Lemon Crinkle Cookies

I absolutely love to bake - the problem is that I also like to eat it all (but I didn't say of what... it doesn't matter.)   See when I cook I tend to think my efforts yield a sub par result.  My taste buds by the time I'm done with a main course are not salivating but are often underwhelmed by all that effort that was just put in.   That is not the case when it comes to baking.  Maybe it's the high contents of sugar and butter involved, but any way you go about it I love to bake and consume what is baked.  

I am always looking for something new to try and whip up when I find the time.   Between a lack of sleep and a lack of motivation derived from sleep deprivation baking is often on the back burner (ha!) of life.    Every now and then I come across a motivator (often found on Pinterest) that gets my creative juices flowing and I head to the kitchen. 

Yesterday that was a lemon crinkle cookie.   After the kids went to bed I got to work.  For a brief moment I thought that I had run out of sugar and while I searched the cupboard for some I laughed at the thought of having to go to the neighbor's house to borrow a cup of sugar.   Eventually I found my massive bag tucked in the back and refilled the easy access container that lives on the counter top. 

Next I started to zest a lemon.  I have to say I find zesting to be a really fun activity.  Don't ask why, I don't really know... but I love it.  With all the ingredients out and measured - the mixing began!  With two sleeping children - that often don't sleep with any duration or regularity I find having everything premeasured before beginning the mixing process works great.  This way if I am interrupted I can either ask the husband to dump stuff in OR more likely, I won't be distracted and dump in tablespoons of salt when teaspoons were asked for.  

For this recipe I looked at several different ones around Pinterest and ended up doing my own adaptation of ingredients and amounts of them, but as far as directions I followed Lauren's Latest

Ingredients (makes about 2-3 dozen):
½ cups butter, softened
1 C. sugar
1 t. Vanilla Extract
1 egg (room temp)
1 organic* lemon zested (about 2 T. worth)
2 T. fresh lemon juice
¼ t. salt
¼ t. baking powder
⅛ t. baking Soda
1 ½ C. flour
Powdered Sugar

Directions:Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In the mixer using the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Whip in vanilla, egg, lemon zest and juice. Scrape sides and mix again. Stir in all dry ingredients slowly until just combined, excluding the powdered sugar. Scrape sides of bowl and mix again briefly. Pour powdered sugar onto a large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar. Place on baking sheet, squish it down a bit (I know totally a technical term!)  and repeat with remaining dough.

Bake for 9-11 minutes or until bottoms begin to barely brown and cookies look matte {not melty or shiny}. Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes before transferring to cooling rack. If using a non stick darker baking tray, reduce baking time by about 2 minutes.

This recipe made 29 cookies... by the time they were cooled and ready to be put away for the night there were 18 remaining.   They were delicious, lemony, and soft (my favorite!) The lemon wasn't over powering and it wasn't "lemon scented" as one friend of mine described about some store bought lemon cookies the other day.     YUMMY!  I actually went and bought more organic lemons so I could make more later this week.

Ok one more picture of my cookies with a lemon...because it's the thing to do.

One last thing!

* You want to use organic anything if you are putting the outer shell of citrus into whatever it is you're cooking.   The pesticides that are used on non-organic lemons (oranges, grapefruits, etc..) are not held to a edible standard by the FDA because that part of the fruit is not consider part of the edible fruit.  Therefore, no amount of 'mild soap scrubbing' is worth the what-ifs associated with what else you're zesting into your cookies.  Bleck!   Buy organic, at least for zesting if not for other reasons.  :)

Babycakes Cake Pops

I recently purchased the Babycakes Cake Pop Maker and the Babycakes Cake Pop Cookbook.  I had previously seen the machine for sale and thought that would be neat, but I quickly dismissed it because I figured it wasn't worth $25 to just make cake pops every now and again.  Then I stumbled upon the cookbook and the fact that I can cook appetizers and other things specifically recipe-calibrated for this machine.   Hooray, I bought away! 

Did I buy for a specific event in mind?  No. Have I ever eaten a cake pop before in my life? No.  Do I think I'll get $25 worth of use of it? Yes, and then some! Are they delicious? Yum! 

