Tobe's Candy-Cane Cookies

In my last post I mentioned my suitemate Tobe's delicious candy cane cookies, and she has kindly agreed to let me post her recipe on this blog. As I wrote earlier, my roommate Sophia and I made 2 batches of these cookies because we could not resist the warm combination of the soft almond cookies and the crunchy-sweet peppermint topping.

Tobe's Candy-Cane Cookies

Ingredients:
    Dough:

• 1 C soft shortening 
• 1 C powdered sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 1/2 C flour
• 1 tsp salt 

    Topping:

• 1/2 candycanes, crushed
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar

Procedure:

1. Pre-heat oven to 375F.
2. Mix the first 5 ingredients together by hand. (I used a whisk)
3. Add the flour and salt. (I used a spoon at first and then switched to using my fingers)
4. Divide the dough into as many parts as you want colors and knead in food coloring until the desired color is achieved. 
5. To make candy cane shape: Roll 1 tsp of each color in to a strip about 4" long.  Place strips together side by side and twist together. Curve tops down for candy cane effect.
6. To make thumbprint shape (for people who fail at making candy canes like me): take 2 tsp of dough, roll it into a sphere, and press down in the middle with your thumb. (This shape is good for holding a lot of topping)
7. Place on ungreased cookie sheets and bake at 375F for 9 minutes.
8. Combine the crushed candy-canes and the sugar in a bowl.
9. Remove cookies from baking sheet while warm, place on paper towels and sprinkle with topping.

Holiday Baking!

Finals are over! And it turns that finals week was the week where I had the most free time. What did I do with this frightening abundance of free time? I baked cookies! I think I baked 8 times in 8 days. Not only cookies though.
Saturday afternoon, my friend Nicole wanted to make shortbread cookies for her professors, so I volunteered to help out. We used this joy of baking recipe and shaped some of the cookies as stars and hearts and other cookies shaped as hippos and elephants. The fizzix professors have a slight obsession with rhinos, so we figured hippos would be close enough. Unfortunately the hippos ran away before I could photograph them.

 

I tried filling shortbread cookie dough with nuts and brown sugar! Pecans, almonds, and cashews all worked well.

That same day, my dorm was having a potluck, so my roommate, Sophia, and I made Sophia's favorite apple crumble recipe. The apples were simply sprinkled with sugar and lemon juice. The topping was a combination of butter, oatmeal, brown sugar, and flour. Usually she uses pecans, but almonds were cheaper.

 

We brought the crumble to the potluck, but it turned out that only 2 people had brought savory foods, so we had a lot of desserts: crumble, apple pie, sesame balls, cookies...

The next day I helped Sophia make the biscotti she makes every year for Christmas. These are delicious almond-anis-raisin biscotti (I liked them even though I usually don't really like anis or raisins.)

 

 The last batch of cookies we made was Tobe's (our suitemate) Candy Cane cookies. Sophia and I agree that these are the best cookies we have ever had. The dough is flavored with almond extract and the cookies are sprinkled with crushed candy canes and sugar. Tobe's instructions said to color some of the dough red and twirl the different colors together to make candy canes, but neither of s was able to do it. Instead, we made trees and mushrooms and flowers, but we discovered that the simple thumbprint cookie was the best at holding large quantities of the candy cane sugar.

Poll Results! What is your favorite type of cookie??

Chocolate Chip	7 (53%)
Oatmeal	2 (15%)
Shortbread/butter	0 (0%)
Peanut Butter	2 (15%)
Chocolate (not just chips)	1 (7%)
Ginger Snaps	1 (7%)
Other	0 (0%)

Votes so far: 13

Yes, I am finally writing about this poll (I think I started it in December.) I must confess, I can't remember what I voted for, but I know that I like chocolate cookies, oatmeal cookies, and chocolate chip cookies. Peanut butter, not so much.
I also tend to really like creative cookies, like these maple-pecan-oatmeal cookies, or my own cranberry-pistachio biscotti.

To me, cookies are just a blank canvas to be painted with whatever flavor is desired. Unfortunately, I never really manage to pull them off the way I would like. I've tried several times to make chewy cookies, using melted butter or other techniques, but they still always end up soft and cakey. (just as tasty though!)

