Merry Christmas!

I hope that you all have a wonderful holiday filled with loving family & friends and lots of great food!  =)

A sweet anniversary

I meant to do this post yesterday, but with all of the holiday stuff going on, I just didn't get that far.  Yesterday was my blogiversary!  Hard to believe that I've been at this for two years now.  It's pretty amazing when I think about all the neat baking things I've accomplished since I started blogging.  And even better, it's great to think about all the wonderful blogging friends I've made.  Brianna and I made a brief stop at Starbucks yesterday so I could pick up some gift cards.  While we were waiting, she had to look at everything, of course.  One thing that she noticed was a bunch of madeleines displayed by the register.  She took one look and pointed out to me, "You've made those!"  And she's right, though I haven't baked any since we did them for TWD last year.  They're on the long list of new things that I've tried due to the influence of a baking group or blogging event.  It's not that I didn't do a lot to baking before I started blogging, but the interaction with others has definitely inspired me to try so many new things.  I'll talk about some more of them when I get to my year-end wrap-up next week, but there's one that I want to share for today.

I've certainly made lots of Christmas cookies this year, thanks to the 12 Days of Cookies.  I realized that I wanted to do something a little different for the daycare teachers and my employees, since they've already been the recipients of many of the cookies I've made this year.  So I decided to try my hand at some different sorts of candy.  I made fudge and caramels, but wanted something else.  Then one of my new Twitter friends mentioned making pralines.  That reminded me of a recipe in the Martha Stewart Holiday Sweets magazine that I picked up right at the beginning of the holiday season.  Pecan-Sour Cream Pralines sounded like just the right thing.

When I first started blogging, I'd rarely made caramel--maybe once.  It scared me, quite a bit in fact.  But over the past two years, I've made it many times, including here and here, and with very messy results here.  Thanks to all that experience, sugar syrup no longer scares me the way it did.

It helps that I have a great digital thermometer to help me with things that need to be cooked to a certain temperature, as the praline mixture did.  You start by melting a couple tablespoons of butter, then adding white and dark brown sugars and sour cream.  The mixture is brought to a boil, then cooked to a temperature of 240 degrees F.  I can set my thermometer to tell me when it reaches a certain temperature (either when heating up or cooling off).  Much less stressful than having to constantly check the temperature.  Once the mixture is done cooking, you turn off the heat and stir in bourbon and vanilla, which makes it bubble a lot.  Then after a couple minutes, you add the pecans and stir until the mixture starts to turn opaque and thicken a bit.  Working fairly quickly, you drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and let them cool until set, about 30 minutes.

The verdict?  These are really, really good.  Sweet, yes, but the salt helps a bit with that.  I've already made two batches because I gave away most of the first one as well as part of the second.  That's probably a good thing, since I've had to restrain myself to not eat them all.  How can you go wrong with pecans and brown sugar and bourbon? =)  They've been a hit with everyone else who's tried them, as well.  If you'd like to try these for yourself, you can find the recipe here.  I definitely recommend it!

12 Days of Cookies - Day 12 - Holiday Sugar Cookies

When I started this project, I didn't expect that my 12 Days of Cookies would take 20 to finish. =)  But I'm very glad that I did it.  One of the best reasons is that I discovered a bunch of great blogs to read in the process. The bakers participating in this baking extravaganza are an amazing bunch.  I love reading about everyone else's experiences, good and bad.  It's been neat to compare results on the recipes that we have in common.  And reading some of the other posts definitely influenced my final list.  There are actually a few more that I had planned to bake, but I ran out of energy and substituted easier recipes instead.  I'll be sure to share them when I do get a chance to make them.

Now for cookie number 12!  As I mentioned in my last post, I ended up making a lot more cutout cookies than I ever would have thought--five of the twelve.  I was worried at first that these Holiday Sugar Cookies and the Christmas Cutout cookies would be too similar.  But they aren't.  While the Christmas Cutouts seemed kind of bland to me, these had a lot more flavor.  In addition to the usual suspects (butter, flour, salt, a bit of baking powder, an egg and some vanilla), the dough also has brown sugar instead of white as well as a bunch of nutmeg.  By this point, I'm pretty comfortable with the whole process for this sort of cookie--mix the dough, chill the dough, roll out the dough, cut shapes, chill cookies on the pan, bake.  I liked this dough because unlike some of the others, it didn't get rock hard when chilled, probably because of the brown sugar.  I thought it was pretty easy to work with, though I made sure I worked quickly, since most rollout doughs get soft pretty fast.

