Tag: cookies

Recipe #9: Ginger Molasses Cookies

It’s holiday season and you know what that means: BAKING!!!

My oven is still misbehaving (don’t ask), but I have managed to whip up some cookies without too much difficulty, although a properly heated oven would mean more predictable bakes.

Nevertheless, my desire to bake has outweighed my patience for the oven to be repaired.

I dug through my recipe box and found this lovely recipe, brought to you by Bonnie Stern. It appeared in the Weekend Post back in 2006 and I’ve held on to it since then. My girlfriend, Katie, was the one who shared it with me. She was trying to find ways to get more iron into her son’s diet. This recipe calls for molasses, which is quite high in iron. It also calls for whole wheat flour or nutri flour, which is a blend of unbleached flour with the bran added back in, so it bakes like an all purpose flour. I didn’t have either of these so I just used all purpose flour, but that means these cookies aren’t quite as nutritious as the recipe says they could be. I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

A mixture of melted butter, sugar, eggs and black strap molasses

You may be in a rush to make the dough and immediately bake the cookies, but the instructions call for chilling the dough for at least an hour. Don’t skip this step. It gives the melted butter the chance to solidify into the dough. It then becomes much easier to form the dough into balls so that when the cookies bake, they come out perfectly shaped with a nice crackle.

Chill the cookie dough: don’t skip this step!

I roll the dough in turbinado sugar, which gives the cookies a nice finish.

Roll the cookie dough balls in turbinado sugar

Enjoy these with a glass of egg nog, milk or a hot toddy….they have a nice flavour of molasses, cinnamon and ginger, perfect for chilly winter nights!

Ginger molasses crackle cookies fresh out of the oven

Ginger Molasses Crackle Cookies

  • 2/3 Cup of melted butter or vegetable oil (I use butter)
  • 1 Cup granulated sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 Cup molasses
  • 2 Cups flour (preferably whole wheat or nutri blend)
  • 2 Tsp ground ginger
  • 1 Tsp cinnamon
  • 1 Tsp baking powder
  • 1 Tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 Tsp salt
  • 1/2 Cup of coarse sugar for dipping (eg. turbinado sugar)

In large bowl, combine butter with sugar. Beat in egg and molasses.

Mix or sift flour with remaining dry ingredients.

Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Shape dough into 1 Tbsp balls and roll in coarse sugar. Place on baking sheet lined with parchment paper and press down lightly. Leave enough space for other cookies.

Bake in a 350F preheated oven for approximately 10 minutes until crackle-looking but still soft in the centre. Let cool before transferring to a wire rack.

Recipe #6: Kelly’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Time for a break from making finnicky desserts and time for some down-to-earth comfort cookies. I fished out a recipe for these cookies that I got from my long time neighbour, Kelly. I remember she brought a freshly baked batch over to our house and they were gone in no time flat.

I can’t remember the last time I made these, probably because the kids can’t take these in their school lunches (or rather, I won’t let them–there are no laws here in California that prevent kids from bringing peanut and nut products to school, unlike in Ontario where Sabrina’s Law exists).

Some would argue these cookies bake best with processed peanut butter like Kraft or Skippy, but I only buy natural peanut butter. Just peanuts!

The butter mixed with the peanut butter was so creamy when I blended it together with the hand mixer.

Creamy peanut butter and unsalted butter

Then I added the requisite sugar, eggs and flour and voila! beautiful cookie batter.

Yes, sugar

I found a couple of Dairy Milk bars in the cupboard and decided to crush them up and throw them in the batter instead of using chipits and I’m glad I did.

Chocolate + peanut butter= sheer perfection

Just before baking, I used the back of a fork to press the requisite hash marks into each cookie. Because, peanut butter cookies. Right?

The resulting cookies were so creamy and delicious, and once again, they disappeared within a few days. I think the milk chocolate chunks also made a big difference.

These were quick and easy to make and didn’t require much, if any, skill or precision. So go make some!!!

Fork tine marks are required in peanut butter cookies
Let the cookies completely on a wire rack–if you can resist!

Kelly’s Peanut Butter Cookies

  • 1 Cup peanut butter (I like to use all natural smooth PB)
  • 1 Cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 Cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 Cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 1/2 Cups, all purpose flour (or you can do half whole wheat flour for a slightly denser cookie)
  • 2 bars of your favourite chocolate bar (I used Dairy Milk), crushed up into chunks

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  • Blend peanut butter and butter together in a standing mixer or with a hand mixer until completely incorporated
  • Add eggs and blend followed by sugars
  • Add baking powder and flour(s) and blend until ingredients are incorporated.
  • Mix in chocolate chunks until evenly distributed
  • Scoop 1″ balls of dough onto parchment-lined cookie sheet
  • Take the back of a fork and press firmly down until fork tine marks appear in flattened cookie (but not too hard!)
  • Bake for ~10 minutes until cookies are lightly browned
  • Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely (if you can wait that long!)

Hanukkah Sugar Cookies

Call me a glutton for punishment, but every year for the last–oh, I don’t know–four years, my husband and I have hosted a Hanukkah party for our closest neighbourhood friends. You see, we are the token Hebrews in the ‘hood, so most of our friends have never been to a Hanukkah party, let alone tasted a latke. So, we felt it would be a Mitzvah (aka: good deed) on our part if we threw a little shindig to enlighten our friends.

Well that little shindig turned into a big shindig and has become something of a tradition. It has also given me licence to go a bit meshugenah (crazy) with the event planning, decor and yes, a dessert table!

Today I’m giving you a preview of some of my *crazy* ideas. I made a big batch of sugar cookies a la Martha Stewart and decorated them with royal icing and some confectioners’ decorative sugar. You will notice a theme of blue, white and silver. 

I made the dough, chilled it, rolled it out, cut it into the shapes of dreidels, menorahs and stars of David before baking. Then I went to town on the icing. The icing was a piping consistency and I could have piped all the cookies and then flooded them, but I got lazy. So the icing is a little thicker (the kids will love me for it–not the parents) than usual and maybe not as pretty. But I’ll let you be the judge!

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Fresh baked star of David sugar cookies

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Star of David sugar cookies with royal icing, blue confectioner’s sugar and a silver dragee.

Dreidel sugar cookies with blue royal icing and white snowflakes
Dreidel sugar cookies with blue royal icing and white snowflakes

 

Cookies! Cookies! Cookies!

So I went on a cookie making bender last night. And there was a legitimate reason. We are in the midst of a United Way fundraiser at the office, so I thought I’d do my part. We decided to encourage people to make a pledge or donation by enticing them with homemade baking when the munchies hit around 3 in the afternoon. It worked like a charm and here are the results!

I feel like this was my warm up act to the big baking contest next week…the meringues were incredibly popular so maybe I’ll try those again. What do you think???

Sweet Hearts

You know me: I’m an easy target when it comes to finding an excuse to bake for an occasion and what better occasion than Valentine’s Day? So I got out the trusty ol’ sugar cookie recipe care of Martha Stewart and dug out my heart shaped cookie cutter and got to work.

Heart shaped sugar cookies
Heart shaped sugar cookies

I whipped up some royal icing, also care of Martha Stewart, tinted it with a dash of pink gel to get a nice baby pink and got to work icing them.

Pale pink royal icing
Pale pink royal icing

I sampled a cookie–which I don’t normally do because I want to make sure there are enough for the kids to give out to all their classmates, but we had plenty. I was pleasantly surprised…it had a nice crispy outside and soft and moist inside. And the icing was sweet but it didn’t overwhelm the cookie. Now I remember why this is always my go to cookie recipe.

Sweet Heart cookies
Sweet Heart cookies

 

 

 

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