For my first attempt making any cake pops this machine made it super easy!  I decided that I'd make some for our community group when it came our turn to bring dessert.   I used their lemon cake recipe.  Considering I didn't have an actual lemon as called by the recipe and only the lemon extract part, they were still quite yummy.  Can't wait to try it with a real lemon! :)

The recipe is super easy, relatively small, and easy to mix together.  After everything was combined, I tossed everything into a ziplock back and cut the end and created a easy device to feed the maker (and throw away when I'm done!)   Finding the right level of batter to create the perfect sphere took a bit trial and error but overall it was very easy.

I have to say that the cookbook does a great job walking you through the ins and outs of the cake pop maker.  Tips on just about anything you'd come across, and I greatly appreciated that.  The cake pops cook quickly only about 4 minutes and they were nice and fluffy.   They pop out of the maker pretty easily too!   Now after doing a lot of reading about 'cake pops'  I have been enlightened that the Babycakes Maker does not make 'traditional' cake pops - which apparently involve regular cake crumbled and a frosting mixtured rolled into a ball.   Forgive me if I say THANK GOODNESS for that!  That sounds disgusting to me.   I like the nice solid cake center.  :)

The book walks you through how best to affix the sticks to your cake pops.  Oddly enough you don't just jam the stick in the cake pops.   After I completed cooking them all (so about 4 rounds of using the maker) - I tossed them in a bowl and put them in the freezer for 15 minutes.   After that I melted a little candy, dipped the stick in it and then speared my cake balls and then I tossed all of those back in the freezer for 15 more minutes.   Then it was time for the fun stuff!

The cookbook offers several recipes for toppings to use on your cake pops, but for this time I chose to use the Wilton Candy Melts. The cookbook also walks through good techniques for using the candy melts to get a less drippy effect, etc..   This part is actually a lot of fun :)  I'm not sure why I found it so exciting, but it was.

Next up to add some fun color I broke out the sprinkles and got to shaking.  For things like sprinkles you want to do it while the candy is still wet.  For other decoration you want to wait for it to dry, just depends on the technique.   I love that the making of cake pops can be so multifaceted.

After making a good portion of the pops white with sprinkles, I thought that I would add in some hot pink dye to the melted candy to make some pink pops.   Apparently that was a grave error!  As soon as the two drops of dye hit the melted candy it turned into this grainy sandy mixture.  Eventually by adding a LOT more candies to the mix and melting those in it finally yielded back into a liquid form.   I guess that's one way to ensure that you buy the specific bag of colored candy melts!   So baker beware - candy melts don't like traditional food dye.  They require an oil based dye and Wilton makes some specifically for their candy melts (of course they do!.)

Ace was my taste tester... he loved them... as said with a mouth full of cake.   :)  Next up was cutting a piece of Styrofoam and then the rest was simple arrangement.  I left several off the sticks and some even completely uncandied for variety sake.  I put those in mini muffin cups and in the end they were all devoured.  Yum!

This was a very fun project and the maker cleaned up with an easy wipe down and thus clean up was a breeze.  :) Can't wait for more occasions to try out different recipes and decorating techniques!  Babycakes has not sponsored this blog, but I'd happily do business with them if they did want to.  Their cookbook is full of recipes and what I find even more invaluable than that is all of the great tips on perfecting your baking and decorating experience.   Stay tuned on a post about making meatballs in the maker!

Freezer Meals

For years I've contemplated freezer cooking and mass production of meals in the freezer.   Heck I think it was three years ago I even purchased a freezer meal book, but I never did anything with it - still haven't in fact.  However, Pinterest provided me with some pinspiration and I decided to give it a go using two different websites.

First I went to The Test Kitchen of Melissa Fallis and Ring Around the Rosies and between the two created my menu and my grocery list.    The amount of time that I spent creating my grocery list I think took as much time as food prep did.   Eventually I settled on a few different meals between the two sites.

My Menu:
Savory Chicken - Ring Around the Rosies
Sausage and Peppers - Ring Around the Rosies
Healthy Mama’s BBQ chicken, using sweet potatoes - Mama and Baby Love
Stephanie’s Goulash - The Test Kitchen
Vegetable Beef Soup - The Test Kitchen

I recommend copying down the recipes (a simple copy/paste into a Word doc will do) so that in case these websites ever disappear your favorite recipe won't.  Plus printing it out - it makes a nice check list as you go along to ensure all ingredients are added.   I did not provide the recipes here, because well that's not very nice if you only visit my page when it was someone else's work. Since I did no adaptations, no recipes will be found here this time.  :)

With a full page, two column grocery list in hand I headed off to the grocery store with both kids.  90 minutes in the store and a FULL grocery cart (I don't think I've ever had one so full!) we checked out.  Combine that with our regular grocery items it was a pricey bill - but considering I purchased:  8 chicken breasts, 6lbs of ground beef, 3lbs of stew meat and a whole host of fresh organic vegetables and organic canned products I really can't complain at the $302.23 bill.
 

