Fall Brownie Tree - From a Mix

Category: Cookies > Bar > Brownie > Fall Brownie Tree

Looking through the pantry and organizing things a bit (the pantry tends to get more and more shuffled as time passes and every once in a while I need to go in there and straighten things out) I noticed that we had three boxes of brownie mix. Don't ask me why. I know my brother loves brownies but, really, three boxes?

So I decided to be a nice sister and bake up one of the boxes of brownies for my little bubby. It was my mom who suggested using the Christmas Tree pan to see if we could find alternative uses for it. So, this was my attempt at creating a Fall Brownie Tree.

One thing you might noticed from the picture was how much the brownie rose in the pan. I was really surprised to see that the brownie from a mix rose so much. I'm curious if other brands also rise so much. But, it's just something to be aware of that brownie mixes will rise as much as a cake will.

Cookie Craft

Category: Cookies > Rolled Cookies > Sugar Cookies

If you are very interested in learning how to make fancy sugar cookies, the following book is a pretty good one. It covers all your basics and has a ton of pretty pictures to give you lots of ideas for your own cookies.



Cookie Craft by Valerie Peterson and Janice Fryer

If you like the book, there is also a special Christmas edition. I don't own this one so I don't have much to comment about on it.

Spookay Bouquet

Category: Rolled Cookies > Sugar Cookies > Cookie Bouquets

A while back I signed up for a cookie bouquet making class. Autumn is my favorite season so I really wanted to do a bouquet with a Halloween theme. My brother dubbed my idea the "Spookay Bouquet". Isn't that cute? So I stuck with it.

The Spookay Bouquet:



This is the bouquet my mother made.

Flower Bouquet:


We used crumbed up chocolate cake for dirt and put little gummy worms in it.

Flower Bouquet's "Dirt":


Theses are other bouquets that were made by other people in the class.

Floral Bouquet:


Ghost/Halloween:




Shoes:


We decorated the cookies with a glaze, fondant, and royal icing.

Sugar Cookie Recipe:

• 1 cup Butter; softened
  
• 1 cup Sugar
  
• 1 Egg
  
• 1 tsp. Vanilla (or flavoring of choice)
  
• 1/2 tsp. Baking Powder
  
• 1/2 tsp. Salt
  
• 3 cups Flour
  

In a mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Beat in egg and vanilla. Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder. Add flour slowly mixing well. Blend the last of the flour by hand.

You don't need to chill the dough. When ready, roll out dough 1/4" thick and cut out desired shapes with cookie cutters. A trick is to roll out your dough between two pieces of parchment paper. It keeps things cleaner. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place cookie cut outs on parchment lined cookie sheets. If making a cookie bouquet, place cookies upside down on the cookie sheet. Press a stick, like a skewer, into the cookie. Make sure you place the stick high enough to cover about 3/4 of the cookie. Cover stick with a little bit of cookie dough, pressing the cookie and the little piece of cookie dough firmly together. Place cookie sheet in freezer for about 5 minutes. Flip cookies over so they are right side up. Bake 8 to 10 minutes until done. Let chill on wire rack.

Once cookies are cool, you can decorate as desired.

Baking Tips:

• If you decide to make a cookie bouquet after you baked the cookies, you can add sticks to the cookies by using royal icing to "glue" the stick to the cookies.
  

Spritz Cookies

Category: Cookies > Press Cookies > Spritz

You may have noticed no post yesterday. I decided to use the day to proof read and fix some typos on the older posts. Ironically, it turns out it was 8:30 PM before I got around to it. =/ It took two hours but I did read through all the posts. Hopefully, I caught everything that needed fixing.

A little while back, my cousin's daughter of four came over to be babysat. I thought it would be fun to make cookies with her. At first, I wanted to make sugar cookies but my mom suggested press cookies. So, I pulled the old cookie press out to see if it would still work. It looked like it would so that was decided.

We made the dough, and for some additional fun, decided to divide the dough up, mix it all different colors, and throw it all back into the big bowl to create rainbow spritz.

The effect was cool but sadly, our dough was too soft and the press didn't work too well. Our spritz cookies came out like blobs. In the end, I started to just roll the dough into circles.



Afterwords, my mom and I decided it was time to invest in a new cookie press. After a bit of research, I decided this one would do.



I tried a new recipe with the new press and it worked wonderfully. We put sprinkles (both store brought and homemade) on the cookies before baking them and the cookies turned out looking good and tasting great.



Recipe:

• 1 cup Soften Butter (2 sticks)
  
• 3/4 cup Brown Sugar
  
• 1 Egg
  
• 1/2 tsp. Vanilla
  
• 2-1/2 cups Flour
  
• 1 tsp. Salt
  
• 1/8 tsp. Baking Soda
  

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar. Beat until it is creamy. Separate the egg. Add the yolk and vanilla. Reserve egg white in a bowl and set aside. Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda. Add it to the mixture and blend well.

Take the egg white, add about 1/2 tsp. of water and beat well to create an egg wash.

Shape dough into the rough shape of your cookie press and place inside. Press dough through desired cookie press disc onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Brush cookie tops with the egg wash.

You can add sprinkles to the cookies as desired.

Place cookies in oven for 8 to 10 minutes. When removed from oven, let sit 1 minute on cookie sheet and then gently loosen them. Remove cookies to wire rack to cool.

