Baking Archives | Page 3 of 6 |

Midnight Snaps (Festive Cookies for New Years Eve)

December 30, 2010 By Laura 20 Comments

My kids and I were trying to come up with some themed food for New Year’s Eve, and {JM} came up with this great idea, right off the bat: Cookies that are designed like clocks! (Oh, to have his quick, 8 year old brain!)

Right away I started trying to figure the details, and decided to start with homemade Gingersnap Cookies. To design them, we went with a white icing that hardens, and a bit of chocolate art. The design process does involve some intricate detail work, but if you enjoy the creative process and have a little patience to work with, they are worth the effort! Your party-goers will be impressed with these festive cookies, you made!

First, I’m going to start by giving you this basic Gingersnap Cookie Recipe. This post is not featuring how to make the cookies, with step by step photos, etc., but how to turn them into clocks. So, using the recipe below, bake some cookies and let them cool before getting to designing.

Participating Ingredients for Gingersnap Cookies:

3/4 shortening
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
2 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground ginger

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease cookie sheets.

In a large bowl, cream the shortening and sugar. Add the egg and beat until light and fluffy, then stir in the molasses. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger and cinnamon. Add to the egg mixture, and stir until well blended. * (See foot note below). Roll bits of dough into 1 inch balls. Dip each ball into sugar and place on cookie sheet, sugar side up, about 2 inches apart.

*Now, being the first time we made these, we did indeed use 1 inch balls of dough. However, we found that the cookies were pretty small to work with, and it was difficult making such tiny chocolate numbers! So……we advise that you make cookies twice the size, using 2 inch dough balls, and putting a little further apart on the cookie sheets. That way, your chocolate numbers can be made larger, and it will all be easier to do.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, until cookies have spread, and cookies have cracked. Let cool on wire rack.

They are delicious straight and plain, for sure! Crispy on the outside, a little softer on the inside, and amazingly good! Surely no one would notice, if just one, was missing. ; )

Again, these are small cookies, and we recommend having bigger ones to work with.

Now, once they are cool, you’ll need to whip up some icing. I am going to guess some of you already have a recipe, and I am sure there many variations out there. This one below is the one I started with. BUT, I really needed to add a lot more liquid than it calls for, being careful to keep it a very pretty thick consistency. Really, this is one of those recipes where you need to tweak as needed, depending on how yours is looking.

Note: You’ll probably want to at least make a double batch of this icing.

Participating Ingredients for Cookie Icing

1 cup confectioner’s sugar
2 teaspoons milk *
2 teaspoons light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon of preferred extract (called for almond, I used vanilla, frankly, because I hate almond. )

* I probably had to add at least 2 tablespoons of milk! But gauge for yourself.

Using a piping bag, we outlined a circle around the edge of each cookie, and filled it in, using the tip to push the icing around some, to help get it all covered.
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The icing is bound to drip a little sometimes, but if you try not to be close to the edge where the fall-off is, you should do o.k.

At the back of the photo above, you can see where we experimented with seeing if covering the whole cookie would be easier. It was just too much icing. So we stuck with our original icing plan.

Allow the iced cookies to set, so that the icing can harden.

*****

Now you’ll need to melt some chocolate to work with, otherwise known as tempering. I should do a post just on this process at some point, but you’ll need to know it for this recipe! So I’m going to share with you a quick tutorial. Now, you may have used the double-boiler method of melting chocolate before, but we’ve never had much good luck with that. Then, we learned a quick and easy trick to tempering chocolate, from Barefoot Contessa – and I am going to share it with you right now:

You’ll need: some milk chocolate -shaved or chips (we used Hershey chocolate chips, which as chips are easier to melt), a glass measuring cup, a wooden spoon, and a microwave.

In the glass measuring cup, add about half of the amount of chocolate that you’ll need. Microwave it for about 15-20 seconds. Take out, and with the handle/ butt end of the wooden spoon, mix the chips rapidly. It will likely need more melting, so put it in for 10 second increments, and stir with the end of the wooden spoon very rapidly after each time, until the chocolate is all melted smooth and glossy. Now, just as the remaining half of your chocolate, and stir rapidly some more. You really want to mix it hard and fast – the more you do, the shinier your chocolate will be.

Now that’s a tip we can all use for life!! Thanks Contessa!

***

Now below is some writing with chocolate tips. Since I didn’t photograph making the teeny-tiny numbers, here below I am using the photos of when we made the words for Jesus’ Birthday cake on Christmas.

We printed out the words on a piece of paper, having laid out the size we wanted, in the font we wanted. Then we slipped that ‘stencil’ to trace, under a piece of parchment paper. Using a fine tip on a piping bag filled with the melted chocolate, do your writing or designs!

As the chocolate cools, it will harden.

Our words came out nice, and when they were hardened, we just placed them on our cake!