We got home and I started to label the gallon freezer bags.  Which thank goodness I had enough - as I forgot to purchase more at the store (it was on the list and I still skipped it!)    So don't forget to buy your gallon freezer bags!  I wrote on the bags if there were ingredients that need to be added later, how long to cook and at what temperature so there was no need to track down the recipe when I was ready to use it later.  Next up,  I broke out some large paper and the crayons for the kids to entertain themselves while I got to work.   They had a lot of fun and I stopped occasionally to trace them or help with something.  

Next, I laid out my recipe lists and got to chopping.  I looked at all the recipes and went through and did all the onions.  So if a recipe called for 2 onions (split between two bags) I would chop one onion and put it in that bag, then the next and put it in the other.   Then move to the next recipe that required onions and do the same thing. So there was no massive pile of nine onions chopped and then dispursed between bags, although it does create an amusing picture in my head. Next carrots, potatoes, and the rest of the veggies accordingly.    The vegetable chopping honestly took the most time,  but overall between stops and starts it took a little over an hour of actual work time for the veggies. 

The next task was to chop 18 cloves of garlic for the various dishes - thankfully I have my Garlic Zoom to use and so while slightly tedious to peel all the cloves and then put them in/out of the Garlic Zoom it wasn't too bad.    After that I moved onto all the can goods, broths, liquid and wine (which I certainly sampled to make sure it was a yummy one first!)   It was also around this time that I broke out cold pizza for my kids to eat for dinner.  Oh the irony.  All this organic, healthy food and they're eating cold pizza.  :)  Next step were all the various spices to be added and then finally I broke out the meat.  I started with the stew meat dishes and got those together.  I left some air in the bag and shook everything up and then went and squeezed all the air out and laid them flat. Cut the chicken breasts in half and placed them in the bags that were appropriate and I was done for the night!

The two bags for the Vegetable Beef Soup went into the fridge for the night, because I needed to brown ground beef before those could be frozen and it was past the kids' bedtime at this point.  The next morning, I woke up, browned the beef with the garlic and onions and split it between the one bag (after the meat cooled!) and the crock pot.   Yes one bag went straight into the crock pot for dinner that night!    Let me say this dish cooking on low for 8 hours - there was very little 'soup' for a soup dish - but it was a delicious meal regardless of soup volume.   If you want soup you might think to add even more beef broth than called for.   

I now had nine more meals awaiting consumption and ready to be consumed!  I waited to write this blog until after I had executed a freezer to crock pot meal and I have to say I was very pleased.   For our next meal on Saturday night (I originally did all the prep work on Tuesday) all I did take out the bag the night before and put it in the fridge.   The next morning around 10am I took that bag and dumped it into the crock pot.   The mess?  Throwing away a ziplock bag!   That's it.   No fuss, hassle, or issue at all.

Now if you are a 'lightly steamed' veggie/potato person I will say that carrots and the sweet potatoes on the BBQ Chicken were a bit more mushy than you would prefer.   If you're really concerned about that I suppose that you could do multiple bags separating your veggies from the rest of the recipe and dump the veggies in when you have about an hour or so remaining.   For me that isn't that big of a deal and so I'll continue with the one bag per meal method for these dishes.  I cooked both of these recipes on low for eight hours and everything was cooked well.   If you choose to cook on high for four hours you might run into the issue of the meat being too dry.   

I have to say that the two meals I have eaten they've been huge hits with the family.  Even my husband who is not a sweet potato fan enjoyed the "BBQ" chicken (it really didn't taste too much like BBQ, but still yummy!)    For our family with busy schedules the prep work and mess at one time was well worth it.    I plan to do this about once a month to help provide my family with healthy choices with very little day to day prep and mess work.  :)   Now really how much prep time did it take?   Well I think if I had someone watch the kids I could prep everything (including browning the meat) in under two hours.    However, with the kids, interruptions, bedtimes, meat browning the next day, etc.. the amount of prep time (including clean up) took 3.5 hours this time.     Honestly, for ten meals ready to toss in the crock pot that still isn't too bad!   Happy cooking!

