Wordless Wednesday - Let them eat cake

With a corncob pipe and a "button" nose

When I got my December issue of Bon Appetit, the pretty cookies on the cover definitely caught my eye.  Then I spyed the small print near the bottom that proclaimed them to be Dorie Greenspan's Speculoos Buttons, p. 96.  I immediately knew that I'd have to make them.  After all, I know I can rely on Dorie. =)  I realized also that these would be perfect for my virtual cookie exchange. 

The dough is easy to mix up.  You cream butter with regular and brown sugars as well as a little molasses.  Next in are an egg and some vanilla.  Then you add the dry ingredients--flour, salt and spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and a bit of cloves).  The dough is formed into logs and chilled for several hours.  Before baking, the logs of dough are brushed with egg white and coated in sparkling sugar.  This was a great chance for me to use the pretty pearlized sugar that I picked up a couple weeks ago.  The recipe calls for adding a glaze and additional decorations to the cookies after they're baked, but I didn't get that far.

The verdict?  I really liked these cookies--they have a good level of spice and aren't too sweet.  Brianna tried one and didn't really like it.  Gillian wouldn't even taste one.  So I took most of them to work, and found several people who were more than happy to take them off my hands.  I will definitely be making these again--the dough is easy to mix up and stash in the freezer for cookie emergencies. =)  Next time I'll have to add the glaze and play around more with the decorations.  Maybe if the girls get to decorate them, they'll reconsider eating them.  Lol. 

If you'd like to try these for yourself, you can find the recipe here.  Be sure to check back in a few days so see what other tasty cookies my friends have come up with for our cookie exchange!  

Deck the halls

..or at least the cookies. =)  I had a meeting down in Austin today, and got out early enough to run a couple of errands before I had to head home.  Stop number one was at World Market, since I was just about out of Andes Peppermint Crunch bits after baking cookies last night.  Central Market had them the past couple years, but I haven't seen them there this year, even though there are plenty of other holiday items out.  So I did some searching online to see where I might get them, and was successful in purchasing several bags this afternoon.

My other stop was at my awesome local baking supply shop, Make it Sweet.  I was reading the December issue of Bon Appetit over the weekend, and there's a great cookie article in there from the wonderful Dorie Greenspan.  The recipe for Speculoos Buttons is high on my list of holiday recipes to try, and I was inspired to search out some interested sugars to use for decorating.  It's hard to tell from my picture, but I found pearlized sparkling sugar in assorted colors--it looks really neat.  The great thing is that Make it Sweet has all sorts of sprinkles, etc. available in bulk, so I was able to try out several without spending a lot of money.

Happily-ever-aftering

This was my latest order from KAF.  No flour this time, since I'm still pretty well-stocked.  I can buy AP, bread, www and unbleached cake flour blend in my local grocery store for quite reasonable prices.  Durum flour is the one I order most often, but I just opened a new bag, and I have cake flour, high gluten flour and pastry flour that I've barely touched.  So I'm good there.  I love the boiled cider, so I try to keep a bottle in reserve.  As for the vanilla, I really like King Arthur's relatively new house blend a lot.  I have to admit, the fact that it's a big bottle makes me use it more liberally than I might otherwise. =)  Again, this new bottle is for my reserve.  I don't want to run out of a lot of things, but vanilla is very high on the list!  As for the sprinkles and cupcake papers, look, it's more evidence of my love of snowflake items. =)  I bought some snowflake papers from KAF last year, which were great.  These are a slightly different design, but still very pretty.  I couldn't pass up the sprinkles, either.  I'm sure B&G will enjoy helping me use them to decorate cookies and top cupcakes.

Note--I just happen to like KAF products; they have not compensated me in any way.

Fifteen?!

