Never Bashful with Butter

Holiday baking, gift making and present wrapping has me pretty wiped out this week.

I mean, holy crap, Christmas is in ONE WEEK! Next Tuesday is the day, the big show… the day that children wait excitedly for all year, other than their birthday. It is a day full of smiles and happiness, not to mention gift giving and receiving.

Every year I make a tradition out of giving homemade gifts as Christmas presents. I’ve already shared one of my homemade holiday gifts- The dark chocolate orange dessert sauce I made last week- This weekend I got on the ball and finished up my “least perishable” homemade holiday gifts, and I’m here to share them with you!

Here are a couple of different and delicious homemade holiday gifts that ANYONE can make in their kitchen. Not only are they great for holiday gift giving, but they’re great for any other gift giving occasion, or even just a way to further personalize your own kitchen supplies!

So, without further ado-

First off, I’ll share with you my rich and delicious hot cocoa mix-

I actually got the original version of this recipe from Allrecipes.com, and someone who commented on the original version further refined it, and then I refined it again, because I wasn’t totally happy with the outcome. Feel free to do the same with mine.

2 cups dutch process cocoa powder
4 cups powdered sugar
5 cups powdered milk
1 1/2 cups powdered creamer
1 bag miniature milk chocolate chips

Mix all of the ingredients together in a GIANT bowl.
Actually, I have this giant tupperware bowl (I usually use it as a layer cake holder, but it holds about 3 gallons of liquid, if need be) and I poured all the ingredients into it, put the lid on and shook it until my arms got tired. I think the shaking method might work better than the stirring method, because the ingredients FULLY integrate, rather than just sort of being sloshed together.

Directions for making the mix into a liquid- For one serving, place 1/3 cup cocoa mixture into mug and “top off” with 3/4 cup boiling water. Stir until fully dissolved. Serve with whipped cream or homemade marshmallows.

Actually, I made two versions of hot cocoa from this mix today, and I REALLY liked the version I made with steamed milk. OMG delicious. I’d totally encourage others to do the same, or even just heat up some milk in the microwave.

In addition to this being a super easy Christmas gift idea, I’m making it even more super easy by including a printable label for it!
Here it is-

After I whipped up the mix, I used a 1/3 cup measure to scoop up 6 servings of the mix into ziploc sandwich bags, squeezed all the air out of the bag, sealed it, put that bag into a SECOND ziploc bag, squeezed all the air out of that, sealed it and then placed it into a homemade gift bag that I made out of gift wrap. (making a homemade gift bag is way easy. Just get out an old VHS tape and wrap it halfway, sealing the edges with a glue stick. Make sure you don’t wrap the whole thing, unless you intend to give the VHS tape as a gift! hehe.. Trim up the top and let the glue dry, and you’ve got yourself a pretty little gift bag!)

GIFT IDEA!

I’d recommend giving your hot cocoa mix as part of a gift basket with a pretty holiday mug, a little baggie of homemade marshmallows, a couple candy canes and maybe a DVD and some cushy socks, to encourage the use of the hot cocoa as a festive relaxing agent. You could even make it a couple gift by including two mugs and picking a romantic movie!

Next up, for all the Italian food lovers, or even the salad loving hippies out there-

Italian herb infused vinegar and garlic olive oil!

This gift idea is not only simple, but its economical to boot! I wouldn’t recommend children make them, as they require stovetop cooking, and hot vinegar and hot oil are especially dangerous.

GREAT BIG GIANT IMPORTANT EDIT!!!

As one commenter reminded me, do not leave the garlic infused olive oil at room temperature for longer than a week (the week guideline was laid out to me via the recipe and directions I initially used for this gift idea, though I am keeping my olive oil refrigerated until the day in which it will be gifted, with instructions for the recipient to keep it refrigerated) as it may begin to grow bacteria. Keep it refrigerated!

