Ginger Cookies

These cookies are a variation of the Ginger Snap.  They are amazingly chewy and have a huge ginger flavor that is not too sweet, but just right for a cuppa tea.  The candied ginger is the secret ingredient.  It adds an little bit extra that make these little babies just awesome!

4 1/2 c all purpose flour
4 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 c shortening
2 c granulated sugar
2 eggs
1/2 c molasses
1/2 c finely chopped candied ginger
1/4 c granulated sugar

In a medium mixing bowl, stir together the flour, ginger, soda, cinnamon, cloves, and salt.  Set aside.  In a large mixing bowl, bleat shortening until softened.  Gradually add the 2 cups granulated sugar.  Beat until fluffy.  Add eggs and molasses, beat well.  Add half of the flour mixture and beat until combined.  Stir in remaining half of flour and mix with a wooden spoon.  Add the finely chopped candied ginger and stir until combined.

Shape dough into little balls and roll in the remaining 1/4 c granulated.  Place on an ungreased cooking sheet.  Bake at 350°F for 12 minutes.  Do not over bake or the cookies will not be chewy.  Let stand for two minutes before transferring to a wire rack.  Yum. Yum.

Grandma Nelson's Chocolate Chip Cookies

There is nothing yummier than or as comforting as Grandma's cookies.  It doesn't matter if she is using an original recipe, the recipe from the back of the Toll House Chocolate Chips bag, baked them from scratch, or bought the dough in the dairy department...just as long as she hides the evidence in the trash before the kiddos come running.  This is my mother's chocolate chip cookie recipe.

3/4c sugar
3/4c brown sugar
1c shortening or butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs

1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 1/4c flour
12 oz semi sweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Cream sugar, brown sugar, and shortening.  Add vanilla and eggs.  Beat thoroughly.  Gradually add salt, soda, and flour.  Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.  Drop rounded ball of dough onto a cookie sheet.  Bake at 375°F (190°C) for 9-11 minutes. DO NOT OVERCOOK!

This last bit is just my opinion, but it is VERY important that you cook up this dough as quickly as possible.  It is absolutely delicious raw and disappears more quickly than you realize.  So far, I've been able to keep the kids' paws out of it citing salmonella poisoning and raw eggs, but they are getting older, quicker, and smarter. This reasoning will not hold them off much longer.  Soon I'll have competition for the raw cookie dough...

Stained Glass Cookies

I came across this recipe last year.  I've been looking forward to making it for about as long.  It's a little more complicated and time consuming than I like, but there's a cookie swap coming up next week and I want to bring something impressive...

Ingredients:

1/2 c Crisco
1/2 c sugar
1/4 c brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
2 c flour
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
20 hard candies (I used Jolly Ranchers. Lifesavers will work fine, too.)

Remove any wrappers from your candies and separate them by color.

 

Put the candies in a Ziploc bag.  Using a hammer or meat mallet or whatever, crush the candies. I'm supporting Breast Cancer research while baking today.  What can I say?  I'm a multi-tasker. 

Set candies aside.

Heat the oven to 375°F (190°C).  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.  In a large bowl, cream together Crisco and sugars until fluffy.  An electric mixer makes this process much easier. Mix in vanilla extract.  Add egg and mix until light and smooth. 

Sift flour, salt, and baking powder over mixture.  Using a rubber spatula, fold dry ingredients into mixture.  Divide your dough in half.  Wrap one half in waxed paper and refrigerate while you work with the other half.  (Dough will keep for up to two days in the refrigerator.)

Place the dough between two sheets of waxed paper and roll out with a rolling pin until the dough has a 1/4 inch thickness.  Cut out your shapes.  I did stars and Christmas ornaments.  Transfer cookies to the cookie sheet.  Use a smaller cookie cutter or a knife to cut out the middle of your cookie.  Remove the inner shape. 

Using a spoon, sprinkle the crushed candy into the hollowed out centers of your cookies, filling in the edges. 

Bake cookies for 7-8 minutes.  Watch your cookies closely. They burn quickly. The candy should be melted and bubbling and the cookies will be just barely beginning to brown.  Remove baking sheets from oven and place on wire racks to cool.  After the cookies have cooled for about 10 minutes you can remove them safely from the cookie sheets.  If you try to remove the cookies from the cookie sheet too early, the candy will separate from the cookie.  Store in air tight container.

