The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Florentines (Almond Lace Cookies)

Florentines are crisp, delicate cookies that are pliable when taken from the oven and may be cut with cookie cutters or formed into shapes while they are still pretty hot.  They are often used as a garnish, or "crunch component" in plated desserts, and that's what I've used them for in a couple upcoming posts. 

Anyway, without further chit chat, here's how you make them.

You will need:

3 oz flour (pastry flour is suggested, but you can use AP as well.  I did - it's what I had on hand.)

3 oz granulated sugar

3 oz softened unsalted butter

3  1/2 oz corn syrup

3 oz blanched almonds, sliced and crushed

Combine the butter and sugar in a mixer,

Then add the flour.  And then the corn syrup.  Beat until creamy.  Then add in the crushed almonds and mix until the nuts completely incorporated.

Scrape the dough out onto a piece of parchment paper

and form into a log, lengthwise on the parchment paper.

Roll the parchment over the dough log and tighten, using a bench scraper to help squeeze the parchment against the dough and tighten the whole thing so there are no air bubbles and the log lengthens and its diameter becomes uniform - about 1  3/4 inches or so.

Then twist the ends and tie them to seal, and place in the freezer or fridge until the dough is firm.

When the dough is cold and firm, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and get out a pan and line it with either parchment paper or a silpat, if you have one.

Cut 1/8 inch slices from your log of dough (though in looking at the image below, obviously I cut them thicker.  I wanted large circles for my recent purposes).

Place on the baking surface, with plenty of space between them, as they spread quite a bit as they cook.

You only want to do a few at a time, if you're planning to shape them in any way, as once they start to cool they will become less pliable.  If that happens, you can put them back in the oven briefly to warm (and soften).

You want to bake them until they are completely golden brown.  The ones you see below are only just starting to brown around the edges.  See how much they spread when they cook?  That's why you want a lot of space between them.

Ah, this is better:

Now, when you first take them out, they will be way too hot and way too soft to work with. 

In the picture above, I'm trying to lift up the edge of the cookie with a spatula - it's too soft to hold together with the rest of the cookie - if I continued to lift, the cookie would tear. 

Wait about a minute once you take them out of the oven, and then try.  They should come off the parchment or silpat easily.  They will be hot, there's just no getting around that if you want to shape them or use cookie cutters. 

If you want to cut out specific shapes, place the soft cookie on a cutting board and press down HARD with your cookie cutter.  The nuts make it a little harder to cut through than you might expect.  Once you've pressed the cutter in to the cookie, pull or cut away the outer excess cookie and then lift the cutter.  (The trimmed edges are great crumbled up and sprinkled on ice cream.  Or you can just eat them while you work.  Or feed them to the birds.)  Set the cookies on a rack to finish cooling.  Keep in mind these are very, very brittle, so handle them gently.

Another option is to shape the cookies - the whole cookies, right off the silpat - into a thin cylindrical cookie.  This can be filled with whipped cream, or dipped in chocolate, or just left plain.  Anyway, here's what you do:

Get a few wooden spoons with straight handles ready.  Lift a hot cookie up and drape one end over the handle of the spoon.

Working quickly, roll the rest of the cookie around the spoon handle and set on a rack to cool.

Once the cookie has firmed up, remove the wooden spoon.

Another option - something I didn't do this time around, so I don't have a picture - you could press the cookie into a ramekin or a small cup or a muffin tin to form little cookie cups.

You can also wrap them around metal cone forms to make little cookie cones.  Or just shape them by hand into something free form.  Have fun!

Here are a bunch that I did recently, in preparing for this post and some of the "Valentine's Day Ideas" posts:

Now, another thing you can do is melt some chocolate

You can microwave it if you want to, but just nuke it for short periods of time - 30 seconds - and then stir, then 30 seconds and then stir - so you don't burn it.

 

When it's all melty and smooth, one thing you can do is take one of your heart cutouts (or whatever shape you did) and spread some of the chocolate on one cookie and then sandwich that with another cookie.  The chocolate will seep through the holes of the cookie a bit before it hardens.  Here's what you get:

Or you can spread it just on one half of a cookie...

Or drizzle some chocolate over the cylinders...

 

Or dip the ends of cylinders (or cones, in this case) directly in the chocolate...

Be creative!  Have fun!  And remember - you get to eat your mistakes!

Warning (with the final update!) : Despite What the Calendar Tells You, Christmas isn't Over Until the Christmas Cookie Posts are Done.

UPDATE - 1/11/08 at 11:05 am, eastern standard time...

That said, I'm going to try, in my two hours of childless, husbandless time this morning, to put up the remaining 4 posts about cookies (and candy) I made before Christmas.  Because I have to.  I took pictures and everything.

I know.  I really need to work on my organizational skills.

Anyway, here goes nuthin....

UPDATE:  It's not gonna happen.  I've got one post done (see below), and maybe I'll get another one done before I have to get the kids...uploading the pictures slows me down, but I can't just post a recipe without illustrations.  Where's the fun in that?  Where's the sudden hunger pangs?

FURTHER UPDATE:  Okay, well 2 out of 4 done before I went to get the kids.  That's not too bad.  Hopefully I can get the other two done some time later today.

THIRD UPDATE:  It's ten past ten - and I finished another post (see below).  One to go.  And I'll do it tomorrow because I'm DONE for today. 

I'M DONE!!!

Let the rejoicing begin.  And please see below for the final installment of the Christmas Cookie Marathon.

In the Cookie Jar: Torrone

Before you say "hey - wait a minute - torrone is a candy!  Not a cookie!" - I realize that.  And I sat here just now thinking about that and wondering if I should make a whole new category for candy...or should I just lump it into the "On My Menu" list?  Or?  Or?  It froze me in my tracks.

Fortunately, my sister interceded and made this insightful comment: 

"Well, you can still put it in a cookie jar."

And you know what?  I can!  And you can, too!

So let's cook up some sugar, shall we?

The recipe I used can be found here - it's on the Food Network, courtesy of Emeril Lagasse.

One of the things you'll need is edible wafer paper. 

I initially ordered mine from Sugarcraft, but that very same day I got a call from someone in their customer service dept to let me know they were out of stock.  While this threw a monkey-wrench into my plans, I really, really appreciated how quickly they called me.  I was able to order it from somewhere else the same day.  But still - go check out their website - if you are into any kind of baking or sugar work or candy making or just bored at work, they've got a LOT of cool tools and gadgets and products to look at.

I ended up ordering the wafer paper through GourmetSleuth.com.  That's another cool site as well, and it's more about all kinds of cooking, not just baking.  I need to go back and browse around - they seem to have a heavy focus on Mexican cooking supplies, which is appealing to me....

Anyway - you will need some of this wafer paper.  The torrone is very sticky and unless it has something like the wafer paper to adhere to, it will just reach out and wrap itself around anything or anyone in the way.  Really.  Remember how I used to have a cat? 

Okay, so you've got your wafer paper trimmed and placed in a 13 x 9 inch baking pan, per the recipe, and you've got all the ingredients assembled - those would include granulated sugar, honey, egg whites, confectioners sugar, toasted almond slivers, and lemon zest.

You will also need a candy thermometer - the temperature of the sugar is rather important.

So first thing you'll want to do is get your sugar and honey heated in a sausepan.

While that starts to melt together and heat up, you should have everything else ready to go.  This means you'll want to pre-toast the almond slivers and have your lemon zest all grated and standing by.  And you'll also want to have your egg whites already in the SUPER CLEAN bowl of your mixer, and the sugar ready to pour.  Once the sugar reaches the proper temperature, a lot of things will need to happen rapidly (I typed "rabidly," which could also apply) so you need to be ready.

The sugar mixture will take a while to come up to the proper temperature.  Which is fine, because it's kind of cool to watch the progress...

Little hot spots of honey lava, bubbling up to the surface.  Stir it a bit so it doesn't scorch....

So what temperature are we at right now?  We need to bring it up to 315 F....

Not there yet... If you can't stand waiting, you could always start whipping the egg whites. 

You want to bring them to soft peaks, and then add in the sugar and bring it all up to stiff peaks.  Don't over-beat them - they'll dry out.  In fact, if you want to just get the egg/sugar mixture to a soft peak stage and leave them there until just before you need them, you can do that, too.

Okay, let's take a peek at the sugar again.

We're making progress...

Temperature is climbing...

I am pretty sure I mentioned this before in my post about Pecan Squares that you need to be VERY CAREFUL when working with boiling sugar.  Anything boiling will hurt if it pours or splatters on you, but boiling sugar is sticky, and if it sticks to you, trust me, IT. WILL. HURT.

Okay, back to staring at the boiling sugar....it's kind of mesmerizing...hypnotic...very cool...

Okay, keep an eye on that thermometer - we're getting close now.

Okay, put your camera down and be ready to get this pot off the heat.  When you hit 315, pull it off the burner and stir the mixture to cool it slightly - to 300.

If you haven't done so yet, now is a good time to bring the egg whites from soft peaks to stiff peaks.  Once the sugar is down to 300 F, it's time for the tricky part.  With the mixer still running (at a slow to moderate speed) pour the hot sugar SLOWWWWWWLY but STEADILY into the egg whites (meringue).  You want to try to run it in a thin stream right down the inside of the bowl - not actually touching the edge of the bowl, but just barely in.  Main thing is, you want to try to avoid having the hot sugar drizzle onto the whisk attachment and splatter hot sugar all around the room. 

The hot sugar mixture will double the volume of your meringue, but that will go back down as the mixture cools a bit.  Keep the mixer running to help cool the sugar/meringue.  It will thicken as well.  At this point, fold in the almonds and the lemon zest.

Now another fun part - but without the burn factor.  Get your 13 x 9 inch baking pan, already lined with the wafer paper...You'll need to pour the mixture into that pan and very gently spread it to fill the pan evenly.  The stuff sticks, like I said before.  You can dip your fingers in water and press the torrone gently into the corners of the pan - the water will help prevent sticking.  Once you've got the mixture pretty well spread out, then top it with the other trimmed pieces of wafer paper.  Let it cool on a wire rack for a bit.

Then, with a "no guts, no glory" attitude, flip the pan over onto a sheet of parchment, and your giant piece of torrone should come out.  If it doesn't...give it a minute - the weight of the candy should release whatever hold it has on the inside of the pan.