Cooking Goal...

We're getting down to the wire and my recipe ratio vs the days I have less is becoming more and more insurmountable as the days tick down. I will be quite disappointed in myself if I ultimately do not meet this goal - it will be the first goal since I have started making these challenges for myself, that I would have 'failed' - so while I am still pushing forward and will attempt to at least make a dent toward HALF of my goal, we'll see how it does.

Another recipe that I recently completed was for biscuits. We needed some bread to go with our pot roast, and so I went to the internet to find myself a simply recipe for something tasty to soak up some gravy. Yum. I came across this one and I doubled it so I'd have some extra to use for breakfast sandwhiches, and snacks. Yum carbs!

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
1/3 cup shortening
1 cup milk

Directions:
1.Preheat oven to 425'
2.In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Gradually stir in milk until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl.
3.Turn out onto a floured surface, and knead 15 to 20 times. Pat or roll dough out to 1 inch thick. Cut biscuits with a large cutter or juice glass dipped in flour. Repeat until all dough is used. Brush off the excess flour, and place biscuits onto an ungreased baking sheet.
4.Bake for 13 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges begin to brown

These turned out soo yummy, I certainly will keep this recipe and use it again! The cooking continues and I keep pushing forward toward the goal of 150 NEW recipes in 2010! We'll see how I do!

Cranberry Bliss Bars

Oh yes, the oh so famous treat from Starbucks! They used to be available starting November 1st. A date a could hold out for and wait for... but last year they decided to wait until December 1st to release them from their bakery 'vault' - tragic! I was quite sad for some time (30 days to be exact) last year. This year, I was getting ancy and then several people started to create their own from recipes they had found/created. When one of my friends did, I jumped all over that recipe! YUM! I made them up and enjoyed them muchly! Might need to make some more. :)

The only thing that I altered to this recipe was to add a bit more white chocolate and cranberries that went into the mix, and for the frosting I did not have any orange zest so I put in an ever so slight and tiny splash of lemon juice instead.... and by splash I mean drizzle, drips... hardly any. :) They were delicious!

Raspberry Tart

Ok I've established that pregnant women should NOT be allowed to watch the Food Network - it's dangerous and results in even more 'cravings' or salivating moments. The other day I switched it on and Paula Deen got my taste buds watering from multiple angles (in fact she was the initiator for my baked potato craving.) In that same episode she made this delicious tart and it instantly moved to the top of my list to create and consume.

I didn't own a tart pan, but there is no time like the present to go and purchase one - and so on Friday, amid my other errands, a quick trip to Bed Bath and Beyond with a coupon was at the top of my list. They had the perfect dish and it came home with us right away.

I'll leave the recipe details up to Ms. Paula Deen and allow you to go directly to her link to obtain the instructions. I did two things differently. One on accident, which was to use granulated sugar in the crust instead of powdered. I just was on auto pilot and it was too late to correct it and I wasn't terribly enthused at the thought of wasting 3/4 cups of butter - so I figured I'd give it a go with the granulated sugar. I think it caused the crust to thicken a tad more, so a little tougher to 'cut' through than the powdered sugar, and the 'sweetness' was a bit less with the granulated sugar. Where as, I think it would have been sweeter with the powdered, but it worked out just fine. The only other alteration to the recipe was that I didn't use blueberry pie filling, I had just recently picked raspberries at a U-Pick farm, so I used those as my topping instead.

The worst part was waiting. :) I cooked the tart crust during the afternoon (before I put in the potatoes.) The tart crust has to fully cool before you can put the filling in. So I created the crust and then waited until after Ace went to bed to finish.

Tips that I would offer to make the 'cooking' process easier or less guess work. Make sure your heavy cream is super cold, slowly add the sugar to the bowl (so none collects on the bottom) and then ramp up to a fast beating of it. I had left it on a medium speed on the mixer and it just wasn't fluffing, my mom suggested to speed it up because what you're trying to do is get air into it... well that makes sense. :) So after I cranked up the speed, it was quite fluffy pretty quickly.

It was delicious. And yes it was my breakfast :) With the pecans on the bottom of the tart crust when eating it, it almost has the flavoring like you're eating a pecan pie without all the goo, but then also add in a light cheese cake flavor, but without the thickness and the fresh and sweetness of raspberries. This is a dangerous recipe! SO GOOD!

