Cookie Plates for Christmas

My Husband and I like the tradition of making cookie plates to pass to friends and neighbors for Christmas. It's something we did growing up and have fond memories of. This year, I think we hit a great balance of flavors.

The husband has perfected his chocolate chip cookie recipe and I love my molasses cookies. Those have always been our staples. This year we also included caramels (plain and salted with chocolate [those were a big hit]), and the new, exciting attempt at candied orange peels, dipped in chocolate, no less. I googled a handful of recipes so I thought I could wing it, but this recipe needs more perfecting. I think I cooked the orange peels a little too hot and long, so they were a little hard.

But MMMmmmm they were tasty.

The Little Engine That Could... just barely

My little man had a birthday! You could probably guess his favorite book by the title of this blog, so I felt inspired to make him a train cake for his birthday. I figured it would be easy and fun.

Hello there, little cake train. I sculpted the cake from a 9 x 13 cake pan, a loaf pan and 3 cupcakes. That part was fun. I covered the cake with a crumb coat of buttercream frosting and put it in the fridge over night. At that point I hadn't decided if I was going to try fondant for the decorating or not. I was feeling pretty good so far.

Well, it's always good to challenge yourself, right? So the next day I decided to make the fondant. This is only my second attempt at fondant (my first was years ago, without children). The fondant was much easier to work with this time, but man, it sure takes a long time to make a cake look good. I always imagine my cakes much better than they actually turn out.

Once the fondant was in place, I realized I was running out of time. I hurriedly piped on the yellow and chocolate frosting, placed the candy, made the cake pops (this was probably pushing my time limit), then hurriedly made the toys. They're pretty ridiculous! The toy soldier looks like he's wearing a huge Russian ushanka, and my poor monkey fell apart two or three times. I just kept squishing him back together until he became a distorted Picasso-esque version of his original self.

It's hard work to make cute cakes quickly with little children nipping at your heels and stealing the decorations! The cake was delicious, though, and my little man was thrilled. That's all that mattered.

Homemade whole wheat tortillas

Lately, I've been falling into a lazy rut when it comes to food. I've been feeding the kids lots of processed crackers, candy (thank you winter full of holidays), sweets and just generally things that aren't particularly good for me or them. I've been feeling the listlessness in my body.

On top of that, my little 3 year-old pretty consistently complains of a tummy ache. I think it might just be constipation, but I'm not helping it much with what I've been indulging in. It doesn't help that she's a super picky eater.

So I am re-inspired to take upon the quest of several years ago when I started making my own bread. I've fallen in and out of making my own bread in the past year, but I'm back on the bandwagon, and I'm taking it a step further. For the next two weeks I have decided to cut out all white flour and processed sugar. Whew. It's not going to be easy. I'm being helped by a blog called 100 days of real food. They have recipes and tips. I'm also SO glad I have a (borrowed) wheat grinder. It makes everything taste better.

Yesterday I made whole wheat tortillas for the first time. They were delicious and the kids ate them. Success!

I got the recipe here and I will definitely be doing this more often. I even had some help.

Hellooooooo Kitty

After following Bakerella for years, I decided to try my hand at her claim to fame: cakepops. They really weren't that hard, but for future reference, don't use the shortest sticks at the store, and cram the sticks deep into the cake pop.

I didn't like cake balls the first time I had them, but they've grown on me. I plan on making these again soon - though probably not shaped like Hello Kitty...

Soaked in Buttermilk Whole Wheat Bread

I have begun my big new old-fashioned food experiment. I have to admit, this is the first time I've made whole wheat bread! This is also the first time I've ground my own wheat! And not as surprising, this is the first time I've soaked flour overnight in buttermilk! All in all it turned out pleasantly.

