My third favorite new cookie this year is not actually a cookie, but a candy bar. This recipe comes courtesy of my friend Christina’s grandmother. Christina and I made these together (along with the caramels) when she was inspired after seeing these bars at Yum! Kitchen and Bakery in St. Louis Park (I highly recommend the place). I enjoyed one of these bars pretty much every day after work while making dinner or waiting for John to get home from work. Needless to say, I’m spending lots of time on the treadmill these days.
Nut Goodie Bars Cut them small – they are very sweet!
Butter a half-sheet sized jellyroll pan. Melt chocolate and butterscotch chips in a large bowl in the microwave, stirring after 30-second intervals until melted. Stir in peanut butter. Mix well. Spread 1/2 of the mix onto pan. Place in refrigerator to set. Stir peanuts into remaining mix and set aside. In a large saucepan over low heat, melt butter then slowly add evaporated milk. Stir in pudding mix. Stir constantly until thickened slightly – do not boil. Remove from heat and slowly stir in powered sugar. Add vanilla. Carefully spread over chilled chocolate layer. Chill 30 minutes. Drop reserved chocolate and peanut mix over chilled pudding layer. Spread to cover. Cover and chill until firm. Cut into 1-inch squares and enjoy.
My second favorite cookie of the season was these gingerbread cookies, from Martha Stewart (of course). I slightly under-baked them (about a minute) so they’d be a little softer, and they were very good – a little spicy and not too sweet. And they kept for a few weeks in a tightly sealed bag. This batch made so many that I ended up wrapping them up in cute little plastic bags for my coworkers.
Since I tend to go a little overboard with the Christmas baking, I decided to make a few batches of dough the weekend after Thanksgiving and freeze them, knowing that I’d probably be burned out on baking by December 15 or so. Then all I had to do a few weeks later was let the dough thaw and then roll it out, cut out the cookies, and bake them off. I’d highly recommend this strategy if you, like me, tend to “bite off more than you can chew” when it comes to holiday baking! (I also made the dough for Chocolate Butter Cookies and Rugelach ahead of time and froze them – more on those later!)
Basic Gingerbread Cookies from Martha Stewart, makes a lot
6 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup dark-brown sugar, packed
4 teaspoons ground ginger
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground clove
1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 large eggs
1 cup unsulfured molasses
Mix together flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar until fluffy in a mixer. Mix in spices and salt, then eggs and molasses. Add flour mixture; combine on low speed. Divide dough in thirds; wrap in plastic. Chill for at least 1 hour (or freeze for a few weeks like I did).
Heat oven to 350 degrees. On a floured work surface, roll dough 1/8 inch thick. Cut into desired shapes. Transfer to ungreased baking sheets; refrigerate until firm, 15 minutes. Bake 8 to 10 minutes. Let cookies cool on wire racks, then decorate as desired. I used these cookie cutters from Williams Sonoma and made royal icing and put it in a piping bag to decorate.
I’m starting off the Christmas Cookie series with my favorite creation from this year – caramels! They were fairly easy to make and so delicious. I made them with my friend, Christina, and we actually cut the batch in half (then each took half the batch) so I think if you made the whole recipe, you just might be wrapping up the caramels until New Year’s Eve! You’ll need a candy thermometer and a whole lot of heavy cream for this recipe.
4 cups heavy cream
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
4 cups light corn syrup
4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 16 pieces
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Vegetable-oil cooking spray
Spray a half-sheet pan with cooking spray, then line with parchment or wax paper overlapping on two ends, and spray that with cooking spray. Set aside in a spot where it will not be moved. In a 2-quart saucepan, combine cream and sweetened condensed milk; set aside.
In a heavy 6- to 8-quart saucepan, combine corn syrup, 1 cup water, sugar, and salt. Clip on candy thermometer. Over high heat, cook until sugar is dissolved, stirring with a wooden spoon, 8 to 12 minutes. Brush down sides of pan with a pastry brush dipped in water to remove any sugar crystals.
Stop stirring, reduce heat to medium, and bring to a boil. Cook, without stirring, until temperature reaches 250 degrees (hard-ball stage), about 45 to 60 minutes (it didn’t take this long for us, but we did cut the batch in half). Meanwhile, cook cream mixture over low heat until it is just warm. Do not boil. When sugar reaches 250 degrees. slowly stir in butter and warmed cream mixture, keeping mixture boiling at all times (be careful – it bubbles up!). Stirring constantly, cook over medium heat until thermometer reaches 244 degrees (firm-ball stage), 55 to 75 minutes (again, it didn’t take ours this long to get to 244 degrees). In order to prevent burned parts from making it into the candies, you have two options: 1) make sure to scrape the bottom of the pan while you stir, or 2) make sure you don’t scrape the bottom at all. Stir in vanilla. Immediately pour into prepared pan without scraping pot. Let stand uncovered at room temperature for 24 hours without moving. Our set in less than 24 hours but I left them for that long, just to be on the safe side.
