Posts Tagged ‘Baking’
Valentine’s Day Sugar Cookies
As I surveyed our pantry, I realized that although we just went grocery shopping we did not have much by way of snacks. I decided to make sugar cookies with the kids and we had a blast. I absolutely love the way the kids wear flour and powdered sugar and don’t bother trying to hide the fact that they are sneaking sugar cookie upon sugar cookie as soon as they hit the plate.
This is the sugar cookie recipe that my mom has used since my sister and I were little girls. It is just the perfect flavor. We make these cookies every year for Christmas but this is the first time I have made them for another holiday.
Ingredients
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 t. vanilla
1 egg
1 t. cream of tartar
1 cup margarine, softened
1/2 t. almond extract
2 1/2 cup flour
1 t. baking soda
Mix powdered sugar, margarine, vanilla, almond extract, and egg. Stir in the remaining ingredients. I usually start with my Kitchenaid mixer and then finish mixing the dough by hand. Cover and refrigerate for at least three hours. When it comes out of the refrigerator, it may seem crumbly. Mix it up and knead the dough by hand. Roll out on a lightly floured surface (or my favorite Pampered Chef pastry mat!) and cut with cookie cutters.
Bake on a lightly greased cookie sheet at 375 degrees for 7-8 minutes. The longer they cook, the crispier they will be. Cool on a baking rack.
Once completely cool, frost with your favorite frosting.
I usually use a buttercream frosting, but this time I used a powdered sugar frosting.
Ingredients
2 cups powdered sugar
2 T. vanilla
2 T. milk
food coloring if desired
Mix the vanilla and milk and add powdered sugar. Continue to mix until it is almost a pourable consistency but not quite.
I also made a chocolate powdered sugar recipe. Following the above directions, I just added 2 T. of cocoa powder to the powdered sugar before combining with the liquid. Next time, I will probably not add the vanilla or only add about 1/2 teaspoon. I felt like the frosting was much overpowered by the vanilla. The kids don’t have a problem with it though!
Once you cover the cookies with frosting (it will be messy!!), allow to dry for at least an hour.
Tags: Baking, cookies, decorating, dessert, frosting, Holidays, Jennifer, valentine's day
Swiss Meringue Cookies
Swiss Meringue cookies make a sweet delicate Valentine’s treat. For these cookies, I used Martha Stewart’s Swiss Meringue recipe.
Ingredients
4 large egg whites
2 cups of sugar
2 pinches cream of tartar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Using a double boiler, combine egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar whisking constantly until the sugar is dissolved and mixture is warm to the touch (you don’t need to boil it). Transfer ingredients to mixer and beat with the whisk attachment. Begin beating on a low setting and eventually increase speed.
Beat for about ten minutes or until stiff peaks form.
The egg mixture should stay at a peak when you lift the whisk attachment.
Add in the vanilla and food coloring.
Drop or pipe on to a parchment covered cookie sheet. Bake at 175 degrees for 2 hours or until they lift off of the parchment easily.
Aren’t these a sweet treat for your favorite Valentine? I made mine a light shade of pink and I also made this chocolate meringue recipe, too.
Linking to:
Fruit Cocktail Cake
I have been collecting Gooseberry Patch cookbooks for years, ever since I received the first one, Celebrate Autumn, as a gift from my SIL Rhonda back in 1997. I even had a recipe accepted for publication in their first edition of Quick and Easy (that will have to be in another post!).
For a few years the owners kind of strayed away from their roots with all kinds of other kitchen and household stuff. I hadn’t received a catalog in a long time and chalked it up to not ordering anything in a while. I recently discovered they are back on track and are concentrating on their publications (and no more catalogs). They have a wonderful blog with lots of free recipes, including this one for Fruit Cocktail Cake which is from their cookbook, Dinner$ on a Dime. I had never heard of this cake before and just had to give it a try, especially since I had all the ingredients on hand … and needed something to blog about since I haven’t been very creative since Christmas!
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking soda
2 eggs
15-oz. can fruit cocktail–regular pictured here, but I actually used “Light” (do NOT drain)
Directions:
Beat eggs. Add the dry ingredients (sugar, flour and baking soda). Add the undrained fruit cocktail and mix well.
Pour into a greased 9” x 13” baking pan.
Bake at 350° for 30 to 40 minutes, until cake tests done with a toothpick inserted in center.
