Cutting Cookies

 This is my latest awesome cookie cutter - little scissors! I was so smitten I paid a full 3$ for it. Hey, I'm a vintage thrifter. That's a lot for old cookware. But how could I resist? I am a seamstress after all...

I used my usual basic butter cookies with a few tasty add-ins.
1 cup butter
1 cup honey
1/2 cup ground flax seed
A handful of lemon balm, crumbled fine between your palms.
baking soda (probably about 1 tsp. I never measure too hard)
~3 cups flour, to make a soft dough. I used a blend of white flour and whole wheat pastry flour.

 It took a long time to roll out all the cookies, since the cutter is funny shaped there's a lot of scraps at the end of each sheet. I added the jam dots mostly for looks, I was worried that the scissor shape wouldn't be obvious without them! That's just peach jam, pureed to be smooth.

I worried too much, the little scissors are definitely cutting and cute. Do you have a favorite odd cookie cutter? What shape do you make for your crafting group? Do I sound like a prim 50's housewife yet?

Pear Pie

Now, usually I wouldn't do much baking with pears, they are already sweet and soft when raw after all. But our Farm Share delivered a large bag of both apples and pears this week, far more then one could simply eat out of hand! These large juicy pears were begging to be dessert! I made a pie, and got so many request for an encore that I thought I should share...

First I made the crust, 1/2 c. Butter, 1/2 c Whole Wheat Pastry Flour, 1/2 c. Wheat Flour, and a drizzle of cold milk. If you can't get the pastry flour you can use whole wheat flour. I recommend buying some kind of whole wheat flour for your pie crust as it makes for a nice nutty flavor. Also, if you use unsalted butter you will need to add a little salt.

Sprinkle some cardamon on the bottom of the crust. Core the pears and carefully slice them very thin. Arrange across the bottom of the pan, I like a thick pie, feel free the heap them up over the top of the pan.

Beat two eggs and 1/4 c. milk thoroughly,  then pour over fruit. It shouldn't cover the fruit entirely.

Mix 1/4 c. rolled oats, 1/4 c. sugar and a generous sprinkle of cardamon. Sprinkle across the top of the pie. Bake at 350 F until crust is browned and the center doesn't jiggle too much. About 45 min.
Enjoy when warm!

What is your favorite way to eat a pear?

Carrot Beet Cake

  Summer time so far means beets beets and more beets every week! Now I like a simple sauteed root, and creamed greens with my dinner; but when you're overwhelmed with veggies you must get creative!

I started with crushed pineapple, and shredded carrots and beets. Added walnuts and brown sugar, eggs and flour. Except the eggs this is a copy of a vegan carrot cake I made when I worked a bakery job. (Except the beets of course!)

 The dough turned an awesome pink color and acquired a nice beety flavor. At this point someone walked in a ask what the hell it was... this, in my book, is a sign of good culinary experimentation.

 I baked the batter in a bundt pan. Just say that a few times for fun. Bundt. Bundt! The joy of a bundt pan is the center hole allowing for even cooking. With a thick batter you don't want to end up with a gooey center and burnt top.  Plus it makes those nice fluted edges...

 Which are perfect for that 50's Betty Crocker Cookbook look. I used leftover coconut icing and it even dripped down the sides of the still warm cake. So that's how they get that look! The photo makes it seem like a strangely large doughnut.

And then we place it in this exceptionally shiny fancy ass vintage cake carrier. It even says "Cake" on it, in case you were unsure where you had left the damn thing. "Oh look! It's a cake! I forgot I made one..."

This cake was for a birthday get together of a friend, so most of it was devoured by ravenous friends at the local amusement park. A good end for it! Another way to make veggies a sweet thing...

Fancy Cake!

Ok, it's fancy cake show off time! Every once in a long while I wake up and decide I'm Martha Stewart and I need to make an excessively intricate baked good. I could spend that time cleaning the house or crafting or something useful, but no I needed to make a lavender lemon cake... I guess I only inherited half of the good housewife genes.

This is an old set of pans from my folks house, I think they had been used about three times. I remember making a checkerboard cake once in middle school, back when free time was easy to come by. I never had that awesome grandma hairstyle tho, I wasn't that cool in middle school (sarcasm).

I followed the recipe on the back of the box, except instead of chocolate I made lavender and lemon flavors. A nice flavor combo and lovely colors too! It should be noted that most of the "old family recipes" were cut out of boxes and magazines, we've never been one for cookbooks around here.

I made one half into lemon cake with juice and zest from two lemons, I added a little color to brighten it up. The lavender is just dried flowers and purple food coloring. In the future I might use an infusion and try to let the flowers offer up all the color, or I might just want it to be scary artificial bright.

 The plastic divider makes the checkerboard magic happen. As you painfully drop each spoonful of batter in a agonize over weather or not there will be enough for all three rounds the plastic bit keeps everything sequestered. You then pull it up carefully and hope you have all three parts at about the same height. I didn't, whatever. No cake is perfect!

 The three bullseyes sitting around cooling. The three pans barely fit in my oven all at the same time, but rotating in the middle of baking kept them from cooking unevenly. Taking this picture made me realize how filthy my kitchen is. Cooking show this is not...

