Sugar cookie cutouts 12.28.19

Although incredibly time consuming, I wanted to make some cutout cookies for my holiday assortment.  I was committed to these cookies, and then I looked through my cookie cutters and realized I have NO holiday cutters.  I should invest at some point, but I do have a set of round and fluted cutters of various sizes.  So I decided I could make wreaths with the fluted cutters.

I used the Bob's Red Mill GF flour for these, and the dough held together nicely, but was a bit soft and fragile.  I used a spatula to carefully pick up the cut cookies and transfer them to trays for baking so I didn't mangle the shapes.  Here are the trayed, unbaked cookies.

In the oven these cookies puff up a tiny bit, just enough so that they look like baked cookies but hold their shape wonderfully.  Exactly what you want in a cutout cookie.  Notice that the recipe uses powdered sugar instead of granulated sugar, which is supposed to make a cookie that does not spread much in the oven.  Here's the cookies in the oven puffed up.

Here's the cookies cooling after the bake.  The recipe made 36 wreaths.

Then I dipped the cookies into flooding-consistency green royal icing, and piped red royal icing decorations.  I used a small leaf tip for the bows (two leaves pointed in toward each other) and a small round tip (#3) for the berries.

I was looking for a powdered sugar, sugar cookie recipe.  The recipe I based this off of is for Partridge-in-a-pear-tree cookies from Better Homes and Gardens 100 Best Cookies.  I used GF flour (same weight). The original cookie is a sandwich cookie filled with apricot preserves and dusted with powdered sugar.  Here, I roll the dough out thicker (about 1/4 inch, not 1/8 inch) since the wreath is a single layer.

Here's the adapted recipe
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sifted powdered sugar (110 g)
Beat sugar into beaten butter.

1/2 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt
Beat in vanilla and salt.

1 egg
8.1 oz GF flour
Beat in eggs.  Stir in flour.

Chill dough 2 hours or overnight.  Roll out to 1/4 inch for single layer cookies (1/8 inch for sandwich cookies)  Bake 350 for 10 minutes until edges are golden.

1 lb powdered sugar
2 egg whites
Blend sugar into whites until desired consistency.  Add color.  Dip cooled cookies in icing, invert and let dry.  Time to dry depends on how thick the icing is.  I thickly frosted these wreaths, so I am leaving them to dry overnight.

Lemon balls 12.28.19

I really wanted to make a lemony cookie.  The original recipe has you form the dough into rings so that they look like wreaths.  I rolled them into balls instead.  They are topped with white nonpareils in the original recipe, but I left them off so that the cookies are just decorated with glaze.  I altered the shape because I was already planing to make sugar cookie cut outs in the shape of wreaths, so I thought a ball shape would complement the assortment better.


Here are the dough balls before and after baking

Here are the glazed cookies

Here's the lemon balls with the sugar cookie wreaths I later made side by side.

Here's my adapted recipe
1 cup (5 oz) flour
1 tsp bak pwdr
0.42 tsp coarse salt
Combine dry ingredients in a bowl.

1.6 oz granulated sugar
1 1/3 tsp lemon zest
Pulse sugar and zest in food processor, about 2 minutes

5 1/3 T butter
1 egg
1/3 tsp vanilla
1/3 tsp lemon juice
Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs. Add vanilla and lemon juice.  Mix in dry ingredients

Form into balls and bake at 350 for 12 minutes, until bottom and edges are pale golden.

1 cup powdered sugar
2 1/2 T lemon juice (from 1.5 lemons)
Start with 1.5 T lemon juice and stir in powdered sugar until the right consistency. Dip top of cooled cookies and set on rack to dry, 6-9 hours.

This is a recipe for Lemon Wreaths from Martha Stewart Living Dec 2009.  

Pretzel Sablé cookies 12.27.19

I love all things French.  The sablé is a butter cookie which has an extra extra light and airy texture.  I found this cook's illustrated recipe for sablé cookies which uses cooked egg yolk in the recipe to give it that extra lightness.  I made the pretzel-shaped variation with extra vanilla flavoring.  The pretzel-shaped cookie might be my favorite in the dutch butter cookie tin.

It's really fun to shape these.  I formed the dough into logs before refrigerating, similar to if I was slicing them into discs.  After the dough was firm, I sliced them (1/4 in) and scaled them to 13 g, then rolled into balls.  Each ball was rolled out, slightly tapered at the ends and formed into a pretzel.  The cookies then need to be egg washed and sprinkled with turbinado sugar.  I didn't want to buy a whole $6 bag of sugar in the raw that I would never use, so I looked for red/green decorating sugar, but I visited four different stores and couldn't find any.  I ended up using granulated sugar.  The egg wash is whites only with water.

I first tried to brush the shaped cookie then place upside down in the sugar to fully coat it, but it was time consuming and the cookies got misshaped a bit with all the handling.  So then I washed them on the tray, and sprinkled sugar over the top of them.  I could have shaped them and put them in the freezer to firm up again.