The recipe I used was from here. I halved the recipe, left out all the optional ingredients and the dough inhancer, and *ahem* accidentally started with an extra cup of flour. I'm not so good at halving recipes in my head. I kind of expected a flaming disaster and a soaring success all at once. What I got was somewhere inbetween-closer to the success side. The texture was perfect! I could've sold it at the grocery store and competed with Grandma Sycamore. The bread was tasty, too. However soaking in buttermilk left a sourdough tang that I don't know if I really love. It's not bad, but it's not for everything.

The point of this experiment, though, is not to make things that are out-of-this-world delicious. The point of this experiment is to see if eating homemade foods prepared with old-fashioned techniques helps me feel better and digest food better. The more I think about it, the more daunting this experiment can be. The only way to really know the difference is if I am consistant and replace ALL my bread with this bread, and ALL my grains with soaked grains (or the like).

I'll start with the bread. I'm pretty sure I can keep this up indefinitely.

You can snicker at this cake

cause it's definitely not winning any beauty contests. But it has the potential for some great cake goodness.

I started with a layer of vanilla ice cream, followed by a layer of homemade caramel topped with peanuts, then a layer of chocolate cake. Repeat. Cover it all with dark chocolate ganache. Take the remaining ganache, whip it up with some more cream and dollop it on the top. Drop snickers candy bar slices on each dollop, and Happy Father's Day!

Things I learned while working on this cake:

1. Spreading warm drippy chocolate ganache over frozen cake and ice cream isn't very pretty. The ganache gets cold quick and/or melts the ice cream and makes a mess.
2. Trying to make a layer cake in an 8.5 inch springform pan with cake layers baked in 8 inch cake pans isn't very pretty. It makes for a lumpy cake. (For the record I thought my springform pan was just 8 inches. I bought it at a garage sale a few weeks ago and never measured it.)
3. No matter how soft and delicious caramel is when you make it by hand, it's hard to cut and eat when frozen in a cake.

Pesto Pain

That's "pain" as in french for bread, not "pain" as in ouch.

One of the first things I did when I unpacked my kitchen was to find my Christmas Cookbook and christen my new kitchen with it's deliciousness. This photo was taken several days after I made the bread. The loaf was HUGE! I used store-bought pesto, but in the future I want to experiment with some homemade pesto. The bread was delicious, but the pesto was a little too tangy on the first day. It mellowed out perfectly by the second day, though.

Buttery Crescent Rolls

We were invited to dinner on Sunday and were asked to bring bread. I had to squeeze in one more recipe from my Christmas cookbook before we moved so it was a good excuse. These are fake crescent rolls. It's a basic roll recipe that you roll out, cut wedges and roll into crescents. The part that was supposed to be special and make it more like flakey crescent rolls was shredding 1 cup of cold butter on the dough before rolling. Yes, one whole cup of butter. It got messy, both shredding (getting all over the counter) and cooking (melted butter pooling in the pan and basically frying the bottom of the rolls). They were very tasty rolls and extremely buttery, but next time I'll probably just spread soft butter instead of shredding cold butter. It will be less messy and taste the same.

Creme Brulee divine

One of my best friends recieved a gift of 10 real vanilla beans. What a fun gift! But she had no idea how to use them. Itta Britta to the rescue (DA da-da DA!!! [that's my theme music])! I also had never used real vanilla beans before, but I had watched them used many many times and couldn't resist the invitation to teach (and to get my hands on some real vanilla beans).

I knew in an instant the best thing to make using real vanilla beans. Creme Brulee. Mmmm. We had a fun night of making custard and the next fun night eating creme brulee. Thanks, dear Emily! We will miss you!

Make your own cheesy crackers? You bet!

There have been several times I've thought to myself "I wish there was a good cracker that didn't have so much artificial stuff in it." Lo and behold, I found this article on the kitchn and immediately wanted to make them myself. It's SO easy and SO good. I've made this recipe several times in the past couple months and the crackers are always gone within a couple hours.