To cut, spray a large cutting board generously with cooking spray. Grasping the overhanging parchment paper, unmold caramel from pan onto sprayed surface. Cut into 1-by-1 1/4-inch pieces, or other shapes. Wrap each in cellophane or waxed paper. I used a large pizza cutter to make the initial cuts, then a metal pastry cutter to cut any pieces that didn’t get cut all the way through.
Yep, there’s a piece missing. I needed to test them out!
In the next few posts, I will write about my favorite Christmas cookie recipes that I tried this year. Here are a few pictures from my 2009 cookie spread! I hope you enjoyed the holidays and got everything you asked for (I did – a Le Creuset French oven and skillet)!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Here are some pictures from our celebration. What’s your favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal? Does your family include an “untraditional” dish in their Thanksgiving meal? Leave a comment and let me know! My family has sausage as a side dish (not sure when/how that started: I hate sausage!).
Golden brown turkey…
Dad making gravy (in between snacking on the turkey neck)…
Rotisserie chickens from the grocery store are a great standby meal for those nights you don’t have time to cook dinner. STOP! Don’t throw the leftovers away! Make your own chicken stock. This was my first time doing this and it was super easy!
First, throw the bones and leftover meat into a pot. Add whatever vegetables and herbs you have in your refrigerator (I used carrots, celery, onion, rosemary, and thyme).
Cover with water. Add some salt and pepper.
Cover and simmer over medium low heat for a few hours, until your house smells like Thanksgiving.
Strain the stock into containers for future use. As you can see in the picture below, you will need to skim the fat off the top. Use the homemade stock instead of the grocery store version!
When making this ginger pumpkin bread the other week, I accidentally bought a 28 ounce can of pumpkin puree, instead of the 14 ounce can I needed. So this is how I used up that extra pumpkin! Scones are a nice treat for breakfast (or anytime of the day). You can find the recipe for these scones on Vanilla Sugar. She has some awesome photos on her site.
Do you like peanut butter? Do you like chocolate? Do you like rice crispy bars? If your answers are “yes,” then you have to make these bars. I purchased this awesome cookbook earlier this summer and it’s now one of my favorites. I highly recommend getting yourself a copy of the book. I think these bars turned out pretty awesome. I sent half these bars home with Sara Beth (SB and Marc, if you’re reading this, I hope you liked them!)
Peanut Butter Crispy Bars Makes 9, from the Baked cookbook
For the crispy crust:
1 3/4 cups rice krispies
1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons light corn syrup
3 tablespoons melted butter
For the peanut butter layer:
5 oz milk chocolate, chopped
1 cup creamy peanut butter
For the chocolate layer:
3 oz dark chocolate
1/2 teaspoon light corn syrup
4 tablespoons butter
Crust:
Spray a 8×8 inch baking pan with cooking spray. Put the cereal in a bowl and set aside. In a small saucepan, stir together 1/4 cup water, the sugar, and corn syrup. Cook over medium-high heat until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage (235 degrees – use a candy thermometer). Remove from heat, stir in the butter and pour over cereal. Quickly stir together and press into the prepared pan.
Peanut butter layer:
Over a double boiler (place a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water) melt the chocolate and peanut butter together until smooth. Pour over the crust. Put into the refrigerator until firm.
Chocolate layer:
Again over a double boiler, melt the chocolate, corn syrup, and butter, stirring until smooth. Pour over the peanut butter layer.
Place the bars in the refrigerator until the chocolate layer hardens. You may have to let them come to room temperature so that you can cut them into squares and serve.
This is my mother-in-law, Kathy’s recipe for apple crisp. John loves her recipe best, since he doesn’t like apple crisp with oats in the topping. I think the topping is the secret to why it’s so good! All the brown sugar melts and becomes all caramelized. (I wanted to say caramelly, but I don’t think that’s a word!) Serve with ice cream – I recommend Haagen Dazs vanilla, which is my favorite. This recipe works great cut in half or fourths for a quick dessert for a few people.
Apple Crisp Adapted slightly from my mother-in-law, Kathy
6 cups apples, peeled and chopped
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/8 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
A pinch each of nutmeg, cardamom, and cloves
Topping:
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
Combine apples, lemon juice, flour, sugar, and spices. Put in greased 9×13 baking dish.
Mix the remaining ingredients using a pastry blender or your fingers, mixing until crumbs form. Spread over apples. A few nuts may be added if desired. Bake for approximately 1 hour at 350 degrees, or until the top is crispy and golden brown and the apples are soft.
My friend Rachel and I spent an afternoon at the apple orchard and baking apple goodies. Rachel is an amazing cook and an awesome friend. We stopped over to her parents’ house (her mom Lois is also a great cook) to pick up an apple peeler-corer-slicer that came in handy for all those apples we had to prep! (Oh, and we got some free lunch out of the visit.) We made quite a mess of my tidy kitchen, but no worries, it’s all tidy again!
Here’s some pictures to document our accomplishments…
Applesauce – super easy to make from scratch
Apple Pie - look at that PERFECT crust Rachel made – amazing!
And Apple Muffins – these got taken to work for my co-workers
I’d love to hear what are you doing to enjoy all the awesome flavors of Fall!