For the olive oil you’ll need-

3 garlic cloves
16 oz extra virgin olive oil

Peel and slice the garlic cloves thinly. Using a meat tenderizer, smash the garlic slices.
Pour the olive oil into a medium saucepan over LOW heat. Place the smashed garlic clove slices into the warmed oil. Stir occasionally. After about 15 minutes, use a metal or wooden spoon to scoop up some of the garlic pieces. They should appear slightly translucent, and yellowy, and the oil should smell garlicky. Do not cook longer than 20 minutes on the stovetop, and never allow the oil to boil, or bubbles to form at the bottom of the oil, this will change the chemical properties of the oil, lowering its smoke point further, which may cause difficulty if the receiver of this gift wishes to cook with it.

Remove the pan from the burner and allow the oil to cool inside the pan. Prepare the jars or bottles that you wish to place the oil by placing a peeled garlic clove and if you wish, a sprig of fresh rosemary or oregano inside the bottle. While still warm, pour the oil into the jar or bottle through a clean and dry funnel. Dispose of the cooked garlic (or use it in a stirfry!). When the oil is room temperature, cap and close the jar or bottle, and keep refrigerated.

Here is the label for the Garlic olive oil-

Of course, this gift could be given alone, or paired with a delicious and spicy herbed vinegar-

To make the herbed vinegar, you’ll need-

2 quarts distilled white vinegar

a handful of fresh organic oregano
a handful of fresh organic basil
a handful of fresh organic rosemary
(you can use any herb combination you wish, just make sure it is fresh and organic)
3 tablespoons garlic powder or chopped garlic
1 tablespoon Mrs. Dash sodium free salt alternative- Original (it is a mixture of all sorts of dried herbs, veggies, and it is also completely optional in this recipe, so if you don’t know what it is or if you don’t wish to purchase it, don’t worry about it.)

I made 2 quarts of herbed vinegar, so feel free to adjust the recipe accordingly if you wish to make more or less of it.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, pour the vinegar and place within it all of the herbs, reserving one “sprig” of each herb per bottle or jar of vinegar you wish to make (they will be used as decoration within the bottle). Heat the vinegar, using a spoon to stir and press the herbs down into the vinegar occasionally, over medium heat for about 15 minutes. Do not boil. Place the reserved herbs into the jars or bottles you wish to store the vinegar in. After 15 minutes has passed, remove the pan from the burner and allow the vinegar to cool slightly. Remove the herbs, discarding them. Stir into the still warm mixture the Mrs. Dash and garlic powder, allow to sit for a few minutes and then strain, using a fine mesh sieve, into a medium sized bowl or pitcher. While the vinegar is still warm, pour through a clean and dry funnel into the jars or bottles with the reserved herbs in them. Allow to cool completely before sealing or capping.

Here is the label for the herbed vinegar-

GIFT IDEA!

This gift would be great alone, paired with the garlic olive oil or even better, make an Italian food gift basket with a package of gourmet spaghetti, a jar of grated parmesan, some salami, a homemade baguette or a selection of Italian cheeses. Take it even further by including The Godfather or one of the seasons of The Sopranos on DVD. (you could go completely crazy and give THIS in addition to the rest of the gift basket, for the big “Godfather” fan in your life.)

A few other ideas for homemade Christmas gifts from the kitchen can be found HERE.

I know this post was more about function than photo, but thats the nature of packaged food items. Only so much can be done to make a bottle of vinegar look… appetizing. In the end, its just a bottle of vinegar.

Anyways, I hope everyone enjoys this post, and maybe is inspired to create a few holiday gifts in their own kitchen!

If you’d like to print out any of the labels I posted here- Just click on the label and you’ll be sent to another window with the image at exact size. Right click on the image and select “save image as” to save it to your computer. Then just open it in whatever photo printing program you have (MSPaint works, even) and there you go!

-A.

P.S. Tomorrow I’m posting another Gift from the kitchen- Homemade lime curd and sour cream cake! (Also, I’ll be posting a selection of holiday candy on Thursday!)

Hey there everyone!

Its been a busy weekend for me, as I’ve been working to complete a bunch of homemade food gifts to give to my family for Christmas.

That being said, I wanted to share with you a few things-

First, I designed a cute little label to go along with the Chocolate orange dessert sauce I made last week, and I figured I’d throw it up here so anyone who wants to give it as a gift can use it if they wish!

