Valentine’s Day Sugar Cookies
10 Feb 2009 Leave a Comment
in Baking, Cookies Tags: Baking, Cookies, sugar cookie, valentine's day
I went to Target this weekend, and they had so many cute Valentine’s themed baking items that my head almost exploded. I bought lots of stuff, including some heart-shaped cookie cutters. Sugar cookies it is!
Now, like all things I make, I want my baked goods to look professional. This, being my first attempt at professional looking sugar cookies, didn’t work out too well. They sure taste good. At least I have that.
Here are the ingredients I used. I took a shortcut and used premade sugar cookie dough.
I cut out various heart shapes and added sprinkles!
Little did I know that it helps the cookies to keep their shape if you chill them again after cutting, so I didn’t do this. They were pretty much misshapen blobs!
So, I thought maybe if I baked the cookie IN the cutter.
It kind of worked. Obviously, this is not how sugar cookies are supposed to look.
Oh well. I started making the Royal Icing, and dyed it pink.
These were what I came up with…not that impressive but still tasty!
I also wanted to show the incredible MESS I made in my kitchen.
Final products:
Christmas Gingerbread Cookies
01 Jan 2009 1 Comment
in Baking, Cookies Tags: Baking, christmas cookies, gingerbread, gingerbread cookies
I have always loved the gingerbread cookies from The Gingerbread Construction Company, which has two store locations in Massachusetts (www.gingerbreadusa.com) . My mom would bring them home from the Wellesley craft fair every December. This year, I finally felt confident enough to take them on. First, of course, I needed to find a good gingerbread recipe. I went to my favorite website, allrecipes.com, and selected Eileen’s Spicy Gingerbread Men, which had excellent reviews. After I mixed the dough, rolled it, chilled it, and cut out the shapes, I was ready to bake them. They came out delicious! I was off to an excellent start.
I knew the hardest part of these cookies to replicate would the the frosting. The Gingerbread Construction Company’s frosting on their gingerbread cookies was always very hard, sweet, and extremely tasty. I immediately thought that it was probably royal icing, which is known for it’s sweetness and stiffness. I knew that royal icing consisted of powdered sugar and egg whites, but I needed a good ratio. So, I selected Royal Icing I from All Recipes. I cut this recipe in half because I knew I wouldn’t need too much. On my first try, the icing never fully dried and hardened. You can see the stickiness in these pictures:
I decided to try another batch to give to people as gifts. My first try wasn’t good enough. The only changes I made to the cookies was to roll the dough out a little thicker. The cookies were very moist and delicious once again. For the icing, I beat the eggs much longer and added a little more sugar until it got the consistency described in the recipe. Success! It took about two days to harden completely, but I could tell right away that it was going to be perfect. Once they were dry, I placed them in little tins along with the Best Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie
And I sent them off for friends and family to enjoy!
I hope you had a Merry Christmas as well!
Quaker Oats “Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies”
13 Sep 2008 Leave a Comment
in Baking, Cookies Tags: Cookies, oatmeal cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, quaker oats cookies
Believe it or not, I had never made oatmeal raisin cookies! So, being bored last night, I tried it out. I used the recipe from the Quaker Oats Old Fashioned container:
Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
(Makes 4 Dozen)
- 1/2 pound (2 sticks) of butter
- 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3 cups Quaker Oats
- 1 cup raisins
- Heat oven to 350 degrees
- Beat together butter and both sugars until creamy
- Add eggs and vanilla; beat well
- Add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well
- Stir in oats and raisins; mix well
- Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets
- Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown
Easy enough right? They came out great!
M&M Chip Cookies
26 May 2008 Leave a Comment
in Baking, Cookies Tags: chocolate chip cookies, Cookies, M&M cookies
After last time’s disaster, I decided to bake something simple: chocolate chip cookies. But for a fun twist, I used dark chocolate M&M’s instead of chocolate chips and added walnuts as well. I have a lot of experience making chocolate chip cookies, so this was no problem whatsoever. Success! I just used the Nestle Tollhouse recipe.
First Experiment: Home-made Girlscout Cookies
23 May 2008 Leave a Comment
in Baking, Cookies Tags: Girl Scout cookies, Samoa's
A few months ago, I stumbled upon a recipe on bakingbites.com for home-made Girlscout cookies, Samoa’s to be exact (http://bakingbites.com/2008/01/homemade-girl-scout-cookies-samoas). This is what they are supposed to look like.
I will admit, this was a bit of an ambitious first project. I have baked plenty in the past, but, I do not tend to have all of the proper tools needed to create masterpieces. But, I decided to give it a shot. I mixed a batch of dough, rolled it out, and cut out circles with the top of a glass. I put them in the oven… didn’t turn out so great. I couldn’t lift them off with the spatula and they crumbled. It tasted delicious though!
I had some more dough so I tried again. After they were done baking, they were vague circles. So, I took the next step. I put the shredded coconut in the oven to bake, and in the meantime, I melted the caramel in the microwave. Okay.
I started spreading the caramel on the cookies. It didn’t really have a good consistency, and would not spread out. I sprinkled on the coconut and melted chocolate. The results were slightly ridiculous:
VERDICT: DELICIOUS FAILURE
