to bake them, you just brush the tops with a little brandy and pop them in a low oven for about half an hour.  Let them cool completely before removing them from the cookie sheet.  Store, airtight, for a long, long time, if necessary.

Of course, you should always sample your baking.  You know, just to make sure they're acceptable.

My original post, from 2007, can be found here, in case you're interested.

Or, if you're looking for a printable version, go here.

Short Dough - Big Snowflakes and Glittery Stars

 

I made a rather large batch of short dough the other day and here's what I did with one small portionof it yesterday and today...

First, I rolled out a piece and cut out 6-pointed star shapes and then, since I was originally intending that they become snowflakes, I kind of squeezed the points so they'd be skinnier.  I laid them out on a baking sheet and chilled them for about half an hour.

Then, right before baking, I brushed the tops with egg white and sprinkled them with sparkling sugar.

 

I baked them at 350 for about ten minutes.

I also took out my big copper snowflake cutters.

 

I cut out two of each shape, and then used the little tiny cutters to make little holes here and there within each cookie.  I baked them at 350 for about 10 minutes as well.

While the cookies cooled, I mixed up a batch of royal icing (using meringue powder) and colored it with royal blue food coloring.  I colored it in two stages - first to get a base blue color, and then the next stage was to create a swirly look to it.  I kept the icing rather loose and piped it onto all my large snowflakes.

 

 

 

See the swirls?

I left the cookies to dry overnight.  Had to keep chasing the kids away from them.  You can't rush cookie art!

This morning I filled another piping bag with white icing and, using a smaller tip (a #3, I think) and firmer icing, I piped my snowflakes onto their swirly blue "sky" backgrounds.

 

I also planned to sprinkle the white piped icing with very fine white sparkling sugar, which meant I had to pipe quickly and sprinkle sugar while the icing was still wet, otherwise it wouldn't stick. 

So, one at a time, I piped icing and sprinkled sugar and made my snowflakes....

   

 

 

You get the idea.  It's tremendous fun, at least for me.  And they don't have to be perfect because, as we all know, no two snowflakes are alike.  So there's no reason why the cookies should be perfect copies of each other.

 

And finally, the kids were each permitted to have a big snowflake cookie.

They go really nicely with a mug of hot chocolate, too.

Printable Recipe!

Please, Sir, I want S'more

I've been wanting to make some kind of cookie with stuff in it.  Like chocolate chip with nuts...or oatmeal with coconut and golden raisins and nuts and chocolate chips and candied ginger and all the other scraps in my pantry.  You know, a cookie like that.

So I went foraging.  And I found, among other things, mini marshmallows (which I don't remember buying, but I must have made something with them because it wasn't a full package.  Or I just ate a huge handful of them and guiltily hid the bag behind instant oatmeal and packages of raisins.)...and some partially-gnawed chocolate Easter bunnies (with crispy rice mixed into the chocolate!)...and that led to me looking on the very top shelf - and sure enough, there were some graham crackers.  Oh, that's right - because I'd made the crust for that Florida Pie a couple weeks ago.

Anyway, as you could tell from the title, I made S'more Cookies.  Never made them before, so I just followed a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe and made some alterations and, voila! - cookies that the whole family could enjoy! 

And here's what I did...

S'more Cookies

Ingredients:

2  1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup shortening (I was entirely out of butter, thanks to Dorie and all her wonderfully butter-laden concoctions that I've made recently)

3/4 cup light brown sugar

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

1   1/2 tsp vanilla

3 eggs

about 1 cup mini marshmallows

1  1/3 large low-end quality chocolate Easter bunnies (with crispy rice bits in them), roughly chopped