Baking Tips:

• There are two tricks to getting good spritz cookies. 1. Make sure your dough is the right consistency. It should be firm kind of like sugar cookie dough. 2. Make sure you are using a good cookie press.
  
• You can refrigerate the dough for a few minutes if it gets too soft.
  
• You can refrigerate the cookie sheets to help get the dough to stick better.
  
• Don't use parchment paper on your cookie sheets. The cookies won't press out well.
  
• You don't have to add any decorations to your spritz cookies. However, if you do there are several things you can do. You can color the cookie dough. You can add sprinkles before you bake your cookies. You can add sprinkles after you bake your cookies.
  
• Don't use sugar cookie dough in a cookie press. It might break. Make sure your dough is a spritz dough.
  
• Store brought spritz dough tends to be really hard. Some people complained that it broke their cookie press. I recommend making your own. It is really easy.
  

Brownies

Category: Cookies > Bar Cookies > Brownies

There are a lot of different types of brownies out there. Basically, you can add anything you want to your brownies that you like. But, at the base, a brownie is a brownie.

Brownie mixes makes good brownies, but if you are interested in how to make a brownie from scratch, below is a good basic recipe. If you are interested in what the difference between a chocolate cake and a brownie is, it is usually that brownies don't have any Baking Soda or Baking Powder in them so they don't rise up.

This recipe has just a tad bit of Baking Powder so they have just a hint of a cake texture to them.



Recipe:

• 1/2 cup Butter
  
• 1 cup Sugar
  
• 2 Eggs
  
• 1 tsp. Vanilla
  
• 1/3 cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
  
• 1/2 cup Flour
  
• 1/4 tsp. Salt
  
• 1/4 tsp. Baking Powder
  

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour an 8 inch square pan.

In a large saucepan, melt butter. Remove pan from heat and stir in sugar and vanilla. Next you need to stir in the egg.

To add egg, place egg in a small bowl and beat while adding a spoonful of the butter, sugar, vanilla mixture to the egg. Continue beating and adding a little bit of the mixture. Now take the egg mixture and slowly beat it back into the butter, sugar, vanilla mixture. You do this because you never want to add an egg to a hot or warm mixture because it will cook the egg and you will get egg clumps.

Beat in cocoa, flour, salt, and baking powder. Spread batter into prepared pan. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Do not overcook.

Peanut Butter Cookies

Category: Cookies > Drop Cookies > Peanut Butter Cookies

One of the many categories of cookies is Drop Cookies - so named because you "drop" the batter onto a cookie sheet and bake. Some examples of drop cookies include, oatmeal, chocolate chip, and peanut butter. Today, I decided to make up some peanut butter cookies - recipe below.

These are soft peanut butter cookies and the recipe bakes about 3 dozen.



Recipe:

• 1-1/4 cups Light Brown Sugar
  
• 3/4 cups Peanut Butter
  
• 1/2 cup Vegetable Shortening
  
• 3 tbsp. Milk
  
• 1 tbsp. Vanilla
  
• 1 Egg
  
• 1-3/4 Flour
  
• 3/4 tsp. Baking Soda
  
• 3/4 tsp. Salt
  

Preheat over to 375 degrees. Combine brown sugar, peanut butter, shortening, milk, and vanilla in a large bowl. Beat on medium speed until well blended. Add egg. Beat just until combined. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Add to mixture at low speed. Mix just until blended.

Drop onto cookie sheet covered with aluminum foil, about a tablespoon per cookie, 2 inches apart. Slightly flatten in a crisscross pattern with the pongs of a fork.

Bake one cookie sheet at a time for 7 to 8 minutes. Let cool on cookie sheet 3 minutes and then move the aluminum foil, with cookies on it to cooling rack to cool.

Baking Tips:

• You can add chocolate chips to the cookie dough to make peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.
  
• Shortening tends to make soft cookies and Butter tends to make hard cookies.
  
• Make sure you don't over bake your cookies. A trick to baking soft cookies is to cook them only for the minimum time suggested. As they cool on the cooking sheet, they will continue to bake.
  
• Never store hard cookies and soft cookies together as it will ruin the texture of the cookies.
  

Funnel Cake

Category: Cookies > Other Others > Fried Cookies > Funnel Cake

When I started on my baking journey, I took requests from my family. Funnel cake was on the top of the request list and they didn't stop asking until I got around to making it.

Even though it is called a funnel cake, it is actually classified as a fried cookie.



Recipe:

• 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 cups Flour
  
• 2 tsp. Baking Powder
  
• 3 Eggs
  
• 1/4 cup Sugar
  
• 1/2 tsp. Salt
  
• 2 cups Milk
  
• Powdered Sugar for dusting
  

You will need a funnel large enough to hold a cup of batter and a deep fryer or heavy skillet.

Sift 1-1/2 cups of the flour and the baking powder together. Mix the eggs, sugar, salt, and milk together. Add the flour and baking powder mixture and stir until smooth. Stir in more of the remaining flour until you have achieved the desired consistency—a batter thin enough to run through a funnel, but thicker than pancake batter.

In a deep fryer or heavy skillet, heat the oil to 375 degrees. Place you finger over the hole in the bottom of the funnel and add 1/2 cup batter. Hold the funnel close to the oil, remove your finger, and release the batter into the hot oil while making a circular motion. Fry until golden brown. Remove the cake and place it on paper towels to drain. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.