Candy Cane Cookies

On a Facebook group I follow, a local woman shared her grandma's recipe for candy cane cookies. I decided to give a go at making them to give as Christmas gifts for the neighbors. They were fun to make, looked super cute, and tasted buttery and delicious. I couldn't get the peppermint candy pieces to stick, but I think the cookies looked better and tasted better without them anyway. The only other change I'd recommend is using less almond extract, as I thought it was a touch overpowering (my husband, on the other hand, liked the almond flavor).

The directions that are italicized are my additions.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup shortening

1/2 cup softened butter

1 cup powdered sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract (I think 1/2 tsp would be enough)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 teaspoons red food coloring (or as needed)

1/2 cup coarse sugar 

1/2 cup crushed peppermint candies (optional)

Directions:
1. Stir together the flour and salt. Set aside.

2. In a separate bowl, mix shortening, butter, powdered sugar, egg, and flavorings.
3. Stir half of flour mixture into shortening mixture. Work in remaining flour mixture with your hands until dough holds together.

4. Divide dough in half. Blend red coloring in half of dough.
5. Divide each half into four balls and refrigerate for 30 minutes while the oven preheats to 375.

6. Make two strips of two colors, side by side. Make like a rope.

My picture of my cookie dough rope:

7. Cut into pieces approximately 6 inches long.  Curve tops like love handles (Those are the grandmother's words, not mine!).

Here's my picture of the cut sections:

8. Bake nine minutes at 375 degrees.
9. While warm, remove from sheet and sprinkle with mixture of crushed candy and sugar (I preferred just the sugar without the crushed peppermint candies).

 10. Enjoy! Also, you will gain weight (Again, her grandmother's words and not mine! Ha!).

Once cool, I packaged them up in some plastic wrap, tied them with a ribbon, and attached a gift tag. All together, this made ~20 cookies for me, but some were very fragile and broke. Thankfully, I had some helpers who were willing to eat those broken ones ;-)

Challah for Rosh Hashanah!

We're not Jewish, but I couldn't help but ogle all of the beautiful foods people were posting online last weekend for Rosh Hashanah. I decided to try to make our own challah! I love baking, and I have the best baking assistant ever--my 3 year old! Unfortunately, we haven't done well with bread. I don't know if it is us or our altitude (5,280 ft), but my breads always come out either too dense or too cake-like.

On Allrecipes.com, I found a recipe for high altitude challah. It came out beautifully. The recipe recommended braiding the bread with 3 or 4 strands, but we ended up braiding it with 5. I looked up a video on YouTube to braid our challah. Yum! We ate it with a little butter a couple hours after we took it out of the oven, and, the next day, we used it to make toast for breakfast.

                                         

Southwest Airlines 41st Birthday Cake

I love to travel, I love to bake, and I love Pinterest.  I can't tell you how excited I got when I read that Southwest Airlines was having a cake baking/decorating contest through Pinterest to celebrate their 41st birthday.  The winner receives two roundtrip tickets anywhere Southwest flies!  Not only that, the winner gets to be a guest blogger on their blog site!  Scoop me off the floor because I'm weak in the knees!

For those of you who are interested in the contest, here's my Pinterest pin that links to all of the rules:  http://pinterest.com/pin/216383957066776757/

I first heard about the contest on Tuesday, June 12, the day after it started.  I sat down and considered a million and one ideas, and I settled on two.  You see, you can enter as many times as you want, as long as you have a unique cake each time.

My first idea was to make an airplane cake.  No, I'm not talking about putting a picture of an airplane on a cake.  I decided to carve a 3D Southwest airplane out of a cake!  My plan also involved decorating it in fondant.  Now, I've never carved a cake before, and I've never made or used fondant.  The challenge made me more determined.

The first step was to bake the cake itself.  I dug around for a recipe and got to baking straight away.  Oliver had a great time helping me bake, but the cake was a total flop.  The cake was so soft and moist that it wouldn't really hold together.  As it cooled, it sunk in the middle.  There was no way I could carve it into an airplane.

Rather than waste another half dozen eggs, I decided just to go to the supermarket and buy a $1 box of cake mix.  It turned out much firmer, which is exactly what I wanted for carving.  I finished baking the second cake before bedtime on day one.  As it baked, Oliver and I got to work on mixing the fondant.  Most fondant recipes aren't vegetarian-friendly, but I finally found one that called for corn syrup instead of gelatin or marshmallows.  It held together well and readily absorbed the gel food coloring I'd purchased at the craft shop.

