Cookie-cutter Cookies: some Christmas baking!

I got this recipe from a friend; thanks, Cab!

The Recipe

1 cup softened butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 tsp baking powder

3 cups flour

Method

1. Preheat oven to 400F/200C.

2. Cream butter and sugar.

3. Beat in egg and vanilla.

4. Add baking powder and flour, one cup at a time. Mix well.

5. Do not chill. Roll out to 1/8″ thick and cut out.

6. Bake for 6-8 minutes, or until brown around the edges.

My Alterations

This was a new recipe for me, and since it was so simple anyway, I followed it pretty much exactly. The fact that I didn’t have to chill the dough made me very excited to try it!

Oh, one alteration I did make was to add some food colouring to the dough for my kids. I broke the dough into fourths, and coloured one part red and one part green. That changed the consistency of the dough a bit, but the kids enjoyed themselves. My daughter still has red food colouring on her hands, though, which looks a bit gruesome!

The Result

I love this recipe so much. It’s easy to throw together, and the dough rolls out beautifully. It isn’t sticky, which is a problem I have with other sugar cookie recipes, and I didn’t have to add any extra flour at all. I rolled the dough out on large chopping boards without having to add any extra flour to the board, either.

The cookies kept their shape when baking and weren’t brittle. My kids didn’t break any of them when decorating; a definite point in their favour! They have a great taste, as well.

The Verdict

I love this recipe! I don’t normally like baking cookies, because even though the end product is delicious, it takes a really long time to bake all the dough. This was so much fun, though! The dough was so easy to work with, and I think that made all the difference.

I baked and decorated several cookies to give as gifts to our family friends, and I’ve already received feedback about how good they taste. The cookies are soft, but not too chewy, and don’t just taste sugary. I can’t recommend this recipe enough!

The Rating

Definitely, definitely 5/5. I’m baking some more cookies right now, actually!

Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

After taking a break from baking for a few days, I was in the mood for cookies. Not to be confused with biscuits, cookies are large and (ideally) a bit chewy. The best place to look for a decent chocolate chip cookie recipe is, of course, Cookie Madness. In the end, I used a recipe that was posted by one of her readers in the comments section. Thanks for posting it, Heidi!

The Recipe

These truly chewy chocolate chip cookies are delicious served warm from the oven or cooled. To ensure a chewy texture, leave the cookies on the cookie sheet to cool. You can substitute white, milk chocolate, or peanut butter chips for the semi- or bittersweet chips called for in the recipe. In addition to chips, you can flavor the dough with one cup of nuts, raisins, or shredded coconut.

Makes 1-1/2 dozen 3-inch cookies

2-1/8 cups bleached all-purpose flour (2 cups plus 2 tablespoons)
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1-1/2sticks), melted aand cooled slightly
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups chocolate chips or chunks (semi or bittersweet)

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Adjust oven racks to upper- and lower-middle positions. Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.

2. Either by hand or with electric mixer, mix butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Mix in egg, yolk, and vanilla. Add dry ingredients; mix until just combined. Stir in chips.

3. Form scant 1/4 cup dough into ball. Holding dough ball using fingertips of both hands, pull into two equal halves. Rotate halves ninety degrees and, with jagged surfaces exposed, join halves together at their base, again forming a single cookie, being careful not to smooth dough�uneven surface. Place formed dough onto one of two parchment paper-lined 20-by-14-inch lipless cookie sheets, about nine dough balls per sheet. Smaller cookie sheets can be used, but fewer cookies can be baked at one time and baking time may need to be adjusted. (Dough can be refrigerated up to 2 days or frozen up to 1 month

My Alterations

I used all the same amounts as listed for each ingredient, and added dark chocolate chips for the cookies themselves. I then halved the dough, adding a handful of coconut and white chocolate chips to one half of the dough, and leaving the other half as-is. The pictures above show the plain chocolate chip cookies on the left and the coconut, dark & white chocolate chip cookies on the right.

I did not do the formed dough thing to the cookies, partly because I couldn’t be bothered, and partly because the dough didn’t turn out the way I expected.