This recipe makes about 3 dozen cookies. I decorated them with some Sparkle Gel left over from the unicorn poop cookies because I was feeling pretty fancy!

Unicorn Poop Cookies

My sister sent me a link to this recipe. Gross? Not really, we used to make cow patty cookies (better known as no bake cookies) when we were kids. Unicorn poop...why not? They're only kids once.

Ingredients:

1/2c butter, softened
1/4c shortening
1c sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Food coloring
disco dust  (It turns out that disco dust is just for decoration and not meant to be eaten.  I substituted Wiltons Cake Sparkles)
sparkle gel
star sprinkles
Wiltons sugar pearls (The original recipe calls for rainbow, but my girls picked pink)



The unlabeled bottle is Wiltons Cake Sparkles. I was substituting this for the Disco Dust. I bought all these (except the food coloring) at Micheals.

In a mixing bowl, cream butter, shortening and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla. Slowly add flour, baking powder and salt. Divide the dough into smaller bowls and add food coloring. We used neon colors in blue, green, purple, red and yellow. Well, because unicorns poop rainbows, right? Chill for an hour.



On a floured counter, roll out the dough into "snakes". When you've got five snakes, combine them and roll into one "snake". This is probably the most labor intensive portion of the project. Form your poop and put them on a greased cookie sheet.



Bake the cookies in a preheated oven at 400°F for 8 minutes. When you take them out of the oven, immediately press in the sugar pearls. You want to push them halfway down into the cookie or else they will just roll off the cookie. Allow the cookies to cool. Then squirt a little sparkle gel on the cookies and "paint" them on with an unused paintbrush. Add star sprinkles and disco dust. (I substituted Cake Sparkles for disco dust.)



Look at those kids, working hard.



Voila! Unicorn poop cookies!

Note: The sparkle gel will always remain a bit tacky. Do not stack these cookies.



Source: http://makingmemorieswithyourkids.blogspot.com/2012/03/unicorn-poop-cookies.html

Chocolate Covered Pretzels

Chocolate Covered Pretzels have always been a Christmas tradition in my husband's family. This was something he made with his mother every Christmas when he was growing up. When we were first married, Liz would send us chocolate covered pretzels with our Christmas presents. She died in 2005 and I never thought to ask her for her recipe. This is the first year since she died that Roger showed interest in making chocolate covered pretzels with our girls. So I started looking for a recipe.

You'll need:

about 12 oz of chocolate
1Tbsp shortening
pretzels
Parchment Paper

You can use chocolate chips or baking chocolate. Either works just fine. Liz always used the small pretzel twists, but we didn't buy the ingredients until Christmas Eve so they only had pretzel sticks left. We used white chocolate because they are Roger's favorite, but brown chocolate is just a good, in my opinion.

Roll out the parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Put the chocolate chips and shortening in a microwaveable bowl. Heat the chips/shortening in the microwaves until chocolate is mostly melted. Stir every 20-30 seconds. If you overheat the chocolate, it becomes thick and unworkable so watch your chocolate carefully. Take it out of the microwave while there are still unmelted chips. Stir until these chips melt.

If dipping pretzel rods, hold a rod by one end and dip it in the chocolate, leaving an inch or two uncovered. If you are dipping pretzel twists, drop the whole pretzel in the chocolate and submerge it slightly. Use a fork to pull the pretzel out of the chocolate. Shake the chocolate-dipped pretzels several times to remove excess chocolate. Place it on the parchment paper. If you are using sprinkles, sprinkle them on while the chocolate is still wet.

Put the cookie sheets of pretzels in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to set the chocolate. Store in a plastic bag or plastic tub on the counter for easy snacking.

This is a really fun recipe to make with kids. I try to remember that I'm making memories as well as pretzels. (This is hard for me sometimes.) It's not too important if the pretzels aren't as pretty as what you buy at the store. As long as the kids are having fun (and sneaking licks of chocolate here and there.)

