Christmas Baking!

Merry Christmas Eve!  As you can see, even Sadie, our dog, is in the Christmas spirit today.  I hope everyone has exciting plans for spending the holidays with friends and family!


We did lots of cookie baking this Christmas.  I made Brownie Covered Oreos, Butter cookies, and Hot Cocoa cookies to give out this year.  The Brownie covered Oreos were OK - not as delicious as they sound!  And certainly not too great if even slightly overbaked.  I'd recommend using more brownie batter on each oreo and cutting down the baking time.  The Butter Cookies were a hit - one of the best cookie press recipes I've made.  And the Hot Cocoa cookies were sticky and delicious.. and tasted just like Hot Cocoa!


Brownie Covered Oreos, insired by Picky Palate

Prepare your favorite brownie recipe (or batter from a box mix) and leave the batter in the bowl.  
Prepare a cupcake pan - either use cupcake liners or thoroughly grease the pan.
Dip oreo entirely in the brownie batter.  Shake off excess batter and put in the prepared pan.
Bake at 350 for about 8 - 12 minutes.  Don't overbake!  There isn't much batter that needs to bake, so these will go quick!  If they are too well done, they will be far too hard and pretty much inedible! (I know, b/c I did this the first time!)


Hot Cocoa Cookies, inspired by How Sweet It Is

Ingredients:
2 sticks butter, room temp
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs, room temp
1 tsp pure vanilla
2 cup flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup fluff
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup mini marshmallows


Cream the butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla until fluffy.  
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.  
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until combined.  Stir in fluff.
Fold in the chocolate chips and marshmallows.  Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Preheat to 350.  Roll 1 inch balls from the chilled dough and bake on a parchment lined cookie sheet for 10-12 minutes.  Let cool on the cookie sheet for 5 - 10 minutes, then lift the parchment from the cookie sheet and place on a cooling rack to cool completely.




Butter Cookies, inspired by Martha Stewart's Cookie Press Cookies 





Ingredients:
3 sticks butter, unsalted, room temp
1 cup sugar
2 large egg yolks, room temp
3 3/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 tsp pure vanilla
colored sugars and sprinkles for decorating


In the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, cream butter, sugar and egg yolk until light and fluffy.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and salt.  Add to the butter mixture.  Mix until combined, then add vanilla and mix.  If desired, all food coloring.
Fit your cookie press with your preferred shape disk and fill with dough.  Press out onto an un-lined cookie sheet.  Sprinkle with sugars and sprinkles and desired.  Chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
When chilled, bake in a pre-heated oven at 350 for 7 - 10 minutes.  Let cool on the sheet for 5 - 10 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.  

Danish Butter Cookie Copy Cats

You know those Danish Butter cookies that come in a blue tin? You knowww, the ones with those pretzel shaped cookies covered in giant crunchy sugar crystals. Yes, those. There is something soo good about those seemingly nothing-special cookies that makes me and the fiance eat through an entire tin of them every time we go to Grammy's house. (Grammy always has a these on hand). So, since Daniel is just getting over a nasty cold, and I woke up extra early (why oh why did I wake up at 5:50??) I decided to try and make a Danish Butter Cookie copy cat recipe for him as a welcome-back-to-the-world surprise.

The result? Good! Well, I guess I mean very good considering that by the time Dan called me to thank me he had eaten his way through 90% of them. According to him, the expert, he said, "They're pretty close... maybe even better" than the beloved Blue tin cookies. They definitely are more buttery and soft than the original, and there is more of a melt in your mouth crumbliness. But maybe thats a good thing. I think the key here is the egg wash and turbinado sugar topping - definitely don't skip this step! The only thing I'd do differently next time is try to make them a little bit thicker when extruding them out with the cookie press.



Danish Butter Cookie Copy Cats

1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/8 tsp fine sea salt
3/4 tsp vanilla
1 large egg yolk, room temp
1 scant cup all purpose flour
1 egg white beat with 2 tsp water
turbinado sugar

Preheat to 350°F. Beat butter with granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg yolk, salt, and vanilla and mix until incorporated. Add the flour and beat the dough until just mixed - Don't over beat it! Spoon dough into a cookie press fitted a disk and press cookies about 1 inch apart onto ungreased baking sheets - not even parchment! Brush cookies lightly with egg wash and sprinkle generously with the turbinado sugar. Bake for 10 to 14 minutes, or until the edges are just starting to turn golden. Transfer cookies to racks immediately when taken out of oven and let cool on racks.

Key Lime Meltaways

Sorry I missed last week's Sweet Melissa Sundays! I am quite the busy girl right now. First, I wanted to show you all the new website we have for the aprons, Woo! Check it out here! Right now, the site up is just a temporary one until we really figure out what we want to do there, but I just thought I would share it with you. What do you think??