6 whole graham crackers, broken up

~~~~~

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F., and get some cookie sheets ready and line them with parchment paper.  I made 48 cookies exactly, just so you have an idea of how much you're making.

Cream the butter and sugars together til sort of light and fluffy.  I really, really don't like using shortening, but I just was too stubborn not to go ahead with the cookies, so I tried not to cringe at the sugar/shortening blend, but really, it just looks odd to me.

Add the eggs, one at a time, and combine thoroughly. 

Add in the vanilla too, and combine.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt, and add that to the batter, and mix until just combined - don't overbeat.

By hand, (well, with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula), mix in the marshmallows, bunny bits, and graham crackers.

With your hands, scoop up portions of dough about the size of a golf ball and place on the baking sheet, leaving space between them, because they will spread.  If your hands get too sticky, run them under water and leave your hands a bit wet - the dough won't stick.

Bake about 15 minutes (depending on your oven), rotating pans once mid-way through.

Allow to cool a bit on the pan before you try to take them off, because the marshmallow will cling to the parchment paper, to other cookies, to your arm, to the phone - pretty much to anything it can grab.

Hand them out to your family and see how they like them.  Or hoard them for yourself.

Flavor-wise, they've got a dark, molassasy flavor, which comes from using two dark sugars instead of white and light. 

Also, the taste and texture of the melted-and-cooled mini marshmallows reminded me of rice crispie treats. 

The chocolate?  Terrible.  Well - acceptable, but it's just hacked up Nestle Easter Bunny chocolate, so it's not going to blow anyone away.  But still, it suited my purpose, which was to clean out some stuff from the cupboards and turn that into cookies.

Mission accomplished.

Lemon Sugar Bites

I needed to make some sort of desserty thing to bring to the party on Saturday, and I was going to do something fancy but ran out of time.  I'd made a big batch of short dough, some of which I used for last Thursday night to make little guitars and musical notes.

But I still had a lot of it left.  I was going to make other cut-out cookies and decorate some and let the kids decorate others, but like I said, I ran out of time.

So here's what we did.

I took the zest of one lemon, and about a cup of granulated sugar...put them in the food processor and buzzed them around til the zest was chopped up pretty fine and incorporated into the sugar.

Then I took pieces of the dough, rolled it into little balls (about the size of...hmm...smaller than a ping pong ball), then rolled the dough balls in the lemon zest/sugar mixture, put them on a parchment lined baking sheet, and pressed down to flatten somewhat.  Maybe to about a third of an inch thick or so.  I baked them in a 350 degree oven until just starting to turn golden around the edges.  Once cooled, the outsides were sugary-crisp with the tang of lemon, and the insides were buttery and ever so slightly soft. 

Nothing fancy about them at all. 

They just taste good.

 

Ravioli Dolci

I was originally planning to make a Ricotta Pie or Rice Pie for Easter, but when I was perusing recipes, I found this one for sweet fruit and nut pockets, or Ravioli Dolci, and I decided to make them instead.  They sounded interesting, they didn't require refrigeration, and, best of all, I had everything I needed and wouldn't have to go to the grocery store.

The recipe is from Lynne Rossetto Kasper's book The Italian Country Table. 

The recipe is actually called "Apricot-Pistachio Pockets" and I really thought I had dried apricots in the pantry, but I didn't.  So I've made one change - I've substituted golden raisins for the apricots. 

There are two components to the cookie - the pastry and the filling. 

Here's what you need for the pastry:

1  3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1  3/4 cups cake flour

1/2 cup blanched whole almonds, finely ground

1 cup sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

shredded zest of 1/2 lemon

shredded zest of 1/2 orange

2 T light corn syrup

2-3 large eggs

And for the filling:

Generous 1/2 cup (1/4 lb) dried apricots (or, in this version, golden raisins)

2 T sugar, or more to taste

Pinch of salt

Shredded zest of 1/2 lemon

2/3 cup water

1/4 cup dry Marsala (I didn't have dry.  I used sweet.)

3 generous tablespoons shelled salted pistachios, coarsely chopped

And you'll also need

1 large egg, beaten for glaze

1/3 to 1/2 cup Galliano or grappa di Moscato (optional) (I'm not using either - I don't have 'em)

And here's what you do:

In large mixing bowl, thoroughly blend the flours, almonds, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Add the softened butter and citrus zests and with your fingertips, rub together the ingredients until they resemble coarse meal. 

In a small bowl, beat together the corn syrup and 2 eggs.  Using a fork, toss with the flour mixture until the dough is moistened and clumps together.  (I did everything in my stand mixer.)  If it seems dry, beat the remaining egg and toss with the dough to moisten.  Gather the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic, and chill 30 minutes to overnight.

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, combine the apricots, 2 T sugar, the salt, lemon zest, water and Marsala. 

Cook over low heat, covered, until the apricots are soft and the mixture is thick, 20 to 30 minutes.  If mixture is still very liquid,

uncover and cook down.  Taste for sweetness, stirring in more sugar if needed.  Remove from the heat and cool.

Puree the apricot mixture in a food processor. 

Stir in the pistachios.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.  Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper, or butter it.  On a floured surface, roll out the pastry 1/16 inch thick. 

Cut into rounds with a 2  1/2 inch scalloped biscuit cutter, or a drinking glass. 

Place half of the rounds on the cookie sheet (you may need to do this in 2 batches) and top each round with 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of filling.  Moisten their rims with water.  Top with the remaining rounds and seal the edges.  Brush with the beaten egg.

Bake 12 to 15 minutes, or until golden brown. 

Lift off the sheet and cool on racks. 

Store the cookies up to 10 days in a sealed tin in a cool place.  To finish with liqueur, sprinkle each cookie with about 1/4 tsp liqueur just before setting out.  (I didn't do the liqueur part.)

These are delicious.  I've never made them before, but I am definitely adding them to my cookie repertoire.  They're sweet (clearly) and crunchy and lemony and a bit chewy.  Alex, in particular, loves them.  The book said the recipe would make about 40 cookies - I made 48 and a half.  (I miscounted and had one extra round of dough left at the end.)

So go on and give these a try.  Trust my son - he knows his cookies.

Florentines (Almond Lace Cookies)

Florentines are crisp, delicate cookies that are pliable when taken from the oven and may be cut with cookie cutters or formed into shapes while they are still pretty hot.  They are often used as a garnish, or "crunch component" in plated desserts, and that's what I've used them for in a couple upcoming posts. 

Anyway, without further chit chat, here's how you make them.

You will need:

3 oz flour (pastry flour is suggested, but you can use AP as well.  I did - it's what I had on hand.)

3 oz granulated sugar

3 oz softened unsalted butter

3  1/2 oz corn syrup

3 oz blanched almonds, sliced and crushed

Combine the butter and sugar in a mixer,

Then add the flour.  And then the corn syrup.  Beat until creamy.  Then add in the crushed almonds and mix until the nuts completely incorporated.

Scrape the dough out onto a piece of parchment paper

and form into a log, lengthwise on the parchment paper.

Roll the parchment over the dough log and tighten, using a bench scraper to help squeeze the parchment against the dough and tighten the whole thing so there are no air bubbles and the log lengthens and its diameter becomes uniform - about 1  3/4 inches or so.

Then twist the ends and tie them to seal, and place in the freezer or fridge until the dough is firm.

When the dough is cold and firm, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and get out a pan and line it with either parchment paper or a silpat, if you have one.