So, do any of you have a favorite cookie recipe you'd like to share?
And don't forget to vote on the new poll!

Pistachio-Cranberry Biscotti

Holiday season is here! Small cakes and cookies are great gifts for distant family, and biscotti are perfect because they are light and sturdy: they can easily be sent by mail. The word biscotti comes from "bis" or twice, and "cotti," cooked. Biscotti means twice cooked.

These biscotti are Christmas colored because they have green pistachio and red cranberries! I recommend toasting the pistachios before using them to concentrate their flavor. Also, don't use salted nuts. The recipe only makes 12 biscotti, but as they rather time consuming (1.5-2 hours), I like to double the recipe because they keep for a long time in an airtight container (don't refrigerate).

This recipe is from Joy of Baking, as usual, my comments appear in [brackets.]

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
  
• 1/2 cup pistachios [toasted for 8-10 minutes in a 325 oven if possible]
• 1/2 cup cranberries

Procedure:

1. [Toast nuts acording to directions above.]
2. With a mixer, mix eggs, sugar, and vanilla until thick, pale, and frothy for about 5 minutes in a large bowl.
3. In a small-medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.
   
4. Add to the egg mixture and beat until combined.
   
5. Fold in the chopped pistachios and cranberries.
6. Transfer the dough to your parchment lined baking sheet and form into a log, [about 2-3 inches tall]. You may have to dampen your hands to form the log as the dough is quite sticky.
   
7. Bake for 25 minutes [I needed 40], or until [a knife poked in comes out clean, better to overbake than underbake. If necessary, cover with foil to prevent burning]
8. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes.
9. Slice into 3/4 inch (2 cm) slices, on the diagonal. Place the biscotti, cut side down, on the baking sheet. Bake 10 minutes, turn slices over, and bake for another 10 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool. Store in an airtight container.

This recipe can be used as an all-pupose biscotti recipe. Use 1.2 cup nuts, 1/2 cup dried fruit or chocolate. If using almonds, replace vanilla with 1/2 tsp of almond extract. You can also dip the biscotti in chocolate for added yummyness!

Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are not chewy, but not crispy either. Nor are they powdery. These are soft cookies. Soft, as in cake-like, light, but not squishy. They would dissolve in your mouth, not melt.

These are some pretty tasty cookies.

I think the reason for the soft texture is that all the ingredients are beaten in. This adds quite a lot of air into the batter, making the final result light. I have been told that to make chewy cookies, the best way is to use melted butter. I don't if if this is true, but seems to make sense. Using melted butter would eliminate the creaming step, therefore incorporating less air into the batter. In turn, the cookie will not rise as much, resulting in a denser, chewier, texture. If you want to try this I the best way would be too mix the melted butter (cooled until you can put your finger in it easily) with the eggs, and combine the sugar with the flour mixture. Then you slowly incorporate the dry ingredients with the egg-butter. Stir or use an electric mixer until you get a smooth dough. If you try this, please tell me about it, I would love to you your results!

I found the cookies to have a slight "baking soda" taste that I did not really like. No one else could taste it, but I think that next time I make the cookies, I will use baking powder.

If you do not know how to cream, please visit my explanation about it.

Now for the recipe: it is Baking Bite's "Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies" with my comments in [brackets]

Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/4 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda [next time I will use 2 tsp baking powder]

3/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup butter, room temperature

1 1/4 cups brown sugar [I used slightly more than 1 cup]

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 large egg

1 1/4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking soda [powder] and salt. [I sifted everything together, but note that since the recipe does not specify sifted flour in the ingredients list, you should measure the flour unsifted first]

In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until light, about 2 minutes.

Beat in vanilla extract and egg until smooth. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add in all the flour mixture, stopping when the dough has just come together and no streaks of flour remain.

Stir in chocolate chips.

Place slightly rounded tablespoons of dough on baking sheet. [here, basically use a tablespoon measuring spoon to scoop out dough and a knife to remove most of the excess]
Bake for 9-11 [it was more around 15] minutes, until just golden around the edges.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. [let the cookies cool 5 minutes on the baking sheet, and then let them cool completely on a rack to prevent the bottom from getting soggy]

Makes 3 dozen.