Cookie Confections

Happy Valentines Day!

K and I don’t really make a big deal out of Valentines Day. We both feel it’s a bit of a contrived holiday. And yet I do love making Valentine’s Day cookies. Hearts just always manage to come out cute. They’re simple and fun to make, so I enjoy making cookies for this holiday.

I also wanted to do something fun for K. I thought about chocolate covered strawberries, in cookie form of course, then decided to make them into a bouquet, a la Incredible Edibles style.

Here’s a quick step by step for making this.

First, ice your cookies.  I iced the red of the strawberries and the stems, and when they were dry, dotted the seeds on using a black food coloring marker.  I then made brown icing and iced that on top to make the chocolate. I also used some of the hearts I had and went a little middle school girl on them, with my “I ♥ U” and “K + N”.

When the icing is fully dry, flip the cookies over and attach lollipop sticks to the backs.  Most people use leftover royal icing for this job, but I cleaned up all my icing, forgetting to save some for this purpose.  So I melted a little chocolate to do the trick.

If the sticks are long and look like they are not going to lie straight, you can rest them on the edge of the cookie tray to keep them straight.

The bonus of using chocolate is that it hardens faster than the icing would have taken to dry. Also, you can get out a bag of pretzels and dip them in the leftover chocolate.

When the chocolate is hardened and the cookies seem securely attached to the sticks, you can begin assembling the arrangement. I got a foam half circle at Walmart in the flower decorating section.

Arrange the “stems” however you see fit. You can shorten the sticks to make it easier to achieve varying heights. Ignore the extra holes…the beauty is that you’re not locked into your original placement.

Wrap the foam base in tissue paper and tie with a ribbon.

Then snap some quick pictures, because the battery on your camera is about to die, and the baby is waking up from her nap, and you know you might not get back to this while there is still good daylight.

Lastly, wrap in clear cellophane wrap, tie with another ribbon, and present to your loved one.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

A while back I started using squeeze bottles for some of my decorating.  I still use bags too. Each has their place, but there are times when the bottles are nice.

The first time I tried decorating with squeeze bottles I wasn’t a fan.  But that’s because I hadn’t hit on the right bottles yet. I had gotten a bottle from the craft store, but it was more of a ketchup/mustard squeeze bottle.  And I ended up with a ton of bubbles in my icing, which I don’t know if it was the bottle itself, or coincidence that that batch of icing was particularly bubbly, or just bad luck, but it was more trouble then it was worth.  I just didn’t think it was all it was cracked up to be, and put the squeeze bottle idea aside.

But then I discovered the bottle I should have been using all along.  It is a squeeze bottle with a coupler, so you can still use all of your tips! I got mine here, but I’m sure you can get them elsewhere as well.

The biggest benefit I see to the squeeze bottles is that they are so much easier, and less messy, to refill. I think they are great for flood icing, where you go through much more icing at a time. Especially if you mix your icing in a liquid measuring cup, then refilling the bottles is a cinch. For this reason, I prefer the larger bottles.

There are small squeeze bottles too, which I use sometimes, though I find them a little more tiring on my hand for some reason.  And I still use bags a lot of the time too.  There is something about the control I have with a bag, and like them for detail work.  But it’s nice to have options, and different tools for different purposes, and for those reasons, I keep some squeeze bottles on hand.

At this point in the season, I kind of expected there to be more snow.  I have no doubt that it’s coming, but we were bracing ourselves for our first NH winter, and our image included a very snowy one, which has yet to materialize.

Well if nothing else I can make snowflakes inside.  Direct from my oven, in the form of gingerbread cookies.  I really like gingerbread cookies; there’s something warm and comforting about them.

I found a great gingerbread recipe a few years back that I used to make gingerbread people for our wedding favors. They’re firm without being hard or crunchy, and have just the right level of spiciness. The recipe is included at the end.

I dusted these cookies with white sanding sugar while the icing was wet, to give them a twinkly snowy effect.

What’s the snow situation look like where everyone else is?

Gingerbread Cookies

Adapted from recipe courtesy of Rick Rodgers, Christmas 101, Random House; via Food Network

3 c. AP flour

1 tsp. baking soda

3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

3/4 tsp. ground ginger

1/2 tsp. ground allspice

1/2 tsp. ground cloves

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. black pepper

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter

1/2 c. packed light brown sugar

2/3 c. unsulfured molasses

1 egg

Preheat over to 350.