Michael and the kids had chocolate left in the bag, and they just couldn’t stop themselves from playing with chocolate some more.

See how you can just pick it up?

So this is the method we used, to make tiny little number and click hands. They were probably only 3/8ths of an inch, so you can imagine it was a tad difficult. Bigger would be easier. This way, doing the chocolate work on parchment paper first, if something comes out awful, you didn’t ruin a cookie or a cake. You just start a new one on the parchment paper, and use the ones that came out best.

If the icing on the cookies is hardened, then use a bit more icing to apply the numbers and dots to the cookie.
Otherwise they won’t stick and stay put.

So here is how our Midnight Snaps came out!! Not perfect by any means. But we think they are imperfectly cute!

Now I realize I am giving you this grand idea, pretty last minute. (lol….lol….). So I wouldn’t blame you, if you went out and tried to find some large, store bought gingersnap cookies, or maybe even molasses cookies, to just bring home and decorate. That would be a time saver for sure. ; )

May you all rock around the clock on New Year’s Eve, (or at least until midnight) and may we all have a Happy New year!

Food | Easter Photo Series

April 6, 2010 By Laura 4 Comments

Just a handful of photos of our Easter food.

Our triplets helping being a team kneading the hot cross bun dough!
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Homemade hot cross buns. Divine!
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Fruit cups, admittedly, from a can. Lol.
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Glazed spiral ham.
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Easter dinner.
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The celebration of Jesus risen, always offers many edible blessings to enjoy! And we-sure-do!
Bet you all do, too!

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Christmas Gift Jars and Baked Good Ideas

January 1, 2010 By Laura 4 Comments

For those who have been visiting our blog long enough, you’d probably know that we usually get very crafty for Christmas gifts for loved ones. But unfortunately, some years we were low on both time and money, to really craft as much as we would like to for gifts. Still, we prefer to show our love to our loved ones at Christmas, with more homemade sort of gifts, if we can. So we had the idea this year of sending some Christmas gift jars and baked goods. It would be simple, inexpensive, yet appreciated we were sure. Who doesn’t love food…right?

You should know, this post is not sharing the actual recipes we used. We are just sharing with you the idea of gift jars, and some presentation ideas, as inspiration, for your own gift giving. Gift jar recipes are very easy to find though! You can just do a web search, or….check Pinterest for a wealth of jar recipe ideas! Here though, we just want to show you what we came up with.

So some jars we made up with most of the ingredients to make Oatmeal Raisin Cookies.
All they needed to add was the butter, egg and vanilla!

Most of our gift recipients got a jar just like this, with the measured dry ingredients and directions. But we knew my 2 bachelor brothers, and my Dad, were not going to be baking anything. lol. So…..we baked theirs for them, and filled up the jar with the cookies. Cookies in a jar! So there is another idea for you!

We also gave some people the dry ingredients for this Curried Lentil Soup. What a big project THIS turned out to be. Because the recipe calls for red and yellow lentils. After visiting 6 stores all over town, over the course of a week, we settled for red and green. Maybe you know better where to get them? If not, don’t toss the idea all together, if you like the idea of soups. Again, search for recipes, and you’ll find more than you can shake a . . . . . . a . . . . . . spoon at. 🙂

Initially, we could only find tan, and made some soup ourselves to test the recipe. Not being lentil experts, we thought only the color was different. But ummm….not so much. We HOPE the red & green works out alright for everyone.

We also made loaves of fresh homemade bread (not pictured) , and included those in most packages.

And homemade donuts! : D

We got calls and messages from everyone, and they all seemed to really enjoy our tasty gifts! We think they probably ‘tasted the love‘. But one did tell us the bread and donuts were kind of hardish, or heavy, when they arrived. Now….the bread crust is. You can knock on the loaf, but it’s soft on the inside. It makes excellent toast, it’s great for sandwiches, and it goes well with soup, too!

But the donuts, being fried, we really weren’t sure HOW they would fair in shipping. So I guess they arrived….a little dense. Now, we take these things very seriously. So, we asked ourselves what we may have learned from that outcome, and this is what we came up with:

Don’t share our donuts anymore!!
No, seriously, we’ll be working on our recipe, to make them a little lighter. 😀 For the rare occasion we make them again, because they aren’t the healthiest regular food to eat. But they are a real treat, and that’s in part what make the holidays so special.

Some pretty ribbon on your jars, with an attached tag that shares the recipe or directions, is a very warm and thoughtful gift, for anyone who eats!
Your tag can be hand-written as well. It actually makes it all the more handmade-appeal.

We hope these ideas make your Christmas gift-giving season fun, delicious, and budget-friendly.

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Political Cookies

November 22, 2009 By Laura 3 Comments

We have a de-LICIOUS roll recipe coming right up, submitted by a regular and loved blog reader, Paula. But first, we just wanted to share with you some of our oldest daughter, {A}’s, creative cookies she made last week. (She is an ambitious baker these days, if you don’t know.)

