All posts in category Cookies

Iced Sugar Cookies

My mom has been baking these cookies since before I was born. When I was growing up, we’d make them for just about every holiday and we probably had about a hundred cookie cutters. Usually we’d make an icing from icing sugar, vanilla, and milk and use paintbrushes to decorate them. It was snowing the weekend I baked these, so with no where to go, I decided to try decorating with royal icing instead – and the results were AWESOME.  To make the penguins, I used the Wilton Comfort Grips snowman cutter and decorated from there.  It’s best to make the dough the night before you actually want to bake and decorate so that it has plenty of time to chill, as it works best when the dough is stiff.

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup shortening (baking fat)
  • 1/2 cup (115 grams) butter, softened
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 and 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Mix shortening (baking fat), butter, sugar and eggs until blended, then add then vanilla.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together in separate bowl. Then gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

3. Cover and chill the dough in the fridge for at least one hour. Again, it’s best to leave it overnight!

4. Heat oven to 400°F (200°C). Dust your work surface with flour, then roll out the dough with a floured rolling pin until it is 1/4 inch thick. Cut with the cookie cutters, then transfer to a baking sheet with a floured spatula.

5. Bake the cookies for 6-8 minutes until slightly brown at the edges. You’ll need to adjust the baking time for cookies that have finer details or smaller sizes (such as the snowflakes, or a thin candy cane shape). It works best if making multiple shapes to only use one shape per tray so that they bake evenly.

6. Transfer to a wire rack to cool, then pipe the decorations with royal icing.

When one tray of cookies are in the oven, I usually put the dough back in the fridge to keep it from getting too soft. Try not to handle the dough too much with your hands, as this will cause the butter to soften and the dough will get sticky and the cookies won’t hold their shape when transferring from your work surface to your baking sheet.  Don’t be too worried about it though, if a cookie loses its shape, just toss it back in the dough bowl and pop all of it back in the fridge for a few minutes.

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by Ashley on February 18, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Ashley on February 18, 2012

https://pajamabaker.com/2012/02/18/iced-sugar-cookies/

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

For Valentine’s Day, I decided to make heart-shaped whoopie pies after seeing the recipe on Annie’s Eats. The hardest part of this recipe was trying to pipe all of the heart shapes the same so that the sides would (hopefully) match up.  It’s actually a lot harder than it looks!  I made these pies pretty small (about 1.5 inches across) to make them more of a bite-sized treats, and I think it worked quite well.

Ingredients

For the cookies:

  • 2 cups flour
  • 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • ½ cup (115 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • ½ cup buttermilk, at room temperature
  • 2 tablespoons red food coloring
For the cream filling:
  • 10 ounces cream cheese
  • 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 2½ cups icing sugar

Directions

1. Cut out a heart shape from an index card for whatever size whoopie pie you want to make. Then trace the hearts onto sheets of baking paper or parchment. Lay the sheets pencil side down so that you don’t get graphite into your dough!

2. Preheat oven to 375° F (approx 190°C).

3. In a medium-sized bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar. Once they’re light and fluffy, mix in the egg, followed by the vanilla.

4. Mix in about a third of the dry ingredients, followed by half of the buttermilk. Mix then scrape down the bowl. Add another third of the dry ingredients, followed by the rest of the buttermilk, mix then scrape the bowl, then mix in the final third of the dry ingredients. Once everything is incorporated, mix in the red food coloring.

5. Transfer the dough to a pastry bag with a large round piping tip. Pipe the dough onto your heart stencils, taking care to make them as even as possible. I kept my dough slightly inside my lines to allow for the cookies to flatten out. Take your time with this part, and if you mess up, scrape off the dough, put it back in the bowl, then try again.

6. Bake the cookies for 7-9 minutes until set. Allow them to cool on the trays for 10 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool the rest of the way. Be sure to let these cool COMPLETELY, or else your cream filling will melt and be super messy.

7. Lay out all of your cooled cookies, then match them up as best you can. Set each pair together on the cooling racks, one side facing up, the other down. This will make things a lot easier when assembling the pies.

8. Make the cream cheese filling by creaming the butter and sugar. gradually sift in the icing sugar. Once everything is combined, add the vanilla. Transfer to a second pastry bag with another round piping tip.  I found it easier to use the filling after putting in into the fridge for about 5 minutes before piping.

9. Pipe the cream filling onto one cookie, then top with the other. Don’t press them together too much or your filling will squish out the sides! Once all of the pies are assembled, place the racks in the fridge for a few minutes to allow the cream filling to set before stacking them up – again, to prevent them from getting squished.

10. Once the filling is set, store the pies in an airtight container in the fridge.

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by Ashley on February 14, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Cookies
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Posted by Ashley on February 14, 2012

https://pajamabaker.com/2012/02/14/red-velvet-whoopie-pies/

Spiral Cookies

These cookies were certainly an experiment based off of a recipe that I found, which immediately reminded me of Pilsbury’s slice and bake cookies that used to hit store shelves for tons of different holidays. They’re a nice, crisp almost crumbly texture that reminds me a bit of shortbread. The almond flavouring is also a nice touch. The recipe calls to do this in a food processor, but I don’t have one, so I had to adapt a bit to make it work. The key to these is to be patient when rolling up the dough!! It’s actually a bit tricky and if you aren’t careful, they dough will crack.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups + 2 Tablespoons flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2/3 cup icing sugar
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 1/4 cups (285 grams) unsalted butter, cold and cut into cubes
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
  • food colouring
  • sprinkles

Directions

1. In the food processor, combine 2 cups of the flour, baking powder, salt, icing sugar, and sugar. Once combined, add the cubes of butter and process again.

2. Add the vanilla and process until the dough comes together in a ball. Divide the dough in half, and set half aside.

3. Add the almond extract, 2 Tablespoons of flour, and the food colouring. Process until combined and the colour is evenly distributed throughout the dough.

4. Roll out each half of the dough between two sheets of baking parchment or wax paper. Try and keep them squared and relatively the same size. This will make your life a LOT easier. Place each sheet of dough onto a baking sheet (still sandwiched between the paper) and place in the fridge to chill for about 2 hours.

5. Once chilled, remove the dough sheets from the fridge and remove the top sheet of wax paper from each one. Stack the sheets of dough on top of each other, trying to line them up as close as possible. Gently roll over the stacked dough a tiny bit just to meld them together, then trim the long edges with a sharp knife to even them up. Leave them to sit until they soften a bit.

6. When the dough is more pliable, gently roll the dough into a log, starting at the long end. Take your time at this part so that you don’t split or crack the dough!

7. Once rolled, completely coat the log of dough in sprinkles. The easiest way to do this is to pour all of the sprinkles out onto a large baking tray so that they don’t roll all over your kitchen. After coating, tightly wrap the dough in plastic wrap, then place in the fridge to chill again for a few hours. I left my dough in overnight just to be sure.

8. When the dough has thoroughly chilled, preheat your oven to 325°F (165°C).

9. Remove the log from the fridge and remove the plastic wrap. Using a sharp knife, slice the log into 1/4-inch (0.6 cm) thick slices. Place them on a baking sheet, leaving a lot of space around them, as they will spread a bit. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes. These cookies don’t turn golden brown, so be careful not to overbake.

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by Ashley on February 8, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Ashley on February 8, 2012

https://pajamabaker.com/2012/02/08/spiral-cookies/

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