The Results

The dough was surprisingly soft and sticky. Perhaps it needed to be chilled before trying the formed dough thing in step 3, but I don’t know. I’m not a big cookie maker, so I’ve never heard of this method before. I always just scoop, dump and bake.

I made the cookies a bit larger than called for in the recipe, and they took about 10-12 minutes to bake at 180C (which was probably a bit too low). I let them cool on the pan, mostly, until I needed it again for the next batch. I made 12 coconut cookies and 6 regular ones, and froze the rest of the dough for another day.

The Verdict

These cookies are brilliant. The regular chocolate chip cookies were really rich, with a slightly crunchy outside and a lovely soft inside. The addition of white chocolate chips and coconut sent the cookie into WOW territory for me, and I couldn’t keep my mitts off of the dough before they were even baked. These cookies will not last long at all; the only reason they haven’t totally disappeared already is because I’m too full to eat them. I’ll try again in a few hours! I’m really happy I froze the rest of the dough because now I will have freshly baked cookies with minimum work.

The Rating

5/5

These cookies have an excellent flavour and texture. I’m very happy with this recipe and can’t wait to eat more.

Day 25: Praline Turtle Cake

We had some friends over for dinner so I thought I’d make a fancier cake for the occasion. Or I was just in the mood for chocolate; who needs an occasion, right?

The recipe comes from Country Living’s “Mom’s Best Cake Contest.” One of the winners, indeed.

The Recipe

1/2 cup(s)	butter
1 cup(s)	brown sugar
1 can(s)	(14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
1 cup(s)	chopped pecans
2 cup(s)	all-purpose flour
3/4 cup(s)	unsweetened cocoa
2 cup(s)	granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon(s)	baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon(s)	baking soda
1 teaspoon(s)	salt
2 large	2 large eggs
1 cup(s)	sour cream
1/2 cup(s)	canola oil
1 teaspoon(s)	vanilla extract
1 teaspoon(s)	white vinegar
1/2 cup(s)	fudge topping
1/2 cup(s)	chocolate chips, melted

1. Make the cake: Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter the bottoms of two 9-inch round cake pans and fit a circle of parchment paper large enough to cover 1 inch up the side of each cake pan. Heat the butter, brown sugar, and sweetened condensed milk in a 2-quart saucepan over medium heat until the butter melts and the sugar is dissolved. Do not boil. Divide the sugar mixture between the prepared pans. Sprinkle 3/4 cup pecans over sugar mixture and set aside to cool. Combine the flour, cocoa, granulated sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl. Add the eggs, sour cream, oil, vanilla, and vinegar, and 1 cup hot water and mix with a wooden spoon until the batter is smooth. Pour the batter into the cake pans — over sugar mixture — and bake until a wooden skewer inserted into the cake center comes out clean — 35 to 40 minutes. Cool cakes in the pans for 10 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the pans and turn cakes out onto a cooling rack. Remove the paper and cool completely.
2. Assemble the cake: Spread the fudge topping over the sugar mixture side of one cake layer. Place the second layer over the first and drizzle with the melted chocolate and the remaining 1/4 cup pecans. Frost the cake sides with your favorite chocolate icing.

My Alterations

Looking at the recipe, I knew that if I didn’t cut it in half — even with guests coming over to help us eat it — I would end up with a massive cake again. Seeing as this is my twenty-fifth cake this month, I’m pretty much drowning in cake and not really interested in leftovers. So I used half of every quantity listed (although I didn’t want to figure out what half of 3/4 cup is, so I just used 1/3 cup instead).

There were a few errors in the recipe; firstly, the ingredients list calls for two lots of baking soda, so I just assumed it meant baking powder for one of them. Luckily, the amounts were the same, so it took most of the guesswork out. In the directions, there is mention of adding a cup of hot water to the batter, but that is not listed in with the ingredients. That threw me for a minute, but since the water is definitely needed to thin the batter before baking, it wasn’t a problem. Just a lesson in Reading Carefully, I guess.

I couldn’t track down condensed milk, so I used evaporated milk instead. I think it’s a bit thinner than condensed milk, so the sugar/butter/milk concoction was quite thin. When I poured the cake batter over the top, it sort of all mixed together instead of layering. Ah well.

