Sunday, November 21, 2010

Pumpkin white chocolate chip cookies

 
These are really moist delicious cookies, I love that they're not as cake like as the ones you find in stores. They're still really delicate and crumbly, but much more like chewy cookies than most fluffy pumpkin cookies.

Ingredients:
1 15 oz can of pumpkin puree
2 cups flour
1 stick butter at room temperature
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 cups white chocolate (or vanilla) chips

Makes 36 cookies

Directions:
  1. Preheat the oven to 350
  2. Beat together egg, butter, brown sugar, and pumpkin
  3. When it is evenly combined add in flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and pumpkin pie spice.
  4. Mix in the white chocolate chips.
  5. On a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper space the cookies 2 inches apart using a smallish cookie baller or spoon
  6. Bake for 13-14 minutes

When I made these I was once again reminded how great parchment paper is, I made the first two batches on tin foil instead of parchment paper and they were so hard to get off afterward. If you don't have any parchment paper then stick the baked cookies (still on the tin foil/cookie sheet/whatever you used) in the freezer for five to ten minutes and they'll come off much easier, but I seriously recommend getting some parchment paper it made it so they lifted off so easily!

Also, how does everyone feel about the pictures mixed in with the directions format? I can't decide if I love it or if it is really distracting... I would love to hear your opinions!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Rolling out cookie dough the easy way!

















Remember those graham crackers I made a while ago? The ones that were so frustrating that I just stuck the dough in the freezer until I could roll them out and cut them easily?

Well, good news, I've figured out the secret for rolling out and cutting cookie dough!

Things you'll need:
Parchment paper (not wax paper, not freezer paper, not tin foil, it has to be parchment paper)
Roll-able cookie dough
A rolling pin
A cookie sheet
Cookie cutters or a knife

Directions:
Start out by putting a fair amount of warm soft (not cold hard) dough between two sheets of parchment paper (roughly the size of your cookie sheet)
I learned at this point not to try to roll out the dough on top of the cookie sheet. It's loud and the cookie sheet slides everywhere, really not fun.

Once you've got the dough to your desired thickness remove the top sheet of parchment paper (and save if you have more dough to roll out) and start cutting out cookies. (Another way to make this easier if you're having trouble with the dough sticking to the cookie cutters, after you've got the dough rolled out leave it between the two pieces of parchment paper set it on top of a cookie sheet (to make sure it stays flat) and chill it in the fridge for 10 minutes...or cheat and stick it in the freezer for a bit before cutting)

You can use cookie cutters or just cut into squares, afterwards either separate the pieces or remove excess dough before baking.

Or you might end up with a giant cookie plate....which takes forever to bake all the way through.
To bake just move the entire sheet of parchment paper to the cookie sheet and bake accordingly.

At this point you should go play peekaboo with the baby



Enjoy not being covered in sticky cookie dough and such!

Monday, November 15, 2010

Kelsey's Guest Post - Apple-Cherry Crumble Bars

Today Little Frosted Adventures will be featuring a guest post by a friend of mine whose photos of her fantastic baked creations and kitchen savvy always leave me wanting the recipe.



Martha Stewart is pretty much my Jesus, so of course her magazine and cookbooks are like my bible. Her Apple-Cherry Crumble Bars are probably one of my favorite fall recipes. I almost died when I tried them for the first time and still have people bugging me about when I’ll make them again so they can come over – not for my company, but for my delicious cookies. They’re so comforting and yummy and so easy to make!

Makes 2 dozen
  • 3 cups dried apples, about 7 ounces (I can never find dried apples so I just use fresh cut up into small cubes without the skin)
  • 3/4 cup dried cherries, about 4 1/2 ounces
  • 1 3/4 cups apple cider
  • 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed light-brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 2 cups rolled oats
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 sticks (16 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, plus more for dish

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a 9-by-13-inch baking dish with Pam, or your favorite non-stick spray, or if you like the old-fashioned way, butter it!



2. Simmer apples, cherries, and cider in a saucepan, stirring occasionally, until fruits are softened and plump, about 5 minutes (depending on your kind of stove, my gas stove could take weeks, believe me). Drain the juices, reserving about 2 tablespoons. Let cool.

3. Combine with 2 tablespoons light-brown sugar, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, and reserved juice.


(This is my new addition to my collection of pyrex - A 1940s green primary bowl. I'm completely in love)

4. Whisk together oats, flour, baking soda, salt, the remaining 3/4 cup sugar, and the remaining 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon in a large bowl.



5. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or 2 knives until crumbs range in size from pea to gumballs (but honestly I never cut in cold butter, they always tell you to do it that way and it just frustrates me because it takes forever. Just pop it in the microwave for a few seconds until it’s soft and manageable).


(My other new addition, a beautiful orange 9x13 pyrex baking dish)

6. Press 4 cups of mixture into bottom of prepared dish.
Spread fruit filling on top, leaving a 1/4-inch border on all sides. Sprinkle remaining oat mixture on top.


7. Bake until brown, which is about 35 minutes.
Then let it cool on a wire rack and cut into 24 bars. Then enjoy, of course!


Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Homemade Oreos


Recently I've been trying out other people's recipes, mostly for things I had never imagined making myself, like Oreos. Who thinks about baking their own Oreos? But, this is seriously worth it. I might never buy the real thing ever again.