The granulated sugar gave them a bit of a crystallized look and the egg wash made the cookies shiny.

1 yolk from hard boiled egg, grated.  Cover egg with water, bring to boil, then remove from heat and cover for 10 minutes.  Transfer to ice water for 5 minutes, then peel and liberate the cooked yolk.
10 T butter
2.75 oz sugar
Cream butter and sugar.  Add cooked yolk with the sugar.

1/4 t salt
1 T vanilla
7.5 oz flour
Mix in salt and vanilla.  Stir in flour.  Scale to 13 gram pieces and roll out to 6 inches slightly tapering the ends.  Then form into a pretzel shape.  Egg wash and sprinkle with turbinado/demerara or sparkling sugar.  Bake 350 for 14 minutes until edges brown, turning once during baking. The recipe made 33 cookies (13 g each), which was a perfect sized batch.

It might be good to embed the sugar into the surface of the cookie.  Next time try to cool shaped cookies until firm, then egg wash and turn upside down, pressing into the decorating sugar to coat fully.

Cherry Walnut Bars 12.27.19

I wanted to make a bar cookie with GF flour. I also am in love with Stoneridge Orchards Organic Montmorency dried cherries.  Instead of using a dried fruit mix in these bars, I decided to go all cherry all the time.

I replaced all of the dried fruit with chopped dried cherries.  I used Remy Martin VSOP for the brandy.  Cognac and cherries are brought to a boil and then left to cool.

I replaced the pecans with walnuts.  I searched recipes with dried cherries and it seems like they were paired with walnuts more often than pecans, so I thought it might be a better pairing.  Here are the drunken cherries and walnuts.

I used the Bob's Red Mill 1-to-1 GF flour for both the crust and bar.  Mixing the crust ingredients with my hand blender made a really nice crumb texture, which is what you need for the crust.  You could also cut the butter into the other dry ingredients by hand.   I made a half recipe, so I pressed the crust mixture into a 9 by 6 pan.  The instructions were to bake the crust 20 minutes.  I baked for about 18.  It was very easy to see the color develop on the crust.

Here's the mixture going into the oven and after cooled.

I cut them into 1.5 in squares.  The whole pan will be wrapped very tightly and will go in the freezer.  Before serving, the bars will be dusted with powdered sugar.

Here's a picture with the sablé cookies I also made the same day.

Whole recipe (I only made half recipe above),

1 1/3 c dried cherries, chopped
1/2 c cognac
Boil cherries and cognac, then immediately remove from heat and let cool.  drain cherries.  Make a spritzer by pouring seltzer over cherry-flavored cognac.

1 c GF flour
1/3 c brown sugar
1/2 c butter
Cut butter into flour and sugar, until resembles coarse crumbs.  Press into bottom of 8x8 square pan and bake at 350 for 20 minutes, until golden

2 eggs
1 c brown sugar
1/2 c GF flour
1 t vanilla
1/3 c chopped walnuts
Beat eggs for 4 minutes.  Mix in sugar, flour, and vanilla.  Stir in cherries and nuts.  Pour over crust and bake 350 for 40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  Cover with aluminum foil for last 10 minutes of bake time to avoid over browning.

When cool, cut into bars and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

I adapted the Brandied Cranberry-Apricot Bars recipe from Better Homes and Gardens 100 Best Cookies.

Donuts and chocolate 12.15.19

Knead Donuts, Providence RI

EH Chocolatier, Cambridge MA

Vanilla glaze donut.  They also had vegan donuts.   It was so delicious I ate half before remembering to take a picture.  The glaze wasn't too sweet, it was a perfect balance with the donut.  The donut itself was very large, but I ate the whole thing.  The inside was tender and so fresh.  Yum!

Rocher and Chocolate Chew bar.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies 12.26.19

These cookies are delicious.  I don't know what it is about them.  They smell like intense cocoa, and the peanut butter filling is a heavenly surprise when you bite into them.

The forming of the peanut butter stuffed cookie dough is a bit time consuming.  I tried to put as much peanut butter filling as possible.  I wanted to cookies to be small overall, so the peanut butter filling was portioned using a large melon scoop.  Then I used #60 for the chocolate dough.  The filling is formed into a ball, and then wrapped with the chocolate dough.

The filled balls are then flattened with granulated sugar.

Here's how they look after baking.

I put both the oatmeal and peanut butter chocolate cookies into tins, then in the freezer until party time.

I used regular flour for the peanut butter chocolate cookies.

7.25 oz flour
1 3/8 oz cocoa pwdr
1/2 tsp bak soda
Stir together dry ingredients.

1/2 cup butter
3.5 oz granulated sugar
3.5 oz brown sugar
2 1/8 oz (1/4 cup) peanut butter
1 egg
1 Tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla
Beat butters and sugars.  Add egg, milk and vanilla.  Stir in flour mixture.  Portion into 36 balls using #60 portion scoop.