Cut 1/8 inch slices from your log of dough (though in looking at the image below, obviously I cut them thicker.  I wanted large circles for my recent purposes).

Place on the baking surface, with plenty of space between them, as they spread quite a bit as they cook.

You only want to do a few at a time, if you're planning to shape them in any way, as once they start to cool they will become less pliable.  If that happens, you can put them back in the oven briefly to warm (and soften).

You want to bake them until they are completely golden brown.  The ones you see below are only just starting to brown around the edges.  See how much they spread when they cook?  That's why you want a lot of space between them.

Ah, this is better:

Now, when you first take them out, they will be way too hot and way too soft to work with. 

In the picture above, I'm trying to lift up the edge of the cookie with a spatula - it's too soft to hold together with the rest of the cookie - if I continued to lift, the cookie would tear. 

Wait about a minute once you take them out of the oven, and then try.  They should come off the parchment or silpat easily.  They will be hot, there's just no getting around that if you want to shape them or use cookie cutters. 

If you want to cut out specific shapes, place the soft cookie on a cutting board and press down HARD with your cookie cutter.  The nuts make it a little harder to cut through than you might expect.  Once you've pressed the cutter in to the cookie, pull or cut away the outer excess cookie and then lift the cutter.  (The trimmed edges are great crumbled up and sprinkled on ice cream.  Or you can just eat them while you work.  Or feed them to the birds.)  Set the cookies on a rack to finish cooling.  Keep in mind these are very, very brittle, so handle them gently.

Another option is to shape the cookies - the whole cookies, right off the silpat - into a thin cylindrical cookie.  This can be filled with whipped cream, or dipped in chocolate, or just left plain.  Anyway, here's what you do:

Get a few wooden spoons with straight handles ready.  Lift a hot cookie up and drape one end over the handle of the spoon.

Working quickly, roll the rest of the cookie around the spoon handle and set on a rack to cool.

Once the cookie has firmed up, remove the wooden spoon.

Another option - something I didn't do this time around, so I don't have a picture - you could press the cookie into a ramekin or a small cup or a muffin tin to form little cookie cups.

You can also wrap them around metal cone forms to make little cookie cones.  Or just shape them by hand into something free form.  Have fun!

Here are a bunch that I did recently, in preparing for this post and some of the "Valentine's Day Ideas" posts:

Now, another thing you can do is melt some chocolate

You can microwave it if you want to, but just nuke it for short periods of time - 30 seconds - and then stir, then 30 seconds and then stir - so you don't burn it.

 

When it's all melty and smooth, one thing you can do is take one of your heart cutouts (or whatever shape you did) and spread some of the chocolate on one cookie and then sandwich that with another cookie.  The chocolate will seep through the holes of the cookie a bit before it hardens.  Here's what you get:

Or you can spread it just on one half of a cookie...

Or drizzle some chocolate over the cylinders...

 

Or dip the ends of cylinders (or cones, in this case) directly in the chocolate...

Be creative!  Have fun!  And remember - you get to eat your mistakes!

Warning (with the final update!) : Despite What the Calendar Tells You, Christmas isn't Over Until the Christmas Cookie Posts are Done.

UPDATE - 1/11/08 at 11:05 am, eastern standard time...

That said, I'm going to try, in my two hours of childless, husbandless time this morning, to put up the remaining 4 posts about cookies (and candy) I made before Christmas.  Because I have to.  I took pictures and everything.

I know.  I really need to work on my organizational skills.

Anyway, here goes nuthin....

UPDATE:  It's not gonna happen.  I've got one post done (see below), and maybe I'll get another one done before I have to get the kids...uploading the pictures slows me down, but I can't just post a recipe without illustrations.  Where's the fun in that?  Where's the sudden hunger pangs?

FURTHER UPDATE:  Okay, well 2 out of 4 done before I went to get the kids.  That's not too bad.  Hopefully I can get the other two done some time later today.

THIRD UPDATE:  It's ten past ten - and I finished another post (see below).  One to go.  And I'll do it tomorrow because I'm DONE for today. 

I'M DONE!!!

Let the rejoicing begin.  And please see below for the final installment of the Christmas Cookie Marathon.

In the Cookie Jar: Torrone

Before you say "hey - wait a minute - torrone is a candy!  Not a cookie!" - I realize that.  And I sat here just now thinking about that and wondering if I should make a whole new category for candy...or should I just lump it into the "On My Menu" list?  Or?  Or?  It froze me in my tracks.

Fortunately, my sister interceded and made this insightful comment: 

"Well, you can still put it in a cookie jar."

And you know what?  I can!  And you can, too!

So let's cook up some sugar, shall we?

The recipe I used can be found here - it's on the Food Network, courtesy of Emeril Lagasse.

One of the things you'll need is edible wafer paper. 

I initially ordered mine from Sugarcraft, but that very same day I got a call from someone in their customer service dept to let me know they were out of stock.  While this threw a monkey-wrench into my plans, I really, really appreciated how quickly they called me.  I was able to order it from somewhere else the same day.  But still - go check out their website - if you are into any kind of baking or sugar work or candy making or just bored at work, they've got a LOT of cool tools and gadgets and products to look at.

I ended up ordering the wafer paper through GourmetSleuth.com.  That's another cool site as well, and it's more about all kinds of cooking, not just baking.  I need to go back and browse around - they seem to have a heavy focus on Mexican cooking supplies, which is appealing to me....

Anyway - you will need some of this wafer paper.  The torrone is very sticky and unless it has something like the wafer paper to adhere to, it will just reach out and wrap itself around anything or anyone in the way.  Really.  Remember how I used to have a cat? 

Okay, so you've got your wafer paper trimmed and placed in a 13 x 9 inch baking pan, per the recipe, and you've got all the ingredients assembled - those would include granulated sugar, honey, egg whites, confectioners sugar, toasted almond slivers, and lemon zest.

You will also need a candy thermometer - the temperature of the sugar is rather important.

So first thing you'll want to do is get your sugar and honey heated in a sausepan.

While that starts to melt together and heat up, you should have everything else ready to go.  This means you'll want to pre-toast the almond slivers and have your lemon zest all grated and standing by.  And you'll also want to have your egg whites already in the SUPER CLEAN bowl of your mixer, and the sugar ready to pour.  Once the sugar reaches the proper temperature, a lot of things will need to happen rapidly (I typed "rabidly," which could also apply) so you need to be ready.

The sugar mixture will take a while to come up to the proper temperature.  Which is fine, because it's kind of cool to watch the progress...

Little hot spots of honey lava, bubbling up to the surface.  Stir it a bit so it doesn't scorch....

So what temperature are we at right now?  We need to bring it up to 315 F....

Not there yet... If you can't stand waiting, you could always start whipping the egg whites. 

You want to bring them to soft peaks, and then add in the sugar and bring it all up to stiff peaks.  Don't over-beat them - they'll dry out.  In fact, if you want to just get the egg/sugar mixture to a soft peak stage and leave them there until just before you need them, you can do that, too.

Okay, let's take a peek at the sugar again.

We're making progress...

Temperature is climbing...

I am pretty sure I mentioned this before in my post about Pecan Squares that you need to be VERY CAREFUL when working with boiling sugar.  Anything boiling will hurt if it pours or splatters on you, but boiling sugar is sticky, and if it sticks to you, trust me, IT. WILL. HURT.

Okay, back to staring at the boiling sugar....it's kind of mesmerizing...hypnotic...very cool...

Okay, keep an eye on that thermometer - we're getting close now.