(I let mine cool on the rack, and as it cooled, it drooped into the spaces between the wire...which is why I'm suggesting the parchment paper.)

Let it finish cooling, and then cut it into pieces.

I'll tell you this - it's very smushy and will be...um...challenging to work with.  But it's fun, and it'll impress your friends, who didn't realize you could actually make candy.

Someone told me it tastes like those "Bit O Honey" candies...not my personal favorite - the honey, I mean, but it's authentic - Torrone is traditionally made with honey.

I would like to try another recipe, with different flavors.  When I do, I'll let you know how it comes out.

In the Cookie Jar: Gingerbread Houses

I've never made a gingerbread house before.  Well, actually, I made one from a kit back when I was maybe 13 or so.  But I had never created my own templates - until now.  Well, last month.  (December.) 

We were watching a Gingerbread House competition on the Food Network and Alex said he wished we could make one some day.  So I thought - I'm already making a zillion cookies - what's one more project? 

Honestly, I had been wanting to make one anyway; I just didn't think I'd have the time.  But hey, if my kid wants to make a gingerbread house, then that becomes the most important project.

So, I have a good sturdy gingerbread recipe that I'd used in the past to make gingerbread bowls.  I hoped to do gingerbread bowls this year (well, last year, since I'm writing in January), but I wasn't sure if I'd have time.

The recipe is from Marcia Adams' book Christmas in the Heartland, published by Crown in October 1992.  It's a beautiful book - not just recipes, but crafts and traditions and information and a cozy warm feeling. 

But I digress.

Here we go...

The wet ingredients...and their good friends, the fats and sugars:

2 cups of unsalted butter (4 sticks), room temp.

1  1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

2/3 cup molasses

1  1/2 cups dark corn syrup

4 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp orange extract

6 large eggs

And...

The dry ingredients:

17 cups all-purpose flour

2 T baking soda

2 tsp salt

2 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp ground cloves

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground allspice

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

(This is a big recipe.  You can cut it in half if it's easier to work in smaller batches of dough.)

Okay, in your mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugars until fluffy.  Add in the molasses, corn syrup, extracts and eggs while the mixer is still running

and beat until well combined.

While the mixer is running, combine all the dry ingredients in another bowl with a whisk.

Add the flour mixture gradually.  The dough will become extremely stiff, and you will probably have to finish by hand, either in a bowl or on a board.

Divide this into quarters, wrap in plastic and put this in the fridge.

Now, about the template.  I decided I would make two houses so that each of my kids could decorate one, rather than suffer the hell of them fighting over who gets to do what to this wall and that roof.  And since it was the first one I was designing, I figured I should make it simple.

I have these square 12" x 12" sheets of graph paper that I'd bought for designing quilt squares and applique pieces.  I drew a rectangle 6" x 8 " for the longer sides of the house, and a narrow rectangle 4" wide with a point at the top for the short side pieces - 8" at the highest point and 6" at the lowest point, and then the roof, which was 9" x  4".  Fortunately all 3 template pieces fit on the one sheet of paper.

Then I taped the single sheet of paper to my countertop and covered that with a sheet of parchment and taped that down.  then I traced the templates onto several sheets of parchment, so I'd have many sets, just in case any ripped or got damp and curled or anything like that.

Then I cut out all the pieces and set them aside.

Now - take out one of the pieces of chilled dough and roll out to about 1/4 inch thick.  Try to roll it out so that you can fit several pieces of the template on it at once.

 

Then, holding the parchment in place with one hand, carefully cut around the template pieces with a knife or pizza wheel or bench scraper. 

And remove the paper.

Fun, huh?  You'll need 2 of each shape to make one house.

Place the dough sections on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and place in the fridge for an hour.

Preheat your oven to 350 F and bake for a good 30 minutes or so.  Take the pans out and let the sections of dough cool on the pans.  They should be hard.

As you can see in the image above, as they bake they will spread slightly, and the sections of your house may run together a tiny bit.  Just wait until they're completely dry - they'll snap apart nicely.

Now, to decorate, I kept the pieces separate because it's easier to work on a flat section than the house once it's completed.  Also - because my kids would be decorating them, I figured there was the chance that they'd somehow accidentally knock over the house if they had to decorate after assembly.

And I used plenty of royal icing to decorate and to glue the pieces of the house together, and we had Necco wafers, mini marshmallows, and colored sugars to use as well.  We also had gumdrops, but I couldn't find them til a couple days later.

Time for the fun part...

Julia favored the mini marshmallows.  Lots and lots of them.

Alex, on the other hand, really wanted to make his look like a house. 

If you look over at the section he's pointing to, you can see that he's drawn a front door on there in red.  And if you look at this other section on the lower right, you can see a little green wreath with a red bow. 

You can see the door a bit better.  I think the Necco wafer there below the marchmallow is supposed to be a window.

And this is just a glimpse of the chaos that existed in my home all of December.  You can see sections of the kids' gingerbread houses toawrd the back, and other gingerbread cookies I made with the leftover dough, and a whole mess of  Pecan Squares in their little paper cups on a tray...all the icing and sugars...and those pale cookies are dinosaurs made out of Short Dough that Julia was going to decorate and instead she broke a Pteranodon into pieces and went on her way.

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures as the houses were assembled.  I was too busy doing the gluing and holding the sides in place.  But here's the one shot I took of them while the icing glue was drying, after the roof sections had been attached:

 

Those containers of cookies and that snowman napkin holder (That Alex made in a Home Depot kids workshop when he was 3, hee hee hee!) are supporting the edges of the roofs.  Oh - and do you like Alex's roof?  With the Necco wafer shingles?  He worked really hard on his house.

And where are they now?  Did we wrap them carefully and pack them away for next year?  Nope.  They ended up as bird food.  The kids got to whack them to bits with a meat tenderizer in the back yard.  That part was Bill's idea - the brutal destruction part.  The kids - well, particularly Alex - loved it.  (I know, and you'd have thought Julia would have been the joyfully violent one.  The birds enjoyed them.  Particularly the seagulls.  And also the squirrels. 

And just for fun, here's a picture of the gingerbread house (actually a graham cracker house, if you want to be precise) Alex made in his kindergarten class:

And that's an ice cream cone tree and a graham cracker reindeer cookie there in the front.

Isn't that adorable?

The birds thought so.

In the Cookie Jar: Almond Stars

And in German - Mandelsterne.

A funny thing about these this year.  The food editor in our local paper had an invitation out to readers to send in stories about learning to cook by watching, say, their mothers or grandmothers.  I sent in a little story about these cookies, explaining that they were my then-boyfriend's favorites and so one evening I learned to make them by helping her.  I missed they deadline by two days, but they posted the story anyway, and the recipe.

And this year - when I made them - they didn't come out so well.  Figures, huh?

Anyway, here's what you do.  And normally I can make these just fine - so I'm really not at all sure what the trouble was this year.  Perhaps I wasn't thinking postive thoughts while I made them....

You will need:

1 lb confectioners sugar

1/2 lb almonds - ground

1/2 lb hazelnuts - ground

6 egg whites (and set aside 4 T of them to glaze the cookies with)

1 tsp almond extract

the rind of one lemon

* Grinding the nuts - I used a food processor this year instead of the meat grinder that I used in past years (because Bill's mom used a meat grinder) - and I like the processor method MUCH better.  It's fast and tidy and fast.

You go from this

 

to this (these are the hazelnuts, by the way)

in seconds.

Now for the batter:

Place your egg whites in THE EXCEPTIONALLY CLEAN AND DRY bowl to your mixer and whip to stiff peaks.

Add in the confectioners' sugar and beat until very stiff.

Then fold in the almond extract, lemon zest, and nuts.  Chill the dough for at least an hour.

Now, on a clear work surface, sprinkle some confectioners sugar or granulated sugar.  A good amount.  You DO NOT want to use flour for these.  They don't have flour in them, for one thing.  So use sugar instead. 

Scoop out a small amount of the dough and put the rest back in the fridge. 

Very carefully - it's fragile stuff - roll out the dough to about a quarter of an inch thick.

Dip your star-shaped cutter in some sugar and cut out enough stars for one cookie sheet.

Now get those 4 T of egg whites you set aside earlier, and gently glaze the top of each star with a little of the white.  It gives them a nice thin "crust" when they bake.

And you place them in a 300 F oven for about 15-20 min...

And because you obviously did something wrong, they come out looking not like stars, but like...

blobs.

But look - in this next picture (from 2006) - in the upper right corner - THOSE are almond stars in their proper star shape.  I CAN make them correctly.  I really can!

And actually those are all 6 of the German cookies.  L-R, back row - Farmer Hats, Lebkuchen, Almond Stars, front row - Pfeffernusse, Springerle, and German Butter Cookies. 

OH - and most important of all - bake them on PARCHMENT PAPER on your sheet pan.  Otherwise they will stick and you will tear your hair out in frustration.

They're very tasty (no matter what they look like) - they're basically meringue cookies with ground nuts in them.  Crispy outside, chewy inside.  VERY sweet.

Enjoy!

In the Cookie Jar: Farmer Hats

In German (according to Bill's Mom's recipe) these are Baurenhutchen.

I prefer to call them The Bane of My Existence.

Actually, they're pretty interesting cookies - they're kind of two cookies in one - a butter cookie outer cookie and a crispy/chewy meringue inner cookie.

The problem is, I can't seem to get them to come out right.  At least, according to what Bill's uncle (his late mom's brother) has said was the way their mother was able to make them.  And I know that is a poorly and confusingly constructed sentence, but I blame it on these cookies.  Anyway, according to what I've been told, the cookies - which resemble tri-cornered hats when you shape them - came out of the oven still looking like that - the three sides vertical and touching in the center.

Mine have never, ever, ever looked like that.  They taste great - they're one of Alex's favorites, and mine - BUT.  They look more like hats that someone put away in an under-the-bed storage thing under some sweaters and heavy pants and oops, maybe they shouldn't have done that because now the perky tri-cornered hat looks like a pancake.

Still, they are yummy and worth the mental anguish.

Here we go:

Oh - and I'm giving you the measurements for the way I make them - which is to double the butter cookie portion because (another of my failings) I always end up with way too much leftover filling.  I could just cut the filling in half, but more cookies is always better.

So.