Optional: Top with a dusting of powdered sugar. Makes 12 servings
And the verdict: it was easy, cheap, and tasty! This cake was moist and kind of spongy. I used the light fruit cocktail, because a cup and a half of sugar seemed to be enough sweetener! I think I’ll pick up a couple of cans of fruit cocktail to have on hand in case I ever need a last minute dessert!
Gooseberry Patch cookbooks can be purchased on their website, in local stores such as JoAnn’s and Cracker Barrel, and from Amazon.com. This is not a paid advertisement, I just love their cookbooks!
Tags: Baking, Cakes, Debbie, five ingredients or less, quick and easy
Easy Homemade Granola Bars
Hello and HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope this post finds all of you happy and healthy and having a great start to 2011! So, it is that time of year to ask that question…What is your New Year’s Resolution? I have had somewhat of a hard time coming up with one for myself. I have told friends that the best thing I can think is to stop spending my husband’s money! We’ll see how that one works out for me! ;) I know many of you, like me, also hope to spend this new year eating healthy and taking better care of our bodies. I thought the best way to start us off in 2011 would be to put up a post with a healthy theme…a super easy, quick, and yummy good-for-you snack.
I know after only one time of making these that I will never get store bought granola bars again! Here is a recipe for granola bars adapted from one I found on allrecipes.com. I used some of the suggestions by other cooks on the website and it really simplifies the measuring process even more.
Easy Homemade Granola Bars
- 3 cups quick oats
- 3 cups of any combination of anything else you want to go in
- (for my first batch I used about a cup of coconut, half a cup of sliced almonds, half a cup of crushed cashews, half a cup of dried cranberries and half a cup of semi-sweet chocolate morsels)…but anything you want will work!
- 1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add condensed milk and butter and combine with hands until thoroughly mixed. Spread into a Pampered Chef Large Bar Pan. Use a piece of wax paper to press the granola down to condense it and push it into the corners and sides of the pan. Bake in preheated oven for 20 – 25 minutes. When the outer edges are a golden brown the granola bars will be a nice chewy consistency. Leave them in a little longer if you prefer them crunchier. Let cool in pan for 3 minutes then use a pizza roller to cut into bars. Remove to a wire rack and let cool completely. Enjoy!
Allrecipes.com says these are 144 calories per bar as prepared in their recipe. Not too bad for a snack that contains ALL natural ingredients. Go look at the back of your store bought granola bars and see what their ingredients are! YIKES!
Recommendations for next time: I will include some flax seed and/or wheat germ for more fiber. I think I will add at least one, if not two teaspoons of pure vanilla extract or almond extract. Maybe a tablespoon of brown sugar and half a teaspoon of some cinnamon, cloves, etc. I will also add more nuts to get that protein in there even though the calories will go up.
I am really excited to look for fun, new, yummy ingredients to make these bars. I am going to work on them to try and make them a great snack to eat before, during, and after my runs. I am training to run my first marathon this March, so you might see more healthy cooking recipes from me and less super chocolate cakes.
Okay, maybe not!!!
By the way – here are the ingredients on the back of the granola bars I usually eat. A whole lot more than oats, nuts, butter, chocolate and coconut:
GRANOLA (WHOLE GRAIN ROLLED OATS, BROWNSUGAR, CRISP RICE [RICE FLOUR, SUGAR, SALT, MALTED BARLEY EXTRACT],WHOLE GRAIN ROLLED WHEAT, SOYBEAN OIL, DRIED COCONUT, WHOLE WHEATFLOUR, SODIUM BICARBONATE, SOY LECITHIN, CARAMEL COLOR, NONFAT DRYMILK), SEMISWEET CHOCOLATE CHIPS (SUGAR, CHOCOLATE LIQUOR, COCOABUTTER, SOY LECITHIN, VANILLA EXTRACT), CORN SYRUP, BROWN RICE CRISP(WHOLE GRAIN BROWN RICE, SUGAR, MALTED BARLEY FLOUR, SALT), INVERTSUGAR, SUGAR, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, GLYCERIN, SOYBEAN OIL. CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF SORBITOL,CALCIUM CARBONATE, SALT, WATER, SOY LECITHIN, MOLASSES, NATURAL ANDARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, BHT (PRESERVATIVE), CITRIC ACID.
Tags: Baking, granola bars, healthy, Marissa, Snacks
Macadamia Brittle Cookies
Here is my last cookie post for a while…I promise! I figured I should probably share with you one of the recipes I made for my 1st Annual Cookie Exchange! I tried something that I have never made before (which is ALWAYS scary when you are preparing for a party). I highly recommend testing new recipes PRIOR to the time you are going to make them to share with people. Who knows, these could have turned out to be more like Messy Brown Chips instead of Macadamia Brittle Cookies.