The verdict?  I really like these cookies.  I like nutmeg a lot, especially when freshly grated, so I really enjoyed the flavor of these.  The nutmeg paired nicely with the brown sugar.  I took the easy route in decorating, with a simple glaze (the same one I used on the Spice Rollout Cookies) and some colored sugar.  They're tasty plain as well, but more fun when dressed up a bit.  I still have a bunch of plain ones that need to be decorated, as well as some dough in the fridge, so I might finally try my hand at more fancy decorating, with royal icing.  We'll see.

I'm actually a little bit sad to be done.  But I've got a few more holiday cookies and other treats to make and blog about, so stay tuned.  I also realized that I missed acknowledging my 200th post, which was on Day 1.  And my blogiversary is coming up in just a few short days.  So I want to come up with some way to celebrate.  I'm really happy that achieved one of my goals with this whole project, which was to get excited about blogging again!

If you'd like to try these cookies for yourself, you can find the recipe here.  And be sure to check out the other bakers participating in the 12 Days of Cookies to see what they've baked up recently!  =)

Andrea of Andrea's Recipes

(honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)

Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen

Courtney of Coco Cooks

Judy of No Fear Entertaining

Kelly of Sass & Veracity

Michelle of Big Black Dog

RJ of Flamingo Musings

Sandy of At the Baker's Bench

Tiffany of The Nesting Project

 

12 Days of Cookies - Day 11 - Christmas Cutouts

Okay, the end is in sight.  I've actually baked both cookies 11 and 12, now it's just a matter of getting the writing done.  Funny how even though I said that I'm not very fond of roll and cut cookies, I seem to have selected an awful lot of them to make for this project.  =)  I planned from the very beginning to make this one, and I thought I was going to save it for last, making a nice circle with my opening spiced cutouts.  But I changed my mind.  Instead, I bring you these vanilla sugar cookies for Day 11.

These turned out to be great for what I needed them for.  Quite a while back, I agreed to help out with the holiday party for Brianna's first grade class.  I planned to bake cookies, like I did last year.  And I did bake cookies for eating--I made another batch of the chocolate candy cane cookies.  But as we were planning a couple weeks ago, I got an email from the party organizer asking if I could bake cookies for decorating.  We decided simple rounds would be best, since we were supposed to avoid reference to any particular holidays.

I mixed up the dough Tuesday night and baked the cookies Wednesday night.  (The party was on Thursday.)  The dough was very straightforward to make--the usual mix of butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, an egg and some vanilla.  The only unusual ingredient was a bit of sour cream.  I didn't bother dividing up the dough; I just flattened it out and wrapped up the whole thing in plastic wrap.  When it was time to roll, I cut the dough in half with my bench scraper and worked with one piece at a time.  I totally missed the part in the instructions about using sugar on the counter when rolling out the dough.  I just used flour.  The dough was a bit hard to roll out--I had to let it warm up quite a bit before rolling.  And even then, it had a tendency to want to break when I was rolling.  But I got my circles cut out, put them on parchment lined baking sheets, and chilled them on the pans for 10-15 minutes before baking.  I baked them for close to 15 minutes before they started to get any color around the edges.

The verdict?  I don't know that I'll make these again.  They worked fine for decorating, and baked up flat and even.  But they didn't have a whole lot of flavor.  Maybe using sugar for rolling them out would have helped, but I'm not so sure about that.  I have other vanilla sugar cookie recipes that I like more.  But I don't think the kids really cared that much about that.  They were having too much fun with the sprinkles...

decorated by one of the kids in B's class--I don't know, you can still see the cookies... =)

If you'd like to give these a try, you can find the recipe here.  And be sure to check out the other bakers participating in the 12 Days of Cookies to see what they've baked up recently!  =)

Andrea of Andrea's Recipes

(honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)

Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen

Courtney of Coco Cooks

Judy of No Fear Entertaining

Kelly of Sass & Veracity

Michelle of Big Black Dog

RJ of Flamingo Musings

Sandy of At the Baker's Bench

Tiffany of The Nesting Project

My weekend project

This is a significant post for several reasons.  For one, this makes the 12th post I've done this month, which is a new record.  I've done 11 several times, but never more than that.  And I'm not done for the month, what with at least two more holiday cookies, not to mention some TWD recipes and some more bread.  This also marks my return to posting about the BBA Challenge.  Hard to believe it's been over two months since I posted my variation on the Cranberry Walnut Celebration Bread.  I did make the next recipe, English Muffins, in mid-October.  I wasn't that happy with how they turned out, though, and don't feel like remaking them right now, so I'm just going to skip posting about them.