Its actual size, since I used a fairly small bottle as packaging, but you’re more than welcome to enlarge it or personalize it! (I added my name above “late”, but I figured you didn’t want to give someone someone elses sauce! hehe)

Just click on the picture above and you’ll be sent to another window with the image at exact size. Right click on the image and select “save image as” to save itneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.com to your computer. Then just open it in whatever photo printing program you have (MSPaint works, even) and there you go!

Also, I wanted to share a link to my holiday website- Jealous of Gingerbread. I’ve been working to collect a bunch of cool holiday links and stuff, and I just posted one of my Original Christmas Card designs as a printable! So go on over there and check it out!

Don’t worry, I’ll be posting very shortly with a few more Gifts from the kitchen- Flavoured olive oil, Flavoured vinegar, Hot cocoa powder and marshmallows, Lime curd and shortbreads! Plus some more cupcakes and cookies and candies! All between now and Christmas!

-A.

One of my favourite things about Christmas time is Gingerbread.

There is nothing better than the smell of homemade gingerbread intermingling with the smell of just baked sugar cookies, buttery shortbread, apple cider, and a fresh cut Christmas tree. To me, these are the smells of Christmas.

Today I started my official countdown to Christmas… So of course, I had to make some Gingerbread cookies!

There are so may different combinations of ways to decorate your gingerbread, so I split my batch in half and showed my two favourite ways. This one is fun, like a deconstructed gingerbread man, with a little mound of gumdrop buttons in the center, while the photos above show a more sophisticated version, with a little gingerbread heart and red sugar sprinkles. Both are iced with brown sugar butter cream cheese icing.

My problem with gingerbread cookies is that so many of them are SO heavily spiced, that I couldn’t really enjoy more than one or two small cookies without getting a little bit of a stomach ache. I know its strange, since ginger is a natural remedy FOR stomach ache, but I’m thinking it wasn’t so much the ginger that caused my discomfort, but rather the general spiciness of the recipe that my family used, as well as the heaviness of the full flavoured molasses in the ingredients.

Over time, I fiddled with the recipe and found a great way to balance the flavours, yet maintain the cookie’s gingery goodness.

My recipe for softer, lighter gingerbread cookies-

1/3 cup dark molasses
1/3 cup honey (any variety will do, but I prefer oregon blackberry honey, because it is less sweet than most varieties. Also, if you would like a stronger flavoured cookie, or would like to veganize this recipe, you are more than welcome to use all molasses in place of the honey. The resulting cookie will be much darker, however.)
3/4 cup softened butter (Feel free to use earth balance if you’d like to veganize this recipe)
1/4 cup trans fat free non hydrogenated vegetable shortening
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (or 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves)
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon allspice

In a medium size bowl, whip together the molasses, honey, butter, shortening, brown sugar and vanilla extract until fluffy and there are no visible large chunks for butter or shortening. Sift into this mixture the flour, followed by the remaining ingredients. Stir until combined.

The dough will be soft, like a very thick batter. Scoop it onto a sheet of waxed paper and roll into a short, wide log. Make sure all of the dough is covered, and refrigerate for a few hours (I prefer to let it chill overnight) to allow the flavours to fully develop. You can bake the dough before refrigerating, but the resulting cookie will not be as tasty.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and pinch off about 2 tablespoons worth of the dough, roll it into a ball and place it on an ungrease cookie sheet. Place each cookie dough ball about 2 inches apart (on a standard half-sheet pan, you can fit 15 cookies) and tamp down the dough balls with the palm of your hand or the bottom of a drinking glass. The cookies will spread out and become thinner, but if you do not flatten the cookie balls a bit, the centers will not cook all the way through.

Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes, but watch the cookies carefully, as the bottoms tend to burn quickly. You’ll know the cookies are done when the tops change from a darker brown to a more opaque, lighter brown colour.

This recipe makes about 3 dozen 2 inch cookies.

After the cookies have cooled, you can decorate them however you wish! If you prefer a sweeter cookie, I would suggest either glazing them with a plain sugar glaze (1/2 cup powdered sugar mixed with a few teaspoons of water or milk, until you’ve acheived the desired thinness) or any sort of sweet frosting! Vanilla, orange, almond, and apricot are delicious flavour pairings with gingerbread, but there are many more. Be creative!