A fun feature of this tart pan that I bought, is that the base of the pan lifts out - so you just push on the bottom and you can easily move the tart out of the pan for super easy cutting and of course display.


sooo hard to put this in the fridge and go to bed!

Knothole Eggs

These are quickly becoming a staple in our house - my MIL makes a mean one! In fact when she was visiting Easter weekend she made them, and then the other night my husband made them again for dinner. Our son took to them right away - and if I can get him to eat egg that's GREAT! That's good protein!

Ingredients:
butter
1 slice of bread (I find potato bread works great!)
1 egg
garlic salt

Directions:

• Butter both sides of the bread and then cut a circle about 1-2 inch(es) in diameter
• Place a dollop of butter in the frying pan over a medium heat, place bread in and cook bread on both sides for a short time (starting to get it toasted, but not quite)
• Then crack the egg into the hole. I like to stir the yolk a bit so it's more 'scrambled'
• Cook on each side for as long as you like to get the egg consistency you want (over easy, medium, etc.)
• Sprinkle with garlic salt and serve
  
  
  They are super easy, pretty quick and not very much clean up. For my son I serve it with ketchup and let him 'dip' - which he is quite fond of. He ususally will eat one piece of bread and one whole egg this way - and that is great!
  
  

Museum Meatloaf

Did you fear that I had succumb to the traditional failures of New Years Resolutions? Don't fret! Our family is still eating, I am still cooking... I just have failed to blog. Also I haven't been cooking any *new* recipes in recent days weeks... and thus no new and exciting blog. I do have a couple ready to post though so be sure to check back for some yummy dishes.

Now onto this post: Museum Meatloaf? What on earth are you talking about? Well that's what my husband said when he ate it. He said it was fit to be in a museum... and my husband is not one who often over gushes about mundane meals (which I thought this one was going to be when I set out to make it.) He's always appreciative, but he doesn't go out of his way to send praise my way to the nonsensical degree, so when he said that it was the best he had ever had and that it was the perfect blend of spices, I believe him and I thanked Paula Deen ... because well that's whom I got the recipe from. ;-)

Ingredients as adapted by me:
1,25 pound ground beef
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1 whole white onion chopped
1 egg, lightly beaten
8 ounces canned diced tomatoes with juice
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats

Topping:
1/3 cup ketchup
1.5 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon french yellow mustard

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
• Mix all meatloaf ingredients well and place in bread pan.
• Spread topping onto the meatloaf
• Bake for 1 hour

I ended up checking my meatloaf at the one hour mark and found that it was still pretty moist, so I left it in for an additional ten minutes and it was perfect, so check it at 1 hour and then maybe add 10 minutes or less to the cooking time if it still seems too moist.
So wala, my super easy I-am-going-to-be-lazy-on-a-Friday-night meal, ended up being 'fit to be in a museum' - wish cooking was that easy every day. :) It was yummy, but we were piggies and there's only about 1 serving left. :)

Cheddar and Sage Biscuits

I love carbs. A lot. I can eat the innards of a loaf of french bread in less than an hour (I'm not a crust fan) I absolutely love all things bread. I can eat my weight in pasta when I get a good hankering for it. I just love 'em! Luckily the Lord blessed me (currently) with the ability to enjoy them and not be the size of a house. In fact during this season in particular (breastfeeding) I am enjoying an excess amount of them :) because I am certain my days are numbered on the endless consumption of delicious bread and pasta carbs.

Another recipe from the December issue of Everyday Food caught my eye instantly! How delicious biscuits are - in fact when I go to KFC I might have one piece of chicken and like 4-5 biscuits for my meal - so when there's a good recipe to make them at home I get very excited! Add cheese and fresh spices, yum yum yum! And indeed they were, albeit a tad salty!

Ingredients (as adapted by me):
4 cups of all-purpose flour
2 T of baking powder (yes tablespoons!)
1 tsp of baking soda
2 tsp coarse salt
2 cups grated cheddar cheese
2 T chopped fresh sage
3/4 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1.5 cups of low-fat buttermilk

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 450'. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add cheddar and sage. Add butter and mix until it is a texture of a coarse meal, with a few pea-size pieces butter remaining. Add buttermilk and mix until combined.
• Turn dough out until a lightly floured work area and knead just until it comes together. With a floured rolling pin, roll dough to a 3/4-inch thickness. With a floured 2.75" biscuit cutter, cut out 12 biscuits (reroll and cut scraps)
  
• Place biscuits on baking sheet and bake until puffed and golden. 12 to 15 minutes.
  
