It's A Wrap

I feel like I've spent the last two weeks in a fog of flour and butter, but all for a good cause. The Christmas baking is, for all intents and purposes, finished and packed in tins for the freezer and for gifts.

Social Tea Squares are always a hit and I think this year I made four batches. Maybe five. It's all a blur. And three batches of my all-time favourite, Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread, cause you want to be certain to have enough.

The usual suspects were on my list - Toblerone Shortbread, Pecan Tassies, Chevre Sugar Cookies, Pecan Shortbread with Chocolate, and Fudgy Chocolate Tartlets - but it's always nice to try a few new recipes too and I really like everything that I tested this year (as did the Official Cookie Tester). Those little Cherry Ginger Thumbprints on the right are delicious and easy.

Cranberries are a favourite of mine and I had pinned a new recipe for these Cranberry Orange Cookies. They are fantastic. Dried cranberries and pistachios combine with orange to make a lovely little treat to have with tea, and the tiny bits of red and green are a festive touch.

 

I also had fresh cranberries in the house so I made another recipe that I had pinned - Orange Cranberry Yogurt Loaf. Actually, I had enough cranberries for two recipes and each made three small loaves, so I had six made in no time. I need to remember both of these recipes for the Holly Bazaar next year.




 

Because I have several tins to fill I just store the batches in large plastic containers in the freezer until all of the baking is done and then fill all the tins at once. It's a bit of a process but easier than sorting through all the tins every time there's a new batch to add.

So, it's a wrap for another year. Some days I feel for the soft spot in my head wondering who on earth needs to bake this many cookies, but when I see them all packaged up and ready to give and know the joy that these little morsels bring, I have my answer.....M

A Great Start to December

Just when I thought I would never see my fabric order (placed in October) with my potential backing for Nantucket, it arrived as the calendar turned to December. And none too soon, as Roberta is now ready to quilt it. It's a great red and coffee toile from the Bon Voyage line by French General that seems to be a commentary on early hot air balloon rides.

Toiles can be an acquired taste but I really like this particular print, which is a relief because when you order online you can't always tell. And the fabric itself is beautiful.

I wasn't sure if it was going to work with the quilt top but a quick trip to Roberta's confirmed that it was ideal so I brought it home, washed it and put the backing together. It's now safely back in Roberta's hands and she will likely quilt it within the week.

Efforts to try and match the pattern were stopped in fairly short order. It was easy enough to match the pattern horizontally but in order to completely match the pattern I would have had to lose about 12" of width. Whaaaaat??? Not sure what the designers were thinking. Anyway, I still love it and am prepared to live with the half match that I've been able to achieve.

Since I had most of my cookie baking supplies still to unpack from our Bakeoff on Saturday I decided it was a good time to start the baking for our gift tins. These Raspberry Ribbons were a new recipe that we tried this year, and, in addition to working up quickly, I think they will look great on a cookie plate so I made a batch of these. The Official Cookie Tester was very happy with the results and didn't need to be convinced to finish up the trimmings from the ends....M

Progress, and My Sweet Tooth

I'm in a bit of a groove with piecing tiny four-patches for Danuta's Garden, and happily so. It's taken a while to feel like there's any traction with this one, but I think I might be over the hump. All credit is going to having everything collected and in one place rather than helter skelter around the house.

It doesn't look like much but this little bundle of joy is my latest bit of progress. They need some quality time with the iron right now to press those seams open, and after that it's full steam ahead on the sashing.

Out of the blue today I decided that I needed some chocolate chip cookies - chewy, nutty, chocolate chip cookies. My go-to recipe has rolled oats, dried cherries and nuts with cinnamon and nutmeg thrown in for good measure, but this time around all I wanted was nuts & chocolate. And I found the perfect recipe in Butter Baked Goods by Rosie Daykin that Stephanie gave me for Christmas a year ago.

They are loaded with nuts, both pecans and walnuts, and are fabulous. Baking the nuts for about 8 minutes before adding them to the dough really helps their flavour shine through (I always roast my nuts when baking). I have to confess that there was a bit of dough sampling happening and it was as good as the final product.

I used a scoop to drop them onto the pan but I think it's smaller than the one used by Rosie because I ended up with probably double the 30 cookies that the recipe said it would yield. Tough problem to have :).

The recipe suggested freezing some of the dough balls instead of baking them all at once so that they are ready to bake and be enjoyed fresh from the oven, so I did. I've not done this before but I think I'll do it more often. Right now though, I have a date with the iron....M

Cookie Craving

For the past couple of days I've had a real craving for a good chewy oatmeal cookie. Tonight I finally caved and made a batch - heaven!

