Maple Cutout Cookie Experiment

This morning I had an email with a recipe in it for Maple Sugar Cookies and... As I had all the ingredients... And the time... I made some!!!

The pictures of the cookies were so inspiring and used some gorgeous tools that I headed downstairs to my baking lair and started searching for something to imprint my cookies with. I couldn't find anything, right away. Just as I was giving up I remembered Kim & I picked up some $1 doilies at Michael's for just this project. 

I was a tad worried the dough would get all inside the doilie but it didn't.

Now, my cookies didn't have the lovely edges that Liv got here: http://livforcake.com/2015/11/maple-sugar-cookies.html but I'm quite pleased to have something I can use to create texture on my cookies. 

I adjusted the recipe a touch: I used 2C Nutri flour & 1C all purpose flour as well as adding in 1/2t maple extract (next time I'll use 1t to further mask the whole wheat taste). These cookies are so good I don't even want to ice them. Yummy!!

Normally I peel off the back of the waxed paper but as I wanted to preserve the pattern I slid my offset under there to make lifting them easier. 

They lifted nicely. 

It's more of a cobblestone pattern but at least it's a pattern. :D

Update Jan 2016: The above adjustments made a delicious chewy cookie that everyone raved about. I made these again the other day & adjusted the flavouring, reversed the quantities of the flours to see if I could keep the chewy factor but lose the whole wheat taste. I do believe it worked but having accidentally pouring a bunch of my maple syrup all down the outside of my mixing bowl... I must have added too much as my cookies spread a touch. Oh boy!

The original recipe with my notes. 

Completely surprised that the recipe called for just an egg yolk... I don't recall that the first time I made these cookies. I think I just used a large egg. ;)

And my final thought?

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Chocolate Cutout Cookies - Mexican Variation Included

Perfect Chocolate Cutout Cookies

Ingredients:
DRY

• 3C AP flour
• 1/2C cocoa
• 1T instant coffee granules, crushed (I have a jar of Taster's Choice Decaf in the cupboard)
• 1/2t salt

WET

• 1C unsalted butter, room temp
• 1C sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2t chocolate flavour/extract (or vanilla)

Mix dry (I sometimes do this the day before when I take out my butter & store in a plastic air tight container).
Mix butter & sugar till fluffy then add eggs 1 at a time. Add flavouring.

When well blended and of even consistency, add dry mixture in 2-3 separate additions, scraping down the sides of your bowl. When mixture is mostly blended, finish mixing by hand.

Divide into two portions and place one portion between two sheets of waxed paper & roll to 1/4" thickness. Place waxed papered-sandwiched, rolled out dough onto a large baking sheet and place in fridge. Next portion can be put on top of this or on it's own sheet. Refrigerate for 15-30 minutes. (Can be left overnight but ensure the edges of the waxed paper are folded over well to limit exposure of the edges of your dough to the air. May need to sit out for a few minutes before you cut out.)

Take out one portion and peel off and replace one sheet of waxed paper then flip the dough over and peel off completely the other sheet of waxed paper to expose cutting area. (I do this so that when I'm cutting out the cookies they will lift more easily. Be sure not to snap or bend your dough. If you do, don't cry like me. :'D)

Preheat oven to 350F (I'm all for saving energy and my oven takes approx 4 minutes to preheat so I don't turn it on until I start cutting out the cookies as it'll be done when I'm ready for it.) I bought some Silpat thing-a-ma-jigs from the dollar store and cut them to fit my sheets. I like the way they give the bottom of the cookie a bit of texture. I found that using them, though, increased my cooking time from 12 to 13 minutes when I was just using the silicone baking paper.

Cut out cookies. At first they will stick to your cutter and if there are delicate portions, you may want to use some of your fondant tools to gently push the dough out of the cutter and onto your cookie sheet. As the dough warms up it will start to be left behind and need an offset spatula to properly lift it onto your sheets.

