Showing posts with label Pizzelles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pizzelles. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

All-Occasion Sugar Cookie Bars for Tuesdays with Dorie -- and -- Orange Rum Pizzelles for Pizzelle Party Week

Holiday baking is now in full swing! What fun! This week for Tuesdays with Dorie we took a chance with "Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies" picked by Ulrike of Küchenlatein -- you can visit her website for the recipe or find it in Dorie's book, Baking From My Home To Yours.

I made these twice, the first time around I had planned to use these as out cut-out Christmastime cookies, complete with frosting and sprinkles and lots of cute shapes. We did a trial run with a few shapes...


and found that they were really difficult to roll out, even after chilling. Totally impossible to roll, cut, and transfer to a baking sheet, so I tried to roll them out on the cookie sheet and then pull the excess dough up around them and just bake the shapes. Didn't really work out that well. So for the rest of the dough I figured I'd do the 'roll and slice' method -- then continue with the frosting and sprinkles, for the kids. Here they are after baking, we taste tested one and they taste nice but are not the kind of cookies I imagined they'd be. I love thick, soft, chewy sugar cookies and these were more dense, crunchy sugar cookies. We didn't end up frosting them, but between my husband and the kids this small batch of cookies lasted barely more than a day -- yikes! I would call these more 'butter cookies' than 'sugar cookies' -- almost like a shortbread.


Which brings me to my second batch of these cookies -- I hadn't had a chance to try my new 12 Days Of Christmas shortbread pan (by Chicago Metallic), and thought these would be perfect to give it a go. The recipe as written made just enough to fit into the pan, but the shapes didn't turn out too well, probably because I had a tough time smooshing the cookie dough down in there...



Good news is that the pan performed beautifully and released the cookies with no problem. I can't wait to try this pan again with an actual shortbread recipe :)



What I ended up with were sugar cookie bars and they ended up being amazing! Go figure -- we thought these turned out much better than the cookies from the same dough. The only change I made to the recipe the second time around was to add a whole second egg, rather than just a second egg yolk.

Aren't the delicious looking?


That's all for TWD this week, but I do have another cookie to share, yesterday I started Pizzelle Party Week here at Nummy Kitchen, and today I have a recipe for...
Orange Rum Pizzelles
3 eggs
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons rum
2 teaspoons grated orange peel
1/2 cup melted and cooled butter
Juice of one orange -- about 1/4 cup
Sift together flour and baking powder in small bowl. In medium bowl whisk together eggs and sugar. Add cooled melted butter, rum, orange juice and zest. Slowly whisk in flour. Drop by tablespoons onto pizzelle iron and bake for about 30 seconds -- depending on your pizzelle maker.
Love that orange zest!
The pizzelle maker I'm sharing today is a Salton Holiday Pizzelle maker from the late 1990s. It makes two pizzelles at a time and each has two different holiday designs, a santa face and a Christmas tree, and holly berries and a deer. The pizzelle designs are also available on a pizzelle maker made by Windmere, they are the exact same plates on the inside, but the Windmere pizzelle press is white and the Salton model is black.
Yes, that's Jimmy Buffett's Christmas Island CD off to the left side :) My husband loves to laugh at me as I dance around the house to Christmas music from October - January. Sometimes I have to break out a Christmas CD in July because I miss the holidays but don't tell anyone.

Happy Holiday Baking!

Monday, December 8, 2008

Mickey Mouse Cookie Baker -- Pizzelle Party Week


Time for a special "Maker Monday" where I share about an unnecessary but fun small kitchen appliance :) I thought this would be the perfect week to do some posts about pizzelles, thin Italian cookies. Pizzelles are usually baked on a special waffle iron type maker, or sometimes on pizzelle irons that you can cook over the stove. They are very popular around Christmastime and long ago in Italy many families had special pizzelle irons with their family crest on them and they could make batches of these cookies to pass on to friends for the holidays. Pizzelle cookies can be flavored many different ways, but I think that anise is the most traditional and popular. I will try out a new pizzelle recipe every day this week, so preheat your pizzelle irons and get ready to have some fun in the kitchen!







The first pizzelle iron I have to share is the Villaware Mickey Cookie Baker. This one is a favorite of my 2 year old, who was Mickey Mouse for Halloween and loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. We made "Original Mickey Cookies" which is just a traditional pizzelle recipe that makes a small batch (30 cookies) and is a great base recipe to play with.


Original Mickey Cookies

3 eggs
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon pure anise extract
1/2 cup butter, margarine - melted - or oil
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla

Beat eggs and sugar. Add cool melted butter or margarine, and vanilla and anise. Sift flour and baking powder and add to egg mixture. Batter will be stuff enough to be dropped by soon. Batter can be refrigerated to be used at a later time.

Recipe courtesy of Villaware Mickey Cookie Baker Recipe & Instruction Booklet.

Check back tomorrow for Tuesdays with Dorie and another fun pizzelle maker and recipe!

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