If I had baked them last night it was going to be either Cherry Pecan Oatmeal, Chewy Oatmeal Raisin or Anzac Cookies. But I got sidetracked, so they didn't get baked until this evening. And when I looked at my recipes again, Loaded Chocolate Chip Oatmeal came out on top. And loaded they are. Can you say chocolate chips, oatmeal, coconut, peanut butter and pecans?

This is the first time making this recipe but that didn't seem to put the Official Cookie Tester off. "Awesome" could be heard between bites and gulps of milk (did I mention he's also a peanut butter fiend?). Guess this recipe's a keeper....M

Why We Bake

With the Cookie Bake-off in my rear view mirror I still had more baking to do for the tins that we give as gifts, so I sifted through books and recipes to see what else all of that butter could be used for. In the introduction to The Gourmet Cookie Book that I got from Stephanie a few years ago I came across this:
     "Buy a cookie, and it's just a bite of sugar, something sweet to get you through the day. Bake a cookie, on the other hand, and you send an instant message from the moment you measure out the flour. Long before they're done, the cookies become a promise, their endlessly soothing scent offering both reassurance and solace. And even the tiniest bite is powerful, bringing with it the flavour of home. For anyone who is comfortable in a kitchen, a warm cookie is the easiest way to say I love you.
     Somewhere in the back of our minds, we all know this. It is the reason we bake cookies at Christmas, why we exchange them as gifts."

How great is that? As you may have guessed, I love  Christmas baking and this just seemed to explain everything perfectly. It also inspired me to take another look through the book and I found two new recipes to try.

These little Walnut Acorns were fun to try but I didn't assemble them using the 'two-spoon' method prescribed - just couldn't figure it out - so I shaped ovals instead.

And these Mocha Cookies - they don't look like much but they are D.I.V.I.N.E.!!! Soooo rich, but what a treat. They are about twice as large as I usually make my cookies but I couldn't get them any smaller.

My faves like Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread, Pecan Chocolate Shortbread and White Chocolate Gingerbread made the list. And then there were these Cherry Pecan Cookies that Linda pinned. The lure of almond and cream cheese was too much to resist. I haven't used Maraschino cherries in years but this was a good excuse to - they reminded me of a yummy cherry loaf that mom used to make.

Last year I missed making my Grand Marnier Glazed Pain D'Epice so they were at the top of my list. Actually, they were responsible for the browsing through my Gourmet cookie cookbook in the first place.

And these little Christmas Trees filled with raspberry jam have been AWOL for a Christmas or two, so they are back in the rotation.

It was another weekend of baking and a little bit of testing by The Official Cookie Tester; the fragrance of almonds, butter and chocolate still hang in the air, but I think I might now be done. So how about you - are you a baker?...M

Fresh Cookies For Sale

For someone who loves to bake and lives with a guy who seems to inhale peanut butter, you'd think that peanut butter cookies of one sort or another would be a staple in my repertoire. Surprisingly, not so.

When I was in university one of the gals on our floor made the best peanut butter cookies, but I couldn't seems to get them to turn out the same way (or was it just that they tasted better because someone else made them?).

Over the years I've been on the lookout for a good recipe and I think that I've found it - Loaded Oatmeal Cookies.

Doesn't sound like a peanut butter cookie, does it? But it has peanut butter and just about everything else that's in the pantry - coconut, oatmeal, pecans, & chocolate chips. What a deadly combination!

I needed to bake something for a Relay For Life bake sale so it seemed like the perfect time to test drive these babies, and I'm so glad that I did.

The only change I made was to cut back on the sugar by about 1/4 cup - there's lots of other sweetness in them. When I found them on Pinterest they were being promoted as 'breakfast cookies'. Hmmmmm.

Time to get out of the kitchen and bind another quilt. The gals from the church have just finished quilting my Goose Tracks, so it's next on the agenda....M

Better Blues

The last couple of shots of Broken Dishes have been taken in the bowels of the quilting cave so I thought I'd share a few shots of it that show the blues in a better light.

The top is now together and just waiting to be quilted. Because it's for baby I'll machine quilt it so that it can stand up to lots of wash and wear.

I guess I could have started that last night but for the past 2 weeks I have been craving Anna Olson's Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies so I made a batch of those instead. Okay, you forced it out of me, I had scarfed back 3 when they were fresh out of the oven. The recipe just calls for raisins but I add in chocolate chips and dried cherries as well.  YUM!....M

My Weekend With Minnie

Lots of quality time was spent with Minnie this past weekend enjoying hand stitching and just winding down from the hustle and bustle of the past several weeks. Loved it! And I have a little to show for my efforts too - 6 new diamonds to add to the mix and another 6 prepped and ready for the final round of hexies.

There are 25 hexies in each of the small diamonds so every now and then I pull colours so that I can just move from one to the next. To help keep things a little more organized I prep the centre blossom and then just keep the pile of hexies for the outer border with it until it's ready to finish off.