Okay, put your camera down and be ready to get this pot off the heat.  When you hit 315, pull it off the burner and stir the mixture to cool it slightly - to 300.

If you haven't done so yet, now is a good time to bring the egg whites from soft peaks to stiff peaks.  Once the sugar is down to 300 F, it's time for the tricky part.  With the mixer still running (at a slow to moderate speed) pour the hot sugar SLOWWWWWWLY but STEADILY into the egg whites (meringue).  You want to try to run it in a thin stream right down the inside of the bowl - not actually touching the edge of the bowl, but just barely in.  Main thing is, you want to try to avoid having the hot sugar drizzle onto the whisk attachment and splatter hot sugar all around the room. 

The hot sugar mixture will double the volume of your meringue, but that will go back down as the mixture cools a bit.  Keep the mixer running to help cool the sugar/meringue.  It will thicken as well.  At this point, fold in the almonds and the lemon zest.

Now another fun part - but without the burn factor.  Get your 13 x 9 inch baking pan, already lined with the wafer paper...You'll need to pour the mixture into that pan and very gently spread it to fill the pan evenly.  The stuff sticks, like I said before.  You can dip your fingers in water and press the torrone gently into the corners of the pan - the water will help prevent sticking.  Once you've got the mixture pretty well spread out, then top it with the other trimmed pieces of wafer paper.  Let it cool on a wire rack for a bit.

Then, with a "no guts, no glory" attitude, flip the pan over onto a sheet of parchment, and your giant piece of torrone should come out.  If it doesn't...give it a minute - the weight of the candy should release whatever hold it has on the inside of the pan.

(I let mine cool on the rack, and as it cooled, it drooped into the spaces between the wire...which is why I'm suggesting the parchment paper.)

Let it finish cooling, and then cut it into pieces.

I'll tell you this - it's very smushy and will be...um...challenging to work with.  But it's fun, and it'll impress your friends, who didn't realize you could actually make candy.

Someone told me it tastes like those "Bit O Honey" candies...not my personal favorite - the honey, I mean, but it's authentic - Torrone is traditionally made with honey.

I would like to try another recipe, with different flavors.  When I do, I'll let you know how it comes out.

In the Cookie Jar: Gingerbread Houses

I've never made a gingerbread house before.  Well, actually, I made one from a kit back when I was maybe 13 or so.  But I had never created my own templates - until now.  Well, last month.  (December.) 

We were watching a Gingerbread House competition on the Food Network and Alex said he wished we could make one some day.  So I thought - I'm already making a zillion cookies - what's one more project? 

Honestly, I had been wanting to make one anyway; I just didn't think I'd have the time.  But hey, if my kid wants to make a gingerbread house, then that becomes the most important project.

So, I have a good sturdy gingerbread recipe that I'd used in the past to make gingerbread bowls.  I hoped to do gingerbread bowls this year (well, last year, since I'm writing in January), but I wasn't sure if I'd have time.

The recipe is from Marcia Adams' book Christmas in the Heartland, published by Crown in October 1992.  It's a beautiful book - not just recipes, but crafts and traditions and information and a cozy warm feeling. 

But I digress.

Here we go...

The wet ingredients...and their good friends, the fats and sugars:

2 cups of unsalted butter (4 sticks), room temp.

1  1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

2/3 cup molasses

1  1/2 cups dark corn syrup

4 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp orange extract

6 large eggs

And...

The dry ingredients:

17 cups all-purpose flour

2 T baking soda

2 tsp salt

2 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp ground cloves

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground allspice

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

(This is a big recipe.  You can cut it in half if it's easier to work in smaller batches of dough.)

Okay, in your mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugars until fluffy.  Add in the molasses, corn syrup, extracts and eggs while the mixer is still running

and beat until well combined.

While the mixer is running, combine all the dry ingredients in another bowl with a whisk.

Add the flour mixture gradually.  The dough will become extremely stiff, and you will probably have to finish by hand, either in a bowl or on a board.

Divide this into quarters, wrap in plastic and put this in the fridge.

Now, about the template.  I decided I would make two houses so that each of my kids could decorate one, rather than suffer the hell of them fighting over who gets to do what to this wall and that roof.  And since it was the first one I was designing, I figured I should make it simple.

I have these square 12" x 12" sheets of graph paper that I'd bought for designing quilt squares and applique pieces.  I drew a rectangle 6" x 8 " for the longer sides of the house, and a narrow rectangle 4" wide with a point at the top for the short side pieces - 8" at the highest point and 6" at the lowest point, and then the roof, which was 9" x  4".  Fortunately all 3 template pieces fit on the one sheet of paper.

Then I taped the single sheet of paper to my countertop and covered that with a sheet of parchment and taped that down.  then I traced the templates onto several sheets of parchment, so I'd have many sets, just in case any ripped or got damp and curled or anything like that.

Then I cut out all the pieces and set them aside.

Now - take out one of the pieces of chilled dough and roll out to about 1/4 inch thick.  Try to roll it out so that you can fit several pieces of the template on it at once.

 

Then, holding the parchment in place with one hand, carefully cut around the template pieces with a knife or pizza wheel or bench scraper. 

And remove the paper.

Fun, huh?  You'll need 2 of each shape to make one house.

Place the dough sections on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and place in the fridge for an hour.

Preheat your oven to 350 F and bake for a good 30 minutes or so.  Take the pans out and let the sections of dough cool on the pans.  They should be hard.

As you can see in the image above, as they bake they will spread slightly, and the sections of your house may run together a tiny bit.  Just wait until they're completely dry - they'll snap apart nicely.

Now, to decorate, I kept the pieces separate because it's easier to work on a flat section than the house once it's completed.  Also - because my kids would be decorating them, I figured there was the chance that they'd somehow accidentally knock over the house if they had to decorate after assembly.

And I used plenty of royal icing to decorate and to glue the pieces of the house together, and we had Necco wafers, mini marshmallows, and colored sugars to use as well.  We also had gumdrops, but I couldn't find them til a couple days later.

Time for the fun part...

Julia favored the mini marshmallows.  Lots and lots of them.

Alex, on the other hand, really wanted to make his look like a house. 

If you look over at the section he's pointing to, you can see that he's drawn a front door on there in red.  And if you look at this other section on the lower right, you can see a little green wreath with a red bow. 

You can see the door a bit better.  I think the Necco wafer there below the marchmallow is supposed to be a window.

And this is just a glimpse of the chaos that existed in my home all of December.  You can see sections of the kids' gingerbread houses toawrd the back, and other gingerbread cookies I made with the leftover dough, and a whole mess of  Pecan Squares in their little paper cups on a tray...all the icing and sugars...and those pale cookies are dinosaurs made out of Short Dough that Julia was going to decorate and instead she broke a Pteranodon into pieces and went on her way.

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures as the houses were assembled.  I was too busy doing the gluing and holding the sides in place.  But here's the one shot I took of them while the icing glue was drying, after the roof sections had been attached:

 

Those containers of cookies and that snowman napkin holder (That Alex made in a Home Depot kids workshop when he was 3, hee hee hee!) are supporting the edges of the roofs.  Oh - and do you like Alex's roof?  With the Necco wafer shingles?  He worked really hard on his house.