Last week, I had a few moments to kill. The week's homework was done already, so I thought I would whip up a batch of cookie's I've had bookmarked for about 989 years. We had some key limes sitting around on the counter, so I figured I'd put em to good use in this Martha Stewart recipe (which ALL user comments raved about, by the way...always a good indicator for me). I made some slight adaptations because I wanted to use Key Limes instead of regular ol' lime, and I really them wanted to pack a limey punch.

These came out really really good. We tried one about a half hour after they came out of the oven, and they were totally disgusting. Totally. I think the combo of sweet, lime, and WARM but a Baddd, Badd combo. It was too tart, and honestly was just really weird. I feared I'd have to toss the whole batch. But a second taste test the next day fixed all that - it seems they just needed some time to relax before they'd become yummy. These are perfectly sweet, limey, and crumbly. I can't imagine any lime lover not enjoying these. here is the original, and below is my adapted version.

Key Lime Meltaways, adapted from Martha Stewart's Lime Meltaways

Ingredients:
1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/3 cup confectioners' sugar + Extra for rolling cookies in
Grated zest of 4 Key Limes
3 - 4 tablespoons freshly squeezed key lime juice
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon Sea salt


Yummm, flecks of key lime zest

Directions:
In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter and 1/3 cup of the powdered sugar until fluffy. Add the key lime zest, juice, and vanilla; beat until fluffy. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, and salt. Add this to the butter mixture, and beat on low until combined. Between two pieces of parchment paper, roll dough into two 1 to 1 1/4-inch-diameter logs. Chill at least 1 hour. (I chilled mine for a few days...I told you I've been busy! The dough was just fine)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone baking mat. Fill a small to medium sized zippy bag about half way with powdered sugar. Remove parchment from logs; slice dough into 1/8-inch-thick rounds (I find it easy to slice the dough with thread - just wrap it around the log, tie a knot, and pull tight to cut a slice). Place the cut rounds on baking sheets, spaced 1 inch apart (AND DON'T MAKE THE MISTAKE I DID WITH THE FIRST TWO COOKIES... for some reason, my sleepy brain tossed them in sugar BEFORE baking... they actually came out pretty normal. But it's much easier to toss them after they're baked, hehe :)
Bake about 15 minutes, or until barely golden at the edges and sides. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool slightly, 8 to 10 minutes. While still warm, place cookies in the sugar bag; shake the bag to coat. Store baked cookies in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

Cookie Press Cookies!

I am quite behind on blogging. I have a few more posts in arrears that hopefully I will get to posting soon. As per usual, I'm quite the busy girl... Training and beginning a new job (that makes a total of 3 jobs), & a Wilton Cake decorating class (pictures and post soon to come... hopefully) amongst the many things going on right now. So please forgive me, but I'll get everything up soon.

A few Sundays back I found myself awake much earlier than Daniel, and knowing I'd soon have less time to bake for fun, I decided to surprise DR with some cookies. Some time ago, Gourmet.com posted their favorite cookie recipes from 1941-2008 and I went bookmarking crazy, telling myself I'd make the recipes I liked in the future. Well, it has been a while and I think this is the first recipe I'm getting around to (is anyone else like that? They keep saving links to things they want to make and never actually get around to it? I have about 5 gajillion links saved, and keep accumulating more!!).

The recipe I chose allowed me to finally bring out the cookie press I got for Christmas. They were quite delicious... as they were cooling, every time Dan passed he grabbed one off the tray and popped one in his mouth. About 15 cookies later, they were finally cooled and I dusted them with powdered sugar. As usual, I found that this recipe improved with a little time. About a day after they were made, they were perfectly buttery, crumbly, and melt-in-your-mouthly. I one-thirded the recipe because I cannot logically prepare a recipe that produces 70 cookies in a house of two people and one shih-tzu. The only other alterations I made were slight, like omitting the almond extract in favor of all vanilla.

Spritz (Norwegian Butter Cookies) from Gourmet's Favorite Cookies: 1941 - 2008.
Ingredients:
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp + about 1/6 tsp vanilla (just eye the 1/6 tsp... a little bit more than 1/8 and a little less than 1/4)
1/3 of a large egg (I know, I'm crazy...just approximate)
1 1/3 cup flour sifted with ~1/6 tsp baking powder
~1/6 tsp salt

Directions:
Preheat to 350.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the softened butter. Slowly beat in the sugar and then the vanilla. Beat until light and fluffy.
Add the 1/3 egg and allow to mix to combine. Add the flour and mix just to combine - do not overbeat.
Insert dough in to the tube of a cookie press fitted with your favorite shape plate (though you could also just pipe shapes on to a cookie sheet with a star tip), and press cookies on to *ungreased* *un-parchment paper-ed* cookie sheet.
Bake about 10 - 15 minutes or until just started to turn golden around the edges. Transfer the cookies with a spatula to a wire rack to cool.
Set wire rack on top of a cookie sheet, and dust cookies with powdered sugar.



complete list of Gourmet's Favorite Cookies available here