I don't paper piece - it's just eyeballing a seam allowance and working my way through. I start by sewing each of the 6 'petals' to the centre hexie with the same thread.

Then I go back and sew the seams to connect all the petals.

Finally, I add the two hexies that correspond with the centre piece to finish off the blossom.

Then I match the flower up with the outer border pieces and move on to the next one until I have a little supply built up; I've got 6 more prepped & ready to go.

The last round takes about an hour to complete so they tend to come together nicely while watching TV. When they are all done they get pressed.

Of course a gal's gotta keep up her energy when doing this much work :) so I enjoyed nibbling on these amazing Vanilla Dipped Gingersnaps that our niece Julia gave us for Christmas.

Hard not to enjoy it all when sitting by the fire with this as my view. My tree will stay up for about another week so I'm determined to enjoy every last minute of it. Not a bad way to wind down 2013, is it?

A very Happy New Year to you and yours and many thanks for dropping by my blog so see what I get up to. Without you, I'd just be talking to myself...M

Brrrrrr...

We've been in the middle of an unseasonably chilly cold snap for the past several days (can you say -32 Celsius with the wind chill?) so the weekend seemed to be a good time to stay close to the oven and see if I could finish off my Christmas baking.

Having a deadline of this Friday to deliver our Christmas tins was an added incentive, but the biggest was to empty this laundry hamper. I had loaded my baking supplies into it for the bakeoff a couple of weekends ago and knew that I would be using lots of the ingredients before all the baking was done, so it's been on the floor in the kitchen ever since, slowly being emptied.

I have to say that it proved to be two very productive days. Saturday I got 5 batches made up and yesterday another 4. I would have made one more batch but had to shovel for two hours last night as the Official Cookie Tester was feeling under the weather.

Lots  of the old favourites like Pecan Shortbreads and Tiny Fudge Tartlets, but also a few that I haven't made in a year or two, like Martha Stewart's Chocolate Crinkles...

and a shortbread with cranberries and orange that you bake as a square. This time around I added candied ginger to them and then sprinkled some over top before drizzling it with white chocolate - reminiscent of Starbuck's Christmas squares, but not as sweet.

My kitchen is a disaster but I'm down to a couple of pans of Social Tea Squares, then Pecan Tassies and possibly a batch of Toblerone Shortbread, and then that will be it except for the strawberry cream puffs for Christmas eve. Almost time to empty the hamper...M

Newbies

I love traditions so it's no surprise that my list of Christmas cookies is close to the same year in and year out, particularly because it's the only time of year that some of my cookies get made. That said, sometimes I just feel that I need to shake it up a bit (it also helps justify all those Christmas cookie mags that follow me home each year). So this year, thanks in large part to my Pinterest adventures, I found a few new recipes that seemed like they needed to be tried, and today was the day.

I had planned starting first thing this morning but I needed to pick up a few supplies so things didn't really get started til lunch time. First off the block were these Cranberry Coconut Citrus Cookies. They are chewy morsels and a lovely combination of orange, cranberry and coconut (oh, and did I mention butter?). The only change I made was to cream my butter and sugar for about 4 minutes - I find it makes all the difference. The recipe suggests that you'd get about 40 cookies. I tend to make my cookies on the small size, but even with 2 1/2" cookies I ended up with 120! Not sure if it was a typo or not but since some of these will be used for the tins that we give to friends as gifts I was thrilled.


My second adventure was Raspberry Almond Shortbreads. Nothing says Christmas baking for me as much as the smell of almond extract, and these buttery little gems have almond flavouring in the cookie and the icing that is drizzled overtop. I suspected that these would be a hit so I made two recipes, which is all well and good, but I felt like I was rolling balls of dough all day. Probably because I was! Regardless, they are worth it.

FYI, instead of sprinkling the cookies with sugar before they go into the oven I just dipped them in sugar to get a little rim around the jam.

A little icing/drizzling tip for you. If you don't have a squeeze bottle for drizzling icing or icing cookies with royal icing run out  and get one (I got mine at the Bulk Barn but you can find them wherever they sell baking/cake decorating supplies) - they are ideal. So much neater and you can just put the cap on if you want to come back it. So much less mess and frustration.

I seldom make Sugar Cookies but when I saw this recipe for Goat Cheese Sugar Cookies I was tempted (another recipe where the dough is rolled into balls!). I even took the bait and rolled them in nonpareils, both multi-coloured and white only. Darned cute. And delicious too. You can smell the cheese when you take them out of the oven but I didn't detect the flavour in the cookie.

All told, there are approximately another 35 dozen cookies now in the freezer. The Official Cookie Tester was happy to have the oven in play and launched his 'testing' season listening to Christmas carols, sipping hot chocolate and sampling the new wares. All received his stamp of approval....M