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.

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