Leftover Cookies

So this is what happens when I am stuck inside the house all day because they are calling for snow and ice!!  The bad weather never really happened, but I sure am glad I got to stay in and bake a little bit.  I like to call these Leftover Cookies because they are basically made from what little dribs and drabs of cookie additives I have hanging around in my pantry.  You know, what's leftover of a bag of nuts after you've used it for a recipe, or what's leftover of a bag of coconut flakes after you've baked up some other goodies.  Basically, this is a simple cookie recipe and you add whatever you like to it, and the cookies come out different every single time.  This time, I added about half a bag of semi-sweet chocolate morsels, half a bag of pecan pieces, a whole bag of shredded coconut, and a whole bag of toffee bits.  It sounded like a lovely combination in my head, and boy did they turn out delicious!!
The toffee and coconuts give the cookies a sort of chewiness that I LOVE, while the nuts and chocolate have more of an in-your-face flavor punch.  You can definitely make this with whatever goodies you have laying around in your pantry.  I wonder if M&M's and broken pretzels would be a good combination??  Or dried pineapple, white chocolate chips, and macadamia nuts?  The possibilities are endless!!  Enjoy the deliciousness!

Leftover Cookies
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
cookie additives (example: chocolate chips, nuts, coconut, toffee, dried fruit, etc) -- as much of each as you want!

Preheat oven to 375F.
Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl.  Beat butter and sugars in bowl of electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until light and creamy.  Add in vanilla and eggs.  Gradually beat in flour mixture.  Stir in cookie additives. 
Using a 1 1/2-inch ice cream scoop, drop dough onto cookie sheet fitted with parchment paper or a silicone mat.  Wet hands and slightly flatten each cookie.  Bake 9-11 minutes or until golden brown.  Cool cookies on pans for 2 minutes before removing to wire racks. 
Makes about 3 dozen cookies
Adapted from Nestle

Linzer Cookies

For some reason, lately, I have had a mega-craving for linzer cookies.  I remember when I was younger and we always used to have them in the house, either store-bought or homemade, and I loved eating them then as much as I do now.  These cookies are definitely different than the ones I remember eating as a child, but different doesn't mean bad.  It just means that you will probably see me post a few linzer cookie recipes on here until I find the ones that remind me of my childhood!

A few weeks ago, I had bought a set of nesting heart cookie cutters, so this seemed like the perfect occasion to use them, especially with Valentine's Day right around the corner (one of my favorite days of the year!).  After a few trays of the larger size cookies, I went ahead and made mostly smaller ones, mainly because they are easier to make.  This recipe is definitely a labor of love.  It involves a lot of cutting and shaping, more than just a regular sugar cookie, but the results are pretty delicious.

When I started out looking for a recipe, I wasn't really sure what I was looking for.  As I researched the Linzer Cookie more and more, I was able to kind of narrow down what it SHOULD be, and from there seek out a recipe.  The cookies I remember from childhood don't fit that description quite exactly, but that will have to be a different recipe for another day.  So, from what I could see, Linzer Cookies should be a butter cut-out cookie made with ground nuts in the batter, and usually some sort of spice, layered with raspberry or apricot jam.  After searching around on the internet for a bit, I settled on a recipe from the King Arthur Flour website.  I often find decent recipes here, so I thought it would be a good place to start.  With that being said, there are a few changes I would make next time I bake these.  First off, I don't think the cookies need to be rolled to 1/8 inch thick, this is just too thin.  I wanted them to bake up a little bit softer, but having rolled them so thin, they didn't really have a chance and got crisper than I would have liked.  Secondly, I feel that the cinnamon in the dough is a bit too much.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE cinnamon and usually love it anything (as evidenced by the title of this blog!), but 1 teaspoon seems just a bit much for this dough.  I didn't bother sprinkling the top cookie with powdered sugar before assembling, but that was just me being lazy.  All in all, I felt this was a good recipe, a nice starting point from which I will continue to build.  Stay tuned for more tweaks on Linzer Cookies in the near future.  Until then, enjoy the deliciousness!

Linzer Cookies
4 ounces pecans
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
Raspberry jam, for filling

In a small food processor, pulse the pecans and salt until a fine meal/flour is formed.  Be careful not to over-process or else you will make pecan butter!  This should make about 1 cup of pecan meal.  If not, add more pecans.
In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine butter and both sugars, beating until creamy.  Add in egg and vanilla.  In a large bowl, combine flour, pecans, baking powder, and cinnamon.  Add flour mixture to butter mixture and beat until just combined.
Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for at least 1 hour (I left it overnight).
Preheat oven to 375F.  Roll the dough to 1/8-inch thick (as I said above, I feel this might be too thin, but I followed this part of the recipe, so I am posting it as I did it), and cut with desired cookie cutters.  Use small cutters to cut a design out of half of the cookies.  Bake for 8-10 minutes, until lightly browned on the edges.  Remove from the oven and cool on a rack.  After cookies have cooled, spread a small amount, about 1 teaspoonful, of jam over the solid cookies.  Place a cutout cookie on top of each filled cookie.  You can dust the cutout cookies with powdered sugar before doing this, as a decorative effect.
Adapted from King Arthur Flour

Note: After letting the prepared cookies sit in an airtight container overnight, I am much happier with them.  The jelly soaks in a little bit, so the cookie itself is no longer crisp, and that is actually the texture I was looking for.  Also, the cinnamon flavor mellows out a little bit, which I prefer.  All in all, I would probably still make the changes I suggested above, but I much prefer the recipe as-is the next day rather than the day it was prepared.