Cheesy Crackers
1 cup flour
3/4 tsp. salt
4 TBS cold unsalted butter
8 oz. grated cheddar cheese
3-4 TBS water


If you have a food processor this will be a breeze. If you don't have one, like me, use a much less breezy pastry blender. In a medium bowl mix together the flour and salt (and an optional few shakes of pepper). Shred the cold butter into the bowl and with your trusty pastry blender mix it in until it resembles coarse meal. Mix in one tablespoon of water at a time until the dough binds together and can form a ball. Wrap the ball in plastic and chill for at least 20 minutes.

Roll the dough out thin (it will puff up). Using a knife or pizza cutter, cut small little shapes. I prefer triangles. I do this all on a piece of parchment paper that I slide right on to a cookie sheet to bake. I like to space out the pieces a little so they don't stick together while baking, but if you don't most of them will break apart.

Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes, but watch them periodically after 10 minutes.

First cake

Ah, this cake. I had so many dreams for this cake, but reality grabbed me by the ankles and dragged me back. I think I frosted this cake in ten minutes. I know the Babe doesn't care. Hopefully when she does I'll have more time to make a cake we can all be pleased about.

Plant a tree, save the world

Today was a busy day! Among the projects, I planted a tree...

made a card for work...
and baked and frosted cookies. I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe and a new frosting recipe here. It's ok, but a little too runny and blah. It needs extra flavor. I'll have to modify it next time.

What the Crepe?

Yes, a stacked crepe cake. I found this recipe in my Christmas cookbook right after I got it and decided to make it when I had a good opportunity. Easter it was! Funny thing, over the past couple weeks, I've been seeing these crepe cakes everywhere! Mine wasn't quite as pretty as the pictures I've seen.

Meh, a little crooked, crepes not all the same size.... Cutting into it is much more impressive.

Pretty cool. It was tasty, but a little sweet for me. I also found the texture slightly unsatisfying. It was fun to make once, but the time it takes to make it again is probably not worth it to me.

Cupcake Craving

I've been wanting to make cupcakes for a few weeks now. I had a great excuse this week because yesterday was a church dance and I was asked to bring refreshments! Cupcakes, here we come.

I wanted to try a new basic yellow cake recipe I found on allrecipes.com. It worked like a charm. Fluffy, moist and sweet. I like homemade cake much better than boxed cake mix. The frosting was a modification of the frosting in this recipe, but I left out some stuff and added grenadine so there was a slight cherry flavor and pink tint.

I used a big star frosting tip for the first time. It made frosting these a cinch! It was super fast and looked better than frosting with a knife. Then I added something that made them look even prettier.

Cherries!

p.s. For future reference, someday I want to order cupcake wrappers from here. The solid color wrappers stay opaque when you bake them, not like the above example of nearly transparent wrappers.

Quintessential Chocolate Cake

I taught my sister-in-law some cake making techniques with this recipe I found on allrecipes. It's a really good basic chocolate cake recipe and the frosting has a delicious sour cream tang.

I stole this photo from my sister-in-law's blog.

It was fun to make the cake together with her little girl helping. I'm excited to experiment and add different flavors and ingredients. One of my grandma's most beloved desserts was chocolate cake with cherries mixed into the batter. I would love to develop my own version of her cake.

What do these things have in common?

Cranberries

Orange and chocolate

They both make delicious additions to sweet scones. I'm starting to learn that I could probably like any food if it's fresh and prepared well. Before I made these I believed that scones, just like biscotti and sugar cookies, were clumps of dry, dense dough that I had to choke down out of politeness. I've made two batches of scones in two days and they were WAY above my expectations. The first batch were no-sugar cranberry cream scones. I substituted honey for sugar and the recipe called for cream instead of milk. I was wary, but they were really good.

My second batch were these delectable Mandarin Chocolate Chip Scones.

With orange zest in the batter and a sweet orange glaze, these had a refreshingly citrus zing with yummy bittersweet chocolate.

In my Christmas cookbook it emphasizes the importance of technique, technique, technique. A new technique I learned for these that I will probably carry over to all pastries is this: whenever you need to cut butter into flour, grate the cold butter first with a cheese grater. It worked like a charm!