I hope everyone out there is having a fabulous time creating Christmas cookie memories!

-A.

P.S. These cookies are softer and slightly chewy. I would NOT recommend using this recipe for complex cookie cutter shapes or for building a gingerbread house. I’m going to try and make a gingerbread house this weekend, so we’ll see if I am able to succeed and post about it!

Alright everyone, its time to take a deep breath *takes a deep breath* and recover from all this bacon cookie craziness with a tried and true flavour combination-

Chocolate and orange.

See, I’m feeling more mellow today.
I’m also feeling like its about time I start working on my Christmas gifts, since.. you know, the big day is like two weeks away. We’ll be giving our gifts out on the weekend before Christmas, so I figured I’d start today with a test batch of one of my favourite things to make and give as a gift from my kitchen.

Dark Chocolate orange sauce…

But I can’t just take a photo of a bottle of dark chocolate orange sauce, which is why I decided to make some Chocolate buttermilk cupcakes, fill them with orange cream filling and use the dark chocolate orange sauce as a topping for these tasty little bites of chocolate heaven.

Its nice and thick and rich, and it keeps well- so it is an excellent gift go give alone, maybe with a nice big bowl, a spoon and a gift certificate for Baskin Robbins… or with a mug, some hot cocoa mix and some homemade marshmallows (which is what I’ll be pairing my chocolate sauce with) Or as an “adults only” gift, with a quality nylon paintbrush and some candy sprinkles (Can you say Human cupcake?)

You could even make a whole gift basket of chocolate treats and tuck this in there.

Another great idea would be to make these cupcakes topped with an orange segment, filled with orange cream, pour a little of the dark chocolate orange sauce on top, have a Holiday party and as a party favour, have everyone take a little bottle of the sauce home with them!

..Or you could just eat it all yourself. I won’t tell anyone. *smile*

In the meantime, here are the recipes-

Chocolate Buttermilk Cupcakes

2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
6 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Line two 12-cup muffin tins with cupcake papers. Set aside.

In a small bowl, sift together the flour and baking soda. Set aside.

In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugars and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the chocolate, mixing until well incorporated. Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the buttermilk and vanilla. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated, but do not overbeat. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended and the batter is smooth. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about three-quarters full. Bake for 20–25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

Cool the cupcakes in the tins for 15 minutes. Remove from the tins and cool completely on a wire rack.

Once the cupcakes have fully cooled, you can fill them with the orange cream filling.

I used THIS recipe for buttercreams, and for the flavours, I added 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract and 1/2 teaspoon orange extract. You can do all orange if you like, but I felt it was a bit overpowering, and I liked the ‘creamsicle’ effect of using the vanilla as well. I just made the buttercream filling, its like a thickened frosting.

To fill the cupcakes-

Use a small paring knife, cut off the top of the cupcake in the shape of a cone. Flip the top over and cut off the pointy end of the cone, leaving a the “shell” of the cupcake top with a little bit of fluffy cake still attached. Fill the cavity left in the cupcake with a teaspoon or so of the orange cream filling. Replace the top of the cupcake.

You don’t have to add this special step, but you may notice that there are two different tones of chocolate on the cupcake. I melted some milk chocolate and spread a little of it on top of the cupcake, that way it wasn’t just DARK chocolate on DARK cupcakes, the lighter tone of the milk chocolate really makes the chocolate sauce more noticeable in the photograph, and it tastes good too!

Dark Chocolate Orange Sauce

12 ounce dark chocolate cut into small pieces (if you really want to make a milk chocolate sauce, feel free to use milk chocolate, or even semi sweet chocolate)
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon orange liqueur (or you can use a teaspoon pure orange extract in its place)

Place the chopped chocolate in a medium sized stainless steel bowl and set aside.
Combine the cream, sugar, and corn syrup in a saucepan and place over low heat. Bring to a boil, stirring often.
Remove from heat and pour immediately over the chocolate. Let stand until the chocolate has melted, then stir until smooth.

Stir in the vanilla extract and liquor.
Strain into your choice of sealable container (I used food grade glass bottles from Specialtybottle.com, you can use canning jars, re-use other containers like baby food jars or peanut butter jars, Just make sure they can be immersed in hot water for reheating)

Makes about 2 cups of chocolate sauce.