3 1/8 oz (3/4 cup) powdered sugar, sifted
6 1/8 oz (1/2 cup + 2 T) peanut butter
VERY IMPORTANT TO SIFT THE POWDERED SUGAR!! Mix these two ingredients until combined. Portion into small cherry/small grape sized balls.

Flatten each dough ball and wrap around peanut butter filling.  Roll dough into a ball.  Place on trays and flatten with a glass dipped in granulated sugar.

Bake at 350 for 8 minutes or until just set and surface slightly cracks.



Adapted from Peanut Butter Munchies from Better Homes and Gardens 100 Best Cookies.

Holiday cookie assortment and Oatmeal Cookies 12.26.19

I wanted to make several holiday cookies, and went through my old recipes and cookie magazines to identify my favorites.  I finally narrowed down my list to the top 6 here.  I cringed a little leaving out things like butter spritz and gingerbread men, but had to make the hard decisions and realize that I am making other butter cookies and other cutout cookies this year.

In no particular order:
1. Brandied Cherry Walnut bars (with cognac, but using cognac as a verb sounds weird.  "Cognacked"?) with gluten-free flour
2. Sablés (French butter cookie), pretzel shaped
3. Thin and crispy oatmeal cookies (with gluten-free flour)
4. Chocolate cookies with peanut butter filling
5. Lemon balls, a short lemon cookie with lemon sugar glaze
6. Cut out sugar cookies decorated with colored royal icing (with gluten-free flour)


I prefer a thick chewy cookie, usually with chocolate chips, but for some reason thin and crispy oatmeal cookies seemed to be a perfect addition to my holiday assortment.

I'm working on substituting all-purpose flour with gluten-free flour in cookie recipes.  This recipe calls for 1 cup (5 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour.

According to Bob's Red Mill, both the GF All Purpose flour and GF 1-to-1 Baking Flour can replace regular flour cup for cup.  But based on the weight differences, I'm going to try measuring by weight for my cookie recipes.

According to Bob's Red Mill Flour Weight Chart, their brand of Organic Unbleached White All Purpose Flour (or unbleached nonorganic) weighs 136 grams per 1 cup.  Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour also weighs 136 g, while Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour weighs 148 g.

Thus, since the recipe calls for 5 oz AP flour, I'm going to instead use 142 g.

Cream butter and sugars

Mix in egg and vanilla

Mix in GF flour

Mix in oats and portion into balls.  I used #40 which turned out to be too big.

I ended up dividing the scoops in half, then in thirds to get a better size.  The final size is about 1.5 teaspoons. I really need to invest in a #70.

Here is the dough before going into the oven, and the baked cookies.

The sizing was hard to gauge since the cookies spread a lot.  Here are all three sizes I made.  The largest ones are 4 inches in diameter.

Finally, here's the cookies in the oven about half way through.  They spread and puff up, then they collapse and start to brown, first around the edges, then in the middle.

4.75 oz GF flour
3/4 t bak pwdr
1/2 t soda
1/2 t fine salt
Stir together dry ingredients

14 T unsalted butter, room temp
7 oz granulated sugar
1.75 oz light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 t vanilla
Beat until light and fluffy.  Add egg and vanilla.  Then stir in dry ingredients.

2.5 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
Mix in oats until well combined.

Roll into small balls (1.5 tsp) and space at least 2.5 inches apart on baking tray.  Cookies will spread completely. Bake at 350 for 14 minutes, turning once during baking.  Take them out when the middles start to brown.  This recipe made two TINS worth of cookies, which is way too many for my cookie sampler I'm making.  1/2 or 1/3 of this recipe would be a more reasonable sized batch.

Adapted from Thin and Crispy Oatmeal Cookies from America's Test Kitchen Best-ever recipes

French Macarons 5.8.2019

MA France, 46 Massachusetts Ave, Lexington, MA

My favorite.  French Macarons. They had a heart shaped one that I really liked.  These are not made in house, but since MA france is waking distance from my house, it's so convenient when I need a real french macaron or other french fix.

Baby Eggplant 4.21.2019

I picked these up at the Haymarket outdoor market.  I roasted the halved pieces, then topped them with tomato salsa, pine nuts, goat cheese, and lime-tahini dressing.

I heart sashimi 4.21.2019

I'm a sake sashimi lover.  I had good luck at Wegmans and found this very fresh salmon.  I wouldn't pick up any sushi fish ready made like this normally, but noticed how fresh this looked and went for it.

It came in one whole piece, but sliced up was enough for a sake don and more!  All it needs is an edible flower and a bed of seasoned rice.

GF crepes 4.15.2019

Best GF crepes that only use 3 GF flours (white rice flour, potato starch, and tapioca) and no xanthan gum!  I used avocado oil instead of butter.

I really need to make a crepe cake next, for a decadent GF dessert.