First attempt is on the left, and second attempt is on the right:

Here are my fondant colors.  I call that large tub of blue, "Southwest Airlines blue."

The following morning, day two, I decided to tackle the carving.  The task loomed before me, but I was excited to see what I could do.  I read online that beginners should always freeze their cakes before carving.  It makes them less crumbly.

To be honest, I couldn't believe how easily I was able to carve my cake into a plane.  OK, so it might not be perfect, but I thought it was really good for both never having done anything like that before and for doing it in the 30 minute window that was my baby's morning nap.

Post-carving, I stuck the cake back in the freezer.  When both of my kids were down for their afternoon naps, I pulled the cake back out and lightly frosted it.  Apparently, frosting the cake first helps hold down any crumbs, and it gives the fondant something to stick to later.

As soon as the kids fell asleep for the night, I tackled the cake decorating.  It was so much fun working with fondant.  I was able to cut, paste, and smooth it out relatively easily.  Andrew took a photo of me applying the yellow icing for the detail.

I was up until nearly midnight, which, for a mom of two little ones, is really late.  I can't remember the last time I was up so late when it wasn't for a nighttime feeding.  I think it was worth it, though.  Here are a few photos of the finished product:

I popped the cake back into the freezer to hold its shape for the following day: Thursday, my third day working on the contest, and the day I set aside for the photo shoot.  My plan was to take the cake outside and make it "fly" for Oliver.  I thought he'd love it.  I was right!  What I didn't count on was how hard it would be to make the cake "fly" for him while still being able to get a good photo of it.

Here's the cake flying.  As you can see, Oliver loved watching it fly.  However, you can't see my cake very well.

I got really into the effects of making the cake fly.  A bunch of neighbor kids came by to watch me fly my cake plane.

Ultimately, I decided the plane had better fly lower to the ground to get a good photo of it.  Oliver enjoyed that because he could reach his finger in to eat some of the powdered sugar clouds.  With over two dozen photos to choose from, I finally settled on the last one of the group.

Here is my entry to celebrate Southwest Airline's 41st birthday.  Happy Birthday, Southwest!  I hope you have as much fun celebrating as I have!

My entry pin: http://pinterest.com/pin/216383957066791786/

#HappyBdaySWA

Gingerbread Cookies

Would the holidays be complete without some gingerbread cookie decorating with the kids? I don't think so!

Oliver loves baking and using the mixer, but I could not fathom making dough, letting it refrigerate, rolling it out, and decorating a million cookies with a two year-old. So, I took the kids out to the grocery store for refrigerated dough. I had the choice between a giant package of Pillsbury or a smaller package of all-natural cookies by Immaculate Baking Company. They were the same price, but I didn't want to be overloaded with cookies anyway. I went with the natural cookie dough. As a bonus, it came with a packet of decorating sugar, which we sprinkled on the icing later.

I worried the cookies wouldn't work because they were pre-formed into drop cookies for easy baking. I just took the lot of them and mashed them together into a ball for rolling. It wasn't a problem at all! Here's my helper rolling out the dough. Take note that my other helper is snoozing in the chair behind him:

Then came the fun part: the cookie cutters! We picked these up from Hobby Lobby yesterday. Their Christmas stuff was on sale for 50% off, so we bought a package of two gingerbread men cutters for $2.

Oliver thought the cookie cutter part was OK. He does it a lot with Play-Doh, so it's kind of lost its luster. As I punched out most of the cookies, Oliver stole little tastes.

The cookies swelled a lot during baking, and their shapes were pretty unrecognizable. I've had that happen with rolled cookies before, but it might have happened with the refrigerated dough because they were made to be drop cookies. No matter! I went back over them with the cookie cutters. It worked like a charm!

Once the cookies were cool, Oliver and I got busy decorating. I took the shortcut again and bought pre-made icing in a decorating bag. It was a little pricey at $3, but, sometimes, it's worth it to pay for conveniences. This was one of those times!

Oliver paused to sample a cookie:

The bag was difficult for him to squeeze, so I squirted a small amount into a bowl for him to use to decorate.

Decorating with one hand and eating a cookie with another:

Back to the squeeze bag:

Oliver decided to sample the icing, too. No wonder this kid wouldn't nap again today! I'm pretty sure 80% of his diet today was sugar.

Our finished cookies:

I have to take a moment to rave about these cookies. Their flavor was out of this world. I could taste the molasses. They really, truly tasted homemade. I don't think we would have made a better finished product if we went through the effort of making them ourselves. I decided they were good enough for gifts! We made tags for four of them to give to each of Oliver's grandparents. I let Oliver color the tags. He's pretty good at that stuff.