And where are they now?  Did we wrap them carefully and pack them away for next year?  Nope.  They ended up as bird food.  The kids got to whack them to bits with a meat tenderizer in the back yard.  That part was Bill's idea - the brutal destruction part.  The kids - well, particularly Alex - loved it.  (I know, and you'd have thought Julia would have been the joyfully violent one.  The birds enjoyed them.  Particularly the seagulls.  And also the squirrels. 

And just for fun, here's a picture of the gingerbread house (actually a graham cracker house, if you want to be precise) Alex made in his kindergarten class:

And that's an ice cream cone tree and a graham cracker reindeer cookie there in the front.

Isn't that adorable?

The birds thought so.

In the Cookie Jar: Almond Stars

And in German - Mandelsterne.

A funny thing about these this year.  The food editor in our local paper had an invitation out to readers to send in stories about learning to cook by watching, say, their mothers or grandmothers.  I sent in a little story about these cookies, explaining that they were my then-boyfriend's favorites and so one evening I learned to make them by helping her.  I missed they deadline by two days, but they posted the story anyway, and the recipe.

And this year - when I made them - they didn't come out so well.  Figures, huh?

Anyway, here's what you do.  And normally I can make these just fine - so I'm really not at all sure what the trouble was this year.  Perhaps I wasn't thinking postive thoughts while I made them....

You will need:

1 lb confectioners sugar

1/2 lb almonds - ground

1/2 lb hazelnuts - ground

6 egg whites (and set aside 4 T of them to glaze the cookies with)

1 tsp almond extract

the rind of one lemon

* Grinding the nuts - I used a food processor this year instead of the meat grinder that I used in past years (because Bill's mom used a meat grinder) - and I like the processor method MUCH better.  It's fast and tidy and fast.

You go from this

 

to this (these are the hazelnuts, by the way)

in seconds.

Now for the batter:

Place your egg whites in THE EXCEPTIONALLY CLEAN AND DRY bowl to your mixer and whip to stiff peaks.

Add in the confectioners' sugar and beat until very stiff.

Then fold in the almond extract, lemon zest, and nuts.  Chill the dough for at least an hour.

Now, on a clear work surface, sprinkle some confectioners sugar or granulated sugar.  A good amount.  You DO NOT want to use flour for these.  They don't have flour in them, for one thing.  So use sugar instead. 

Scoop out a small amount of the dough and put the rest back in the fridge. 

Very carefully - it's fragile stuff - roll out the dough to about a quarter of an inch thick.

Dip your star-shaped cutter in some sugar and cut out enough stars for one cookie sheet.

Now get those 4 T of egg whites you set aside earlier, and gently glaze the top of each star with a little of the white.  It gives them a nice thin "crust" when they bake.

And you place them in a 300 F oven for about 15-20 min...

And because you obviously did something wrong, they come out looking not like stars, but like...

blobs.

But look - in this next picture (from 2006) - in the upper right corner - THOSE are almond stars in their proper star shape.  I CAN make them correctly.  I really can!

And actually those are all 6 of the German cookies.  L-R, back row - Farmer Hats, Lebkuchen, Almond Stars, front row - Pfeffernusse, Springerle, and German Butter Cookies. 

OH - and most important of all - bake them on PARCHMENT PAPER on your sheet pan.  Otherwise they will stick and you will tear your hair out in frustration.

They're very tasty (no matter what they look like) - they're basically meringue cookies with ground nuts in them.  Crispy outside, chewy inside.  VERY sweet.

Enjoy!

In the Cookie Jar: Farmer Hats

In German (according to Bill's Mom's recipe) these are Baurenhutchen.

I prefer to call them The Bane of My Existence.

Actually, they're pretty interesting cookies - they're kind of two cookies in one - a butter cookie outer cookie and a crispy/chewy meringue inner cookie.

The problem is, I can't seem to get them to come out right.  At least, according to what Bill's uncle (his late mom's brother) has said was the way their mother was able to make them.  And I know that is a poorly and confusingly constructed sentence, but I blame it on these cookies.  Anyway, according to what I've been told, the cookies - which resemble tri-cornered hats when you shape them - came out of the oven still looking like that - the three sides vertical and touching in the center.

Mine have never, ever, ever looked like that.  They taste great - they're one of Alex's favorites, and mine - BUT.  They look more like hats that someone put away in an under-the-bed storage thing under some sweaters and heavy pants and oops, maybe they shouldn't have done that because now the perky tri-cornered hat looks like a pancake.

Still, they are yummy and worth the mental anguish.

Here we go:

Oh - and I'm giving you the measurements for the way I make them - which is to double the butter cookie portion because (another of my failings) I always end up with way too much leftover filling.  I could just cut the filling in half, but more cookies is always better.

So.

For the butter cookie part, you will need the following:

1 lb all-purpose flour

1/2 lb unsalted butter

1/2 lb granulated sugar

6 egg yolks (save 2 of the whites, you'll need them for the filling.  Save the others.  Make meringue cookies with chocolate chips in them.  Hide them.  Eat them when no one's around to want you to share them.  You work hard.  You deserve it.)

2 T thick sour cream

Combine the flour and sugar in your mixing bowl, and then cut in the butter.  You can use a paddle if you're using a stand mixer.

You want to check your progress as you combine them so you don't over-beat the mixture.  You're looking for a fine, sandy sort of result.  Like this:

And now you add in the yolks and the sour cream...

And mix together until you've got a nice, smooth dough.  Remove it from the bowl, wrap in plastic so it doesn't dry out, and set aside while you make the filling.  Or, if you're not going to use it til the next day, put it in the freezer.

(Look at those bizarre wrinkles in my hand.  You'd think the dough weighed several pounds....)

Okay, now for the filling.

First, you need 1/4 lb of almonds, ground.  I used to grind them in a meat grinder, which is what Bill's mom did, but this year I put the nuts in the food processor and I like that MUCH better.  For one thing, when I used the meat grinder, it took a long time.  And every year it seems like I make larger batches of cookies, so that adds to the time, AND, sometimes the grinding produces more of a nut butter result than just a ground up nuts result.  So that's my two cents.  I'm using the food processor.

Because you can start out with this:

And moments later, you've got this:

Oh - and if this looks like way more than a quarter pound of nuts, it is.  I was also doing the almonds for the Almond Stars.  Figure I'd grind two batches with one process.  heh heh.

Okay, now you will also need two egg whites that you hopefully set aside earlier when you were separating your eggs.  And about 3/4 of a cup of sugar.

No put the yolks in a PERFECTLY CLEAN (AND I MEAN ABSOLUTELY NO RESIDUE FROM THE OTHER DOUGH LEFT IN THE BOWL OR YOUR WHITES WILL NOT WHIP PROPERLY) and dry bowl, and, using the whisk attachment, whip them to stiff peaks.

And then slowly add in the sugar and beat some more...

Now, the recipe doesn't say whether you want any sort of peaks or not.  It just says to beat 1/4 of an hour - which is because this was originally done by hand.  I beat them together until they are soft peaks. 

Next you fold in the almonds, and your mixture will look like this:

Okay.  Now you'll need a clear work surface with a light dusting of flour.  And some parchment-lined baking sheets.  Set your oven on stun.  Just kidding.  Set it to 325 F.

Take a portion of your dough and roll it out to a thickness that's comfortable for you to work with.  And what thickness is that?  Anywhere between 1/8 and 1/4 inch.  The recipe says 1/8 - actually it says the thickness of the back of a knife, but that leaves room for way too much variance, so Bill's mom added "approx 1/8" and then she wrote in - "I like 1/4."  So - it's up to you.  Mine was somewhere in between. 