I've been procrastinating on the Focaccia for quite some time, and it took a couple of different things to finally get me back on track with BBA.  One was that our annual Christmas potluck with the Italian genealogy group coincided with a full weekend off from work (both Saturday and Sunday!).  I knew that the focaccia recipe made a large quantity (a half-sheet pan, 13"x18") and that it would be perfect for a crowd (so we wouldn't eat it all ourselves).  The second was that I signed up for an evening class with Peter Reinhart here at Central Market in January!  I'm very excited about going, and the anticipation has me re-energized about bread baking.  The class is mainly about his new book, but I'm hoping that if I take my copy of BBA maybe he'll sign it for me. =)

Anyway, on to my recipe notes.  The main thing that had me putting off this bread was the fact that it takes two days.  Since I finally had a Saturday off, though, I figure it was time to tackle it.  It turned out that the whole process wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.  I used my mixer for the dough, first with the paddle for the initial mixing, then with the dough hook for kneading.  I did have to add a bit of additional flour to get the dough to clear the sides of the bowl.  After the mixing, it was mostly waiting.  You stretch and fold the dough, then wait a while before doing it again, several times.  Then the dough is gently spread in the pan by using fingertips to dimple the dough, with the help of lots of herbed olive oil.  I went with a simple rosemary and garlic oil, since rosemary was the only fresh herb I had on hand.  Here's what I used:

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil (nothing fancy)
1/4 cup chopped fresh rosemary
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3/4 teaspoon granulated garlic

Once the dough was in the pan, it was covered with plastic and placed in the fridge to develop flavor overnight.  That was Saturday night.  On Sunday morning, I took the dough out of the fridge early, since the recipe says that it needs about 3 hours to proof.  It got some more herbed oil and more dimpling.  At about 2 1/2 hours, I realized that the dough was starting to try to escape from the pan.  So I quickly turned the oven on to preheat, and dimpled the dough  one more time to deflate it just a little.  Once the oven was ready (500 degrees F), I put the pan in, turned down the temp to 450 degrees F as directed, and baked it for 10 minutes.  Then I rotated the pan and baked it for 10 minutes longer, at which point it was starting to brown nicely.  I took it out of the oven and immediately took the focaccia out of the pan and carefully transferred it to a rack to cool.

The verdict?  This stuff is good.  Really good.  But it would be hard for it to be bad, with all that oil adding flavor.  =)  I assume everyone at the potluck liked it--it disappeared very quickly.  The girls and Jamie all liked the focaccia a lot, so I have a feeling I'll be making it again soon.  I'd like to experiment with some different herbs as well as other toppings.  If you'd like to try this one for yourself, get your hands on a copy of the book.  You won't regret it.  And don't forget to check out some of the other bakers who have taken on the BBA Challenge.

12 Days of Cookies - Day 10 - Cranberry-Orange Drop Cookies

Welcome to the latest installment of the 12 Days of Cookies!  This is number 10, and I'm hoping to get some more baked today.  I actually made these last night, and stayed up way too late.  Not just because I was making cookies, it just worked out that way.  I think I was enjoying the peace and quiet too much. =)  There's not that much of that around here.  Though I must say, it's fairly quiet right now, since both my girls are glued to the Dora Christmas special.  *sigh*  Not sure if that's entirely worth it--calm is good, but Dora can be pretty annoying. =)

For this latest cookie, I went with something easy, that I could work on in between my other baking.  (I was also working on focaccia for the BBA Challenge last night--not hard, but lots of waiting time.)  There's a little bit of waiting for the cookies, as well.  The first thing you do is mix a lot of dried cranberries with some orange juice, and let them sit for about half an hour to plump up a bit.  While I was waiting on that, I mixed the dry ingredients--flour, baking powder and soda, salt, cinnamon and dried ginger.  I increased the dried ginger to 1 1/2 teaspoons, since I didn't have any fresh ginger (the recipe calls for both).  I also grated the orange zest (clementine this time).  I made a change on the nuts--the recipe calls for walnuts and pistachios, but I had my fill of shelling pistachios yesterday morning.  So I used walnuts and pecans. I used the small bowl of my food processor to chop them, and threw the fresh (frozen) cranberries in with them so everything got chopped at once.  After that, the mixing went quickly--cream butter with brown sugar, add the zest, egg and vanilla, mix in the dry ingredients, and stir in the fruit and nuts.  I used my #40 disher and ended up with 3 1/2 dozen cookies.  I baked them at 325 degrees F for 17 minutes.

