Food In Many Forms

Happy Chrismahannakwanzakah! Cookies are a great holiday present for those on a budget - they require time and effort and most of the ingredients are cheap if you don't already have them at home.  These cookies taste like the real deal, but have 75% less sugar because of the Stevia blend I used. I also chose a cookie icing from Betty Crocker that was really easy to use and had 0 g of fat. Ingredients:  1 cup unsalted butter, softened 1/2 cup baking Stevia 2 large eggs 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 4 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt Optional Garnishes: decorative candies and colored sugars Directions: Beat butter at medium speed with an electric mixer in a medium mixing bowl until creamy. Gradually add baking Stevia, beating well. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in vanilla. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate mixing bowl. Gradually add flour mixture to baking Stevia blend...

As you can probably tell by now, I make all my friends bake with me. Even when it's passover and the friend in question is observant. I do love a challenge after all. Before we even started, we were grilled by her mother about what ingredients were in the cookies, just to be sure we weren't pulling a fast one on her. After some debate, we carefully combined two recipes from "Couldn't be Parve". They turned out awesome considering the restrictions we were under, but your patience will be rewarded if you can wait until the filling hardens up before you eat them.  Ganache-Filled Almond Cookies Makes approximately 20 cookies For Cookies 1 cup almond butter 1 cup dark brown sugar 1 egg 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 teaspoon cinnamon Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and stir until well combined. Scoop out teaspoon sized balls of dough onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Space the cookies at least two inches apart since th...

When St. Patrick's Day comes along, I feel obligated to produce baked goods involving either green food, green food dye, or beer . This year, pinterest led me to this lovely recipe: http://squarebakery.blogspot.com/2009/03/this-ones-dedicated-to-shamrock-shake.html Green Food Dye it is!  A lot of reviewers complained of the intense minty flavor , and at first I wondered what they were talking about. Then I realized, I used peppermint extract, instead of peppermint oil.  The substitution is:  1/4 teaspoon oil = 1 teaspoon extract So basically, I only used a quarter of the amount of peppermint called for in the recipe. I'm sure I would have complained too, if I used that much peppermint! I used 3 teaspoons of peppermint extract , and I was happy with the results, but I'll post the original recipe below: Mint Meltaway Cookie Recipe  Makes 24 cookies You will need: 1 cup unsalted organic butter 1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar 2 teaspo...

It was not my idea, but it was a delicious one! Pumpkin cookies are a great way to welcome fall! My roommate thought these would be great with cream cheese frosting, and I'm inclined to agree. One reviewer on allrecipes.com even recommended sandwiching two of these cake-like cookies together with frosting in between. Now I just need a cream cheese frosting recipe... Ingredients 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup butter, softened 1 1/2 cups white sugar 1 cup canned pumpkin puree 1 egg 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups confectioners' sugar 3 tablespoons milk 1 tablespoon melted butter 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Directions Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and salt; set aside. In a medium bowl, cream together the 1/2 cup o...

I have a habit of picking up unusual baking supplies at the grocery store, just because I have never seen them before. Almond paste, poppy seed filling, dutch process cocoa, orange and lemon extracts have all caught my eye on one occasion or another. But of course I always forget the essentials . Without baking powder, unsalted butter or confectioner's sugar, I resorted to a lemon sugar cookie to fulfill my sugar craving . Compared to other untested recipes I've tried, this recipe was pretty successful. But I think they would be even better with a lemon icing or a lemon glaze , or even just some colorful icing on top!  Adapted From:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/crisp-lemon-sugar-cookies/detail.aspx Ingredients 1/2 cup butter, softened  1/2 cup and 1 teaspoon sugar  1/2 egg  1-1/2 teaspoons milk  1 teaspoon lemon extract  1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract  1-1/4 cups and 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour  1/2 teaspoon salt  1/4 teaspoon baki...

Even in the picture you can tell that these Kolachky cookies are sticky and shiny. I can tell you when I split them in two, they definitely weren't cooked all the way through. The insides were doughy even after they cooked for forty minutes and they were burned on the outside. I got the recipe from the food network  website from an episode of Sweet Dreams called "Bubbe's Bakeshop", but in this case I think you just need to go to real people to find out the tricks. On All Recipes, someone said to knead the dough until it lost its stickiness, and I bet when I try this again it will turn out better. After all, I used a pound of prunes to make the homemade filling, now I have to find a way to use it all up!

I found this in Barnes & Noble on Friday. I'm super excited after so many bad or mediocre cookie recipes to try (hopefully) tested recipes for not one, but four different types of sugar cookies - chewy, crunchy, browned edges or cut-out ! Plus each one has variations - just think of the possibilities!

The urge to bake has not left and after dinner today I could not wait to make molasses cookies ! When I look on my shelves at all the spices and sauces I have accumulated recently, I am quite impressed with how much I have really become a Cook. When one of my roommates is missing an ingredient to make dinner, it is not unlikely I will be able to find it in one of the five or six places that I hide away food. Even more exciting to me is when I try to make a recipe and have no way of getting the ingredients, I am able to throw something together anyways with the ingredients I have. I made crab cakes last week and we had neither old bay nor hot sauce nor dijon mustard. Instead, I used yellow mustard packets from the convenience store, I added lots of fresh black pepper and some Worchestershire sauce, and baked them up! Today, I just got lucky because I had molasses and sugar and flour and spices. The recipe was your typical cookie recipe...beat wet ingredients, combine dry, mix t...