{A} has a very strong interest in the Kennedy Family, and has as of late, been studying their family history in great depth. That’s not to say she is a fan of all of them. ; ) But, she does like who Robert F. Kennedy was. So much so, that she made sugar cookies for his birthday on Friday, November 20th. She thought it was a great excuse to practice her piping skills.

There were many duplicates of these cookies above, so this is just a sample of each design. She even had more detailed pre-sketches on paper, but realized they would be really hard to pipe. I think they came out really cute though. I also think it’s cute that she made these. lol

On a side note, I just wanted to mention that we’ll be doing a little renovation on the Home Page (just a little one). So if you notice things are out of sorts at any point, that’s why. : )

And that, I believe, was my shortest post, ever. I deserve a cookie, don’t you think?

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Feast Day of Michaelmas

September 30, 2009 By Laura 2 Comments

On Tuesday, we celebrated Michaelmas, and studied this Feast Day for school. (Homeschooling, that is.)

For anyone who may not know, Sept. 29 has been the feast day established by the Roman Church, to celebrate St. Michael the Archangel, since the the 15th century. Although, Archangels Gabriel and Raphael were added to be acknowledged on this day as well, in the 20th century.

We reviewed much of what we had already known about Archangel Michael: that he is the most powerful of angels, that he was present and had great part in some of the greatest Biblical battles, and is in fact appointed “Defender of the Catholic Faith“. It is St. Michael, who is even the angel that escorts all souls to eternity!

We continued to learn the significance of Gabriel and Raphael as well, whose roles in history cannot be dismissed.

It was especially interesting to study once again, the Ranking Order and Marching Order of Angels, which is as follows:

The First Triad

Closest to the Throne

Seraphim – Continually sing God’s praises

Cherubim – Worship God

Thrones – Oversee Justice in Heaven

The Second Triad

Guard Heaven and Earth

Dominions – Assign duties to other angels

Virtues – Work Miracles

Powers – Protect us from evil

The Third Triad

Earth Duty

Principalities – Protect nations and cities

Archangels – Deliver messages from God

Angels – Guard us personally

Feasting on fat geese has long since been a tradition of the English, Scots and Celts, as have been carrot bouquets given as gifts! Eating goose did not appeal to us, and I personally don’t like carrots either, although I do eat them to be a good example. But it would have been hard for me to eat carrots, and associate it with a celebration of any kind. Thankfully, yet another traditional food has been a breakfast bread called St. Michael’s bannock, which Daddy/Michael made and we had with dinner, instead, and it was delicious!

It is very quick and easy to make, so if you would like the recipe, you can grab it HERE.

{A} also made angel cookies, using just an ordinary sugar cookie recipe.

My mother loved angels. That was her thing. So whenever I hear of, see, read about, or think of angels for any reason, I think of my mother.

Ever since we began home schooling, we have entertained the idea of naming our ‘school’. I know many homeschoolers do. While we have never encountered a real need to do so ourselves, we have heard that it can be helpful in getting a discount in purchasing home school supplies and material sometimes, as one benefit. Besides the fact that we haven’t found a reason to, and granted, we could very well be unaware of many more benefits of doing so, I also personally felt a real weight of sorts, about such a decision. Whether we needed one or not, following through and naming our school felt really important. It seemed like something we should think about long and hard, because it would have permanence, and reflect us in some way.

For at least a year, we have considered naming our school in reference to St. Michael, the Archangel. He has always been {A}’s favorite angel, and has been the focus of many projects and conversations of hers. We all, too, have been drawn to him, being able to identify with him in so many ways. For example, in defending our faith, which we must do now and then, and defending why we live as we do, which we actually don’t feel the need to do much at all, except to say our life style too mostly revolves around our faith. (Although there are COUNTLESS other reasons/perks/blessings!!)

Obviously, also, one of the leaders of our family/household’s name is Michael, and one of our boys has his namesake as well. So we are partial to the name, and all that name represents: “Who is like God.” Of course, we are all made in His likeness, but that happens to be what the name Michael actually means.

And so….because the name still seemed fitting after all of this time, for whatever reasons we may not even know of yet, and aside from the fact that we may never use it in any way, except to finally do it, we thought it would be a good day to agree as a family, and name our school:

I know, like anything angel related, as simple as cut out cookies, this name will also remind me of my mother. Not only because she loved angels, but because of the sheer JOYFUL reaction she gave me, when I told her we decided to home school the kids. She startled me, actually. She literally cheered out loud, and had tears in her eyes. So I think one way or another, she would have been happy with our school’s name as well.

If you home school, have YOU named your school? If so, would you share the name you chose with us, and the significance behind choosing your name? Also, if you know of any real benefits in naming your school that we should know of, it would be wonderful if you shared that with us as well.

We hope you all had a wonderful Michaelmas!

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