Chocolate-Almond Icebox Cookies

Lately I have been obsessed with all things almond.  I'm not sure where this is coming from because I am usually a vanilla girl, but I seem to be unusually drawn to almond-flavored things recently.  On Thanksgiving, for instance, I made a fabulous recipe for Almond Cookies that had a whole tube of almond paste mixed in.  I LOVED it!  I'll post that recipe on here soon, too -- I'm sure you guys will enjoy that one just as much as I did.
This particular recipe is a loose adaptation of a Martha Stewart recipe that calls for espresso powder, black pepper, and vanilla extract.  Since I was still in the mood for almond, I decided to leave out the espresso and black pepper and substitute in almond extract for the vanilla.  I've made the recipe as-is before and it is wonderful, so I knew switching just a few of the flavorings around would still leave me with a delicious cookie.  I bet this would be great with a little bit of orange zest in it, too.  I love the combination of rich dark chocolate with the little orange flecks of zest mixed in.

This is a nice, simple chocolate icebox cookie, so it can be made well in advance and left in the refrigerator until you are ready to bake them up.  They cook just long enough to be set, but I don't like to make them too crispy and crunchy.  I like the chocolatey center to still be a tiny bit soft and with a little bit of give.  Rolling the log in sanding sugar before slicing and baking gives the cookies a glittery sparkle effect, like beautiful chocolate jewels waiting to be eaten.  Enjoy the deliciousness!

Chocolate-Almond Icebox Cookies
1 & 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 & 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
coarse sanding sugar

In a large bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, salt, and cinnamon, and set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar for a few minutes, until well combined.  Add in egg and almond extract.  Add in flour mixture, stirring until just combined.
Roll the dough into a log in a large sheet of parchment and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 350.  Allow dough to sit at room temperature for 5 minutes before unwrapping.  Sprinkle with sanding sugar, pressing the dough so the sugar will stick to it.  Cut into 1/4-inch slices.  Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat and bake for 10 minutes.
Makes about 3 dozen cookies
Adapted from Martha Stewart

Another cookie...Sugar Saucers

I know, you're probably thinking, "Is this blog just going to be filled with recipes for and pictures of desserts??  That can't be good for anybody!", but I promise that's not all I'm going to be cooking up here!  Maybe it's just because it's holiday time.  Maybe it's just because I love to bake and I usually don't have an excuse to because with there being only 2 adults in the house, we always end up eating everything ourselves.  Maybe it's because I try to be so careful and healthy all the time, once in awhile I love a food splurge.  Whatever the reason, I ended up baking another batch of cookies.  These were kind of similar to the Butter Twists I had made a few days ago, but more of a sugar cookie than a butter cookie.

There are a few blogs that I like to look at every day, and probably my favorite out of all of those is Annie's Eats.  She posts wonderful photos and recipes and really draws you in -- makes you want to go home and start cooking and baking right away!  Unfortunately, she is also way more ambitious than me, making things like homemade puff pastry, which I have neither then time nor energy to even think about trying.  But if you are into looking at food blogs, definitely check that one out -- you won't be sorry you did.  You might even get hooked, like me!
On to the cookies.  I decided to try these cookies out because I was in the mood for a sugar cookie, but didn't have time to do the whole rolling-out-the-dough-decorating-with-royal-icing thing.  I needed to satisfy my cookie needs faster than that.  So, when I saw this drop cookie recipe, it seemed pretty perfect.   Then, I started reading.  Like the writer on the blog, I was pretty skeptical because it's a cookie recipe that calls for half butter and half vegetable oil.  Besides seeming kind of odd, it also seemed kind of gross.  I'm not sure why, but the idea of a cookie made with vegetable oil just didn't seem all that appealing to me.  But the picture that she had posted of the finished product and her description of how it turned out made me willing to try it.  And I'm glad that I did!  This tasted like a pretty standard sugar cookie, which is what I was looking for.  I like the idea of sprinkling the tops with granulated sugar -- the cookies come out looking crystallized and beautiful.  I had some family over last night, and they all enjoyed eating the cookies as well. I'm not sure this is something I'll make all the time, but it was a good basic sugar cookie recipe for when you don't feel like doing all the rolling out and decorating usually associated with sugar cookies (but, oh how pretty those do turn out, don't they?).

Finally in the kitchen! Butter Twists

Well, I have finally been able to get in the kitchen a little bit and I actually  have something to post about!  This was an extremely busy weekend for my family because we were baptizing my BEAUTIFUL baby niece, and there were tons of out-of-town family members to entertain and dinners to go to!  Somehow, I still managed to get into the kitchen for a little while tonight while my husband entertained the baby (he can be an angel sometimes).  I originally was preparing these cookies to give as a gift to a co-worker who had helped me out about a month back when I was preparing for my own daughter's baptism, but I seem to have eaten so many of the cookies myself, I'm not sure it would be appropriate for me to give her a half-full tin of cookies as a gift!

 I made this following a Martha Stewart recipe, and they really were delicious!  There is something just so simple and buttery and delicious about them, you won't be able to stop eating them!  They have a kind of buttery, melt-in-your-mouth crunch that makes them divine.  You can see that I shaped them like pretzels instead of twists, just because I thought it would be cute.  I tried sprinkling them with a little sanding sugar to give them a bit of sparkle, but it didn't really seem to stick.  I think maybe that would've worked better if I had brushed them with a little beaten egg first, but that probably would've changed the color of these buttery wonders, too.  Either way, I hope you enjoy these cookies as much as I do.