Something a little unexpected happened at work today.  This coming Monday will be my 15th anniversary of working for my company.  I knew that in the back of my head, but I wasn't expecting anything related to that today.  But since we have the day off on Monday, my boss brought it up this morning.  I got a nice certificate and a lovely paperweight-ish item to commemorate the occasion.  But much better was the gift from the people I work with, pictured above.  Do they know me, or what? =)  Okay, not well enough to know that I don't really like white chocolate, lol.  But the thought is definitely what counts, and it certainly won't go to waste, since everyone else here likes it, and I can find fun ways to use it for decorating stuff.  I love the cupcake stencils, mainly because they're something I wouldn't have thought to buy for myself.  I think I need to bake some cupcakes this weekend now...  Something that my coworkers were surely hoping for.  =)

Wordless Wednesday - Baked Chocolate Doughnuts

(My friend Tracey has the recipe on her blog)

I'm late, I'm late

Yes, I'm behind.  But I figured I'd better get another one of these cookies baked and posted before the group disowns me. =)  On one hand, I don't have much of an excuse, since I've been on vacation this week.  But in reality, it's been a busy week--lots of appointments and other stuff I can't get done when I'm working.  Tuesday, Brianna and I went to the eye doctor and we found out that Brianna needs glasses.  She has mixed feelings about it; guess we'll see how things go once we pick up her glasses sometime next week.  Wednesday was Gillian's turn--4-year-old check-up.  Five shots, which she took amazingly well.  I only got one (flu shot), and I think my arm bothered me more than her legs bothered her after the first day. =)  Thursday was consumed with Brianna's class holiday party (I baked cookies for them to decorate), and Friday I helped with Gillian's daycare party.  I had every intention of baking more cookies, but I decided to go with spiced nuts as teacher gifts, figuring they would get plenty of sweets from everyone else.

And so it managed to get all the way to Saturday, and I hadn't baked another one of these Cookies We Love.  To be totally honest, I guess I'm just not feeling the love for any of these cookies.  It seems like I run into problems no matter which one I think about making.  The next one I had my eye on was the Galletas con Chochitos.  Several of the other bakers have made these, and there were some reports that they spread a lot and just weren't that exciting.  But I finally just decided to forge ahead and see how they would turn out. After all, I got these amazing chocolate sprinkles from King Arthur Flour, and really wanted to use them.  

I admit, I can't leave well enough alone, and I made some changes to the recipe.  The first thing I did was replace two of the egg yolks with a whole egg.  I have more egg whites in my freezer than I can count, and just couldn't face the idea of adding three more.  I mixed up the dough, and decided to chill it before forming the cookies, since it was pretty sticky.  I also changed the method for forming the cookies.  I've run into this debate before when making bagels.  I'm firmly in the "form a rope and join the ends together" camp, rather than the "make a ball and poke a hole in the middle" faction.  So I went with my preferred shaping for these cookies, too.  The ends don't always want to stick together, but that's okay, because they'll fuse when the cookies bake.  I also used up the leftover egg white making spiced nuts, so I just brushed the tops of the cookies with some water (I used my finger dipped in a bowl of water) and then dunked them in the sprinkles.  That worked just fine.  The final change I made was to the baking temperature.  I baked one pan at the recipe temperature of 300ºF (for 15 min) and got cookies that were cakey and didn't have much color.  So when I made the second pan (the next morning, after letting the remaining dough chill overnight), I changed the temperature to 350ºF and baked the cookies until they were nicely browned on the bottoms and edges, about 12 minutes.  (I'm not sure of the exact timing;  I turned off the timer without realizing it. Oops.)

Cookie from batch #1 on the left, batch #2 on the right

The verdict?  I definitely liked the second batch better.  I prefer my butter cookies browned and crisp.  Brianna, on the other hand, gave the first batch a thumbs-up, since she liked the softer texture.  Something for everyone! =)  I'm not sure if I'll make these again, since they seemed rather fussy for something that just wasn't that exciting in the end.  I'll definitely be finding a use for the rest of the sprinkles, though. =)

If you'd like to try this recipe, you can find it here.  And be sure to check out what the other cookie bakers have made over the past couple weeks:

Courtney of Coco Cooks 
Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes
Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen
Judy of No Fear Entertaining
Kelly of Sass & Veracity
Michelle of Big Black Dogs
Renee of Flamingo Musings
Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench
Tiffany of The Nesting Project