 The icing was an "interesting" problem. I bought coconut milk to make it with for a yummy coconut flavor. Usually the fat rises to the top of the can and I can scoop it off like shortening. This can was a wetter squishy milk. I poured in the thick stuff on top and added some butter to give it body. I then proceeded to use the entire bag of powdered sugar to get it thick. That didn't work, so I put half of it into the fridge to "glaze" things with and started adding flour. What? It worked! I finally for the icing thick enough to put on a cake.




So I started putting the cake together. The first two slabs went fairly smoothly, then of course the top fell into three pieces and had to be scraped from the pan. Icing to the rescue...

I covered the cake in a thick layer of icing and sprinkled the top with coconut. If you ever wondered why commercial cakes have so much icing - it's to cover up the imperfections. you can start with a light layer then freeze the cake, then make it look perfect, but in theory I'm on a diet. (shut up, cake it totally ok diet food, I'm eating salad the rest of the day.)

There, it's a checkerboard, I promise. Yes I took the photo with the crumbling side away from the camera, in this shot you can see the carnage. The white icing sets off the bright colors and... who am I kidding it looks a little less than stellar, the box always lies! But fuck it, it's ridiculously yummy.

See, a pile of multi-colored goodness. This isn't the Food Network people, this is my hot and not-very-clean kitchen. And I've licked so much icing off bowls and beaters I need to go lay down now...

What summer treats are you making?

Scones and Tea

 Recently I noticed a strange phenomenon in my fridge. You see, I get a weekly milk delivery, which includes orange juice and butter as well. Now one can only butter so much bread in a week, this order is for baking. In the colder months I regularly make batches of rolled cookies and pies, but that's too much time in the kitchen hovering over a hot oven. So my fridge had built up a pile of one pound boxes of butter - an embarrassment of riches.


So I pulled out an old recipe from my days working at a bakery - scones. The joy of it, is you make a dry part, ass some assorted liquids, and then add all the nommy little morsels you can stand. I use a food processor to cut the cold butter into flour sugar and leavening.You don't want to puree the mess, just get it chopped up into crumbly bits.

I added homemade yogurt (That's what I do if people forget to drink the milk, there are two lactose free folks in the house so I take most of that burden.) and an egg. Then I chopped up fresh cherries. Did I mention that the cherry tree is ripe? I guess this whole project is just baking with perishables... I added cherries and hopped almonds. It's good to have everything cold so that the butter stays stiff in the batter.

Then I formed it into a disc. It should be stiff enough to not slump out when shaping, but not stiff like a cookie dough. I actually baked a test to make sure it was just right, my last batch was too wet and I ended up with cookies instead... I've always cut scones into wedges, tradition perhaps? But it's important for even baking that they are not too much thicker than they are wide.



After a short while in a medium oven the scones are golden brown and ready for dunking in tea. It's been hot enough for iced tea here, but it's still good with scones. Maybe scones and ice cream?

I also like to make savory scones with veggies and cheese, perhaps when our Farm Share starts to arrive next week and we are inundated with fresh vegetables... What's you favorite warm-weather baking project?

Sandwich Cookies

Also known as "Wow, I have a lot of Jams stored away in my cabinets. No wonder there's not room for anything else!" Cookies.
I'm planning to meet with many different people this weekend, and share cookies with them of course! So I made a big batch of dough, three sicks of butter! Other than cinnamon I left the cookies pretty basic, no need to have too many competing flavors! My shape of choice today was round, I actually used a jam jar lid, it was a perfect size. I recently bought some sets of little tiny cookie cutters that are perfect for this purpose!
The key here is counting, One wants to have an even number of top cookies and bottom cookies! I tried to split each tray evenly to keep things right.

Put a nice layer of jam on a solid cookie (The weird looking tray side, not the nice top!) and stick a decorative top cookie on it. Simple, easy, done! Unless you make really chunky jams, and it's hard to spread them evenly... Colorado Cherry, and Palisade Peach Cookies. A perfect way to eat local fruit in the winter.
One could also make chocolate cookies, or use nutella inside, or a ground nut filling... Lots of choices! Just be sure you make a big batch, you will want to have plenty to share.

Harvest Time Cookies

As part of my lovely Thanksgiving week, I naturally worked hard to move thru the pounds of pumpkin puree in the freezer. There was pies naturally, and a bread or two, but one of the most fun to make was Pumpkin Hazelnut Cookies.
Butter, sugar and honey creamed, then an equal measure of pumpkin. Don't forget all the spices - cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg and ginger.
Leavening and whole wheat pastry flour, I then sifted the fine bits out of my roasted hazelnuts. Whenever I use my food processor to chop nuts I end up with both nearly whole pieces, and very fine flour. Putting it in the cookies gave a subtle nutty flavor, but kept them from getting lumpy.
I rolled it out pretty thick, I like squishy cookies not burnt ones. And I'm not afraid of big cookie cutters either! I made both oak leaves and these odd turkey (?) shaped ones. No matter how fast I roll I rarely can keep up with the oven...
Have you been making seasonal yummies? Try something new, and it may become a common occurrence...
UPDATE - These cookies were brought to craft night at the local coffee house, and shared with the barista a few weeks ago. Last week he had a special request "it's my birthday next week, will you make me some of those cookies?" This "recipe" is officially part of the repertoire!