Luckily for me, they turned out exactly as they should have. At least they tasted great to me! They are a definite toss back to the great taste of pralines. This cookie has many different layers of taste. You first get a taste of crunchy butter cookie, but then as the praline mixture starts to dissolve in your mouth it has the fantastic vibrancy of the macadamia nuts…true Hawaiian delicacies. The after taste, I cannot quite pin down, put it is pretty darn great too. I would not rate this as one of my favorite cookies ever or anything, but it is rare to find a treat with such fanciful layers. A wonderful addition to a holiday party!
Macadamia Brittle Cookies
Ingredients:
- 8 ounces coarsely chopped, toasted macadamia nuts
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
- ½ cup confectioners’ sugar
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups semisweet chocolate morsels, melted in microwave or double boiler
Directions:
- In a heavy saucepan, cook sugar over moderate heat: shake the saucepan 2 or 3 times until the sugar melts, then cook without stirring until the sugar becomes caramel colored. Remove from heat and add ½ cup of macadamia nuts. Pour the praline nut mixture onto a cookie sheet covered with wax paper and let cool completely.
- Grease 2 cookie sheets. Break apart praline mixture and grind in a food processor. Add the remaining toasted macadamia nuts and continue grinding until medium fine.
- In a large bowl of an electric mixture, cream together butter and confectioners’ sugar on medium speed. Add flour and praline mixture and combine until well blended.
- Roll tablespoonfuls of dough into 2 ½ inch logs. Arrange them 1 inch apart on cookie sheets and flatten each log slightly. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly colored.
- Let cookies cool in pan for 5 minutes then transfer to wire rack to cool completely. When cool, dip in melted chocolate and let cool on wax paper.
Tags: Baking, cookies, macadamia nuts, Marissa, party
Chocolate Crinkles
Here is yummy recipe #2 from my first annual cookie exchange. I think it is a fairly well known cookie. Chocolate crinkles are basically a brownie mixture that you chill for HOURS. After waiting and waiting and waiting, you take the dough out of the fridge, roll it into balls and coat it with powdered sugar before baking. It is totally worth the wait. This was the other cookie from the exchange that was gone the first day I had them. So yummy and addictive! Thanks H.B. for contributing!
.Chocolate Crinkles
- 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 cups white sugar
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 4 eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
Directions:
- In a medium bowl, mix together cocoa, white sugar, and vegetable oil. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; stir into the cocoa mixture. Cover dough, and chill for at least 4 hours.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Roll dough into one inch balls. Coat each ball in confectioners’ sugar before placing onto prepared cookie sheets.
- Bake in preheated oven for 10 to 12 minutes. Let stand on the cookie sheet for a minute before transferring to wire racks to cool.
These cookies have a wonderful cracked texture with the powdered sugar. They will add beauty and taste to any holiday place setting!
Holiday Graham Cracker Bark
My FAVORITE recipe from the cookie party so far!!! How can I be so sure it is my favorite!? Not only have I eaten my share from the cookie swap, but I have also eaten all the leftovers from the platters that were brought to share during the party. I am a huge fan of toffee, but this might possibly take the place of any toffee recipes I have. It isn’t exactly the same, but it has an amazing melt in your mouth buttery flavor. And it sounds so easy to make! I cannot wait to try making it myself and I HIGHLY suggest you try it ASAP!!!
Thank you J.G. for this AH-MAZING recipe! Oh, and I have no pictures of it to share because I ate it all!!! Sorry!
Holiday Graham Cracker Bark
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup butter
- 3/4 cups chopped walnuts (or your choice)
- 6 ounces semi sweet chips
- 1 package graham crackers
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9 x 13 pan with tin foil and cover with one layer of graham cracker pieces. Combine butter and brown sugar in a sauce pan. Bring to a low boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in nuts. Pour sugar mixture over crackers and then bake in preheated oven for 8 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for five minutes. Melt chocolate chips in the microwave and pour over top of cooled grahams. Cool in fridge. ENJOY!
You will SO NOT be sorry if you try this recipe. Talk about WOW factor!!!
Molasses Sugar Cookies
Update: The Pioneer Woman , one of our very favorite bloggers, is sponsoring a holiday give-away.