  

One of the next thing on my kitchen cooking gadgets and supplies will be a silicon baking mat, however I have yet to procure it. So far wax paper and a taping job has been working sufficiently for my purposes - although you can't roll the rolling pin perfectly with this creation. This recipe calls for a TON of salt and is almost TOO salty. When I make it again I will experiment by removing either 1 tsp of the course salt or perhaps even a tablespoon (sheesh!) of baking powder. I'll have to do a little more research into which would be best to remove. But they are very salty, but still very yummy.

Seared Steak with brussels sprouts and almonds

Another dinner set to the table this one... not a fan of. Another recipe from December's issue of Everyday Food. First and foremost I am not a fan of nuts in food and second I am not a fan of brussels sprouts. However, I thought it had been nearly a decade since I had willingly ingested brussels sprouts, so I thought I'd give it another go. Overall, the brussels sprouts themselves were fine - not my favorite - but not inedible. Still not a fan of nuts in my food though. The skirt steak was tough and stringy and for the price we paid for it was not a 'good' cut of meat. The flavoring though was delicious. Would I attempt this recipe again? No. Do I recommend it? If you like skirt steak and brussels sprouts, sure.

Ingredients:
1 skirt steak (1.5lbs) cut into 4 pieces
2 T of butter
1lb of brussels sprouts, trimmed and thinly sliced
1/4 cup of chopped almonds, toasted
2 tsps fresh lemon juice

Directions:

• Season steak with coarse salt and ground pepper. Heat a large skillet over medium-high. Add steak and cooking until medium-rare. 3-5 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate to rest.
• Reduce heat to medium and melt butter. Add brussel sprouts and season with salt and pepper. Stir and cook until crisp-tender. 3-5 minutes. Toss in the almonds and lemon juice and cook for another minute or two. Or if you prefer crisper brussel sprouts, remove and then add nuts and lemon juice.
  

So while the meal wasn't a wow factor, it filled us up and only took 20 minutes to really prepare and plate, so not too shabby. Although to make myself feel better I did take some pre-made cookie dough and toss it in the oven for a yummy cookie dessert. Yum!


I might have over estimated the capacity of the cutting board.

Chicken with cauliflower and parsley

The first recipe of the new year and the first use of my new Le Creuset! This dish was pretty simple and pretty delicious! I only wish I had made more cauliflower! The recipe came from the magazine Everyday Food. The recipe says that it serves 4. Total prep and cooking time was about 35 minutes, just as stated in the magazine and the prep work was extremely minimal - my kind of cooking!


Ingredients as modified by me:
5 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
1 head of cauliflower (1lb)
1/2 cup fresh parsley
2 T cider vinegar
1 T capers, rinsed.

Directions:
Preheat oven 450'

• In the Le Creuset over a medium heat (or in a ovenproof skillet over a medium-high heat) season chicken with coarse salt and pepper and cook chicken* skin side down for 5-7 minutes or until brown. Flip chicken and cook until brown on the other side.
  
  
• Place cauliflower around the chicken and coat in the pan juices, season with salt and pepper. Put in a pinch of the fresh parsley and transfer the Le Creuset (or skillet) uncovered into the oven. Cook until chicken is cooked through and the cauliflower is tender (about 20-25 minutes)



• Remove from oven and stir in remaining parsley, vinegar and capers.
  *No oil is required for this dish

After making this recipe I would add more cauliflower - with the capers, vinegar and the juice from the chicken it was an amazing array of flavors - yum! I ate umm... almost all of the cauliflower :-D Sorry husband (and child!) I would certainly make this dish again and highly recommend it for a relatively easy meal.

Cranberry-Chip Cookies

More Christmas cookies! These were a random recipe I pulled out of one of my holiday craft books and I'm so glad that I did! They are dangerously delicious! I've already made two batches of these and would not be surprised if I made them again.