Yummies...

Now I have always regarded my mother as a master cookie baker. She can easily turn out 10 dozen delicious pieces in a single evening, and her toffee bars are legendary. As I have entered upon my Journeyman stage in baking training (where one goes out into the world to try it without support from your master) I was delighted when we found a cookie press at an estate sale - now I can make the family favorite Spritz cookies!
My mother always relied on her perfect cookies to speak for themselves and does little to dress them up besides a sparkle of colored sugar, but I was less optimistic. I made three different flavors, the green is Macha, the Pink are Sesame, and the middle ones are plain dotted with a little bit of apricot jam. Not quite the masterpieces of my childhood, but my roommates have already devoured most of them so they must be good enough...

Itty-Bitty Cherry Pie Committee

It's that time again! The cherries on my parent's tree are ripening up and I'm picking them by the handful. These are not tart pie sherries, but they aren't super sweet either. We eat a lot of them raw, but I like them with just a little bit of sweet added. So first I sit on the porch during the longest day of the year and use that diabolical looking tool to shoot the pits out into the yard!

I then made a pie crust, just a simple butter and flour action. If you let your crust sit a while in the fridge it will let the gluten relax so you get less stringy bread-like crust and more flaky pastry crust. I have used the food processor to pulse the butter and flour, but it's never as good as hand chopped!




I coarsely chopped the cherries and put them on a low stove with a drizzle of honey and some flour and corn starch. It took about an hour to thicken up, you'ld be amazed at how much juice those firm little fruits have in them!



I rolled out my crust and used a muffin cup as a template to cut little circles. I didn't worry about them being perfectly round, as the act of pushing them down into the cups fixes any unevenness. This is a teflon no-stick cupcake pan (bullshit, I only tried using it for cupcakes with no cups once, it was awful); but with a regular pan I would grease if first to ensure they come out.

I baked them at a lower temp than most pies - 350F - since they were small. I could tell they were ready when the crust flaked and separated getting just a tiny bit brown on the edge. I used a cake spatula to peel them out, and they didn't give me too much trouble. They are messy and delicious to eat! Not a single one survived the night! Fortunately there are many many more cherries that still need to be picked...

Shortenin' Bread!

Actually, shortbread cookies...
These classic flaky pieces of yum are quick and easy, I combined them with homemade jam for super yummy amazingness. Take 1 cup butter and beat until soft, add 1/2 cup sugar and cream together until really soft and smooth. Add 1 and 1/2 cups flour (I mixed whole wheat pastry and whole wheat bread flour). You can also add spices like nutmeg or allspice at this point. Mix until just past sticky, you may need to add a little more flour...
Let the dough chill in the fridge for an hour. Heat oven to 350F. Drop little piles in a baking sheet and press them flat. A nice rocks glass dipped flour is perfect, but be sure it's not the glass you have your drink in. (You are sipping a lovely cocktail while you work right?). The cookies will spread a bit so space them generously.

Bake 10 or so minutes, they shouldn't be left to get brown at all, so once the shine is starting to disappear pull them out! Let them cool 10 minutes or so. They should slide easily off the sheet and be still a little soft, so lay them flat.

Add a good layer of yummy jam, sandwiched between two cookies. If you're stacking them put a layer of paper between your cookie pairs (learn from my mistake!). Take them to craft night, and watch them disappear! Magic...
If these aren't decadent enough, follow my mother's lead and dip one half of the sandwich in chocolate!

Breakfast of Champions - Berry Tartlets!

Nothing like a balanced breakfast of thick flaky pastry and sweet ripe berries! It's like individual pies for your morning enjoyment...

I used a mix of fresh and frozen berries, all with no added sugar! Tho in a pinch one could use a good jam instead. With spring strawberries showing up my next batch will feature those! Most of the berries were whole, but the largest black berries were cut in half (which stains the fingers a nice indigo)

I made a standard pie crust pastry, salted butter and flour. For a light but still nutty tasting crust use whole wheat pastry flour, or mix half and half whole wheat and white flour. Cut it together with a pastry tool, and add just enough cold milk to convince the whole mass to coalesce. You can cover and put in the fridge overnight for an easier to work with dough, but we who have more skill than patience just soldier on...

Roll out your dough with just enough flour to avoid a sticky mess. Cut out a circle of dough using the pan as a guide. I happen to have pot pie pans, because you can make a lovely tart in a pie pan, but a terrible pot pie in a tart pan! The dough needn't extend up the sides so just the diameter of the tin is fine.

Plop a few spoonfuls of your berry mix into each tin and fold down the sides to just curl over the berries. Put them in a preheated oven (to 300F or thereabouts) and bake until the top edges brown and the berries are dark. An awesome treat, and not super sweet, so if you want to serve them for dessert add a pile of fresh whipped cream to the top!

Enjoy them hot (with ice cream perhaps!?), or wait until the next day, they will still be just wonderful. I great way to pair the fruits of the season and a crisp yummy crust...