Next, you want to cut out circles that are about 3" in diameter.  Place the circles on a cookie sheet with at least an inch of space between them.  Place a bit of the filling (the egg white and nut mixture) in the center. 

Okay, now the amount is another thing you want to play around with until you are comfortable with it.  Because the next step is to fold up the sides of the cookie to form the tri-cornered hat shape.  This takes a little practice.  Also, if you've had the dough in the fridge, you want to give it plenty of time to come to room temp before you try making the hats, otherwise the dough won't bend; it will just crack and tear.

Here's my left hand (I'm right-handed, but that's the hold-the-camera hand) trying to demonstrate how to fold up the edges successfully.

Pinch the edges together in the center so they'll stay in place, at least for now.

Kind of cool, huh?  Now I've put them in the oven for anywhere from ten minutes to a month to firm the dough up so it'll keep its shape.  And here's how they looked AGAIN this year, part way through the baking:

FLATTENED.  AGAIN.  Plus the edges didn't stay pinched together.

There has GOT to be a way to do this so they stay perky.  Either that, or Bill's uncle is remembering them BEFORE they went into the oven, and I'm feeling insecure and inadequate for nothing.

I thought I'd taken a picture after they were out of the oven, but apparently not.  They will basically look like they do above, only a bit more golden brown.  You need to bake them for about 20-25 mintues.

And I've experimented with different oven temps too.  I'll tell you this - they don't look good if they're burnt.

I will keep trying, anyway, and if I succeed, you'll be the first to know.  Because my scream of triumph will be audible around the world, I think.

Oh - and what to do with any leftover filling, you may ask?

Well, you can mix in some mini chocolate chips if you want to,

And bake them until they are crispy and lightly golden on the outside...

And kind of chewy and melty

on the inside. 

(I really need to hire a hand model for these shots.  My hands are all wrong for this sort of thing.)

Anyway, that's how to make the Floppy Farmer Hats - and despite my griping about how they look, they really are pretty yummy. 

And the taste, after all, is what will keep bringing stealthy hands back to the cookie jar.

 

In the Cookie Jar: Pecan Squares

Oh my. 

Think pecan pie.  Think candy.  Think cookies.  Now put them all in a jar and shake it up and you've got these delectable morsels.

Start out with a batch of  short dough.

Line a half sheet pan with parchment paper.

Roll out the short dough and line the pan with it.  You may need to cut and paste pieces of dough to completely fill the pan, but that's perfectly fine.  No one's going to see it anyway.

Okay, now bake this at 425 F until golden, about 10 minutes or so, depending on your oven. 

Set aside and allow to cool.  Drop the oven temp down to 350 F.

While the short dough crust is baking and cooling, go ahead and assemble the following:

1 lb unsalted butter

4 oz granulated sugar

12 oz honey

1 lb brown sugar

2 lb pecan pieces

4 oz heavy cream

You'll also need a candy thermometer on hand.  And a large, heavy sauce pot.

A word of caution - we're going to be bringing a lot of sugar to the boil - PLEASE be aware that boiling sugar can give you some of the worst possible kitchen burns possible.  The sugar will start to cool (it's a relative term - it won't FEEL cool) when it hits to your skin, and it will STICK to you and the part that's touching your skin will still be extremely hot and will just hang on and burn, burn, burn.  If you splatter boiling sugar on yourself while you're making this recipe, IMMEDIATELY run or pour cold water on the sugar on your skin and get the sugar off of you as fast as you can.

Okay?  But don't let that deter you - it's kind of fun to boil sugar, just so long as you have a healthy respect for what it can do.

Put the butter, granulated sugar, honey, and brown sugar in your sauce pot. 

Set the flame on high and bring the mixture to a boil.  It will take a while for everything to first melt

and then heat up,

 

and at some point it will seem to you that the temperature will never go high enough,

but just be patient,

and keep an eye on your candy thermometer.

   

You want to bring the boiling sugar up to 257 F.  When you reach that temp, add the pecans and the heavy cream, stir it around and shut off the heat.

Stir some more to make sure everything is well combined, and then pour it into the pan on top of your short dough crust. 

   

(I was using a really deep pot, and I had two pans to fill...and I wanted to be able to tilt the pan without burning myself and distribute the pecan mixture evenly and quickly between the two pans.  So this is what I rigged up.  I've got another pot upside down in between the two pans.  I have a damp cloth on top of that pan so the hot pan of sugary goodness won't slip.)

(And oh, would you look at that lovely mess of dish towels and Alex's socks there on the floor.  Hmmm...apparently the maid went home early that day.)

Bake in the oven for at least 20 minutes, or until the pecan mixture is bubbling and the top is semi-firm.  I think it took mine at least 30 minutes, but my oven runs cold, and also I was making two pans at once.  And I kept peeking.

Allow to cool completely.

When you're ready to cut this enormous cookie into pieces, run a knife along the edges of the pan that aren't covered by parchment paper.  Very gently, begin to tug at the parchment along the edges of the pan to loosen the product from the pan.  The cooked and cooled sugar will make it stick.  Be patient.  I've ripped plenty of parchment paper in the process.  Once you've loosened the edges, the rest should go smoothly - just tilt the pan and tug on the lower end of the pan until the whole thing slides out onto your work surface.

You can cut this up any way you want.  This year I cut small squares no bigger than an inch on a side because the little paper candy cups I had on hand wouldn't hold anything bigger.  I had wanted to cut out little circles, but my smallest round cookie cutter wasn't deep enough and kept getting stuck.

 

Keep in mind all the butter and sugars and honey and nuts are very rich in combination and you don't need enormous portions.  If you want more, just have another one.  After all, they're so small....

One Last Decorated Cookie Picture from 2007

I decorated this set on maybe the 23rd and 24th, and took this one picture a couple days after
Christmas.  It was the only one left of the bunch.

It's a gingerbread cookie, with a blend of green food colorings in the royal icing to give it a nice leaf color...I used a little offset spatula to create texture...and then piped on little red holly berries...and then painted thin lines of watered-down royal icing and sprinkled on clear sparkling sugar (it doesn't melt when you get it wet or bake it...at least not for a long time) to create the icy/frosty/snowy look.

They were fun and relaxing to do.  I wanted to have more time to decorate some of the cookies I'd made, but it was not to be.  I'll budget more time for that next year, hopefully.  And in the meantime, there are plenty of other holidays and occasions coming up, with plenty of reasons to decorate cookies. 

And besides, I have so many cookie cutters longing for their fifteen minutes of fame. 

Hmmm.  That might be an interesting project for the upcoming year...actually USE more than just the Halloween ones, the dinosaurs, and the traditional holiday ones for a change.  I think that deserves some consideration....

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.

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!

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.

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.

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...

Organizing

Tomorrow morning I'm going to get my sister's kids and bring them back to bake and decorate cookies over the weekend.  Alex has been itching all week to pick out which cutters we'll use, and finally, finally, tonight we took the boxes of cutters out and I told Alex to take them out and put them all over the dining room table while I emptied the dishwasher and washed up what was left in the sink.  (Julia wasn't interested.  She wanted to watch Frosty on DVD instead.)

As I was stacking dishes and bowls in the cupboard, I listened to Alex checking out all the cookie cutters and cookie presses and a few other assorted cutters that have nowhere else to go. 

"Santa!  A snowman!  A reindeer!  A Christmas tree!"  And so on.

