Day 11: Maple Cookies-Failure is not an Option

Fail

A little better

Yesterday afternoon I sat down at the computer to find a cookie to make. I had the maple on my mind and my mind on the maple. I found this little number at AllRecipes.com. It caught my eye immediatley when I read in the description "my husband loves these, he says they taste like maple bars" I was sold! See my own husband is not real big on sweets. I seriously have to ask him to please try a cookie! While I could eat nothing but dessert 24/7, he is one of those annoying people who can pass without a second thought. That being said...I happen to know he loves maple bars.
After reading the recipe I noticed there were some user comments below from what sounded like experienced bakers to me. All comments said they had trouble with the recipe and each modified it one way or another. I took this advice and, being an experienced baker myself (ahem) modified it further. Well it turns out I am not as experienced as I thought. The cookies spead into crispy buttery little maple crackers.
Determined to make my husband a maple cookie I could be proud of, I let the kids scrape what they could off of the parchment paper and I started again.
This time I used the recipe for chocolate chip  cookies and just decreased the vanilla and added 2 tsp of maple flavoring. For the icing I just kind of eyeballed it all until I got the consistency I wanted. I thought they were a little drab looking so I tossed some pecans in brown sugar and sprinkled it over the icing.



 Not one of my all time favorites but they taste really good. Although I do still have quite a bit of dough left in the freezer so I am hoping they will bake a little better after the dough has been frozen.

Day 10: Rachael Ray for the Win!!

I went into this recipe very skeptical considering yesterday's shortcoming with the Apricot Cheesecake Pockets. I didn't even unwrap all of the 24 peppermint patty's the recipe calls for...just in case. But this recipe for Double Chocolate Cookies with a Peppermint Patty Surprise does not dissapoint! This is another from the December 2011 issue of Everyday with Rachael Ray and it has restored my faith. Which is a really good thing since there are at least 2 more recipes I want to try from that issue.
Not only do these cookies taste delicious (think Thin Mints on steroids), but they just scream Christmas! Oh and as a bonus, pretty easy and fun to make, a great recipe to let the kids help with. The process reminded of one of my favorite activities as a kid...making mud pies.

Some pointers: freeze the peppermint patties, measure out each tablespoon of dough before pressing mints into dough, roll the dough in a ball then flatten in your hand before you wrap the dough around the mint, chill each pan of cookies about 20 minutes before putting in the oven. Enjoy!

Day 9: Apricot Cheesecake Pockets...Sabotage??

   After yesterday's Martha Stewart rant, I decided to give Rachael Ray a shot today. This recipe is from the December 2011 issue of Everyday with Rachael Ray. I do not have a link for the recipe and just didn't feel like typing the whole thing up, besides it's...you guessed it....wrong. I will give Rachael the benefit of the doubt and assume it was a typo. The recipe is supposed to yeild 2 dozen cookies. The dough is rolled to 1/4 inch thickness and cut with a 4" round cookie cutter. I carefully measure everything, I got 12 cookies. Also 1/4 inch is way to thick for a cookie that is folded in half. If I make these again I will roll them out to 1/8 inch thickness.

I think I am more proud of this picture

   I want to believe Rachael Ray is not out to sabotage all of us the way Martha is. I have 4 more cookies recipes from the magazine I want to try. And really other than the thickness issue, this recipe did work out really well and the cookies are delicious.
UPDATE: Here is the recipe. Again, I would not roll the dough as thick as the recipe states.

Day 8: Shortbread and Why Martha Stewart Cannot Be Trusted

 So today I was feeling a little unmotivated, maybe something to do with rockin' all night at the Pixies concert last night...maybe. So I searched the web for a cookie to make today and stumbled upon Martha Stewart's Holiday Cookies. I KNOW better than to trust Martha Stewart, but somehow she continues to suck me into her web. (Google "Martha Stewart recipes never work") Before I explain, stop reading here and visit this link. Got it? Okay, sounds simple enough, cookies look really good too. But here's the thing about Martha...she seems to leave out key elements of her recipe. Things you need to know or be shown in order to make the recipe work. I have made Martha's cakes, candies and cookies and each time I curse her name and swear "never again" This time she fails to mention there is no way possible to roll a shortbread dough into a log. (Okay, it is possilbe, but very difficult). So then you freeze the dough. And guess what is harder than molding shortbread dough into a log? that's right, slicing a log of frozen shortbread dough. And what kind of knife should I use? I somehow imagine it is some type of $500.00 special extra sharp knife made only for slicing frozen shortbread dough. In order to keep the shape and slice the dough I had to knead it several times to warm up and soften the butter which means this is no longer really a shortbread!!! In Martha's defense, she does give you the option of molding this dough into a square. If you decide to try this recipe, do the square, they will end up that way anyway. Better yet, press the dough into a tart pan, score wedges and poke holes with a fork. This will conclude the ranting portion of today's post.
 Today's cookie is actually a hybrid. The shortbread recipe above and a Spice Cookie I have been wanting to try. I took Martha's shortbread recipe and added 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1 tsp. nutmeg and 1/2 tsp ground cloves. Then I added 1/2 c chopped walnuts and 1/2 chopped raisins. Not just any raisins though, Fresh and Easy's Jumbo Mixed Raisins. A mixture of golden raisins, regular and cinnamon raisins. YUM!

They didn't turn out too bad. Not really sweet and the spices are nice. They would go great with coffee as they are a little, make that alot, dry. If you decide to try this recipe, please let me know how it works out for you.
  

Day 7: Buttery Gingerbread Santas

Confession, I hate any kind of ginger based cookie! The only reason I ever even tried this recipe was because I wanted to make a gingerbread house, and I fell in love with them, must have been the butter!! It's always the butter. The recipe comes from a cookbook I bought when my kids were little and I still had Christmas visions of granduer. Those visions were met by reality, but still I dust it off every November and plan to make most of the recipes in it. This is typically the only one that gets done.

Today I will only be making the dough, I just do not have time to decorate them in the anal retentive, painstaking manor I enjoy. Once I do though, I will certainly post pictures of the decorated cookies. For now though, here is a picture of my boys when they were little and cute making their Christmas Cookies...enjoy and happy baking!!

Major Update/Relay for Life

So it's time to kick this little blog up a notch. If you notice my blog contains ads at the bottom. Every time my blog is view I earn money. 100% of everything earned from this blog from now until April will be donated to Relay for Life to help in the fight against cancer. You can also visit our team page directly if you would like to donate to our team. Thank you for your support and I promise I will try to keep this blog interesting and will add recipes!!!

Day 6: Russian Teacakes

   I have always loved to make cookies. When I was little I used every ingredient in the house to make some of the worst cookies (I'm not sure you could even call them that) ever tasted. As I got a little older I started to understand why you needed to follow recipes when baking. We never had a lot of food in the house so I would search my moms cookbooks for anything I could make with what we had. That's when the Russian Teacake came into my life. I found it in one of my Great Grandma's old cookbooks and make them over and over until the page fell out of the book. As an adult I searched to find the recipe again and finally found it a few years ago, only now I bake them about once a year instead of once a week. So simple, so good. They are often mistaken for Mexican Wedding Cakes but they taste and are made differently.

I like to coat them in powdered sugar while they are still warm, it makes almost a frosting around the cookie.