The final product:

Parents of toddlers, if you have loads of patience and deal well with messes, I highly recommend taking a few hours for some cookie makin' and bakin'. We had loads of fun!

Oliver Kory: Professional Baker

Cookie Day!

Every year, my friend Aminta and I spend one entire day baking hundreds of cookies. We have a few favorites that we bake over and over, but we also experiment and try new cookies, too.

Yesterday (Sunday) was our cookie day this year, and we had our share of disasters and winners.

The first disaster was Alton Brown's Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel cookies (recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/chocolate-peppermint-pinwheel-cookies-recipe2/index.html). I'm pretty sure the problem was my fault and not Alton's recipe. See, I ran to the grocery store Saturday night, and they had sugar cookie dough on sale for half off (it expired just after the holidays, but I figured it would be fine). With a coupon I had, it was practically free. I decided to pick them up and substitute them for the sugar cookie dough in his recipe. I followed the rest of his recipe exactly. I melted unsweetened chocolate and mixed it and vanilla into one roll of dough. In the next, I mixed an egg yolk, peppermint extract, and crushed candy canes. I rolled them out, stacked them on top of each other, and rolled them into a log. It looked beautiful. Then, I put it in the fridge to cool until the next day.

Well, cookie day arrived, and I eagerly sliced into my peppermint pinwheel log. The slices looked lovely and smelled of sweet peppermint. I did notice that the peppermint swirl was gooey, though, but I wasn't too worried. I popped them into the oven and went to peek on them 7 minutes later. They didn't bake as much as they just melted. As they melted, they seemed to release peppermint into the air that was so strong, it made my eyes water. Oops.

Cookie #2 was a complete success. I made maamoul cookies as Aminta shopped for cookie ingredients. It was my first time having a maamoul cookie. The best way I can describe them is a flaky, buttery, Middle Eastern cookie stuffed with dried fruits and nuts. They were incredible! I used this recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/maamoul-stuffed-date-orange-cookies-recipe2/index.html. I couldn't find crystallized ginger or fresh dates at my grocery store, so mixed a few of the various fillings they have listed. I used apricot jam, toasted walnuts, and dried dates. It's fabulous.

Once Aminta arrived, she set to work on our Salted Maple Walnut Thumbprints. They were simple, beautiful and delicious. I wanted to eat the whole batch. This is the recipe she used:

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/15/131337398/recipe-salted-maple-walnut-thumbprints

I began my work on the truffles. First, I made mocha truffles using a recipe I created by merging a few different ones together (Here's my recipe: http://allrecipes.com/PersonalRecipe/62520077/Mocha-Truffles/Detail.aspx). Then, I used that same basic recipe, only I substituted peppermint extract for the instant coffee to make peppermint truffles. Those, I rolled in crushed candy canes. I got that idea from O Magazine, which featured a peppermint truffle in a recent issue.

Last year, Aminta made a fabulous lemon-pistachio cookie that Andrew raved about for weeks. I suggested she make it again. I thought it had been a Martha Stewart recipe, but (wouldn't you know?) she had multiple listings when I searched for lemon pistachio. We printed out one we thought would work. Unfortunately, we didn't have pistachios on hand, and we didn't want to run to the store and spend more money when we had bags of pecans and walnuts available. So, we decided to make lemon-walnut cookies. Aminta worked on those, and they came out surprisingly well. They were chewy and flavorful and reminded me of a breakfast granola. I don't think it was the same recipe from last year, but it was very good.

Here's the recipe she used this year: http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/pistachio-lemon-drops
And here's the recipe that I think she used last year: http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/lemon-pistachio-wreaths

I made a double batch of Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookies, using some alterations that my friend, Corinne, uses. I did half semi-sweet chocolate chips and half dark chocolate chips, and then, for the nuts, I did entire pecan halves. They're incredible. I made about 100 chocolate chip cookies. Haha.

As I worked on meticulously on rolling the truffles (they took a while to set), Aminta made some berry shortbread thumbprints (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Berry-Shortbread-Dreams/Detail.aspx) and some chocolate peanut butter cup cookies (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Peanut-Butter-and-Chocolate-Peanut-Butter-Cup-Cookies/Detail.aspx). The shortbread thumbprints started to melt in the oven, just like the pinwheels! It was the strangest thing, especially considering that we've used that recipe in the past. However, some kept their lovely shape, and they still tasted good, so we decided they were a keeper.