After a while - and a few more boxes - he started announcing "Mommy, you have a LOT of cookie cutters."  "Mommy!  You have SO MANY cookie cutters!"

I figured since we were assembling them, we might just as well do ALL of them, regardless of the holiday. 

"You were tricking me, Mommy!" Alex stared at the additional boxes I'd placed on one of the dining room chairs.

"I wasn't tricking you, Alex.  I just thought we should put everything on the table."

At one point he flat out told me there wasn't any more room.  Shaking his head.  Crazy mommy.

But we slid things around and found the room.  The only cookie items I didn't add were my springerle molds.  But since Alex has been eating my springerle even though they are supposed to sit for a few weeks, I have a feeling I'll be making another batch or two before the holiday.  So maybe I'll take a picture of all the springerle molds at that point.

Anyway, after he'd put all the cookie cutters out on the table, I took a few pictures, and for some reason, they have disappeared from my camera.  I'm NOT happy about that.  Alex was grinning from the other side of the table and he looked pretty cute.

Before I put them away, I took pictures of them in groups, just to have a record of everything I have.  Some I've bought or they've been gifts.  Others were my mom's mother's.  And still others belonged to my late mother-in-law. 

So, um...maybe Alex is right...maybe I do have a lot of cookie cutters...what do you think?

A Springerle Recipe

2007:  I originally posted this a couple of years ago, and since this is the recipe I used again this year, I'm just going to add those in where appropriate.  I'll also keep this year's comments in bold, in case you're wondering....by the way, the black ringbinder I refer to in the paragraph below is my late mother-in-law's book of her mother's recipes, translated from the German.

This is not the handwritten recipe in the black ringbinder. I haven't attempted that one. I'm posting (for now) the recipe that we used two years ago, the time that I baked cookies with my mother-in-law. The recipe was in a 1996 copy of Yankee Magazine and was sent in by a Marian Tietz Anderson, of Fredonia, New York. At the end of the little article it says "The Yankee Cook Suggests Springerle molds from the House on the Hill" and gives an old address and phone number, and adds "It has a huge selection of deeply cut molds that make wonderfully detailed pictures."

So onto the recipe, courtesy of Marian Tietz Anderson, with notes from Elsa...

Springerle Cookies

Make these three weeks ahead if possible, then store airtight to mellow and soften.

anise seed
4 1/2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs
1 pound sifted confectioners' sugar (4 cups, per Elsa)
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest

Grease cookie sheets and sprinkle with anise seeds.
Sift together flour and baking powder. Set aside.
With an electric mixer, beat eggs until light;

add sugar;

beat until mixture makes a thick ribbon when dropped from a spoon (or a spatula).

Add lemon rind,

then flour mixture.

Mix well

* this year I had a repeating issue with dough that was too dry.  I followed the recipe, but things like humidity can affect your dough, and so maybe (I don't know for sure) the dryness in the air, or in my house, was partly to blame.  It held together okay in that picture above, but later on, when I went to roll it out, the whole thing crumbled.  I fixed that by dripping a little water on the dough - VERY LITTLE - and working the dough with my hands, adding a bit more water if necessary, until I had a better consistency.  So if your dough is crumbly - just work in bits of water.

and chill.

On lightly floured board, roll to 1/2-inch thickness.  (Sorry - for some reason I neglected to take pictures of this step.  But I think you can manage without them.)

Flour springerle molds  (because if you don't, dough will stick in the little spaces like you see below, and it's a pain to dig that out.)

and press firmly into dough.  Cut cookies apart.  (or, if you're using a single cutter like this one, trim around the main picture, either with a knife or a cookie cutter, as appropriate.)

Place 1/2 inch apart on cookie sheets and leave exposed to air overnight.

Bake the next morning in a 300 degree F oven, 20 to 25 minutes or so; do not let them get brown.

Yields about 3 dozen 2-inch cookies

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

Elsa had written the following across the top of the page: "Comes out high & full if baked in round cake pans rather than cookie sheets." I think this is because the cookies were surrounded by the sides of the cake pan, concentrating the heat within that circle, which probably helped give the baking powder an extra bit of oomph to help leaven the cookies. Just a guess.

Springerle molds are sometimes single pieces of wood (or a resin/wood combination) with a sort of checkerboard arrangement of lots of smaller pictures. Each picture is meant to make a single cookie, so after you've imprinted the mold on the dough, you need to carefully cut these into the smaller cookies. For straight lines, a pizza wheel works very well, as long as you're careful and the wheel doesn't get away from you.

She also noted, with regard to the length of cooking time "20 min is good" - but that will really depend on your oven. Still - check them at 20. No one wants a browned springerle!! Trust me!!

I am going to make a batch with this recipe this year (to play it safe) and a batch from Elsa's ringbinder(to be bold and brave). I also have (somewhere) a recipe that my husband's cousin, Elsa's brother's daughter, had sent to me last Christmas. I can't remember if it's an adaptation of a family recipe or something she got somewhere else, or something she developed...apparently these come out lighter and a bit easier on the teeth. The airing out can result in a rather dry, hard cookie, and time will have the same effect. I don't mind - I like to gnaw on them, actually. You can also dunk them in your coffee. Or tea. Or milk.

Update, 11/24/03
Now that I've finally made them, here are a couple of tips...

Make sure you let the dough warm back up a bit after chilling before you attempt to roll it out. This is a bad habit of mine - I start trying to roll it too cold (I do this with pie dough too) and it inevitably cracks and is very frustrating to work with. Can't really give you a length of time, but try 10-15 minutes and then figure out what's best in your kitchen.

Also - when pressing out the molds...the dough, as you press (and be prepared to exert some pressure - this is a strong dough and will push back) needs somewhere to go. It will go up into the mold, which you want, and it will go out to the sides. I found out it works best if you can cut a piece of dough just about the size of the image you're pressing, press that lightly to the mold, and flip it over and lean on it (evenly, so it doesn't come out really detailed on one side and less so on the other) that should work. I've also seen instructions to put the dough on the mold and run your rolling pin over it. I have one really big mold and I'll probably do the rolling pin thing when I get to that one. I'll be making another batch next weekend....

In the Cookie Jar: Pfeffernusse

Pfeffernusse translates as "pepper nuts," which is pretty much on the money.  Ground pepper is one of the ingredients, and the finished products sort of, now that I think about some of the items on my recent cookie sheet, resemble acorns.  Kind of.  Anyway, they're hard.  Like nuts.  And rocks, actually.  But nuts are a bit more biter-friendly.  And they probably taste better, too.

First, the ingredients: 

1/2 lb sugar

2 eggs

1  1/2 tsp baking soda

finely grated zest of half a lemon

4 1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp cloves

1/4 tsp ground pepper

1/2 lb flour

brandy

You might wonder about some of the measurements.  Actually, the original recipe was a combination of pounds and grams.  My late mother-in-law, Elsa, converted grams into teaspoons.

Shall we proceed?

Stir sugar and eggs 1/2 hour.  Really, that's what it says.  I'm saying - it's an old recipe.  No hand-held mixers, no KitchenAid stand mixers, no food processing.  Just bowls and wooden spoons.  That's how you did it.  But it's okay to skip that bit of authenticity in favor of time saving measures.  So instead, beat the eggs and sugar together until light in whatever way you want to.

   

In a separate bowl, mix together all the remaining ingredients EXCEPT the brandy.  That's for later.

And then add the dry goods to the egg/sugar mixture...