Ugly Cheesecake

Here's an ugly photo of an ugly cheesecake:
This recipe was in my Christmas cookbook titled "Creme Brulee Cheesecake" so I had to try it. I love creme brulee and I really like cheesecake. I made this for Valentine's Day. The cheesecake was divine, but the directions were incomplete. I was told to make the brulee carmel topping early in the process. Then I baked the cheesecake and chilled the cheesecake overnight, then I was supposed to use the carmel topping again... over 8 hours later... without any instruction about how to store it or reheat it. I ended up covering the saucepan I made it in and kept it at room temperature overnight. It hardened, of course, it is burnt sugar after all, so I reheated it before I poured it on the cheesecake. Then it hardened again into an ugly, thick, tough, uncuttable top to the cheesecake--as you can see above. We ended up peeling off the topping and eating the naked cheesecake. It was very tasty, but I don't think I'll make the recipe again, at least not the way the book explained it.

"The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies"

I have found it! Not that I looked for that long (thank goodness for allrecipes.com). When I think of sugar cookies I think of dry, hard, stale cardboard-like cookies. Sad, huh? Well, no more. After reading a few recipes I came across "The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies" recipe, and I must agree with its name: they were delicious! Soft and moist and thick. Mmmm. And they kept their cookie-cutter shape very well.

I think some of the tips that made them work so well were: 1. I have fresh baking powder, 2. I kneaded the dough briefly before I rolled it out, 3. the cookies were only baked for 6 minutes at 400 degrees. I'll have to remember those tips.

This was my first time trying to make royal icing. I've always been a buttercream girl and avoided royal icing because of the far inferior flavor. Butter just makes everything better. Well, I'm learning some good tips to royal icing. It definitely holds its shape better. It's easier to clean. I can be more flexible with the texture just by adding more water. I started out with too thick of frosting that had an ugly texture (see red and white stripes below), but then I added too much water and had the smooth, but runny frosting in the pink stripe.
I'm confident I can get it right if I have the time to work it out. I was kind of rushed with these.

I still like buttercream better.

Baking Hiatus

I broke my pattern and didn't bake something new this week. The week started off with a sick Babe and ended with a sick Babe and a sick Mama. Blech.

On the up side I made a new soup. Not only did I make it, I made it up! Hurray for making new recipes. There's a restaurant chain in the Twin Cities called Eddington's and they make some really yummy soups. One of our favorites (after the Boundary Water Wild Rice and the Wisconsin Cheddar Cheese) is the White Chicken Chili. It's rich and creamy and mmm mmm good. After some research, I learned that they put cream in it and Swiss cheese, so I decided to make up the rest!

It was fun and so yum. The clincher that made the recipe awesome was lime juice. Yum. Maybe I'll post the recipe later. Or maybe I'll keep it a secret and leave people to wonder at it's deliciousness.

Rocky Road Biscotti

This is probably one of the most blatantly unhealthy things I've baked. Chocked full of chocolate chips, white chocolate chunks, marshmallows, pecans, butter, sugar, drizzled with even more white chocolate... The recipe called for toffee bits, too, and I had them, but there simply wasn't enough batter to mix in more sweet and chunky goodness.

doesn't that yellow flower paper plate just make you happy?

(counting down the days to spring...)

I don't even like biscotti. One of the reasons I made this particular recipe was to find out if I added enough candy, chocolate, sugar, and nuttiness if it would compensate for the uncomfortably dry and crunchy texture that I dislike about biscotti.

The result? I liked this biscotti, but I don't think it was because of the chunks. It was the butter. In my Christmas cookbook it mentions that European biscotti is rarely made with fat, but American biscotti is much more cookie like, made with butter. The second baking allowed that butter to magically mingle with the newly cut edges and crisp to a tasty, lightly fried texture. That little bit of greasiness was delightful! Who would've thought?

I just might make biscotti again. Just might.