Using an electric mixer, beat together the butter and brown sugar until light in texture and color. Beat in the molasses and egg. Add in baking soda, spices, and half the flour.  Mix until dough begins to come together.  Add in remaining flour and mix till combined.  Divide the dough into two disks, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least one hour.  If refrigerating longer, let dough stand at room temperature until workable.

Place the dough on a lightly floured work surface and roll out to between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick, depending on desired softness.  The thicker the cookie, the softer. Cut with desired cookie cutter and place on cookie sheets at least one inch apart. Bake approximately 12 minutes, rotating cookie sheets top to bottom and front to back half way through.

Cool cookies on cookies sheets until cool enough to remove, then finish on cooling rack.  When cookies are cool, decorate with royal icing.

Oof, it’s been a loooong time since I posted.

At first I had a good excuse.  You see, we moved, and for a while this is where all my cookie cutters were sitting.  Taped up in a box in the dining room.

But that excuse can only take me so far.  After all, we moved back in June…

It wasn’t that I wasn’t baking at all.  I wasn’t making much in the form of cookies, but I did make a cake, and muffins, and chocolate pudding. But sadly, the habit of posting, turned into a habit of not posting.

Embarrassingly enough, my cookie cutters are still sitting in that box in the dining room.  It’s the last of the boxes there. The problem is I haven’t figured out where to put them yet; I kind of ran out of room in the kitchen.  But at least the box is open now, and some of the cutters have seen the light of day.

I officially jumped back into the swing of things when a friend requested Cars cookies for her son’s Cars themed birthday party.  She got the cutters from Williams Sonoma and sent them my way.

These are probably the most detailed cookies I’ve decorated to date, so I was a little nervous about them, but I knew with enough time I would be fine, and I’m really pleased with how they turned out.

So hopefully I’ll be back here on a more regular basis.  I’m already working on posting that cake I mentioned.  And I’ve got some cookies from the spring I want to share.  That is at least until the little bambina is born, and I take another hiatus.

…or forty.

A friend ordered cookies for a birthday party.  The theme was teacups and pansies.  I had free reign on the design and colors, as long as they were feminine.  The only absolute requirement she had was that I used a teacup cutter with a saucer, since it matched the invitation.

I used the same rose technique for the flowers that I used on the watering pails for Easter.

And here they are all boxed up and ready to be delivered.

Thanks again Mary for the order!

I hope everyone had a wonderful day.  I hosted Easter for our families this year.  It was a beautiful sunny day today; a fitting day for it to finally start feeling like spring.

I wanted to give a quick recap of the cookies I ended up finishing for Easter.

There were the eggs, which I showed in my last post, but for my other cookies I wanted to do something that was more about spring. I have a watering can cutter I hadn’t had a chance to use yet, so I decided to make watering pales and flowers.

For the base of the watering pales and flowers I used a #2 tip and a medium consistency icing, somewhere between outline and fill consistency.  I went back and added outline to the large flowers and detail to the small ones, using the same tip and consistency icing.

For the flowers on the watering pales and the leaves on the large cookies, I thickened my icing to very thick.  I had meant to take a picture, of the icing, but forgot.  Basically, you want it so thick that it will hold the shape of the design of your tip.  If the icing smoothes together after stirring it in the bowl, it is not thick enough, because it will not hold it’s shape when piped.  I’ve definitely tried making flowers, only to have to go back and thicken my icing more because they were melting into blobs.  If you scoop a spoonful, it should not fall off the spoon without shaking it off, that’s how thick we’re talking.

I tried a new technique for the leaves around the flowers on the watering pale.  I thought about piping them on, but they looked too blob-like and I wasn’t happy with them.  I also thought about painting them on with food coloring diluted with water.  But then what I decided to do was to paint them on using icing.  It’s hard to show in pictures, but I tried.

I used a small flat square brush (one I only use for cookies).  Dip it in a small amount of icing.  Starting at the edge of the flower, pull the brush out away from the flower, and turn it 45 degrees, so you end up with a tapered edge towards the point of the leaf.  These don’t have to be perfect, but I like the depth it gives, without the leaf being big and competing with the flower.

All the finished flowers and watering pales.  I used a black food coloring writer to make the dots for the watering holes.