Ingredients:
1 1/8c of flour
1/2 c quick-cooking oats, uncooked
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/3 c brown sugar, packed
1/3 c sugar
1/2 c dried cranberries
1/2 c white chocolate chips (I used the swirl ones)
1/2 c chopped walnuts
1/2 c butter
1 egg
1 t of vanilla

Directions:
Mix all the dry ingredients together and use a fork to mash up the brown sugar clumps. Then add butter, eggs, and vanilla.
A rounded tablespoon for about 12-14 minutes (2 doz)
A rounded teaspoon for 8-10minutes (3 doz)
Bake at 350 degrees
I used vegan butter since I made them for a lactose intolerant friend, that same friend made them with regular butter and said that they didn't turn out as well - so it might make a difference. Haven't tried it with the regular butter yet. But what an excellent excuse to make another batch! Merry Christmas!!!

Swedish Christmas Cookies

I love to bake! I really do. I honestly prefer to bake than to cook meals. I just find butter, sugar, eggs and flour more compilable and willing to work with me rather than against me. :) This Christmas cookie time of year always yields Christmas Cookie Exchanges - a time to try out large recipes to see if these cookies will be delicious. Swedish Christmas Cookies was a home run! They are also very conducive to freezing the dough and simply cooking a few at a time when you get a hankering for them. I original obtained the recipe from here.



These cookies were created in a two step process and using a new spice that I had never worked with before. Cardamom, it is delicious - and I don't know how I've missed it all these years!



Ingredients

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons ground cardamom

1/4 teaspoon fine salt

1 cup unsalted butter, (2 sticks), at room temperature

1 cup confectioners' sugar

1 large egg, room temperature

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest

Colored sanding sugars or chopped toasted pecans





Directions:

Whisk the flour, cardamom, and salt in a bowl.



Combine the butter and confectioners' sugar until smooth. Add in the egg, vanilla, and lemon zest until combined. Add the flour mixture and blend all together. The dough should be butter and smooth.



After completing the dough, create two logs in plastic wrap. Place the logs in the refrigerator for 30 minutes in order for the dough to get firm enough to work with. Take the dough out and roll it into more even logs about 8 inches long and 2 inches in diameter. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours but best to refrigerate overnight.


I used an egg white and water wash to coat my logs, but I think any variant of an egg wash would be fine. In my oven I found 20 minutes to be perfect. The only thing I might try next time is to egg wash the tops of the cookies to give them a little more browning to them. They were a little bland ontop when they were out. So presentation wise they were a little underwelming on top compared to the fancy and festive sides. No complaints on the taste. The cardamom spice was yummy. Some describe it as lemon-y, others say peppery - so use it cautiously. I also added a dash of cinnamon into my recipe!



Preheat the oven 325'.
Take the logs out of the freezer and use an egg wash to coat the logs and roll the logs in the sugar. Slice into about 24 cookies from each log at about 1/4 inch thick. Cook for 20-25 minutes.

Test Run with Fondant

I have been addicted as of late to all the cake shows that are on tv these days. Ace of Cakes, Cake Boss, Food Network Challenge, I could go on - there are so many and I watch um most of them :) and with Ace's first birthday coming up, I've been inspired to do something grand. However, I thought it best to do a test run before the big event because I was going to attempt working with fondant for the first time. For a test run I thought it worked out wonderfully! The cake is nothing special, and neither is the frosting really - both box and containers. The fondant though was the 'homemade' piece of the cake.

It is a marshmallow based fondant and I originally acquired the recipe from this website, although like always I altered it to my liking.


16 ounces white mini-marshmallows2 to 5 tablespoons water
2 pounds icing sugar
1/2 cup Crisco shortening (although I used FAR less than this, because I find Crisco so gross!)


I melted the marshmallows in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds for 2 minutes, then added the powdered sugar. I kneaded the fondant adding water as it was necessary, folding in more of the powdered sugar as I went. After I got the right texture, then kneaded in the food coloring to obtain the color that I wanted. Gently coated it in Crisco (yeck!) wrapped it in plastic wrap and the put it in the fridge for several hours. When I was ready to start wrapping the cake, I microwaved the fondant for 10 seconds and then got to rolling. Then applied it to the frosted cake (always frost the cake it helps the fondant stick to the cake.) Repeat the step for the next layer.



















After applying the fondant use a knife or a pizza cutter to remove the excess! Then decorate as you see fit. Nemo on the top was made out of fondant molded to be "nemo" shaped and then dyed frosting to paint him. He looked a tad sad, but that's ok it was a test run and I have a plastic Nemo to put on top of the actual birthday cake. The sand is brown sugar. Ace enjoyed sampling the cake, I think he'll do just fine come his big day!