For the butter cookie part, you will need the following:

1 lb all-purpose flour

1/2 lb unsalted butter

1/2 lb granulated sugar

6 egg yolks (save 2 of the whites, you'll need them for the filling.  Save the others.  Make meringue cookies with chocolate chips in them.  Hide them.  Eat them when no one's around to want you to share them.  You work hard.  You deserve it.)

2 T thick sour cream

Combine the flour and sugar in your mixing bowl, and then cut in the butter.  You can use a paddle if you're using a stand mixer.

You want to check your progress as you combine them so you don't over-beat the mixture.  You're looking for a fine, sandy sort of result.  Like this:

And now you add in the yolks and the sour cream...

And mix together until you've got a nice, smooth dough.  Remove it from the bowl, wrap in plastic so it doesn't dry out, and set aside while you make the filling.  Or, if you're not going to use it til the next day, put it in the freezer.

(Look at those bizarre wrinkles in my hand.  You'd think the dough weighed several pounds....)

Okay, now for the filling.

First, you need 1/4 lb of almonds, ground.  I used to grind them in a meat grinder, which is what Bill's mom did, but this year I put the nuts in the food processor and I like that MUCH better.  For one thing, when I used the meat grinder, it took a long time.  And every year it seems like I make larger batches of cookies, so that adds to the time, AND, sometimes the grinding produces more of a nut butter result than just a ground up nuts result.  So that's my two cents.  I'm using the food processor.

Because you can start out with this:

And moments later, you've got this:

Oh - and if this looks like way more than a quarter pound of nuts, it is.  I was also doing the almonds for the Almond Stars.  Figure I'd grind two batches with one process.  heh heh.

Okay, now you will also need two egg whites that you hopefully set aside earlier when you were separating your eggs.  And about 3/4 of a cup of sugar.

No put the yolks in a PERFECTLY CLEAN (AND I MEAN ABSOLUTELY NO RESIDUE FROM THE OTHER DOUGH LEFT IN THE BOWL OR YOUR WHITES WILL NOT WHIP PROPERLY) and dry bowl, and, using the whisk attachment, whip them to stiff peaks.

And then slowly add in the sugar and beat some more...

Now, the recipe doesn't say whether you want any sort of peaks or not.  It just says to beat 1/4 of an hour - which is because this was originally done by hand.  I beat them together until they are soft peaks. 

Next you fold in the almonds, and your mixture will look like this:

Okay.  Now you'll need a clear work surface with a light dusting of flour.  And some parchment-lined baking sheets.  Set your oven on stun.  Just kidding.  Set it to 325 F.

Take a portion of your dough and roll it out to a thickness that's comfortable for you to work with.  And what thickness is that?  Anywhere between 1/8 and 1/4 inch.  The recipe says 1/8 - actually it says the thickness of the back of a knife, but that leaves room for way too much variance, so Bill's mom added "approx 1/8" and then she wrote in - "I like 1/4."  So - it's up to you.  Mine was somewhere in between. 

Next, you want to cut out circles that are about 3" in diameter.  Place the circles on a cookie sheet with at least an inch of space between them.  Place a bit of the filling (the egg white and nut mixture) in the center. 

Okay, now the amount is another thing you want to play around with until you are comfortable with it.  Because the next step is to fold up the sides of the cookie to form the tri-cornered hat shape.  This takes a little practice.  Also, if you've had the dough in the fridge, you want to give it plenty of time to come to room temp before you try making the hats, otherwise the dough won't bend; it will just crack and tear.

Here's my left hand (I'm right-handed, but that's the hold-the-camera hand) trying to demonstrate how to fold up the edges successfully.

Pinch the edges together in the center so they'll stay in place, at least for now.

Kind of cool, huh?  Now I've put them in the oven for anywhere from ten minutes to a month to firm the dough up so it'll keep its shape.  And here's how they looked AGAIN this year, part way through the baking:

FLATTENED.  AGAIN.  Plus the edges didn't stay pinched together.

There has GOT to be a way to do this so they stay perky.  Either that, or Bill's uncle is remembering them BEFORE they went into the oven, and I'm feeling insecure and inadequate for nothing.

I thought I'd taken a picture after they were out of the oven, but apparently not.  They will basically look like they do above, only a bit more golden brown.  You need to bake them for about 20-25 mintues.

And I've experimented with different oven temps too.  I'll tell you this - they don't look good if they're burnt.

I will keep trying, anyway, and if I succeed, you'll be the first to know.  Because my scream of triumph will be audible around the world, I think.

Oh - and what to do with any leftover filling, you may ask?

Well, you can mix in some mini chocolate chips if you want to,

And bake them until they are crispy and lightly golden on the outside...

And kind of chewy and melty

on the inside. 

(I really need to hire a hand model for these shots.  My hands are all wrong for this sort of thing.)

Anyway, that's how to make the Floppy Farmer Hats - and despite my griping about how they look, they really are pretty yummy. 

And the taste, after all, is what will keep bringing stealthy hands back to the cookie jar.

 

In the Cookie Jar: Pecan Squares

Oh my. 

Think pecan pie.  Think candy.  Think cookies.  Now put them all in a jar and shake it up and you've got these delectable morsels.

Start out with a batch of  short dough.

Line a half sheet pan with parchment paper.

Roll out the short dough and line the pan with it.  You may need to cut and paste pieces of dough to completely fill the pan, but that's perfectly fine.  No one's going to see it anyway.

Okay, now bake this at 425 F until golden, about 10 minutes or so, depending on your oven. 

Set aside and allow to cool.  Drop the oven temp down to 350 F.

While the short dough crust is baking and cooling, go ahead and assemble the following:

1 lb unsalted butter

4 oz granulated sugar

12 oz honey

1 lb brown sugar

2 lb pecan pieces

4 oz heavy cream

You'll also need a candy thermometer on hand.  And a large, heavy sauce pot.

A word of caution - we're going to be bringing a lot of sugar to the boil - PLEASE be aware that boiling sugar can give you some of the worst possible kitchen burns possible.  The sugar will start to cool (it's a relative term - it won't FEEL cool) when it hits to your skin, and it will STICK to you and the part that's touching your skin will still be extremely hot and will just hang on and burn, burn, burn.  If you splatter boiling sugar on yourself while you're making this recipe, IMMEDIATELY run or pour cold water on the sugar on your skin and get the sugar off of you as fast as you can.

Okay?  But don't let that deter you - it's kind of fun to boil sugar, just so long as you have a healthy respect for what it can do.

Put the butter, granulated sugar, honey, and brown sugar in your sauce pot. 

Set the flame on high and bring the mixture to a boil.  It will take a while for everything to first melt

and then heat up,

 

and at some point it will seem to you that the temperature will never go high enough,

but just be patient,

and keep an eye on your candy thermometer.

   

You want to bring the boiling sugar up to 257 F.  When you reach that temp, add the pecans and the heavy cream, stir it around and shut off the heat.

Stir some more to make sure everything is well combined, and then pour it into the pan on top of your short dough crust. 

   

(I was using a really deep pot, and I had two pans to fill...and I wanted to be able to tilt the pan without burning myself and distribute the pecan mixture evenly and quickly between the two pans.  So this is what I rigged up.  I've got another pot upside down in between the two pans.  I have a damp cloth on top of that pan so the hot pan of sugary goodness won't slip.)

(And oh, would you look at that lovely mess of dish towels and Alex's socks there on the floor.  Hmmm...apparently the maid went home early that day.)

Bake in the oven for at least 20 minutes, or until the pecan mixture is bubbling and the top is semi-firm.  I think it took mine at least 30 minutes, but my oven runs cold, and also I was making two pans at once.  And I kept peeking.

Allow to cool completely.

When you're ready to cut this enormous cookie into pieces, run a knife along the edges of the pan that aren't covered by parchment paper.  Very gently, begin to tug at the parchment along the edges of the pan to loosen the product from the pan.  The cooked and cooled sugar will make it stick.  Be patient.  I've ripped plenty of parchment paper in the process.  Once you've loosened the edges, the rest should go smoothly - just tilt the pan and tug on the lower end of the pan until the whole thing slides out onto your work surface.

You can cut this up any way you want.  This year I cut small squares no bigger than an inch on a side because the little paper candy cups I had on hand wouldn't hold anything bigger.  I had wanted to cut out little circles, but my smallest round cookie cutter wasn't deep enough and kept getting stuck.

 

Keep in mind all the butter and sugars and honey and nuts are very rich in combination and you don't need enormous portions.  If you want more, just have another one.  After all, they're so small....

One Last Decorated Cookie Picture from 2007

I decorated this set on maybe the 23rd and 24th, and took this one picture a couple days after
Christmas.  It was the only one left of the bunch.

It's a gingerbread cookie, with a blend of green food colorings in the royal icing to give it a nice leaf color...I used a little offset spatula to create texture...and then piped on little red holly berries...and then painted thin lines of watered-down royal icing and sprinkled on clear sparkling sugar (it doesn't melt when you get it wet or bake it...at least not for a long time) to create the icy/frosty/snowy look.

They were fun and relaxing to do.  I wanted to have more time to decorate some of the cookies I'd made, but it was not to be.  I'll budget more time for that next year, hopefully.  And in the meantime, there are plenty of other holidays and occasions coming up, with plenty of reasons to decorate cookies. 

And besides, I have so many cookie cutters longing for their fifteen minutes of fame. 

Hmmm.  That might be an interesting project for the upcoming year...actually USE more than just the Halloween ones, the dinosaurs, and the traditional holiday ones for a change.  I think that deserves some consideration....

Next?

I planned on making two more batches of cookies today.  Shortbread and probably biscotti.  I figured that would do it as far as having enough cookies to give out to everyone. 

I was nearing the finish line - already had cookies packed up for a few of the neighbors.  Just had two more for Bill's side (meaning an emphasis on the German cookies) and three tins for my side (meaning all the broken cookies - JUST KIDDING EVERYONE!) and that would be it.

So I figured I'd do the two tins for Bill's side first, since I knew I had all of those cookies available.  Packed them up.  Done.

And I looked around...and...hmmm...this...this is really weird...um...Bill?  Um...I think...I think I have enough.

It was a painful admission.

I don't even know why.  Maybe because it was so unexpected.  Maybe because my entire existence this past month has been all about COOKIES AND COOKIES AND OH YEAH, MORE COOKIES and now, if I don't have cookies to bake...then...who am I???