I used dark chocolate chips for the drizzling part of the recipe, because I don’t have any milk chocolate chips and didn’t want to buy anything extra. Dark chocolate is better, anyway, so it’s all good. The caramel sauce is aimed for drizzling over ice cream. I figured it would work in other settings, too.

The Result

The baking parchment (greaseproof paper) worked really well, as you can see:

There would have been a lot of mess in my oven (okay, okay, a lot more mess) if not for that paper keeping most of the batter from bubbling over. The cakes baked in good time, and even though I halved the recipe, I had enough for two good-sized cakes. I even managed to layer them on top of each other and added the required caramel sauce and stuff.

The Verdict

Heavenly. Divine. Rich, decadent, lovely. The cake itself is just perfect, and I will probably use that as my basic chocolate cake recipe from now on. I think the sour cream really gives it a richness and depth of flavour that wouldn’t be there with just normal milk. Yum! The cake really does remind you of a praline turtle candy, so it’s a well-named recipe. It really deserved winning that cake contest, I have to say.

The Rating

5/5

I love this cake! It’s one of the best. I know I’ve said I don’t like nuts in my cakes, but I might have to repeal that statement for this one in particular. The caramelized topping worked amazingly well with this moist, rich chocolate cake. Delicious.

Day 18: Apple Coffee Cake

Another recipe found at Allrecipes.com. I had some apple pie filling in my cupboard, bought specifically for a cake like this, and today I finally got round to it. Mmmm… fruity cake….

The Recipe

• 1 (21 ounce) can apple pie filling
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter, melted
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 teaspoons hot water

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9×13 pan.
2. Mix pie filling and cinnamon, set aside.
3. Beat flour, white sugar, milk, 1/2 cup softened butter, baking powder, salt and eggs in mixing bowl on low speed for 30 seconds. Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes.
4. Pour half of the batter into prepared pan. Spoon half of the pie filling over the batter. Spread remaining cake batter over pie filling, and top with the remaining half of the pie filling.
5. Mix brown sugar and nuts together and sprinkle over top of cake. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons melted butter.
6. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 45 to 55 minutes. Allow cake to cool 20 minutes.
7. Combine confectioners sugar, 1 tablespoon butter, 3/4 teaspoon vanilla, 2 to 3 teaspoons hot water. Beat until smooth. Drizzle over cake.

My Alterations

I have to say, I’ve learned a thing or two from cake baking these past couple of weeks. When I saw the directions for mixing the batter, I decided to disregard them and make it the prescribed way. I combined the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, creamed the butter and sugar together, added the eggs one at a time to the butter/sugar mixture, and alternated adding the flour and milk. I also added 2 teaspoons of vanilla to the recipe, because I think a cake like this needs it. No electric mixer required.

I also used two cans of apple pie filling, but this was because (to my surprise) the UK tins were smaller than what the recipe stated. I think — translating solid grams to liquid ounces isn’t my forte. I didn’t mind if there was too much apple pie filling though!

I used twice as many nuts for the topping. This is mostly because I wanted to get them out of my cupboard.

I also skipped the confectioner’s sugar glaze bit. Didn’t see the point, really.

Quick tip: use a spatula to spread the pie filling onto the cake batter. Do it a little at a time, so the filling doesn’t sink to the bottom.

The Result

My biggest mistake with this cake was using the wrong cake pan. I used my tube pan, and when I tried to turn the cake out, it fell apart:

I really shouldn’t have been surprised; the cake wasn’t exactly solid in the middle, with that layer of pie filling in there.

It also took a bit longer to bake than stated in the recipe, but that is probably down to my cake pan choice. If I had used a large rectangular pan, it would have baked faster.

The Verdict

In spite of half the cake falling apart, I am very happy with this recipe. It was almost like eating an apple danish in cake form, and how can that NOT be good?

Next time, I will make this in a square pan. They may also work well as chunky muffins, but with less filling in the middle. Oh, they would be a great gift!

The Rating

5/5

Delicious! Very easy recipe with fantastic results. The brown sugar melted into a lovely caramelized glaze during baking, and if the cake hadn’t fallen apart, it would have been very pretty to look at. Better to eat, though.

Bonus: fruit in the cake makes it seem like a breakfast food!