Cookie Insanity

These.  Took.  All.  Day.

Seriously - the fun started around 9:15, and nine hours later I iced the very last chocolate mint mitten and laid it out to dry.

Iced cutout cookies take an eternity if you do everything from start to finish in one go.  Even with the efficiency measures I took (make one batch of cookie dough, stick it in the fridge, make the next batch and so forth until there were three, then roll them out and bake them in the same order), I didn't even get around to icing them until after 2 p.m.  And lemme tell ya - you know you've made a lot of cookies when you don't even want to sample them anymore.

For these cookies, I stuck with the recipe from the other day and made flavor adjustments with each.

Red cinnamon hats and mittens

For the cinnamon cookies, I simply added a teaspoon of cinnamon before the flour.  Most of these came out about 1/8" thick, which made them smaller and crisper than the cookies I usually make, but they also went farther than the chocolate mint cookies (below).  The biggest challenge with these cookies was the icing: it took about 70 drops of food coloring added to this icing recipe to turn it red!  I kept adding two drops at a time, then four drops at a time...until I reached 70, I was wondering if I'd have to settle for pink Santa hats. 






Almond snowflakes

This is loosely based on various recipes I found for Zimtsterne cookies, which are German almond star cookies enjoyed during the holidays.  At least one of the recipes I found called for ground almonds in place of flour, and all the recipes had rather complicated directions both for the baking and the icing (with meringue, not regular icing).  I decided not to use any of them because, with all the other cookies on my to-do list, I didn't think I had time for a learning curve.  The flavor adjustment I did make was to replace 1/2 cup of flour with ground almonds.  These were also pretty thin and waferlike, and the detail on the snowflake cutter made icing them a bit more of a challenge: I had to run a knife or the side of a fork around each of them to scrape off the excess icing so they wouldn't look misshapen.  For the icing, I replaced the vanilla with almond extract (this was also used on the white parts of the red Santa hats).  Delish!

Chocolate mint hats and mittens

In this cookie dough recipe, I used a teaspoon of peppermint extract instead of vanilla and replaced 1/2 cup of the flour with plain cocoa.  I also used 2/3 stick of butter, because that's all I had left, and I knew from previous experience making chocolate cookies that the 1:3 ratio of cocoa to flour would also soften the cookies.  I only rolled these until they were 1/4" thick, so I got just over two dozen, whereas the other recipes, rolled thinner, each yielded three dozen and change.  For the icing, I replaced the vanilla with peppermint extract and added two drops (I think) of green food coloring.

One discovery I was glad to make with the orange star cookies is that the icing does eventually dry, as stated in the directions - just give 'em a few hours.  So, I made a point of leaving these out until a little after 9:00 p.m., then packed them up and managed to put them away without disfiguring any.

Except for loving the flavor of the almond icing (which I knew I would), I'm going to reserve comments and let my relatives tell me what they think when I give them out this Friday at our extended family Christmas Eve gathering.  I still have plenty of ingredients, so hopefully I'll have time and energy to make more (simple) cookies before I hit the road!

More Trial and Error with Cookies

Yesterday was cold and rainy, so I chickened out of an 8-mile group run and stayed inside to make more cookies.

This was a bit of an odyssey, since I've never really made cookies with visual appeal in mind.  I mean, it's the holidays, and if it looks like a cookie, people are gonna eat it, right?

I should have been able to predict the result, since I'm not artistically inclined and, until yesterday, had never cut out or decorated a cookie before in my life.  Sure, I can mix the ingredients together, throw them in the oven and take them out when the timer goes off, but decorating's another story.

The recipe for the cookies themselves worked out well, and I'll probably use it again or something very much like it, whether I decide to ice them again or not.  The orange extract was something I picked up by mistake a couple of weeks ago but still wanted to use, so it went into the cookie dough in place of vanilla.

Orange star cookies
1 stick butter, cubed
2/3 cup of sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp soy flour mixed with 2 tbsp water (egg substitute)
1 tsp orange extract
5 tbsp milk
2 cups flour

This followed the usual cookie drill - cream the butter and sugar, add the rest except for the flour and combine, then add the flour about 1/2 cup at a time.  Roll into a cylinder, wrap in plastic wrap, then into the fridge for at least an hour. 

When I casually mentioned to Steve a couple of weeks back that I might try my hand at decorated cutout cookies this holiday season, he went out and bought a couple of sets of cookie cutters along with the usual stash of groceries.  One set consists of a snowflake, mitten and cap, and the other has different-sized stars.  I decided to start with one shape only, so I could at least decorate them all the same, so I went with the second-smallest star.

The Country Cook, also a friend from back home (hey Brandie!), recently advised using wax paper for rolling out cookie dough.  This worked out well, especially since I discovered just as it was time to get to work that we don't have a rolling pin in the house and I was going to have to improvise with an iced tea glass. 

The cutting out and baking (350 degrees, 10 minutes) were easy enough.

Then it came time to ice these bad boys.

I used this recipe for the icing but had to change it up a little.  The wet ingredients weren't enough for the powdered sugar, so I added one teaspoon each of milk and corn syrup (regular, not light).  I used orange extract in place of the vanilla.  The orange color was achieved with one drop of red food coloring and two of yellow.

Holy orange, Batman!  Steve and I both sampled it and were reminded of a mandarin orange candy from childhood.  What a difference the extract made - so glad I used it instead of orange juice!

In terms of decorating, I figured I'd try to emulate the cookies pictured at the link for the icing recipe, except that I had the ill-advised idea of also icing the cookies in the side.  So I made the icing recipe all over but used lemon juice (3 teaspoons) in place of the milk, no vanilla or extract and a couple of drops of yellow food coloring.  Another winner in terms of the taste, but...

I guess I was expecting the icing to dry a little harder, but these suckers were messy to ice, even with one of those piping things, and messy to handle after they'd had a while to sit and dry out on the parchment paper.  Also, I ran out of the lemon icing before I was done, so some of these only have the orange icing.

Oh, well.  It was still a nice way to spend a cold, drizzly Saturday, and my hungry co-workers will be getting another surprise on Monday.

Have a nice Sunday and enjoy the sunshine!