While I made the cookies last night, I waited until this morning to take pictures.  I've been having a lot of fun coming up with ideas for festive holiday food photos.  And I really enjoy reading everyone else's 12 Days of Cookies posts and getting new ideas for pictures from them.  For today's post, I had some help from my resident food stylist:

She also also asked if she could take a picture or two.  This one is hers, which shows our high-tech photography studio:

The verdict?  I'm a bit surprised by how much I like these.  I don't usually like nuts in cookies all that much, but as Brianna put it, the nuts go quite well with the cranberries.  Both girls seem to like the small sample they had.  As if they would say anything else--if they did, I might not let them sample cookies for breakfast anymore! =P   Most of these are destined for the potluck we're going to at lunch time; hopefully everyone there will enjoy them too.

If you'd like to give these a try, you can find the recipe here.  And be sure to check out the other bakers participating in the 12 Days of Cookies to see what they've baked up recently!  =)

Andrea of Andrea's Recipes

(honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)

Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen

Courtney of Coco Cooks

Judy of No Fear Entertaining

Kelly of Sass & Veracity

Michelle of Big Black Dog

RJ of Flamingo Musings

Sandy of At the Baker's Bench

Tiffany of The Nesting Project

12 Days of Cookies - Day 9 - Holiday Biscotti

Yay!  It's nice to have a Saturday off after working the past couple.  Finally, I have a chance to get caught up on Christmas decorating and baking.  The girls and I put some more ornaments on the tree before breakfast this morning. =)  (Still more to do this evening.)  And I made my selection for Day 9 of the 12 Days of Cookies.  This Holiday Biscotti with Cranberries and Pistachios has been on my list from the beginning.  It wasn't even that hard to make--what slowed me down was the need to shell the pistachios.  I wish I'd thought to check at Central Market to see if they had any already shelled.  At least Brianna helped me with a few of them.  As picky as she is about a lot of things, she absolutely loves pistachios.  I'm sure she'll help me eat the leftovers.

I mostly followed the recipe as written.  I left out the aniseed because I really dislike all things licorice.  And a la Dorie, I rubbed the lemon zest into the sugar so it was evenly dispersed, then creamed the lemon sugar with the butter.  Then it was just a matter of mixing in the eggs (one at a time), then mixing in the dry ingredients.  I stirred the cranberries and pistachios in by hand.  I formed the dough into two long, thin logs on a parchment-lined baking sheet--the dough was surprisingly easy to work with.  I put the sheet in my oven (preheated to 325 degrees F) and baked the logs for about 25 minutes.  When I took the sheet out of the oven, I was surprised that the dough hadn't spread as much as I'm used to with biscotti.  That's when I realized that I'd added too much flour (2 1/2 cups rather than 2 1/4).

I decided that an extra ounce of flour wouldn't cause a complete disaster, and proceeded with cutting the logs into pieces.  I cut on the diagonal so I'd get longer pieces.  Rather than laying the biscotti pieces on their sides on two sheets, I left them standing up and was able to fit them on one sheet.  I had to bake them a bit longer (about 25 minutes) for them to start to brown, but it was worth it since I didn't have to mess with turning the pieces over.  Once the biscotti had cooled, I coated one end of each piece with dark chocolate.  (I took a poll, and Brianna and Gillian both voted for dark instead of white chocolate.)

The verdict?  Tasty!  I definitely like the dark chocolate much more than I would have liked white chocolate.  I think the dark goes nicely with both the cranberries and pistachios.  The plain biscotti also has a distinct but pleasant flavor of lemon that goes nicely with the other ingredients.  I'm going to take these to an potluck tomorrow (our Italian genealogy friends); I'll have to report back later on what they think.

If you'd like to give these a try, you can find the recipe here.  And be sure to check out the other bakers participating in the 12 Days of Cookies to see what they've baked up recently!  =)

Andrea of Andrea's Recipes

(honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)

Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen

Courtney of Coco Cooks

Judy of No Fear Entertaining

Kelly of Sass & Veracity

Michelle of Big Black Dog

RJ of Flamingo Musings

Sandy of At the Baker's Bench

Tiffany of The Nesting Project