But fear not, for I still have plenty of other kitchen stuff to do.  We'll have people over on Christmas Eve AND Christmas day, all of whom will be ravenous, I'm sure.  So on Christmas Eve, which will be with Bill's side of the family, we will have sauerbraten, spaetzle, red cabbage, broccoli casserole, some sauerkraut (not homemade - I have some in the freezer), and a loaf of pumpernickel bread, which I will bake tomorrow.  And for dessert, a huge springerle cookie (by big, I mean bigger than a dinner plate) made from the mold you see below.  I bought it several years ago from House on the Hill and I make one every year. 

I just checked their website - the mold is 13  1/2 inches in diameter.  It's big.  And it's beautiful.  It's very detailed, and sometimes hard to get all the dough pressed in deep enough (without it getting stuck) to get all that detail to show in the finished product.  But it's fun to try, and even if it isn't perfect, it's still fun to trot it out.

I'll also (fingers crossed) be making pain au chocolate to have on Christmas morning.  I buy these Callebaut semi-sweet chocolate sticks and this year I'm using the recipe that King Arthur Flour sent along with them.  It's basically a chocolate croissant.  So...yum.  If I make them tomorrow, then I can just reheat them Tuesday morning.

And I'll be up early Tuesday.  We're having roast beef and yorkshire pudding, and the last couple of times I've had Christmas at my house, instead of roasting the beef, I've browned it on all sides (it's a 5 rib roast - rather unwieldy, but I like a challenge) and then put it in a 200 degree F (yes that's correct - two hundred degree) oven and cook it "low and slow" - about half an hour per pound.  So, it's a 12.5 pound hunk of cow, so it's going to cook around 6 hours, give or take.  And before that, it should sit out at room temperature for a few hours.  So if we eat around 2, I need to get it in before 8, and so it needs to come out of the fridge between 5 and 6.

After the beef is done, I'll take that out of the pan, jack up the oven temp to around 400 or something (I have to look it up) and bake the yorkshire pudding in the drippings from the meat.  Probably two pans' worth, since I'll eat an entire pan myself if given the opportunity.

Anyway - the meat comes out gorgeous this slow-cooked way.  I'll try to remember to take pictures just to show you HOW gorgeous. 

Bill's going to grill a couple of chickens for the non-red-meat-eating members of the family, and we'll have a variety of side dishes as well. 

And that's the scoop.

Don't know how much posting I'll do over the next couple of days, so in case you're wondering where the heck I am, now you know.  I'm in the kitchen.

Cookie? No, thanks.

I was dropping some cookies off at the UPS store yesterday and one of the employees asked if I wanted a cookie.  There was a large tray of cookies out on the table in the middle of the small room.  About 2/3 of the cookies were gone.  Looked like peanutbutter cookies and snickerdoodles.

Anyway, they guy had finished helping a customer and went back to his thermos of coffee and a half-eaten peanutbutter cookie behind the counter.  "Would you like a cookie, ma'am?"

I am resigned to "ma'am." 

I laughed to myself and politely declined the cookie offer. 

No, really.  I've had my fill.  Thanks anyway.

Today I'm bringing them a small selection of my cookies.  They're really nice people in that office - I've been shipping cookies out of that office for the past couple of years now and they're mostly the same group of employees and the manager.  So.  I'm sharing.

I have shipped all the cookies I'm going to ship.

Today we have our Christmas party in my dept at work.  I'm bringing in Butternut Squash and Roasted Garlic Bisque - which is a fabulous winter vegetable soup that I've been making around the holidays (usually Thanksgiving) for a number of years now.  Try it.  It's easy and it's yummy and it's got roasted garlic in it, so how can you go wrong there?

Anyway, it should be a good day of eating. 

I've still got Christmas shopping to do, some of which I'll attempt on my lunch break today, and more tomorrow.  Oy.  No matter how much I think I'm in good shape, prep-wise, I always end up feeling like I'm running around desperately during the last few days before the holiday.  But oh well, it will get done.

I've still got cookies to plate up and hand out to family and neighbors.  Last night I was putting together some trays and I got this insane thought that I just don't have enough.  It happens every year, despite the stacks of plastic boxes filled with cookies in the dining room.  I still worry I will run out and someone will go cookie-less.

I told Bill last night that some misguided part of my brain believes that I need to have enough cookies to feed every recipient for a week.  I don't know where that came from, but there it is. 

I still have cards to send out too.  AAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH.  I don't know when I'll get them done. 

Well, enough of the whining.

I don't have a cookie recipe to post today - my apologies - it's just been so nuts these last several days that I am not prepared this morning.  Hopefully tonight, but I can't promise anything.

So in the meantime, here are a few pictures I've taken recently.  They're mostly my kids.  Julia's eye will not be pink in the pictures, in case you were worried.  Or hopeful. 

Julia, by the way, is very much the little mommy lately.  She has four baby dollies (all of them apparently are warm enough without clothing on, as Mommy Julia has removed said clothing long ago and who knows where it all ended up.)  And there's also her pink elephant - her favorite stuffed animal and companion and germ receptacle.

The other day Julia and her elephant were sitting on the couch watching something on tv and suddenly I heard, in a small, cramped voice that came from the corner of Julia's mouth "shut up."  Immediately, Julia's eyes flew open and her mouth made a large "O" of astonishment.  "Did you hear that?" she asked.  "Elephant said a bad word!" 

Two of her little baby dolls spent the entire night in time out (on the ottoman in the basement) and when I asked why, Julia informed me that "They said a bad word called shut up and stupid."

Those - shut up and stupid - are Julia's favorite cuss words, and in order to say them without getting in trouble, she has figured out that if elephants or babies say them, she's not at fault, especially if she is just as outraged as us taller people.

And a couple nights ago I was in the kitchen working on cookies (what else?) and she came in with the smallest of her apparal-challenged children, held the doll out to me and said, in a thoroughly I've-had-it-up-to-here tone "Here.  Take her.  She did poop."

(Look, Ma!  No neck!)

Okay...now my other child.

Another night while I was working on some cookies...I was just icing an outline on the cookies, and Alex came up to say goodnight on his way to bed. 

He stared at what I had done so far and then asked "Mommy, aren't you going to decorate them with beautiful detail?"

His vocabulary frightens me a little.  He trots out these unexpected words and phrases and I just stare at him - where did you come from??

And then he starts making monkey sounds (Curious George) and everything falls back into place.

Okay, I've got to get moving.  Have a lovely day, and I'll try to put up a cookie recipe tonight.  Sorry I've been slacking!

In the Cookie Jar: Biscotti with Candied Ginger, Mini Chocolate Chips and Almonds

Okay, have to hurry this morning, are you ready?

First, set your oven to 325 degrees F.

Here's your ingredients:

In the Cookie Jar: German Butter Cookies

These cookies are in the same family as sugar cookies, but they are softer and richer.  Very simple to make, too, and only 6 ingredients to worry about. 

Shall we?

You will need the following:

1 pound of flour

12 ounces granulated sugar

1/2 pound of unsalted butter

4 eggs

1 knife tip of baking soda (yes, you read that right)

And the rind of one lemon.

I'll skip down to the unusual one first.  The knife tip measurement.  Basically it's just a little tiny bit of baking soda.  Hardly any.  But some.  I used a regular old table knife.

(The baking soda sort of slid down the knife as I took this picture.  And that's DOUBLE the knife-tip measurement, because when I was taking these pictures, I had doubled the recipe.  I don't really know why I doubled it - it's not like I don't have plenty of cookies already....)

All set?  Okay.

Combine the flour and baking soda in one bowl, put your butter in a mixing bowl, and have the other ingredients measured out and ready nearby.

To make the dough:

Cream together the butter and sugar until light.  Mix in the lemon zest.  Then add some of the flour mixture...half the eggs...more flour...the rest of the eggs....the rest of the flour.  Mix together until just combined, but don't overwork it.

Because of all the butter and eggs, this is a very VERY soft dough.  You won't be able to knead it into a ball at this stage - it's way too sticky.  Just scoop it out of the mixing bowl and put it in a zip lock bag, press out the excess air, and put it in the fridge for at least an hour.

See how squishy it is?

Once you're ready to roll out the dough, you'll need a good amount of flour to dust your work surface with and to prevent your rolling pin from sticking.  As you roll out the dough, keep picking it up off the board and tossing a bit more flour underneath. 

Use whatever cookie cutters you want, and bake in a preheated 300 degree (F) oven.

Now, when Bill's mom made these, at least as I remember it, she used these really small cutters - a snowman, a stocking, a tree, and an angel.  So those are the ones I use when I make them to send out to the family.  But you can use any size cutter - you'll simply need to adjust the baking time accordingly.

The little ones I used here took about ten minutes.

And the last instruction in the recipe is to brush the cookies with egg wash before baking.  I don't remember, but I think the first time I made these, I used a whole egg mixed with a bit of water and brushed that on.  But it wasn't right.  It didn't LOOK right.  The right way, is just to brush with the yolk.  I figured that out through trial and error, and knew I'd got it right when the cookies came out of the oven with pale yellow stripes or blotches on them.

I took pictures (really?  no!) as I went along, partly because, well, that's what I do.  But also because I love these tiny little cookie cutters.  Take a look....

tiny snowmen...

...tiny stockings...

...petite angels...

...and tiny trees...

Tiny, soft bites of gold.  It's so very easy to eat a lot of them!

In the Cookie Jar: Chocolate Candy Canes

These were an experiment using a cookie recipe I'd found in a collection of holiday cookie recipes a bunch of years ago.  I liked these chocolate cookies because texture-wise they are kind of like shortbread.  They do not contain eggs.  They are easy and versatile.  And they taste really, really seriously chocolatey.

Here's what you will need:

4 cups all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt - sifted together.

1 pound unsalted butter, room temperature, and cut into small pieces.

And you will need 1 and 1/2 cups granulated sugar, and 2 teaspoons of vanilla.  (Sorry, didn't take pictures of them.)

You'll also need some sort of icing (I had some leftover royal icing from the cookie decorating that day) and about 8-10 small candy canes.

Okay.

Combine the butter and sugar in your mixing bowl and cream til light and fluffy.  Add the vanilla, and then add the flour mixture and combine on the lowest speed, scraping down the bowl every so often, until the flour is completely incorporated.

Scrape the dough out of the bowl, flatten and wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

While the dough is chilling, set out some baking sheets and line them with parchment paper.