...until combined.  But don't overdo it.  You're making a cookie, not a loaf of bread.  No need to get the gluten all excited.

Now you want to turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board.

Hey...what are those little things in the back there?

Oh...you mean these?

These are one-of-a-kind pfeffernusse tools.  Elsa's father made them.  In front is a little wooden matchstick sliced into a blunt point at one end and marked (on the left) at the quarter inch mark.  That's how thick you want to roll the dough.  It's hard to read, but the word "pfeffernus" is written on the stick as well.  Behind that is a part of a little tin container that held Herb-Ox bouillon in some form or other.  He cut the tin down to size and as you can see, "pfeffernus" is written on that as well.

There are more of these match sticks for the other cookies we will be baking this holiday season.  But I think my favorite item is this tiny cutter.

For those of you who don't have an old Herb-Ox tin container to trim down... the diameter is about 3/4 of an inch.  If you don't have a round cutter that small, GET ONE!  No, you can use something a little bigger - but use the smallest size you possibly can (you don't want english muffin-sized pfeffernusse...someone could break a jaw).  If you end up making them larger than the 3/4 inch size, you'll need to adjust the cooking time accordingly.

Okay, so we've got our special tools, and we've got our dough.  Now you need to roll it out until it's about a quarter inch thick...

Now you take your pfeffernusse cutter and start cutting out little circles of dough, like so:

 

Place the tiny cookies on a parchment-lined sheet pan. 

You should dip the cutter in flour every couple of circles, so the dough doesn't stick too much.  Sometimes no matter what, you just need a bit of help getting it dough to come out...

You can re-roll the dough a few times, in order to get as many little circles of dough out of that batch as possible.

Yes, it can be exhausting work...

...but keep going, you're almost done for now.

Set the pan aside in a cool place for 12-24 hours.

I let mine sit over night.

When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 300 F.

And here's where the brandy comes in.  You don't need much.  Pour a little bit into a bowl and lightly brush the tops of the cookies with the brandy.  I believe that what it does is moisten the dried top surface of the cookie, allowing the cookie to soften a bit and pop up and take on that round nut shape.  But then, I could be doing it completely wrong and maybe they're really supposed to resemble pecans.  Probably not.

Now, just pop the pan in the oven and set the timer for 25 minutes.  Besides baking them, you're also drying them out, so you want the tops to feel firm, rather than mushy, when you check them at this point.  If they need to go longer, let them.  If you're not sure, another five minutes won't harm them.

When they're done, they will look more or less like these:

I say more or less because, well, mine still don't look consistent.  Some are nicely domed, others look like that little guy in the middle there...what happened to him?  Nothing good....

These, on the other hand, look a bit better to me -

- nicely proportioned, I think.

But no matter how they look, they will all taste good.  They should be dry and crunchy and spicy little bites.   If you're a fan of gingersnaps, you'll probably like these, too.

The recipe makes about 9 dozen.  I only bake one batch and I have more than enough to give away and to keep.

Have fun!

Printable Recipe!

It's That Time Again

Yesterday I "officially" (like that matters to anyone but me) began the Baking Of The Christmas Cookies.

I'll post more on that tonight, once I've got the rest of the pictures I want to use.

But for now...

Remember these cookies?  Well, I had some leftover dough that I wanted to bake off, since otherwise it would make its way to the back of my fridge and not be seen again until springtime.

And I'd been thinking about those stained glass window cookies you make by crushing candy (lifesavers or other similar candy) and sprinkling that in the center of a cookie outline, and baking that.  Most of the ones I've seen are simply that - an outline with a pretty color in the center.  And there's nothing wrong with that - I think they're pretty.  They don't appeal to me as a cookie, to eat, but I still think they're pretty to look at and might make a lovely ornament for your tree.

Anyway, while I was at work on Friday - yeah, Friday, wallowing in my post-turkey have-to-work misery, I had a little part of my brain busy at work with this stained glass thing.

And I thought, also, about the woman who cuts my hair.  Her name is Roberta, and she's an artist.  No, really.  She was a graphic artist, and she has recently been taking courses in stained glass work.  And the windows at the salon she co-owns are adorned with these beautiful stained glass images of fish and seahorses and starfish - in keeping with the ocean-side location.  They're gorgeous.  She designed them and made them and I keep thinking of them.

So I thought, in my copycat way, why not do something like that with cookies?  I figured I'd start small, and just do a little experiment with the rest of that gingerbread dough.  Maybe little fish bowls with little gingerbread fishies swimming around in blue jolly rancher water.

So that's what I did.  And here they are.  My stained-glass fish bowl experiments:

Kind of cute, huh? 

They were fun.  There are things I learned from the experiment, things I'd do differently next time, etc. 

As far as eating them, well, my son and the kid across the street didn't like them, but my daughter and my husband did.  I haven't tried them, actually, but I know my taste preferences, and I don't think I'd enjoy them either.  If you're gonna have candy, have candy.  If you're gonna have a cookie, have a cookie.  Plus, I'm just not really nuts about hard candy anyway. 

These hard candies, by the way, were blue jolly ranchers - THIS shade of blue, or close to it.  But in the baking process, they became greenish.  Interesting.

Anyway, I've got to go now, but I'll be writing probably tonight about the first batches of cookies I've made - namely, Pfeffernusse and Springerle.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

(from my old blog)

Yesterday I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, at my husband's request. No nuts - just chocolate chips. I used the recipe from the back of a package of Ghiradelli semi-sweet chips, but I used both the remaining semi-sweet chips and a whole package of Ghiradelli's double chocolate chips too. (There weren't a lot of the semi-sweet ones - about a quarter of a package.) Anyway, I made them very small - definitely just a teaspoonful per cookie - and they are nice, bite-sized cookies that dare you to stop once you've begun.

Here is the recipe:

Ghiradelli Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/4 cups unsifted flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter, softened (the recipe didn't say it, but this should be unsalted butter)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
2 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs
1 cup walnuts (I didn't use them)
1 bag (12 oz) Ghiradelli Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Stir flour w/baking soda and salt, set aside. (Use a whisk - it'll incorporate everything together better.)

In large bowl, beat butter with sugar and brown sugar at medium speed until creamy and lightened in color (about 4 minutes).

Add vanilla and eggs, one at a time, mix on low speed until incorporated. (Scrape the bowl down after each egg is incorporated.)

Gradually blend dry mixture into creamed mixture. (I added it in 3 batches, scraping down the bowl after each addition.)

Stir in nuts and chocolate chips (or just chips, if that's what you're doing).

Drop by tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets. (I used teaspoons, and dropped them onto parchment-lined pans. Clean up is quicker, and you can re-use the parchment a few times.)

Bake for 9-11 minutes or until golden brown. (I baked for 5 minutes on the lower rack, then turned the pan around and moved it to the upper rack, and popped in the next sheet of cookies. Baked another 5 minutes, took the ones on the top rack out, turned and moved the pan on the lower rack to the higher rack, and popped in the next pan. It worked well.)

I don't know how many it made - but I know they won't last the week.

Next time, though, I'm putting nuts in. I was also thinking of using 3 sizes of chips, just for kicks.