Monday, December 25, 2006
christmas baking 2006
My sister and I decided to bake cookies for Christmas to give away this year. We set out at 9am on the 22nd to bake.. and we finished at 4:30pm. She has previously prepared some of her dough on the weekend.. and I made my oatmeal raisin cookie and my peanut butter cookie the day before. If we hadn't it would have taken us A LOT longer. It took us and additional 1.5 hours to package and put it all together.
It was fun, but tiring. I was exhausted by the end of the day...
I hope everyone enjoyed them as much as I had enjoyed making them. I dont have the recipes for all of the cookies at the moment. I do, but I'm just too lazy to type them up.
oatmeal raisin cookies
I didnt like the oatmeal raisin cookie that I baked recently. I used this recipe a year a two ago, when I was experimenting with different oatmeal raisin recipes. I really liked this one. I found this a couple years ago in the All American Cookie Book.
peanut butter cookies
I decided to make a peanut butter cookie just for David's sake because I know how much he loves peanut butter. This actually turned out a lot tastier than I had imagined. It was nice with a tad of crunch. The peanut butter wasn't too strong either. I used the recipe from the Dorie Greenspan book.
chocolate cookies
I wanted to have a chocolate cookie, yet I didnt want to use real chocolate. I went through Martha Stewart's website and I found this chocolate cookie, which used cocoa. I found this a bit sweet, but my mom really liked this cookie. A few others also claim this one to be their favourite.
Grammy's Chocolate Cookies
ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups (2 sticks plus 4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar, plus more for dipping
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
directions:
Preheat the oven to 350°
1. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter, 2 cups sugar, and eggs on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add vanilla, and mix to combine. Gradually add dry ingredients, and combine with mixer on low speed. Cover bowl with plastic wrap, and chill until dough is firm, about 1 hour.
3. Roll dough into 1-inch balls. Dip top of each ball into sugar. Place on prepared baking sheets about 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake until set, about 8 minutes.
applesauce cookies
This cookie didn't turn out. My sister labelled this cookie as the 'sad cookie'. She claims it looks very sad. I wanted to bake a cookie with fruit, but I think put too much apple. I used fresh apples, which I puree and added to the mixture. When we gave my dad a plate of cookies that contained a mixtures of cookies I made and my sister made... my dad poked at the apple. It was really soft. He immediate put it back down once he held it. Poor apple. :(
chocolate chip expresso walnut cookies
This has recently become one of my favourite cookies. It was also from the Dorie Greenspan book. My sister made this cookie a month ago and I fell in love with it. Though I find it really filling, so I can only have one cookie at a time.
cranberry pistachio cookies
The following are baked by my sister. This was really good. I love how the pistachio goes with cranberry. It was delicious, but did not fit in with my batch of cookies for I was making nice round big drop cookies.
cherry icebox cookies
These were okay. I made something like this last year.
banana bread
My sister's famous banana bread. The banana bread, which she bakes for 6 consecutive weeks sometimes... I get so sick of banana bread sometimes. But nevertheless they are always good as a small snack.
chocolate crackle cookies
These crackles I believe was a Martha Stewart recipe. They turned out pretty good.. a cake like texture. Though it required lots of chilling time. She took a couple of hours to prepare this batch.
Cookies Galore
Our boxed up cookies as we prepared other batches. Our kitchen and table is a mess.
Packaging
We took another good hour and almost a half to package our cookies. We have all the boxes and different cookies laid out so we can package them. And thereee... the beautiful finished result. :)
My sister and I decided to bake cookies for Christmas to give away this year. We set out at 9am on the 22nd to bake.. and we finished at 4:30pm. She has previously prepared some of her dough on the weekend.. and I made my oatmeal raisin cookie and my peanut butter cookie the day before. If we hadn't it would have taken us A LOT longer. It took us and additional 1.5 hours to package and put it all together.
It was fun, but tiring. I was exhausted by the end of the day...
I hope everyone enjoyed them as much as I had enjoyed making them. I dont have the recipes for all of the cookies at the moment. I do, but I'm just too lazy to type them up.
oatmeal raisin cookies
I didnt like the oatmeal raisin cookie that I baked recently. I used this recipe a year a two ago, when I was experimenting with different oatmeal raisin recipes. I really liked this one. I found this a couple years ago in the All American Cookie Book.
peanut butter cookies
I decided to make a peanut butter cookie just for David's sake because I know how much he loves peanut butter. This actually turned out a lot tastier than I had imagined. It was nice with a tad of crunch. The peanut butter wasn't too strong either. I used the recipe from the Dorie Greenspan book.
chocolate cookies
I wanted to have a chocolate cookie, yet I didnt want to use real chocolate. I went through Martha Stewart's website and I found this chocolate cookie, which used cocoa. I found this a bit sweet, but my mom really liked this cookie. A few others also claim this one to be their favourite.
Grammy's Chocolate Cookies
ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups (2 sticks plus 4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar, plus more for dipping
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
directions:
Preheat the oven to 350°
1. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter, 2 cups sugar, and eggs on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add vanilla, and mix to combine. Gradually add dry ingredients, and combine with mixer on low speed. Cover bowl with plastic wrap, and chill until dough is firm, about 1 hour.
3. Roll dough into 1-inch balls. Dip top of each ball into sugar. Place on prepared baking sheets about 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake until set, about 8 minutes.
applesauce cookies
This cookie didn't turn out. My sister labelled this cookie as the 'sad cookie'. She claims it looks very sad. I wanted to bake a cookie with fruit, but I think put too much apple. I used fresh apples, which I puree and added to the mixture. When we gave my dad a plate of cookies that contained a mixtures of cookies I made and my sister made... my dad poked at the apple. It was really soft. He immediate put it back down once he held it. Poor apple. :(
chocolate chip expresso walnut cookies
This has recently become one of my favourite cookies. It was also from the Dorie Greenspan book. My sister made this cookie a month ago and I fell in love with it. Though I find it really filling, so I can only have one cookie at a time.
cranberry pistachio cookies
The following are baked by my sister. This was really good. I love how the pistachio goes with cranberry. It was delicious, but did not fit in with my batch of cookies for I was making nice round big drop cookies.
cherry icebox cookies
These were okay. I made something like this last year.
banana bread
My sister's famous banana bread. The banana bread, which she bakes for 6 consecutive weeks sometimes... I get so sick of banana bread sometimes. But nevertheless they are always good as a small snack.
chocolate crackle cookies
These crackles I believe was a Martha Stewart recipe. They turned out pretty good.. a cake like texture. Though it required lots of chilling time. She took a couple of hours to prepare this batch.
Cookies Galore
Our boxed up cookies as we prepared other batches. Our kitchen and table is a mess.
Packaging
We took another good hour and almost a half to package our cookies. We have all the boxes and different cookies laid out so we can package them. And thereee... the beautiful finished result. :)
# posted by viv @ 1:21 AM 