Bake for 12-14 minutes at 350F.

Personally, I always eat that teeny tiny piece of dough I have left and it's my absolute favourite part of making the cookies (unless I'm making gingerbread then I throw that right into the garbage as I hate gingerbread that much!).  I know there are eggs in the recipe... I haven't been sick once and am still alive. Enjoy!

VARIATION: Mexican Chocolate Cookies - I added 1t pumpkin pie spice & instead of chocolate or vanilla flavouring I added 2t Pumpkin Spice flavouring. (I was hoping for pumpkin/chocolate deliciousness but ended up with chocolate/cinnamon cookies.)

I got these cute cutters from Whisked Away Cutters on Etsy here: https://www.etsy.com/transaction/1030490861

I started showing off near the end & did the vines in my initial "L". ;D

The original recipe is modified from the book Cookie Craft by Valerie Peterson & Janice Fryer (excellent starter book).

I found the original recipe spread far too much for my taste so I experimented until I got the proportions of ingredients just right and now I have almost zero spreading of these wonderful cookies. They are always a hit and the smell will drive you crazy!

Oh the Disappointment of an Unripe Avocado

Today I'm having my best friend over for lunch!! It's early September, we've had some rainy weather already but right now we're enjoying Summer's last fling! 

This friend is always doing for her husband, family, mother, neighbours, friends, & me. I know she'll be running around like crazy today so I wanted to have her stop by for a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup, one of our favourites! :D

Along with this yumminess, I wanted to give her a bit of a treat so I made the Looney Spoons Chocolate Pudding which is made from avocados. Now, this friend of mine is quite the home chef & not much of a baker so I always feel secure when I present her with treats for her & her husband or for her large family gatherings. But... She's an avocado aficionado so I know that this has to be perfect!

I sent hubby the following link on Pinterest: http://www.nwedible.com/never-buy-a-rotten-avocado-again/ because it was very important that he get me ripe ones for the recipe below. I told him I sent him the link. I trusted he looked at the link... Maybe that's where the plan fell down. 

:(

These are the two I got:

Looks almost like the example above, doesn't it? I lost quite a bit of the meat due to bad spots throughout just the one avocado. I could feel the bad/soft spots from the outside so I was fully deflated once I opened it up. 

I'm not an avocado fan, to say the least, but put it with some chocolate in a recipe and I'm all there! My friend & I made this pudding before at her place with perfect avocados and it was delish! I'm still holding my breath on how mine will turn out. 

This trick surely seems to have worked with the two that I had:

Can you see my tears pooling on the cutting board?

Nasty!

Unsure if I can avoid this happening again, but here's hoping my dessert wasn't too compromised by the lack of avocado. 

Here's a link to the recipe I used. I added more syrup as I could still identify the yucky avocado taste (I did mention I'm not a fan, right?).

http://janetandgreta.com/recipe/april-2013-newsletter-chocolate-avocado-pudding/

Enjoy!!

Another Trek Into the Gluten Free World - Carrot Cake

Experimenting today w/a gluten free carrot cake recipe. I took a promising recipe & followed some of the comments for reducing sugar (and I put in brown instead of white) & fat. I then adjusted the fat in the recipe from oil to browned butter (which I'd seen on Gretchen's Bakery when she made her carrot cake). Instead of 1C nuts, I put in a total of 1C combo of pecans, chopped Craisins, & unsweetened coconut. Whew! Is that all I changed??  ;)

Oh, and I also made some GF cake release (1T GF pizza crust flour, 1T coconut oil, & 1T Crisco shortening) which worked amazingly! The recipe was for 2x9" pans but I used the Wilton 6" 5-layer pans and was also able to make 3 cupcakes. 

I wanted to be able to test this out so made sure there were cupcakes involved!

Doesn't look too bad, right? Tasty too!

Here's the original recipe: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/381469030915723407/

Be sure to read the comments as well, I found them very helpful. 