The recipe can be found at Smitten Kitchen, I came across it quite a few months ago and thought that it would be great for me because I am not a fan of the filling in normal Oreos. So, I longed to make just the cookies, the pregnancy and being huge and hating sweet things and really anything that wasn't tacos kept me away though. Alas, I am no longer pregnant, so it was a must on the 'make soon' list. Here is a link to the original recipe.

Makes 25-30 sandwich cookies and a whole ton of frosting

Ingredients:

Dough:
1 electric mixer (very necessary this time, sorry)
1 1/4 cups Flour
3/4 c unsweetened cocoa (instead of 1/2 cup)
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1 stick butter at room temperature
1 egg at room temperature

Filling:
1 stick butter at room temperature (instead of 1/4 c butter and 1/4 c shortening)
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups sifted confectioners sugar

Directions:
  1. Preheat oven to 375°F
  2. Combine flour, cocoa, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda, then mix until homogeneous (fancy word for distributed equally, today I feel like being fancy, I made my own oreos after all you know)
  3. Add in the butter (the room temperature butter, and might I remind you that room temperature is not squishy but cold to the touch...) and the egg.
  4. With the electric mixer, using a dough hook, mix somewhere between slow and medium until it forms a ball of thick dough.
    Using a teaspoon, and a baby spoon (or something of similiar size) measure out teaspoon sized lumps of dough onto a cookie sheet roughly 2 inches apart (I was able to fit 18 to a pan in three rows of six)
    Then with moistened fingers (this is important because otherwise you get all sticky) mush the little globs into flat ish circles
    Bake for nine minutes, turning the pans around about half way through.
    Let cool while you make the frosting, or just start eating them plain, because they're delicious.


To make the filling:
    Clean your mixer bowl out and fill it with the butter and vanilla.
    Then painstakingly sift all the powdered sugar in (if you want really buff arms, just make plans to do lots of sifting)
    Beat on high until it is light and fluffy then pipe/dab/spoon/spread however you want some amount close to 1 teaspoon of filling into each set of cookies. You're welcome to use more frosting than that, there will be a lot left over, but 1 teaspoon is the recommended amount.
    Save the left over filling for some other project, keeping it in the sealed container in the freezer will keep it for a month or so, or a week or so in the fridge.


    All the dry ingredients before mixing
    All the dry ingredients after mixing.
    The finished dough.
    A teaspoon crammed full of dough.
    A use for the millions of baby spoons I have
    Yep thats the baby right there, and here is squish the dough
    All the dough is squished hooray!
    The finished cookie part
    Me trying to be all artsy with the picture taking
    The frosting
    I hate sifting things...
    And the cookies!

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Graham crackers



So today I decided to try the scharffenberger graham cracker recipe which you can find here.

It calls for honey, I hate cooking with honey... it might smell nice and taste nice, but it is horrendously sticky and awful to work with or clean up and I hate hate hate it.

But, I thought, "Yum! Homemade graham crackers, I want some of those. And, I bet I can cut them into cute little shapes with all those cookie cutters I got for Christmas..." So, I decided to attempt the recipe.

Nikolai and I donned the handy baby wrap and got to work on the recipe.

I altered it a bit... so here is my version.

Ingredients:
1 stick butter
2 eggs
3/4 cup brown sugar (instead of white sugar)
1/2 cup honey
4 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (instead of whole wheat and white flour)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon salt

I also had this great idea to cover one side of the crackers with cinnamon and sugar... but there were some complications
(so, if you want to try that you'd need more sugar and cinnamon)

Directions:
  1. Preheat oven to 350° F
  2. Cream the butter, sugar, and eggs together
  3. Add in the honey
  4. Add in the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt, in parts mixing it thoroughly
  5. Get out your rolling pin and flour the counter/cutting board/flat surface of your choosing
  6. Take a goodly sized ball of your dough and roll it out to 1/8 of an inch (Good luck actually making that happen by the way)
  7. Then either cut your rolled out dough into squares/rectangles/squirrels/whatever and painstakingly move it over to a cookie sheet
  8. Bake 10-13 (they said 6-9 but that didn't work for me but I also didn't use the center rack in the oven) minutes until the edges brown and they smell delicious


    This dough is excessively sticky... it starts out looking really dry and hard to work with, but as it warms up from being smooshed around it becomes awful sticky goo that will take scalding water to get off your fingers....This is why I hate honey.... I'm sure there is some magical way of rolling out dough easily and then cutting it with cute cookie cutters and transfering it to the cookie sheet but I don't know it... (If you do please share share share!) The process of cutting out three crackers, moving them to the cookie sheet, then gathering up the dough scraps and starting over again was so angering that I put the rest of the dough back in the bowl and shoved it in the freezer until I can figure out how to do it more easily... In the end the finished crackers were fabulous even if slightly thick (because it is so hard to roll it out that thin and cut it and blah blah blah) so they're worth making again...but only when I really want them.
    And I'd like to let you know now, I can't figure out why none of my photos will format similarly...so I give up and they'll all just be crooked  
    The pathetically small batch of graham crackers...
    The dough even stuck to the cookie cutters...
    And here is the sticky rolling pin.. sorry the pictures
    aren't more appropriate for the steps..
    Here is the dough in the fridge to make up for the lack of
    mixing pictures...