Full baking day

As Bella posted we made another recipe together.  I bit of planning as I really did want to bake on Saturday, but I came home from work pretty darn wiped out.  So what did I learn from this recipe?  I didn't bother with precise measurements.  No matter what Bella says, I really don't measure that much.


Hmm, I seem to have gotten Bella dirty.  Well when in the kitchen messes do occur.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

La Fhéile Phadraig Sona Duit!  In honor of St. Patty's Day my daughter's kindergarden class is having a small party with treats.  Sadly (for me) the class went with a decorate-your-own cookie activity.  As I was eager to test out some decorating ideas from the book I just bought Hello Cupcake I offered to bring in treats for the pre-K class as well.  That is the best way to test any decorating technique--because even if you totally mess up, as long as it tastes good the kids are happy.  I made green iced shamrocks and round leprechaun decorated cookies.

(note to self: next time allocate more than an hour to decorating 60 cookies, the beards were rather rushed and didn't come out as good as they could have)

Left: cookies drying. I used colored fondant for the faces, spearmint gummies for the hats, orange gummy slices for the beards and decorator's gel icing for the details.  

Right: Treat/activity bags packed and ready to go.  Each bag contains two undecorated shamrock cookies, a bag each of green icing and a mix of colored (two different greens, yellow, black, white) sprinkles, Smarties, and chocolate kisses

Tonight's dinner is a very Irish meal of Dublin Coddle and Soda bread.  I will post the results later.  

Momofuku Milk Bar Compost Cookie

Amateur Gourmet posted about Momofuku Milk Bar's Compost Cookie. Seems the recipe was posted on the Regis and Kelly site. Wohoo! I have yet to run across a terrible recipe from David Chang and his crew of insanely genius chefs. The first time I made one of his recipes was Thanksgiving 2008. My SIL brought the recipe for his roasted brussel sprouts with Japanese marinade. I now love brussel sprouts and in fact will only roast them or cabbage now.

Lately my son has been asking for cookies and well I get lazy, and I worry that he will eat 6 dozen cookies in one day. Hey, it's happened between my son and husband depending on which cookie is made. I like to make a batch, scoop and freeze, so we can maintain some semblance of portion control when it comes to sweets. The same goes for cookies I like too.

Now this cookie is insane. A chocolate chip cookie with pretzels and POTATO CHIPS! I told Bella and she thought that was insane. It is insane, but I can't imagine life without it. I did skip the potato chips, but used pretzels, mini chocolate chips, and crushed heath toffee bars. This cookie requires a Kitchenaid. The mixing time is quite long.



Because of the long mixing time, the dough is really light. I don't make big cookies. I like little ones, you get to eat more for the same amount of calories. I use a 1oz cookie scoop and froze most of the cookies. So I froze the cookies instead of putting them in the fridge for 30 min. It worked just fine. These cookies are out of this world! Next time I make them I'm putting more stuff in them. These cover just about every craving a girl may have.

Valentine's Day Cookies

Recently, I got this wild notion that I will learn how to bake and to decorate.  I don't mean just throw some icing or sprinkles on something, I mean fancy-schmancy, wow-gee-whiz that's so cool kind of decorating.  I guess this is what happens when you watch too many episodes of Ace of Cakes.  Problem is, I've never really tackled anything more difficult than drop cookies and the annual birthday cake for BabyBella.  Thus, when I was asked by my daughter's teacher to bring in something sweet for their Valentine's Day party I decided that this was the perfect time to learn how to use fondant. Seriously, even if I royally mess up, a bunch of kindergardeners won't mind.  Talk about low-pressure.

So, off I go to the local craft store where I grabbed a bunch of stuff I thought I'd need and merrily went home, excited to tackle this.  Yeah...maybe I should do some research first.  Seems I forgot the right extracts, rollers, cutters, etc.  Ah well, so I made due.  Here's the result after the break: