Favorites from 2013

2013...oh, the cookies we've shared together.  Oh, the buttercream we've inhaled.  Oh, the skinny jeans that we won't ever be wearing...

Here are cookie and recipes favorites from the blog this year...mine and yours (and kiddo's). 

Let's start with these (your favorites)...

buttercream rose cookies for mom  (This year I fell in love with buttercream on cookies.)
firefly and mason jar cookies
hostess cupcake cookies (with a chocolate glaze....mmm.)
hello (polka dot) kitty

Here's more...

This picture was probably the most popular. It makes me smile every time I see it.

the stars at night...

These cookies were some of my favorites to make:
all saints' day cookies
downton abbey love
rosie cookies
brush embroidery tutorial
little leprechauns


Your favorite recipes of 2013?  Here ya go: 

simple macarons (2013: my macaron obsession begins)
reese's peanut butter egg stuffed-peanut butter cookies
whoppers chocolate malt frosted brownies (these are kiddo's favorite)
mother knows best italian cream cake
perfect every time cut-out cookies 


Social media favorite?  These guys...

Did you know that Facebook only shows you a *fraction* of the posts on the pages you've liked?  Typically, Facebook shows my posts to about 2% of the people who have liked my page.  These guys, though, went Facebook-crazy.  I don't know if Facebook likes peanut butter or turkeys, but the combo struck a chord.

The recipe that *I* have made the most this year from another blog?   

How Sweet It Is' Crockpot Short Rib Tacos with Salted Lime Cabbage and Queso Fresco.  It's embarrassing how many times I've made these this year.  I crave them.  I know when kiddo lets out a "woo hoo" when I tell him they're what's for dinner (again!) that I'm not alone.

What blog post, from Bake at 350, your blog, or any other blog, was one of your favorites in 2013?  Feel free to leave a link in the comments!

Speculoos & Chocolate Button Cookies for Santa

I have a Christmastime confession for you. Are you ready?

Many years ago when I was selling cookies, I was so exhausted from making Christmas cookies for other people that we set out a store-bought cookie assortment for Santa at our house.  How terrible is that?  A cookie maker feeding store-bought cookies to Santa?

I remember it clearly because as kiddo took each cookie from the package to place on Santa's plate, he took a bite out of each one. ;)  (He is his mother's child.)

This year Santa is getting these: Speculoos & Chocolate Button Cookies.  
(That is if I don't eat them all first.)

They feature my all-time favorite bittersweet chocolate for eating straight: Lindt Dark Swiss Bittersweet Chocolate Bar.  I keep it in my "chocolate basket" in the pantry at all times.  The size of the pieces just happen to be perfect for the cookies.

Speculoos:  I know it sounds funny, but I bet you've eaten it before.  You know those crunchy cinnamon cookies they serve on Delta Airlines?  Those are Speculoos cookies; the brand is Biscoff.  You can also buy Speculoos spread....which is like peanut butter MADE FROM COOKIES.  Look for Biscoff brand or Trader Joe's Cookie Butter.

The cookies are a little crispy around the edges, chewy in the center, covered in cinnamon-sugar, and topped off with the perfect piece of Lindt chocolate.  It's the chocolate that just catapults them from really yummy to ohmygoodness so delicious.

Let's make them.

Speculoos & Chocolate Button Cookies

{yield: 40 cookies}

1 & 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup (1 stick) salted butter, cut into chunks
3/4 cup Speculoos spread
1 teaspoon cinnamon sugar, plus more for rolling
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
2 TBSP milk
2 Lindt Bittersweet Chocolate Bars, divided into pieces (you'll have leftover chocolate)

Cinnamon-Sugar (if you don't have it on hand)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 TBSP cinnamon (or to taste)

Preheat oven to 375.  Line cookies sheets with parchment paper.

Combine the flour, salt and baking soda in a bowl and set aside.

Cream the butter and Speculoos spread together until smooth.  Beat in the sugars.  Add in the egg and milk and beat until combined.

Add in the flour mixture on low, in three additions.

Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Roll into 1 to 1.5 inch balls, then roll through the extra cinnamon-sugar.

Bake for 9-10 minutes or until done.  Remove from the oven and let sit on the cookie sheet for 1 minute.  (The cookies will be slightly poufy when they come out of the oven, then deflate.)

Press a piece of chocolate onto the top of each cookie.

Remove the cookies to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Serve to Santa.

PS...I have it on good authority that if you put a few Lindt LINDOR truffles out with the cookies, Santa leaves extra goodies.

{This post was sponsored by Lindt Chocolate.  Thank you, Lindt.}

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! 
Eat lots of cookies!

Beep! Beep! It's Christmas!

 
Guys, I've had this cookie cutter for YEARS.  It intimidated me.  Every year after Christmas I would think to myself, "next year, I'll use that cutter."  And, the next year rolled around and I just couldn't get the design quite right.

This year, though, the King Arthur Flour holiday catalog featured...Christmas Truck Cookies!!!  (After my last post, you guys might think all I do is sit around reading catalogs.)

Armed with inspiration from King Arthur Flour, I broke out my cookie cutter and went to work.

To make Christmas Tree Truck cookies, you'll need: 

 

• truck cookies, using this recipe (similar cutter here...and truck and tree cutter here!)
  
• royal icing tinted with AmeriColor super black, super red (two shades), egg yellow, grey (made with black), leaf green, chocolate brown, and bright white
• disposable icing bags
• squeeze bottles
• decorating tips (#2, #3) and coupler
• meringue powder
• small paintbrush
• white sanding sugar

Use a #2 tips to outline the wheels (black) and truck body (darker red).. Reserve some of this red piping icing for later.

Thin the black, light red, grey and yellow icings with water, a bit at a time, stirring with a silicone spatula, until it is the consistency of a thick syrup.  You'll want to drop a "ribbon" of icing back into the bowl and have it disappear in a count of "one thousand one, one thousand two." Four is too thick, one is too thin.  Count of 2-3 is good.  Cover with a damp dishcloth and let sit for several minutes.

Stir gently with a rubber spatula to pop any large air bubbles that have formed. Transfer to squeeze bottles.

Fill in the outlines with thinned icing.  Use a toothpick to guide into corners and pop large air bubbles.


Let the cookies dry for at least one hour.


Use a #2 tip to outline the wheel wells (fenders?) in the darker red icing.  Pipe a line across the truck body and one for the door.


Thin the dark red icing as above and fill in the outlines.

Use a #3 tip to add centers to the wheels in white.  

Let the cookies dry uncovered, 6-8 hours, or overnight.

Once the cookies are completely dry, combine equal parts meringue powder and water, and brush the mixture onto the wheel wells and piped detail lines. Sprinkle on the sanding sugar and shake off the excess.

Use a #2 tip to pipe branches for the trees in green.  I made one layer, then when back over and added several more on top.

Use a #2 tip to add a truck with brown icing.

Do you have any cookie cutters stashed away that intimidate you just a little bit?  

Painted Christmas Tree Cookies...inspired by Sur La Table dishes!

It would make more sense to get cookie decorating inspiration from the COOKIE DECORATING section of the Sur La Table catalog.  As soon as I saw these dishes, though, I ripped the page right out, knowing those trees needed to be cookies.

Painting on cookies is really fun...and this simple design is perfect for someone like me who is not artistically inclined.  Another bonus is, you'll only need one color of royal icing: white!

I'll always be grateful to Renee from Kudos Kitchen from whom I learned the proper technique for painting on cookies.  She's a master.  

To make these painted Christmas Tree cookies, you'll need:

• tree cookies, using this recipe
• royal icing tinted with AmeriColor Bright White (the food coloring is optional here, but using white ensures a white-white cookie)
• disposable icing bag
• squeeze bottle
• decorating tips (#2 & #1) and coupler
• AmeriColor Leaf Green, Electric Green, Chocolate brown
• water
• artist palette
• paper towels
• small paintbrushes
• red sprinkles 
• tweezers

Use a #2 tip to outline the trees in white icing. Reserve some of this piping icing for the next day.

Thin the remaining icing with water, a bit at a time, stirring with a silicone spatula, until it is the consistency of a thick syrup.  You'll want to drop a "ribbon" of icing back into the bowl and have it disappear in a count of "one thousand one, one thousand two." Four is too thick, one is too thin.  Count of 2-3 is good.  Cover with a damp dishcloth and let sit for several minutes.

Stir gently with a rubber spatula to pop any large air bubbles that have formed. Transfer to squeeze bottles.

Fill in the trees with the thinned icing.  Use a toothpick to guide into corners and pop large air bubbles.

Let the cookies dry uncovered, 6-8 hours, or overnight.


Once the cookies are totally dry, mix up your painting medium.   Mix equal parts food coloring with water. (Start with 1 drop of each.)

Dip a paintbrush into the mixture, then blot very well on a paper towel, almost to the point where you feel like you've blotted all of the food coloring off.  Brush onto the cookie, alternating between leaf green and electric green branches.  You should be able to paint several branches with each dip into the "paint."

Repeat this technique adding a trunk with brown icing.


Remember, perfection is overrated here.  Art is not perfect!  Have you looked at Picasso's work lately?!? ;)

OK.  Now, place a #1 tip on the bag of reserved icing.  Dot icing where you'd like to place the red sprinkles.

{I used red sprinkles from a Christmas sprinkle assortment...now, what to do with all of that extra green and white?!?  Remind me of this when St. Patrick's Day rolls around.}

Use (preferably only-for-the-kitchen) tweezers to place the sprinkles onto the icing.


Ta-da!  Painted cookies!!!  So easy, right?

Where do you find YOUR cookie inspiration?

White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Christmas Cookies

Have you seen the Reese's White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups?  They exist.  Oh yes, they do!

After making these turkey cookies for Thanksgiving, I couldn't wait to use the white chocolate peanut butter cups for some Christmas cookies.  

White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Christmas Cookies!

Visions of the *cutest* Santa cookies danced in my head for weeks.  I was SO excited to make them.

Except, they were totally creepy.  Mr. E actually took one look at them and started laughing.
Wanna see?!?

I was determined, though, so I came up with second best...carolers, red-nosed reindeer, and ornaments.

The cookie base is a white chocolate peanut butter cookie.  Buttercream is used for the decorating, and for attaching the peanut butter cup.


{psst...you can find white chocolate peanut butter cups on occasion in stores, OR you can order them by the case *ahem* from Hershey's or Amazon (gotta love free 2-day Prime shipping for such emergencies.)} ;)


You'll also need to spend about 20 minutes of your life digging through a bag of peanut butter M&Ms separating out the red ones. What you do with those other colors is your business.

White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Christmas Cookies...you can find the recipe and assembly instructions at Imperial Sugar.  

Gold-Adorned Christmas Wreath Cookies: Color Challenge

Hey guys!  Remember the first color challenge...the color was bright pink?  Well, this time, the color is GOLD!!!

Gold screams "fancy;" it does (!), but I wanted to incorporate gold into cookies in a super simple way.  I know I say this all the time, but I love a simple cookie.  It leaves more time for eating.

These gold-adorned wreath cookies incorporate gold in two ways: 1. edible gold star glitter (!!!), and 2. a gold luster dust bow.

To make them, you'll need:

• wreath cookies, using this recipe
• royal icing tinted with AmeriColor Forest Green & Gold
  
• disposable icing bags
• squeeze bottles
• decorating tips (#2) and couplers
• gold star edible glitter
• gold luster dust
• vodka (yep.)
• small paintbrush

With a #2 tip, outline the wreath bow in gold icing.


With another #2 tip, outline the wreath in green icing.

Thin the green & gold icings (reserve a bit of gold for later) with water, a bit at a time, stirring with a silicone spatula, until it is the consistency of a thick syrup.  You'll want to drop a "ribbon" of icing back into the bowl and have it disappear in a count of "one thousand one, one thousand two." Four is too thick, one is too thin.  Count of 2-3 is good.  Cover with a damp dishcloth and let sit for several minutes.

Stir gently with a rubber spatula to pop any large air bubbles that have formed. Transfer to squeeze bottles.

Fill in the wreath with the thinned green icing.  Use a toothpick to guide into corners and pop large air bubbles.

Add the star sprinkles.

Fill in the bow with the thinned gold icing.  Let dry at least one hour.

Let dry at least one hour.

With a #2 tip add a center to the bows.

Let the cookies dry uncovered 6-8 hours or overnight.

Get out your luster dust supplies:  Luster dust, small ramekin, small paintbrush and vodka (a good excuse to always have vodka in the house).

Mix up your luster dust with a few drops of the vodka and brush it on. (The alcohol will evaporate, leaving just the gold sheen.)  Add a few drops of vodka to the ramekin as you're working if it starts to get clumpy on you.  A little goes a long way, so don't worry about using all of the container in one shot.


You can see here the difference between the plain iced bow (right) and the luster dust bow (left).

I hope you'll add some gold to your holiday cookies this year!

Now, go check out the other GOLD color challenge blogs.  These ladies are SO talented!!!  

Perfect Every Time Cut-Out Cookies

If you're looking for a cut-out sugar cookie recipe for your holiday baking, birthday parties, baby showers, wedding favors, you name it...you've found it.

This is my all-time, go-to, never-fail, made thousands-of-'em sugar cookie recipe for decorating.

• It requires NO CHILLING!
• The dough can be frozen!
• The baked cookies can be frozen!
• The decorated cookies can be frozen!
• And more importantly, it's yummy.

More info on freezing cookies here.

Decorating with kids?  Gotcha covered.

Need royal icing.  Got that, too.

Looking for gingerbread?  Here ya go.

Perfect Every Time Cut-Out Cookies

3 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 c sugar (I use sugar that I've stored vanilla beans in)
2 sticks (salted) butter, cold & cut into chunks
1 egg
3/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 tsp pure almond extract

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine the flour and baking powder, set aside. Cream the sugar and butter. Add the egg and extracts and mix. Gradually add the flour mixture and beat just until combined, scraping down the bowl, especially the bottom.

The dough will be crumbly, so knead it together with your hands as you scoop it out of the bowl for rolling.

Roll on a floured surface to about 1/4" to 3/8" thick, and cut into shapes. Place on parchment lined baking sheets (I recommend freezing the cut out shapes on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before baking) and bake for 10-12 minutes. Let sit a few minutes on the sheet, then transfer to a cooling rack.

Go forth and BAKE, my friends.