Then get those candy canes, still in their little plastic wrappers, and place them on a dish towel on the counter or a table top.  Fold the towel over the candy canes, and then beat the s*** ...beat the p*** ...beat the heck of them with a meat tenderizer or a hammer or a rolling pin or a baseball bat or something along those lines.  Then discard the torn and useless plastic packaging from the candy canes.

You want to pulverize them as much as possible.  I should have hit these a bit more, in fact.  But it was an experiment.  At this point, I really wasn't sure how I was going to use them.

Okay, after an hour, get your dough out of the fridge and get your pans ready, and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Using your fingers, pull off a chunk of dough around the size of a ping pong ball, or maybe a bit bigger.  Roll this into a ball, and then roll the ball into a rope, about a third of an inch in diameter, or about 6 inches long.  Curve one end of this rope so it resembles a candy cane shape, and place this on your cookie sheet.  Keep going like this until you've filled the cookie sheet.  Leave space between the cookies because they will spread a bit while baking.  Put the cookie sheet in the fridge for about ten minutes before baking - this will prevent them from spreading a LOT. 

(That's my little step - by - step illustration for you.)

Bake each batch of cookies for about 15-20 minutes or until firm.  Let cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes, then let transfer the cookies to a cooling rack to finish.

Once they're cool, you want to put some white icing in a piping bag and draw the candy cane lines on the cookies.  I did a few of them one-at-a-time, and while they looked nice, I needed to move things along.  So I put a bunch of cookies on a rack like you see above, and put the rack over a baking pan.  Then I just piped the icing onto the cookies in a series of diagonal lines.  It's a lot quicker then the individual approach.  You could also, if you don't have a piping bag, either use a zip top plastic bag and cut a small hole in one corner and pipe that way, OR you could just drizzle the icing with a spoon.  So many options.  Find the one that works best for you.

Now, once you've drizzled or piped the icing on, get your crushed candy canes and sprinkle some across the cookies where the icing is.

   

Now, it also just occurred to me that you could have a shallow bowl of the candy canes and take the cookies and press them, icing side down, into the crushed candy and have it stick on that way.  But you'd need a lot more candy for something like that.  Leave the cookies out so the icing will dry and harden before you pack them away, otherwise they'll stick to each other.

However you apply the icing and the crushed peppermint, you MUST try one immediately.  If you like chocolate and mint, I think it's a pretty good bet you'll like these.

As my son is now fond of saying - "Eat!  Eat!  MangiaMangiaMangia!"

I Need MORE Flour. And Butter. And Eggs.

Yep.

Well, I didn't get as much done yesterday as I'd planned, but I'm off to a good start today - in fact, to be honest, the only reason I'm typing anything right now is to allow myself time to drink my coffee while it's still hot, without my hands covered in flour or egg or anything.

Not that I get a lot of gunk on my hands while I'm baking.  I try to be a tidy baker.  But if I'm making cookies, I tend to get wrapped up in that and forget to drink my coffee.  Or eat lunch.

Yesterday I made the butter cookie dough (Bill's mom's recipe) and the outer dough for the "farmer hats" (another of Bill's mom's recipes) and so today I just need to bake off the butter cookies, make the filling for the farmer hats, fill them and bake them, make the almond stars.  And make other stuff. 

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of the morning making cookies for the kids to decorate, because the neighbor across the street was going to come over with her two boys, but that ended up not happening, so...ah well.  My kids decorated some cookies, so they had some fun.

At one point I turned the corner to look into the dining room, where they were busy decorating, and saw my little girl, with the end of the piping bag of pink icing IN HER MOUTH, and she was squeezing the other end of the bag.

I wasn't holding my camera at that moment - sorry.  I just yelled out "HEY!" and she jumped and dropped the icing bag and in the same motion, picked up a cookie and took a bite.  She's a quick thinker, that one. 

Tonight I PLAN to post a cookie recipe or two, but that involves sitting down, and if I sit, forget about anything else getting done today.

Anyway, for your entertainment this morning, here are some non-cookie pictures....

The Push is On

This weekend is the BIG cookie weekend.  I want to get the rest of the German cookies done so I can ship them out next week to Bill's relatives, plus get enough of other things done so I can ship cookies out to MY friends and relatives who live out of state.

So, here's the list:

farmer hats

almond stars

butter cookies

(those are the rest of Bill's mom's recipes)

AND

mexican wedding cookies

pecan diamonds

shortbread

biscotti

and - for the first time - torrone, which, okay, is not a cookie, it's a candy.  But whatever.  I want to make it.  So I have all the stuff, and we'll see how it goes.

And that's the game plan.

I'll be back tonight (I think) to let you know how it's going, and I will also show you these fabulous chocolate cookies that I made last weekend.  I might make more of them, too.  And possibly more springerle, because I just never feel like we have enough.  Especially since my son will devour them on sight.

Okay, gotta go clear all the unnecessary clutter out of my kitchen so I can get this show on the road.

And Speaking of Cookies...

How cool are these?

In the Cookie Jar: Gingerbread Cookies

The recipe I use for Gingerbread Cookies comes from a cookbook I bought years ago entitled The Complete Cookie Book, by Elizabeth Wolf Cohen.  It was a Bargain Book at Barnes & Noble when I bought it, and according to their website, it's gone.  But if you find a copy kicking around somewhere, grab it.   It features recipes from all over the world, and over the years I've tried out quite a number of the recipes and they've all been good.

Anyway, here we go.

You will need (for one batch):

3  1/2 cups of flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1  1/2 tsp ginger

1  1/2 tsp cinnamon

1  1/2 tsp allspice

1 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp finely ground white pepper (use black if you don't have white)

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

1/2 cup molasses

1 egg

First, sift together the first 8 ingredients

Next, cream together the butter

and the brown sugar

until light and fluffy.

Next, add in the egg(s)

and molasses

to combine.  And then, with your mixer on the slowest speed, add the flour mixture and combine.

Scrape this out onto a lightly floured board and shape into a ball (or something like a ball).

Divide this into two or three smaller pieces, wrap in plastic and flatten somewhat.  Refrigerate for a couple of hours or up to 2 days. 

When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Line a couple of baking sheets with parchment if you have it, or lightly grease the pans instead.

Roll out some of the dough to about a quarter inch thick on a lightly floured board, and cut out your cookies.  (In this picture, my niece, Natalie, is cutting out cats and squirrels.  Before that, I'd done teddy bears and pine trees.)

Arrange the cookies on your pans about an inch apart (yeah, I know, that's not an inch in the picture.  Sorry!)  With a pastry brush, lightly dust any excess flour off of the cookies.

Bake for about 10-12 minutes.

Let cool on a rack, and then decorate with royal icing or whatever kind of frosting you like.

I remember when I was a kid, my mother would just use some raisins for the eyes and buttons for the coat when she made gingerbread men.  That works, too.  Use your imagination.  I bet dried cranberries would be good, too.

In the Cookie Jar: Short Dough

This is a very simple and versatile dough that I learned to make while I was at Johnson & Wales.  You can use it for cookies, or even for crusts for no-bake pies or cookie bars.  Like I said - it's versatile.   Why is it called a "short" dough?  It has to do with the texture and structure of the final product.  A short dough of any kind (think shortbread) is kind of brittle and crumbly.  It's not chewy.  It has a high proportion of fat and sugar and little in the way of binding ingredients - like egg - to keep it intact once you bit into it.  The other thing, with this recipe, is the use of cake flour instead of all-purpose flour.  There's a lower protein content in cake flour, so as you work it, it's less likely to develop the gluten strands that give a loaf of bread its structure.  So the finished product is light and brittle and melts in your mouth.

In the baking classes I took while I was at J&W, the recipes are called formulas.  And that's the thing about baking - it's more of a science than cooking.  Much of the time, it's all about proportions.  If you can learn the proportions, or ratios, of ingredients in a recipe, you're set for life.  Okay, I exaggerate.

But this dough is a perfect example of that.  The ratio is 1:2:3, sugar, butter, and cake flour, by weight.   There is also a little egg in the recipe - 'scuse me - the formula - but it's not entirely necessary and it's not part of the main ratio.  If you're using, say a half pound of sugar, then you only need about 3 ounces of egg...which is about an egg and a half.

Anyway, here's what I did with this one.

Printable Recipe

Let's begin with the ratio - 1:2:3. 

I used 1 lb of sugar,

2 lbs of unsalted butter,

3 lbs of cake flour,

and 6 ounces of whole eggs - about 3-4 eggs, depending on the size.

And for some additional flavor, I added the zest of a lemon.

Next time around, for this much dough, I'd probably up that to two lemons.

So here we go...

You want the butter to be room temperature before you begin.  If it's not, cut it into pieces and put it in your mixing bowl.  With the paddle attachment, beat the butter until it's soft.  You'll need to scrape the bowl and paddle down several times during the process, but at least it's better than sitting around staring at the cold butter and trying to will it to warm up.

First, after you've measured out everything, combine the softened butter and your sugar in the mixing bowl until they're light and fluffy.

Now add the eggs, and blend well.  Have patience - it's hard to combine fat and water.

Then add the lemon zest and the cake flour...

As you add the flour, use the lowest setting on your mixer, otherwise you'll have flour everywhere.  Run the mixer until the flour is just incorporated, then stop and add some more.  If you're making a large batch, like I was, you may have to finish working in the flour in a larger bowl...

Just take your time and if you need to, flour your hands and knead the flour into the rest of the dough that way. 

When you're done, form it into a ball

- or divide it into smaller balls - then press flat and wrap tightly in plastic wrap.

Refrigerate the dough for an hour or so to firm it up.  Then, when you're ready to make cookies, get your cookie cutters ready, roll out the dough on a lightly floured board and start cutting. 

If your kitchen is on the warm side, put the baking sheets with the cookies on them in your fridge to chill some before baking.  Otherwise the cookies will basically melt and spread out on the pan.  If they're really cold when you put them in the oven, they'll hold their shape better.

Oh, yeah, and use a 350 degree (F) oven.  Depending on thickness, they'll take around 15-20 minutes to bake.  You want them to stay pale - barely golden on the edges is okay, but no more than that.

Next up...gingerbread cookies.

Cookie Weekend

Last weekend my sister's kids were here to bake and decorate some cookies.  The fun part was the actual decorating, which we did Sunday morning. 

We made two kinds of cookies - a basic short dough for some, and a gingerbread dough for others. 

I don't have a lot to say - I'll just let the pictures tell the story...