I also at the last minute made bunnies for place cards.  And when I say last minute, I mean I started at 9pm last night and we were having guests at 2pm today.  Luckily I had dough and icing already made, so all I had to do was bake and ice.

Last year I had all intentions of doing something like this.  I wanted to make cookies and ice everyone’s name on them and put them at the place settings so people would know where they should sit.  This is sort of how I got into this whole cookie decorating thing in the first place, because I did something similar for our wedding.  But time got away from me last year and they never happened, and I ended up just making simple place cards with card stock.  This year I thought about it again, but figured I would try not to kill myself and scratched the idea.

But my mom and sister were over last night helping me get ready, and my mom asked if I was going to do the place cards again, because she thought they were cute last year.  I hadn’t planned on making even the paper ones, figuring people could handle figuring out what seating worked for them on their own.  But the replanting of the idea and a mini compliment and that’s how I found myself baking bunny cookies last night at 9pm.  They ended up being super easy to do though, and managed to dry in time and everything, so I’m really glad I did it.  My family of course thought I was crazy, because as of yesterday afternoon they were nowhere near existing, but this they already knew, so nobody was that worried about me.

Because I was tight on time I had to take a shortcut, that actually ended up working out really well.  I knew I wanted to keep it simple and do a back view of the bunny, with just the tail.  Normally I would have iced the base, then when it was dry gone back and iced the tail and added the sugar.  But I knew I didn’t have the time to do the two steps.  So I iced the bunnies, and on a piece of wax paper, I piped dots of icing and sugared them.  This morning I peeled the dots off the wax paper, and with a small bit of icing, attached them to the bunnies.  That way everything was able to dry simultaneously over night.  For the last step I wrote everyone’s name on the cookies using food color writers.  I’m happy with the way they turned out, and really glad I went ahead and made them.

I had a wonderful day today, and want to thank our families for being here with us and making it special.  (And for helping do all the dishes too.)

Finally, a new blog post.  I know, it’s been a long time.  With an impending move coming up, we’ve been playing adult and doing things like looking for a new place to live, which has cut into the cookie baking and decorating time.  But then today I was catching up on my Google reader, and saw some recent posts from I Am Baker (do you follow her?  you should, she makes gorgeous cakes).  She just had a baby, and she’s baked a couple time already.  Point taken, I need to get over being busy and get back into that kitchen.

So tonight I made Chockablock Cookies.  It’s a recipe I tore out of a Bon Appetit magazine and make a few times a year.  They’re a really nice cookie to have around the house.  They’re kitchen sink type cookies.  And while technically cookies, they have all sorts of redeeming qualities, like oats! and nuts! and dried fruit!  Those are all good for you foods.  Oh, and chocolate!  Chocolate’s good for the soul.

Look at all these ingredients!  Like I said, kitchen sink.

A little note about the dried fruit.  It’s not mandatory.  You can put pretty much whatever you want in these cookies.  I added pecans, walnuts, raisens, dried apricots, prunes, chocolate, and coconut.  My husband once took a cookie out of his mouth and handed it back to me upon finding out there was dried fruit in it.  He doesn’t do dried fruit.  Prunes in particular will send him running in horror from the kitchen.  For the likes of him, we make these without fruit.  What I do is mix up the batter with everything except the fruit, scoop out a tray full for him, then add the fruit, and scoop out the rest for me.  Everyone is happy that way.

Chockablock Cookies

(modified from Bon Appetit recipe)

1 1/2 c. flour

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 stick unsalted butter

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. molasses

2 eggs

1 1/2 c. old-fashioned oats

1 c. coarsely chopped nuts, such as walnuts and pecans

1 c. coarsely chopped dried fruit, such as raisens, prunes, apricots

2 c. bittersweet chocolate chips

1/2 c. sweetened shredded coconut

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Using a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until creamed.  Add the sugar and beat to combine.  Add the molasses and beat.  Add the eggs and beat.  Add the oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, and beat on low until just combined.  Add nuts, fruits, chocolate, and coconut and beat to incorporate.  Note, all this can be done with a hand mixer or good old fashioned spoon.

Using a 2 tsp. ice cream scoop, scoop out heaping mounds of dough and place on cookie sheet 1 1/2 to 2 inches apart.  Bake approx. 16 minutes, or until golden brown and just set.  Makes about 45 2-bite cookies.

