Hallowe'en cookies!

Made some more Hallowe'en cookies, and thought I'd do a quick tutorial on the decorations.

I love the classic sugar cookie recipe from the Cake & Cooky Cookbook, brushed with milk and sprinkled with sugar or sprinkles. Generally, this means sugar or sprinkles all over the cookie sheet, cooked on, keeping me from lifting off the cookies without breaking them. So this time, I made stencils out of heavy paper, by tracing the cookie cutters and then cutting inside the lines (the idea being, if the stencil is slightly smaller than the cookie, there will be less spillover). After I had done a few, I realised at one point that folding up the edges of the stencil would result in even less spilling.

Then I made separate stencils for the Jack O'Lantern face and ghost eyes.

A slightly tedious process, but much less time than icing, and after the first sheet I had a pretty good assembly line going, doing the white sugar first, then the orange, then all the black (eyes, faces, cats) at once.

They look like more work than they are!

Eggs: yolks + whites

I love eggs! The most versatile, irreplaceable ingredient. If I was allergic to them, I would surely weep.

So the other day, when I picked up a couple dozen organic eggs of exceptional egginess, I felt they needed a recipe to really show them off - a classic gold cake, a simple way to showcase a good egg.

Then of course, you have egg whites left over, so you have to make meringues!

Gold Cake
(from The Cake and Cooky Cookbook)

2 cups sifted cake flour
1 TBS baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, soft
1 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup milk

Grease two 8" round pans, line with waxed paper, grease paper.

Measure flour, baking powder, and salt into sifter.

Beat butter, adding sugar gradually, till light and fluffy.

Beat egg yolks till thick and lemon coloured. Blend into butter/sugar along with vanilla.

Sift and add dry ingredients, alternating with milk.

Divide between prepared pans and bake 35 minutes at 350 F. Cool 5 minutes in pan before turning out onto rach.

Chocolate Frosting

1 1/2 cup milk
3 TBS corn starch
1 cup butter, soft
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1 tsp vanilla

Whisk together milk and starch, cook over medium heat until thick. Allow to cool to room temperature.

Beat butter, adding sugar gradually, till light and fluffy. Beat in cocoa and vanilla.

Gradually add cooled milk mixture, beating till smooth after each addition.

Meringues

2 egg whites, at room temperature
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

Beat egg whites with cream of tartar and salt until foamy.

Gradually beat in sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating well after each addition to dissolve sugar completely.

Continue to beat till meringue forms stiff peaks. Stir in vanilla.

Spoon mounds on ungreased cooky sheet, leaving room for spreading.

Bke 60 minutes at 275 F, till crisp.

Cool on racks, then store in airtight container.

holiday crunch time!

the end of december is almost here, and we haven't even sent out our cards yet, yikes!

but at least i got a pair of mittens made for the kid's teacher:

and volunteered in his class this morning making gingerbread houses (actually from graham wafers):

then i had to rush home to finish decorating 75 cupcakes. every year, i volunteer to bake cupcakes for one organization or another for their holiday party - this year it was for youth without shelter.

not even halfway through, my piping bag exploded! whoops.

this is why we always make extras! i added extra sprinkles to make up for the less-than perfect icing job.

i made a bunch of chocolate ones, too!

cupcakes for spring!

we used to make these when i was a kid - vanilla cupcakes with butter frosting, decorated with flowers made of mini fruit-flavoured marshmallows cut in half. kiddo did all of the putting-cupcake-papers-in-the-tin, some of the stirring, most of the marshmallow-cutting, and a few of the flowers.

the recipe, of course, is from the much-beloved cake and cooky cookbook.

on saturday meanwhile, i baked this yummy mocha cake for dinner with my in-laws. was very glad to be invited there for dinner, as i'd just found this mocha cake recipe i wanted to try, but the kiddo and i already had plans to make the cupcakes, and i was having trouble justifying making that much cake.

it's all as good as gone though! mocha cake got gobbled up at dinner, cupcakes have been delivered to the neighbours and some are set aside for my coworkers tomorrow. easy come, easy go.

curly-writing cookies

so the kiddo asked me a week or two to show him how to read curly writing. he doesn't entirely understand that it's the same letters written a different way (i.e. he'll see a printed word and say "how do you spell that in curly writing?") but i thought cookies would be a fun way to learn the concept of making a letter out of a single line (or rope of cookie dough). also, cookies.



these are just plain sugar cookies from the much-loved "cake and cooky cookbook" published by family circle 50 or 60 years ago. some are a bit thicker than others, so some needed a bit more baking than others. and someone lost interest in curly writing and just rolled out the dough with his very own rolling pin. they're tasty either way!



he doesn't have his own apron (yet), so he's wearing my old craft smock from when i was his age. my mother made it for me, same dark green as a chalkboard, with white bias trim and my name embroidered on the pocket!