So, um...can you guess which of my children decorated which reindeer?

This was the only batch I did by baking the sugar onto the cookies.  After that adventure, I just baked off the rest of the cookies and we used royal icing in a variety of colors to decorate the cookies.  Colored sugars were available, too, but for the most part everyone stuck with the icing.

You can make royal icing with egg whites and confectioner's sugar, but if you're doing huge batches and have no use for all the yolks - or you just don't feel like cracking eggs - buy a cannister of meringue powder and you're all set.

All you need is the meringue powder, confectioner's sugar, and water.  And a stand mixer helps, too.

There you go - just add water, combine slowly first so the sugar doesn't fly all over you and your kitchen.  Once everything's been mixed together, scrape the sides of the mixing bowl down, and then let 'er rip.  If the mixture is too thin, add some more sugar.  If it's too thick, add more water.  It's hard to explain how thick or thin you'll want it - you just have to try piping some and see how it looks.  If you're doing something very detailed and you want the icing to hold its shape, then you want it on the thicker side, but still thin enough so you won't immediately develop advanced carpal tunnel syndrome the first time you decorate a cookie.  Sometimes, though, you're filling in a large outlined space, and you just want the icing to spread out and cover the cookie.  Then, obviously, you want it thinner.

For Sunday's purposes, I really didn't mess around with the icing much.  It was thinner than I would have used, but it was just fine for my 4 young artists.

Here, Alex holds up one of his first gingerbread men, while Julia...mines for gold, apparently.  I hadn't noticed that when I was taking the picture.  My nephew, Calvin, is focused on his own work.  And my niece, Natalie, seems to be staring at her little girl cousin...just...staring.

Each kid filled up a cookie sheet with their creations.

I think Julia had the most cookies...but that was because of her minimalist approach....

Later on, when she was eating them, she'd bite off the parts that had the icing and hand me the naked remains..."I don't want this." 

Next up, Alex.  He had a blast.  I think he was the last cousin to put down the piping bag.

If Alex wasn't the last kid decorating, then it was Natalie.  She spent a lot of time creating each cookie...

See the two cats in the middle?  Those are their family's cats.  The black one is Ozzie.  He's your basic gorgeous all-black cat.  The other one is Tulip.  She's a petite calico, about 2 years old, and oh, yeah, she's kind of ditzy. 

Anyway - last up, Calvin.

He kept saying decorating was a lot of fun, and that made me happy because he's the oldest and I don't want him to feel like he's stuck doing little kid stuff with his little kid cousins.  Actually, to be fair, he's really great with them. 

And who wouldn't have fun painting with frosting? 

In the Cookie Jar: White Lebkuchen

2007:  This is another recipe I'd originally posted several years ago.  I'm updating it now with pictures and a few comments.  Also, just as an fyi, when I made the batch in the photos, I had tripled what's written below.  Anyway, here we go...

I believe the "white" simply refers to the glaze that tops these cookies...this recipe is copied directly from Elsa's black ringbinder, in her handwriting, with her notes, etc. I'll add my own notes at the end....

1 C almonds, ground

1/2 C orange peel (candied) 1/2 C citron peel (candied),

cut into small pieces

1/4 C cinnamon (scant)
2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp baking soda
4 1/4 C flour

...sifted together...

4 eggs

and 1/2 C sugar.

Stir sugar & eggs until foamy (1 hour by hand, 15 min by mixer)

Sift flour, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon into sugar mixture, add orange, citron and almonds, alternating using flour last.

Work on board to finish mixing

Let rest 1/2 hr. (or, if you're not going to do anything with it right away, wrap tightly and refrigerate.  Just remember to allow it to warm up before you try to work with it.)

Now, this year I had some problems with a couple batches of dough.  I think it's because I tripled the recipes and didn't spend enough time at the end making sure everything was combined well.  And I didn't pay attention to the texture of the dough in the process.  These two batches turned out on the dry side, as you can see from the picture above. 

It happens, so what do you do?  Well, what I did was to add small amounts of water to the dough, and work it (knead it) on the board until it was the right consistency.  It took some extra time, but saved me the frustration of trying to work with crumbly dough.

Anyway,  once the dough is workable, roll it out to the thickness you want - the thinner the dough, the crisper the cookie.  I make mine on the thicker side - about a quarter of an inch thick - because I like the chewy texture and because that's how Bill's mom made them.

(and see how mottled that dough looks?  That was the first batch I rolled out - without adding any water to it.  It was crumbly and difficult, and I was stubborn.  They came out tasting fine, but really, they don't make for a good presentation, do they?)

Anyway, cut out all your circles (or whatever shape you want - again, I am doing what Bill's mom did...just because.) - or let a child help do it...

and lay them out on a cookie sheet and bake 300 degrees for about 15 minutes

Cool - glaze.

I actually made them them one night and then packed them away and glazed them a few nights later.  Which is fine.

Glaze

1 3/4 C - 2C confectioners' sugar
4 T HOT water

Stir 10 minutes or until shiny

Bill's mom used to spoon some glaze onto the top of each cookie and sort of frost the cookie with the back of the spoon.  I've done that for the past several years, but this year I decided to try something different.

I dipped the top surface of the cookie in the glaze,

(of course, I'm doing this left-handed and holding the camera with my right...I'm right handed, so normally I would do the cookie-dipping with my right hand, and THAT experienced hand wouldn't look quite so stiff and awkward and shy about the camera.  So please bear with my left hand.  It's probably nervous.)

And then tilt the cookie up and let some of the excess icing drip off.  Then place on a rack to let the icing dry and harden.

Like so.  I let mine sit out overnight. 

And there you are.  When I packed them away again, I did a layer of cookies, then a piece of parchment paper, then another layer of cookies, and so on until the box was full.  It's not necessary, but I do it just to keep the cookies from sticking together.

Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Misc. notes....

Make one batch at a time - dough dries out quickly  (no kidding!  Or divide the dough and put some in the fridge, well-wrapped so it doesn't dry out.)

4 oz container of citron & orange peel = 1/2 C

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To glaze them, I just spooned some of the glaze onto each cookie and swirled it around a bit with the back of the spoon. The glaze never covered the cookie completely, when my mother-in-law made them, so that is the look I go for, too.

Elsa always cut these out in circles, and she used a specific juice glass, which she kept (and I have) in the cardboard box that she kept the important cookie-making supplies. The rim of the juice glass is about 2" in diameter.

Think about that bit of direction - "one hour by hand" - yes, that's what she did before she had a mixer to do it for her.

By "work on board" she meant knead the dough a bit. Not too much - you don't want the cookies to become tough. But you'll need to put a bit of muscle into it. The dough is pretty stiff.

Yes - that's a quarter of a cup of cinnamon in the recipe.

Let me know if you have any questions! And no - I don't remember how many this recipe makes...

Organizing

Tomorrow morning I'm going to get my sister's kids and bring them back to bake and decorate cookies over the weekend.  Alex has been itching all week to pick out which cutters we'll use, and finally, finally, tonight we took the boxes of cutters out and I told Alex to take them out and put them all over the dining room table while I emptied the dishwasher and washed up what was left in the sink.  (Julia wasn't interested.  She wanted to watch Frosty on DVD instead.)

As I was stacking dishes and bowls in the cupboard, I listened to Alex checking out all the cookie cutters and cookie presses and a few other assorted cutters that have nowhere else to go. 

"Santa!  A snowman!  A reindeer!  A Christmas tree!"  And so on.

After a while - and a few more boxes - he started announcing "Mommy, you have a LOT of cookie cutters."  "Mommy!  You have SO MANY cookie cutters!"

I figured since we were assembling them, we might just as well do ALL of them, regardless of the holiday. 

"You were tricking me, Mommy!" Alex stared at the additional boxes I'd placed on one of the dining room chairs.

"I wasn't tricking you, Alex.  I just thought we should put everything on the table."

At one point he flat out told me there wasn't any more room.  Shaking his head.  Crazy mommy.

But we slid things around and found the room.  The only cookie items I didn't add were my springerle molds.  But since Alex has been eating my springerle even though they are supposed to sit for a few weeks, I have a feeling I'll be making another batch or two before the holiday.  So maybe I'll take a picture of all the springerle molds at that point.

Anyway, after he'd put all the cookie cutters out on the table, I took a few pictures, and for some reason, they have disappeared from my camera.  I'm NOT happy about that.  Alex was grinning from the other side of the table and he looked pretty cute.

Before I put them away, I took pictures of them in groups, just to have a record of everything I have.  Some I've bought or they've been gifts.  Others were my mom's mother's.  And still others belonged to my late mother-in-law. 

So, um...maybe Alex is right...maybe I do have a lot of cookie cutters...what do you think?

A Springerle Recipe

2007:  I originally posted this a couple of years ago, and since this is the recipe I used again this year, I'm just going to add those in where appropriate.  I'll also keep this year's comments in bold, in case you're wondering....by the way, the black ringbinder I refer to in the paragraph below is my late mother-in-law's book of her mother's recipes, translated from the German.

This is not the handwritten recipe in the black ringbinder. I haven't attempted that one. I'm posting (for now) the recipe that we used two years ago, the time that I baked cookies with my mother-in-law. The recipe was in a 1996 copy of Yankee Magazine and was sent in by a Marian Tietz Anderson, of Fredonia, New York. At the end of the little article it says "The Yankee Cook Suggests Springerle molds from the House on the Hill" and gives an old address and phone number, and adds "It has a huge selection of deeply cut molds that make wonderfully detailed pictures."

So onto the recipe, courtesy of Marian Tietz Anderson, with notes from Elsa...

Springerle Cookies

Make these three weeks ahead if possible, then store airtight to mellow and soften.

anise seed
4 1/2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs
1 pound sifted confectioners' sugar (4 cups, per Elsa)
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest

Grease cookie sheets and sprinkle with anise seeds.
Sift together flour and baking powder. Set aside.
With an electric mixer, beat eggs until light;

add sugar;

beat until mixture makes a thick ribbon when dropped from a spoon (or a spatula).

Add lemon rind,

then flour mixture.

Mix well

* this year I had a repeating issue with dough that was too dry.  I followed the recipe, but things like humidity can affect your dough, and so maybe (I don't know for sure) the dryness in the air, or in my house, was partly to blame.  It held together okay in that picture above, but later on, when I went to roll it out, the whole thing crumbled.  I fixed that by dripping a little water on the dough - VERY LITTLE - and working the dough with my hands, adding a bit more water if necessary, until I had a better consistency.  So if your dough is crumbly - just work in bits of water.

and chill.