Update: Here's how the cake turned out...

It was delicious!! I used a Swiss buttercream and added in a stick of room temp cream cheese. What an amazing recipe.  You could not tell it was GF. That pizza flour worked wonders. I now need to test out the flour in another cake recipe to see how it performs. 

Twinkling Glint in Your Eyes

I've seen some videos of people piping glints on eyes or putting them on the eyes w/their scribe so there I was poised over the eyes and knowing my ability to hold my hands steady and absolute precision with my piping... I decided I needed to find another method. 

I put some icing on my hand and swiped the scribe through the little blob & then added it to the eyes. 

This is one time I could've used an assistant holding my camera. You know how you can't do your best work when someone is breathing down your neck? Yup, that's how I felt. I'm amazed the cookie remained in view!

(Once I figure out how to insert a video... I will add my video.)

Whimsical Ones

My grandbaby is turning one in less than two weeks & I'm working on Birthday cookies, cakes, cake pops, & cupcakes! This party will be brought to you by the letter C, the number 1, and by owls! :) Looking forward to many sequels. 😉

So, in the midst of all this we make it through a power outage with power only to have my fridge start sparking & catching on fire. All cake & cupcake production has come to a grinding halt! 🚫 Ah well, it must then be time to start decorating the cookies!

I'm doing owl gift cookies, monkey cookies to eat, & some 1s for decoration.  The owls are starting nicely:

I started the practice 1 as a wet-on-wet whimsical, black & white thing & then realized I should've done a monogram. 

Today, I finished all the eyes & then did more 1s. 

These two are my faves:

As a grandmother I'm allowed favourites, right? 😜

Now it's time for a rest & a tea before I tackle any more!

Update: Here they are at the party...

Coca-Cola Cookies

A dear friend of mine collects Coca-Cola products: old 6-packs, napkin holders, etc...  Looking to give him a bit of cheer I made him some CocaCola cookies. :)

Similarly to my Root Beer cookies, I took a sugar cookie recipe & replaced the flavourings with Cola flavouring. Using my bottle cutter I cut out my cookies & baked them for 13 mins at 350F. 

Once cooled, I outlined with some edible ink.

I then filled in the lower part of the bottle. 

Then the top part. 

Bottle cap: ON!  But, it needs a bit of details...

(Sorry not too clear; iPhone doesn't macro too well.)

As I wasn't going to be adding any words, I outlined my swoosh with white for some contrast. I let this dry so the red wouldn't bleed into it. (I tried a wet red w/a white outline... Needless to say, my husband got a cookie to eat this evening.)

All dried & put away for the night. Tomorrow I'll package them up & my friend will drop them off for me. :)

If you feel inspired to make Cola flavoured cookies or Coca-Cola cookies, please let me know. 

Join us in our Facebook group, All Things Cookies & happy teatime to you!  All His best!

Lea

Not just a refrigerator cookie any more!

Whenever I change a recipe from a refrigerator cookie to cut out cookie, I'm very nervous, & rightly so!

Will the dough hold it's shape? Can this recipe make the transition seemlessly, without my having to adjust the ingredients? So many things could potentially go wrong. 

Well I'm happy to say that the Good Housekeeping's Citrus Slices has transitioned from a refrigerator cookie to a cutout cookie!

When I had originally tried this refrigerator cookie recipe, I noticed that the cookies didn't spread and I wondered, "Could this recipe be turned into a cut out cookie?"  To me, they tasted like Peek Freans' jam-centered cookies I'd had as a kid. (http://www.peekfreans.com/) 

So yummy!  I just didn't like the limitation of the shape due to forming a log. 

(I picked up this book on sale years ago at my local Save-On-Foods. Some of my favourite recipes are in it!)

Well, I'm very pleased that these have turned out so well as I'm hoping to use them for a March baby shower gift cookie. Just have to decide on plain or lemon icing now. :)

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