Chewy Sugar Cookies

Today was the trial run to the Girl Scout Baking Party I'm having next month. I think it might be the first sign that I'm certifiable. I am inviting thirty girls (ages 6-8) to my house, to trash my kitchen in the name of baking, frosting, and decorating cookies. However, they'll be earning badges and hopefully taking all the cookies with them at the end of the day. Here is the recipe we'll be making minus the frosting and sprinkles that I'll figure out later:

2 1/4c flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2c sugar, plus 1/3c sugar for rolling the dough
2 oz cream cheese, cut into 8 pieces*
6 Tbsp butter, melted
1/3c vegetable oil
1 egg
1 Tbsp milk
2 tsp vanilla extract

*Most sugar cookies do not call for cream cheese, but I found the cream cheese cut the sweetness of the cookie and really rounded out the flavor.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together in a medium sized bowl. In another bowl, combine sugar, cream cheese, and warm butter with a fork. Whisk in oil until smooth. Add egg, milk, and vanilla. Continue to whisk mixture until smooth. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Combine until a soft homogenous dough forms.

Divide dough into 24 equal pieces. Using your hands, roll the dough into a ball. Put about a third of a cup of sugar in a small bowl. Roll dough balls in the sugar before spacing them evenly on 2 cookie sheets. Using a drinking glass, flatten dough balls until they are about 2 inches in diameter. Then flip the cookie over so the top of your cookies doesn't read: IKEA 365 like mine did. Bake, on cookie sheet at a time, for 14 minutes. Rotate the cookie sheet about half way through. If you over cook these cookies, they will lose their chewiness.

Iced Pumpkin Cookies

This is my favorite time of year. I love baking in the autumn...and if you've been following my blog you'll notice a slight favoritism for cooking with Pumpkin. This morning Kaitlyn asked where her baby pumpkin went. I told her we were going to make her baby pumpkin into cookies today. She was on board.

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter or shortening, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 cups canned pumpkin puree*
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

*I used some of the puree that I made yesterday. It tasted the same as the stuff I buy at the grocery store.

For the Icing

2 cups confectioners' sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and salt. In a medium bowl, cream together the 1/2 cup of butter and white sugar. Add pumpkin, egg, and 1 teaspoon vanilla to butter mixture. Beat until creamy. Mix in dry ingredients. Drop on cookie sheet with a spoon. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven. Cool cookies, then drizzle glaze with fork.

To Make Glaze combine confectioners' sugar, milk, melted butter, and vanilla. Add a little more milk as needed, to achieve your desired drizzling consistency. I made half the cookies with icing and half without. Kaitlyn prefered them without, but I liked both. If there are any left when Roger gets home....I'll ask which one he prefers.

Halloween Pumpkin Cookies

This is a pretty easy recipe to make. I acquired this recipe when Roger and I were first married. It came in the monthly newsletter that our apartment complex distributed...along with safety tips and a reminder that it was, in fact, illegal to sell drugs out of your apartment. Ahhh the memories of being newlywed and broke...

1 stick butter or margarine (Crisco is a good substitute, too)
1/2 c sugar
1 egg
1/2 c pumpkin
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 c flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp of cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl. Add egg, pumpkin, and vanilla. Sift dry ingredients together and add to bowl. Drop by tablespoon onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

It's fall. The temperature is a little more barable. The leaves are turning. One of my favorite things about autumn is cooking "fall food". I love cooking with pumpkin. It smells so amazing. This is a recipe that my friend Jen shared with me. It's a vegan recipe so it's great if your kids are allergic to eggs.

Ingredients
2 cups flour
1 1/3 cups rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1 2/3 cups sugar
2/3 cup canola oil
2 tablespoons molasses
1 cup canned pumpkin, or cooked pureed pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon ground flax seeds*

Directions
Preheat oven to 350.

Mix together flour, oats, baking soda, salt and spices.

In a seperate bowl, mix together sugar, oil, molasses, pumpkin and vanilla (and flax seeds if using) until very well combined. Add dry ingredients to wet, folding to combine.

Drop onto greased cookie sheets about a tablespoon at a time. They don't spread very much so they can be placed only an inch apart. Flatten the tops of the cookies with a fork or with your fingers, to press into cookie shape. Bake for 16 minutes at 350. If you are using two sheets of cookies on 2 levels of your oven, rotate the sheets halfway through for even baking. Makes about four dozen.

Remove from oven and let set before serving.

*Ground flax seed will add a chewy texture to the cookie, but is optional. I found the ground flax seed on the "health food" aisle, but I've also seen it with the flour.

**Variation: Fold in 1 cup walnuts (finely chopped) and 1/2 cup raisins right before dropping batter onto cookie sheet.