On lightly floured board, roll to 1/2-inch thickness.  (Sorry - for some reason I neglected to take pictures of this step.  But I think you can manage without them.)

Flour springerle molds  (because if you don't, dough will stick in the little spaces like you see below, and it's a pain to dig that out.)

and press firmly into dough.  Cut cookies apart.  (or, if you're using a single cutter like this one, trim around the main picture, either with a knife or a cookie cutter, as appropriate.)

Place 1/2 inch apart on cookie sheets and leave exposed to air overnight.

Bake the next morning in a 300 degree F oven, 20 to 25 minutes or so; do not let them get brown.

Yields about 3 dozen 2-inch cookies

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Elsa had written the following across the top of the page: "Comes out high & full if baked in round cake pans rather than cookie sheets." I think this is because the cookies were surrounded by the sides of the cake pan, concentrating the heat within that circle, which probably helped give the baking powder an extra bit of oomph to help leaven the cookies. Just a guess.

Springerle molds are sometimes single pieces of wood (or a resin/wood combination) with a sort of checkerboard arrangement of lots of smaller pictures. Each picture is meant to make a single cookie, so after you've imprinted the mold on the dough, you need to carefully cut these into the smaller cookies. For straight lines, a pizza wheel works very well, as long as you're careful and the wheel doesn't get away from you.

She also noted, with regard to the length of cooking time "20 min is good" - but that will really depend on your oven. Still - check them at 20. No one wants a browned springerle!! Trust me!!

I am going to make a batch with this recipe this year (to play it safe) and a batch from Elsa's ringbinder(to be bold and brave). I also have (somewhere) a recipe that my husband's cousin, Elsa's brother's daughter, had sent to me last Christmas. I can't remember if it's an adaptation of a family recipe or something she got somewhere else, or something she developed...apparently these come out lighter and a bit easier on the teeth. The airing out can result in a rather dry, hard cookie, and time will have the same effect. I don't mind - I like to gnaw on them, actually. You can also dunk them in your coffee. Or tea. Or milk.

Update, 11/24/03
Now that I've finally made them, here are a couple of tips...

Make sure you let the dough warm back up a bit after chilling before you attempt to roll it out. This is a bad habit of mine - I start trying to roll it too cold (I do this with pie dough too) and it inevitably cracks and is very frustrating to work with. Can't really give you a length of time, but try 10-15 minutes and then figure out what's best in your kitchen.

Also - when pressing out the molds...the dough, as you press (and be prepared to exert some pressure - this is a strong dough and will push back) needs somewhere to go. It will go up into the mold, which you want, and it will go out to the sides. I found out it works best if you can cut a piece of dough just about the size of the image you're pressing, press that lightly to the mold, and flip it over and lean on it (evenly, so it doesn't come out really detailed on one side and less so on the other) that should work. I've also seen instructions to put the dough on the mold and run your rolling pin over it. I have one really big mold and I'll probably do the rolling pin thing when I get to that one. I'll be making another batch next weekend....

In the Cookie Jar: Pfeffernusse

Pfeffernusse translates as "pepper nuts," which is pretty much on the money.  Ground pepper is one of the ingredients, and the finished products sort of, now that I think about some of the items on my recent cookie sheet, resemble acorns.  Kind of.  Anyway, they're hard.  Like nuts.  And rocks, actually.  But nuts are a bit more biter-friendly.  And they probably taste better, too.

Printable Recipe

First, the ingredients: 

1/2 lb sugar

2 eggs

1  1/2 tsp baking soda

finely grated zest of half a lemon

4 1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp cloves

1/4 tsp ground pepper

1/2 lb flour

brandy

You might wonder about some of the measurements.  Actually, the original recipe was a combination of pounds and grams.  My late mother-in-law, Elsa, converted grams into teaspoons.

Shall we proceed?

Stir sugar and eggs 1/2 hour.  Really, that's what it says.  I'm saying - it's an old recipe.  No hand-held mixers, no KitchenAid stand mixers, no food processing.  Just bowls and wooden spoons.  That's how you did it.  But it's okay to skip that bit of authenticity in favor of time saving measures.  So instead, beat the eggs and sugar together until light in whatever way you want to.

   

In a separate bowl, mix together all the remaining ingredients EXCEPT the brandy.  That's for later.

And then add the dry goods to the egg/sugar mixture...

...until combined.  But don't overdo it.  You're making a cookie, not a loaf of bread.  No need to get the gluten all excited.

Now you want to turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board.

Hey...what are those little things in the back there?

Oh...you mean these?

These are one-of-a-kind pfeffernusse tools.  Elsa's father made them.  In front is a little wooden matchstick sliced into a blunt point at one end and marked (on the left) at the quarter inch mark.  That's how thick you want to roll the dough.  It's hard to read, but the word "pfeffernus" is written on the stick as well.  Behind that is a part of a little tin container that held Herb-Ox bouillon in some form or other.  He cut the tin down to size and as you can see, "pfeffernus" is written on that as well.

There are more of these match sticks for the other cookies we will be baking this holiday season.  But I think my favorite item is this tiny cutter.

For those of you who don't have an old Herb-Ox tin container to trim down... the diameter is about 3/4 of an inch.  If you don't have a round cutter that small, GET ONE!  No, you can use something a little bigger - but use the smallest size you possibly can (you don't want english muffin-sized pfeffernusse...someone could break a jaw).  If you end up making them larger than the 3/4 inch size, you'll need to adjust the cooking time accordingly.

Okay, so we've got our special tools, and we've got our dough.  Now you need to roll it out until it's about a quarter inch thick...

Now you take your pfeffernusse cutter and start cutting out little circles of dough, like so:

 

Place the tiny cookies on a parchment-lined sheet pan. 

You should dip the cutter in flour every couple of circles, so the dough doesn't stick too much.  Sometimes no matter what, you just need a bit of help getting it dough to come out...

You can re-roll the dough a few times, in order to get as many little circles of dough out of that batch as possible.

Yes, it can be exhausting work...

...but keep going, you're almost done for now.

Set the pan aside in a cool place for 12-24 hours.

I let mine sit over night.

When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 300 F.

And here's where the brandy comes in.  You don't need much.  Pour a little bit into a bowl and lightly brush the tops of the cookies with the brandy.  I believe that what it does is moisten the dried top surface of the cookie, allowing the cookie to soften a bit and pop up and take on that round nut shape.  But then, I could be doing it completely wrong and maybe they're really supposed to resemble pecans.  Probably not.

Now, just pop the pan in the oven and set the timer for 25 minutes.  Besides baking them, you're also drying them out, so you want the tops to feel firm, rather than mushy, when you check them at this point.  If they need to go longer, let them.  If you're not sure, another five minutes won't harm them.

When they're done, they will look more or less like these:

I say more or less because, well, mine still don't look consistent.  Some are nicely domed, others look like that little guy in the middle there...what happened to him?  Nothing good....

These, on the other hand, look a bit better to me -

- nicely proportioned, I think.

But no matter how they look, they will all taste good.  They should be dry and crunchy and spicy little bites.   If you're a fan of gingersnaps, you'll probably like these, too.

The recipe makes about 9 dozen.  I only bake one batch and I have more than enough to give away and to keep.

Have fun!

 

It's That Time Again

Yesterday I "officially" (like that matters to anyone but me) began the Baking Of The Christmas Cookies.

I'll post more on that tonight, once I've got the rest of the pictures I want to use.

But for now...

Remember these cookies?  Well, I had some leftover dough that I wanted to bake off, since otherwise it would make its way to the back of my fridge and not be seen again until springtime.

And I'd been thinking about those stained glass window cookies you make by crushing candy (lifesavers or other similar candy) and sprinkling that in the center of a cookie outline, and baking that.  Most of the ones I've seen are simply that - an outline with a pretty color in the center.  And there's nothing wrong with that - I think they're pretty.  They don't appeal to me as a cookie, to eat, but I still think they're pretty to look at and might make a lovely ornament for your tree.

Anyway, while I was at work on Friday - yeah, Friday, wallowing in my post-turkey have-to-work misery, I had a little part of my brain busy at work with this stained glass thing.

And I thought, also, about the woman who cuts my hair.  Her name is Roberta, and she's an artist.  No, really.  She was a graphic artist, and she has recently been taking courses in stained glass work.  And the windows at the salon she co-owns are adorned with these beautiful stained glass images of fish and seahorses and starfish - in keeping with the ocean-side location.  They're gorgeous.  She designed them and made them and I keep thinking of them.

So I thought, in my copycat way, why not do something like that with cookies?  I figured I'd start small, and just do a little experiment with the rest of that gingerbread dough.  Maybe little fish bowls with little gingerbread fishies swimming around in blue jolly rancher water.

So that's what I did.  And here they are.  My stained-glass fish bowl experiments:

Kind of cute, huh? 

They were fun.  There are things I learned from the experiment, things I'd do differently next time, etc. 

As far as eating them, well, my son and the kid across the street didn't like them, but my daughter and my husband did.  I haven't tried them, actually, but I know my taste preferences, and I don't think I'd enjoy them either.  If you're gonna have candy, have candy.  If you're gonna have a cookie, have a cookie.  Plus, I'm just not really nuts about hard candy anyway. 

These hard candies, by the way, were blue jolly ranchers - THIS shade of blue, or close to it.  But in the baking process, they became greenish.  Interesting.

Anyway, I've got to go now, but I'll be writing probably tonight about the first batches of cookies I've made - namely, Pfeffernusse and Springerle.

For your entertainment

Alex REALLY REALLY wanted to make gingerbread men.  Not just any - he wanted to duplicate the gingerbread man from (what else) the Shrek movies.  So last night we made a batch of gingerbread dough and cut out some cookies, and the kids decorated two each before bath time.  Here they are:

Complete with gumdrop buttons.  Alex's, that is.  Julia's...gumdrop goiters, perhaps.

Flour Children

Haven't had a lot of time to write lately...it's cookie season...

   

and we've been a bit busy.

Yes, but

I may, at times, be a fool...but at least today, I'm a cooking-baking fool.

Springerle will be baked off before I go to bed.

I'm baking oatmeal cookies now - two variations - one with chopped pecans and golden raisins, the other with crystallized ginger and bittersweet chocolate.