I just ate about 5 of these.  They’re good.  It’s almost midnight though.  OK, and now I just admitted to everyone that I may sometimes eat cookies at midnight.  It happens.  Try eating them for breakfast instead.  Remember, all those redeeming qualities.  I approve.

I’ve also been gearing up for Easter.  I’m normally so last minute with holiday cookies, and I vowed to start decorating Easter cookies on April 1st.  I didn’t quite make it out of the gates by then, but I did decorate cookies this weekend, a whole two weeks before Easter!  So here’s the first batch of cookies.  My take on wimsical Easter eggs.  You might notice some dimpling on the dots.  I’m not sure what happened there.  File that under “figure out what happened”.  It could be icing consistency, or the size of the dot.  When I figure it out I’ll let you know.

Have a great week!

I saw snow yesterday, and according to the weather channel I’ll probably see more tomorrow.  So happy spring to you?

It’s technically now spring.  I guess.  If your definition of spring includes unpredictable weather with possible snow and temps not so cold that you need to wear your boots but not exactly your idea of warm either, then sure, let’s call it spring.  But wait, I think that actually is exactly what spring is.  That big tease until Memorial Day when it finally gets warm.  So why am I surprised?  Really we’re right on target. 

But I saw buds on the trees recently.  And that made me smile.  There’s hope people.

And I baked these for a family friend this weekend. 

Here is a quick step by step.  I used a #2 tip for everything.

First outline the flowers.  I intentially wanted to go for a simple flower, the kind you used to draw as a kid, and make it about the pop of color in the center.

Then fill in the flower in white.

Finally add the stem and leaves and fill in the center of the flower with the color of your choice.  I used red and pink.  Now if you have time, you can wait for the white to fully dry before filling in the colored center, and add sprinkles to the whole center.  I was short on time, and didn’t have time for the white icing to dry, so I had to carefully add just a few sprinkles, being careful not to spill them onto the white.  I still like the effect though, better than adding none I think.

So happy spring to you all!  Hope it starts to feel like it real soon!

I was rooting through the freezer tonight trying to figure out what to make for dinner.  I’ve got the remainders of a summer’s worth of farmers market vegetables I froze, and meat I stocked up on, and other odds and ends I’ve frozen over the last several months.  And it’s time to start making a serious dent in it all.  So while this may not be the most seasonal thing at the moment, as other people are starting to think forward to spring, it’s still cold outside, and this is tasty, and I want to take advantage of those cranberries I saved in my freezer.

This is a recipe a coworker gave me that I’ve tweaked some.  It’s really simple to make, it just takes a little time to cook.  But the time investment preparing it is minimal, and a wedge of it makes a really nice breakfast or late night snack.

Cranberry Surprise

1/2 c. sugar

1 egg

1/4 c. butter, melted

1/2 c. flour

1  1/4 c. fresh (or frozen) cranberries

1 c. walnuts

Mix together ingredients and spread into a buttered and floured pie plate or cake pan.  An 8 inch cake pan works well.  The mixture will be lumpy.  Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes, or until golden brown.  Mine wasn’t quite brown after 45 minutes, so I turned the oven up to 350 and baked for 15 minutes more.  Remove from oven and let cool in the pan.  Eat warm or at room temperature.

Updated:  I cut a wedge this morning and it stuck a little bit.  Next time I would use a piece of parchment paper cut to the size of the bottom of the pan (butter and flour pan, place parchment paper, butter and flour paper).

I’ll be back this weekend with more iced cookies.  I was on vacation, and have been fighting a cold since last week, so not all that much has been going on in my kitchen lately.  I wanted to bake something, but I’ll be honest this cranberry tart was a little easier on my energy reserves than icing cookies.  But I’ve got some cute cookies just waiting for icing, so I promise to get to them real soon.

I wanted to thank you for doing such a great job these last few days.

Of course, I’ve been a fan our yours since day one, but you were put to the test this week and really stood up to it.

Making 25 batches of cookies, 2 batches at a time, was no easy task. Mixing in 6 cups of walnuts and chocolate chips is a lot to ask, especially after we’ve already put in all that butter…and sugar…and the 6 cups of flour.

And true, I did have thoughts of 20-quart Hobart mixers each time I had to finish mixing in the nuts and chocolate chips by hand, and my fingers might be a bit sadder for it. But there are no Hobarts in my kitchen, there’s you and me, and you did a good job, so thank you.