I’m thinking this might be like the new printer Marissa was posting about on FB the other night!! All you have to do is go to the Tasty Kitchen section of her blog and post your favorite holiday dish — since this cookie is a family favorite I’m going with this recipe!
Every year at this time, our mom would break out her Molasses Sugar Cookie recipe and would start rolling those balls out, coating them in sugar and baking them to that perfect finish where they have just enough crunch but are soft and chewy at the same time.
I have a little secret to admit…somehow in the ten years I have been married and on my own (immediately after college), I haven’t made these cookies once. Not once. It isn’t like I haven’t wanted them every holiday it is just that every time I head over to my mom’s or my sister’s they have already made the cookies and I go home with a bag full! This year, though, I got to send my mom home with a bag of cookies!
These are the perfect cookies for a cookie swap or to put out for Santa!
Molasses Sugar Cookies
Melt 3/4c shortening in large bowl (microwave). Cool. Add 1 cup sugar, 1/4c molasses and 1 egg. Beat well. Add 2t baking soda, 2c flour, 1t ground cloves, 1t cinnamon, 1/2t ginger, 1/2t salt.
Form into 1 inch balls and roll in granulated sugar.
Place on greased cookie sheet.
Bake at 375 for 8 to 10 minutes. Cool on a rack.
Tags: Baking, cookies, Cooking, Jennifer, Pioneer Woman
Pikachu Birthday Party Cookies
Hello blog world! Yes, we are still alive over here at Threaded Together! Between family trips, work trips, Halloween, and more, we are keeping busy doing all sorts of things that have kept us away from craft posting for a little while. We’ll try and get back on the blogging wagon though, especially as the holidays approach!
Yesterday we celebrated my son’s 9th birthday! I know, I am getting so old! For his birthday we decided to play it low key this year and just had a group of boys (12 to be exact) come over to hang out at the house. We ate pizza, watched movies, colored, and snacked on chips, cookies, and cupcakes. They DEVOURED the four pizzas and two boxes of wings I ordered and there were only 3 of 24 cookies leftover at the end.
We did not have any a cake at this party. My son does NOT like cake. I know, right? Clearly he is not my son, but I’ll have to figure that one out another day… Instead of cake I made him his favorite type of cookie, sugar cookies, and decorated them to look like Pikachu from the Pokémon card trading game. Go figure, he didn’t like the cookies either. Apparently I didn’t make the right KIND of sugar cookies. Don’t let this lead you to believe the cookies didn’t taste good. They were awesome. My kid just has issues :).
Instead of walk you through how I did it, check out this great post on Snack or Die. Apparently, knowledge of this website is a necessity if you have a boy ranging from age 5 to 15 who likes to play video games! They have cupcakes, cookies, and more, all decorated to look like characters and worlds from video games and shows. Super cool.
I followed their tutorial exactly, all the way down to the fact that I had to cut the cheeks and chin off of my bunny shaped cookies to round out the faces. My differences: for cheeks I used red-hots, chocolate morsels for the ears and eyes, and fruit by the foot pieces for the mouth. I also just used regular butter cream icing spread over them.
Orange-Lemon Cake
My husband loves those incredibly unhealthy, gooey, sticky bundt cakes that you can buy in the grocery store bakery. When we were first married, that is what he requested every year for his birthday. Eventually we moved to other treats, but he still loves those cakes. When I saw a picture and link to recipe for Orange-Lemon Cake in this month’s Taste of Home Simple and Delicious magazine (LOVE that magazine!), I knew that my husband would love it. It turned out beautiful, tasted pretty good and he loved it!
Orange-Lemon Cake
You need:
In a mixer or large bowl, mix the first five ingredients together.
Pour into a pan. The recipe calls for a fluted pan but I used a sunflower pan with a middle (something I won’t do again…see below!).
Bake for 35-40 minutes at 350 degrees. My cake had to bake for about 45 minutes. Let cool for 10m and put on a wire rack to cool completely.
After cake has cooled make the glaze by combining the powdered sugar and orange juice. Pour glaze on cake. As you can see, the glaze is not the gorgeous white color that it is in the magazine picture. Does anyone know how to get that beautiful bright glaze color?
Next time, I would probably use a bundt pan of some sorts. The sunflower pan has a middle and when I was pouring the glaze, it pooled in the middle of the cake. When you are finished, you have a beautiful cake that tastes pretty good too!
Tags: Baking, Cake Decorating, Cakes, Cooking, icing, Jennifer