And I made a basic sugar cookie dough, too, which, tomorrow, will be transformed into hissing cats, bloodthirsty bats, and pumpkins. 

The timer's going off - I must go now.

Mail Therapy

So I've been feeling overwhelmed and stressed and depressed and lots of other awful things lately.  Mostly while I'm at work.  Yesterday was particularly bad, actually.  There were moments throughout the day when I just wanted to say "you know what?  I just can't do this any more.  See ya."  but I didn't because I did the math and I don't think we could afford it, plus I really should discuss that sort of thing with Bill first. 

Finally the day finished and I went and got my kids and the day began to improve.

For one thing, on the ride home, out of nowhere, Alex announced "You're a banana sandwich, Mommy!"  He said it like it was some secret I'd been hiding and he'd figured it out and thought it was pretty amusing.

Later on, after we'd been home for a while, and the kids were settled down doing something relatively safe, I got the mail.

And there it was.  My "House on the Hill" catalog.  (I'd link to it but my computer's being weird and I could lose this post so I'll do the linking later...)  House on the Hill is a company that makes and sells springerle molds, among other things.  I've posted a recipe for them somewhere in my recipes category.  I need to restructure that section, now that I'm thinking about it.

Anyway, it brought me a much-needed change of focus.  Here it is, October, and guess what, it's time to start planning the Christmas cookie baking.  YAY!!!  I don't know how to explain how happy that made me, and then, the more I thought about it, mentally planning who I need to bake for, and how many batches I'll need of the different recipes...and I realized, this year will be BETTER than the previous years!!!  I can do MORE!!!  I can go back to doing some of the more time-consuming decorated giant cookies that I used to make YEARS ago!  I can make those really cool gingerbread cookie BOWLS like I did about, oh, probably ten years ago....I HAVE TO START MAKING LISTS!!!

I couldn't sleep last night.  I know I sound nuts.  It's just cookies, after all.  But no, it's way more than cookies.  It's creativity, for one thing.  It's COOKIES, for another.  It's traditions.  It's the holidays.  It's me showing off, probably.  But none of those things compare to the biggest thing of all - the thing that makes all the other elements so VERY possible this year:

My kids are toddlers. 

Both of them. 

I loved both of their babyhoods - I'm not dismissing that section of their lives.  I sort of miss it, when I see little tiny baby clothes at the stores.  But.  Now.  They can play by themselves.  I don't have to carry either one of them everywhere all the time.  They mostly sleep through the night, which means so do I.  In short - I have more time and more freedom.  I need a little of that right about now. 

And another fun thing - Alex helped me last year, cutting out the almond stars.  He will help again.  And maybe Julia can help too...though I can just see her just ignoring the whole "helping" aspect and grabbing blobs of dough off the table and shoving them into her gaping maw as fast as she can....

But still.  I am wound up now.  If I didn't have to work today, I would have stayed up last night making my lists - of cookies, of ingredients, of people I'll send these to or bring them to, of other stuff I need (cookie tins, for one thing...)...ah, the bliss of lists.

We'll bake some cookies this weekend, me and Alex.  You know, for practice.

Oh well.

Maybe I was trying to accomplish too much.

I was up til almost midnight baking, and one of the last things I did was mold the very last of the springerle dough. I had bought a few new molds - and for these I was using a hen and a rooster. Very nice detail in the molds, and in the cookies, when I pressed the dough deep enough.

But I was getting tired (up and in the kitchen since 6:30 or so)...and frankly getting sick of cookies by that point. But - I got them done, placed them in their pans and cleaned up the kitchen and went to bed.

My body hurt. I think I'd spent the greater part of the day slightly hunched over bowls or pans or the oven or the sink.

Alex woke up shortly after I'd unkinked myself and was attempting to relax and fall asleep - he's got a cough, and I looked at the clock and realized he was probably due for another dose of cough medicine. So I (VERY RELUCTANTLY) rolled myself out of bed.

My feet hit the floor and I was immediately brought back to two periods of time in my life - when I waitressed, and when I went to culinary school full time on weekends. That awful swollen-soled pain that you feel after you have spent an entire day on your feet and haven't necessarily been wearing the best shoes, either. (In my case yesterday - no shoes at all...on a tile floor...)

And to make it even better - I felt this lightening bolt of pain shoot up the back of my left leg all the way to my butt. I couldn't move my left leg without feeling it again. Which was going to make it hard to get downstairs to where the bottle of cough medicine was.

And hopping wasn't going to work.

The only thing that worked, until everything finally loosened up, was to turn my feet out and plie. And walk in that position. Knees bent. Feet turned out. Out of our bedroom, down the stairs, to the kitchen.

This morning when I finally got up (Bill got up earlier with Alex - thank you, Honey!!!) my feet still hurt but I no longer needed to walk like a frog on my hind legs.

My first order of business was to bake off the springerle.

And you know what? I burned them. Well, burned half and overcooked the others. They are all in the trash now.

Oh, yes, and the two batches of stollen that I baked came out less than glorious too. I was impatient. It's a heavy dough, and I should have just left it alone so it could rise at its own pace.

But I didn't. So I have 3 1/2 loaves of very dense stollen. Still tastes okay, but I won't be giving it as gifts as I'd planned.

My parents were here for coffee this morning and sampled some. My mother and I had already discussed the flaws and the reasons behind them. My father and Bill came into the room a bit later, and my father said, approvingly, that it wasn't overly sweet.

I remarked to my mother that it wasn't overly airy either. We laughed.

I am glad I can laugh about this. There was a time (probably last weekend) that I would have taken this way too seriously, pulled my hair out and torn my clothes over it.... So if I have evolved in no other way, at least I take myself a teeny bit less seriously than I once did.

Gotta go finish the glazing of the lebkuchen....they turned out fine, at least.

Mise en Place

Mise en place (pronounced "meez-en-plahs") is a French phrase which means, basically, "to put in place," - and what it refers to in professional (and not-so-professional) kitchens is getting all your ingredients measured (or scaled) out, prepped, and ready to go, so that when you actually start cooking or baking, you don't have to suddenly search frantically through your cupboards for the bottle of ground cloves that you could swear you saw up there the other day.

It means being organized. It also keeps your work area tidy, since you aren't stopping to separate eggs in the middle of mixing your dry ingredients because you suddenly realize that you will only be adding the egg yolks to the sugar and butter at first, then incorporating your dry ingredients, and then the whites are whipped separately and folded into the rest of the mixture...and so since you didn't plan ahead for this, you've suddenly got egg white dripping down your arm and a bit of shell in with the creamed butter and sugar.

Tonight, while Bill brewed up an extract batch of Stout, I did my mise en place for 4 more batches of cookies. A double batch of the lebkuchen, and one batch each of almond stars, farmer hats, and butter cookies. Tomorrow throughout the day I'll put the doughs together, and bake them off tomorrow and Sunday. And then we can ship them out on Monday to Bill's brothers and uncle.

I also plan/want to make stollen, which is a German bread studded with raisins and candied orange peel (yes, studded, like they say in restaurant reviews or in cooking magazines) and marzipan...and topped with a heavy dusting of confectioners' sugar. I remember a good friend of my Mom's family, who was Aunt Hilda to me, used to make this and I loved it. With butter on it.

I also want to make shortbread...and a couple of batches of biscotti...my sister-in-law, Nina's recipe, and another recipe that a friend at work handed to me a few weeks ago.

Also want to make chocolate croissants or cinnamon rolls or something like that for Christmas morning...

I still have a little bit of time, I think...

I'll be fine as long as I mise en place...

Okay, this is way past my bedtime...goodnight....

Where to Begin?

Well, let's take it in order...

Thanksgiving went very nicely, with the exception of my husband's migraine, which finally eased up around 3 in the afternoon...

Other bits and pieces from that day

...not sure which of them it was, but someone in my family taught Alex to say "Cheers!" and clink his sippy cup against another person's glass...he went around the room, from person to person, saying "Cheers!" and clinking cups...

...my first Thanksgiving turkey came out JUST FINE, thank you, and none of it dry OR undercooked. And the stuffing, which my mom came up and helped with, was - as always - very yummy. My sister was the first to sample it, when the bird was barely out of the oven - she was over there, trying to look innocent...

...my son likes turnips....

The next day - my mother's birthday. We hosted that, too, and my husband did the cooking - (I had to work) - roast leg of lamb...brussels sprouts...baby carrots...and leftover mashed potatoes and turnips from the day before. Very yummy. I made kind of faux Napoleons of puff pastry circles layered with lemon pie filling and whipped cream and garnished with candied lemon peel.

...it's not a whole lot of fun having a sinus infection through the holidays...

Over the weekend we got a lot done around the house, and I've started decorating for Christmas a bit. I figure I'll do a little of something every day - a little pre-Christmas gift to myself because I always feel like I don't get enough time to do the fun pre-Christmas things...I always feel rushed.

So - my Nativity scene is up, and I've hung the cutesy snowman advent calendar up AND filled all the compartments with cookies for Alex and my husband to share.

And speaking of pre-Christmas things - I've got more springerle dough (made a triple batch this time) on the counter warming up a bit and tonight I'll form a ton more cookies...and bake them tomorrow.

So - must go. Also made a batch of pfeffernusse - they're kind of like spicy little rocks...good with tea.

That's it for the moment!

The Cookie Tradition, Continued...

I have been given a welcome nod and a nudge, as well, from Sheila regarding my post the other day about my mother-in-law's traditional cookie baking. I inherited that role in the family after her all-too-soon passing last November. One might say the spatula has been passed.... (or one might not, depending on one's sense of humor).

Anyway, I had promised to post a cookie recipe, and I'll probably post more than that - we'll see how it goes tonight. But before I do that, just a quick little link to the website for a company that sells many, many cookie presses and springerle molds, and other cookie-making books and supplies. My mother-in-law had purchased one, possibly two, springerle molds in recent years, and I have just recently ordered a few as well...to build the collection.

The place is called House on the Hill, and if you're at all interested in making springerle, or just interested in cookie-making in general, you should check them out.

With that little reference made, I'll be right back with a couple of recipes...

Chocolate Chip Cookies

(from my old blog) Yesterday I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, at my husband's request. No nuts - just chocolate chips. I used the recipe from the back of a package of Ghiradelli semi-sweet chips, but I used both the remaining semi-sweet chips and a whole package of Ghiradelli's double chocolate chips too.