The chocolate sauce will keep for a few months in the refrigerator.

If you give the sauce as a gift, you can label it however you wish. I made a simple label out of white paper, and I used a strip of clear tape to laminate and adhere it to the bottle. You can adorn the bottle or jar with a cloth topper, a ribbon tied around the bottle neck, or like I did, with a little wire ring and some beads (orange for orange flavour!) The wire embellishment is removeable once the lid is taken off, so it won’t interfere with pouring.

Just make sure to include a tag or a note stating the ingredients and the instructions for use-

Ingredients- Chocolate, Cream, Sugar, Corn syrup, Flavouring

To reheat chocolate sauce for use, remove the cap and dip the bottom 3/4 of the bottle in hot or boiling water for about 30 seconds. Do not boil the bottle, do not microwave the bottle with the lid on. Mix with milk, add a flavour boost to your hot cocoa, or pour on top of your choice of tasty treats. Enjoy!

-A.

P.S. if you’re not a fan of Chocolate and orange, you can make the cream filling using any flavour extract that appeals to you. Same with the Chocolate sauce, you can add a teaspoon of any sort of flavour extract, or a tablespoon of any flavoured liqueur that you feel would pair well with chocolate. Be creative! Be inventive!

My family has been making and eating oatmeal jam squares for as long as I can remember. I’ve actually even blogged about them way back when I first started this food blog (and wasn’t all that great with the photo taking just yet).

Truth be told, these cookies are just too tasty not to talk about.
Problem is, they have a bit of an image problem.

You see, they’re not exactly the best looking cookie on the planet.

Sure, I could dress them up with a drizzle of white chocolate, or a sprinkle of powdered sugar, or.. something, I don’t even know how many different ways there are to dress up a boring cookie. The problem isn’t so much that there aren’t options, but that it just doesn’t seem right.

A boring sugar cookie can be enhanced by sprinkles or frosting, which add colour and flavour in addition to eye appeal, but I guess some cookies just don’t need embellishment. These cookies are just THAT good.

These cookies are so good, one bite and you’ll want to eat the whole batch. The smell left in the house once these cookies start baking is amazing. They’re versatile. You can make them completely vegan without altering the taste, texture or appearance. You can change the whole flavour profile of the cookie by changing the flavour of the filling. You can make them more healthy by adding wheat germ or chopped nuts or using a wheat flour blend, all without damaging the flavour of these delicious cookies.

Here is a re-post of the recipe-

Oatmeal Jam squares

2 1/2 cups rolled Oats
1- 3/4 cups flour (either all purpose or half all purpose, half wheat)
1 cup melted butter or margarine (you can make this recipe completely vegan if you use Earth Balance)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup jam, jelly, applesauce or mashed up fruit. ( I use raspberry, strawberry or apricot most often. You can also mix jam flavours, if you have odds and ends in your fridge!)

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit

Mix everything but the jam together in a bowl.

Separate 2 cups of the mixture, press the rest of it into a 13×9in greased pan.

Spread the jam over that as evenly as possible. If the jam is especially thick, you may need to warm it up a bit in the microwave and pour it onto the bottom layer of the oat mixture.

Sprinkle the rest of the oat mixture on top of the preserves. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the top of the cookie is golden brown. Cool. Cut into little squares.

Make sure you allow the cookie to cool COMPLETELY (about half an hour) before cutting it, or the result will be a big gooey mess that burns your tongue. I know this because I made them last winter and couldn’t hold myself back, so I spooned a bit into my mouth, burning my tongue and the roof of my mouth. The small piece of missing cookie caused the rest of the cookie to slide forward and turn into a big gooey problem. it still tasted good, but it was even less pretty than the cookies you see here.

Enjoy!

-A.

*EDIT 1/18/07*
For those of you who are just now reading this post, here are a few things I’d like to note-

• Yes, there is bacon on the inside of the cookie as well as on the top as a garnish
• Yes, I used “Streaky” bacon, not “canadian” bacon.
• Maple syrup is not the same thing as maple extract. Maple extract is much stronger than even reduced maple syrup. You will not achieve the same effect as Maple extract with Maple syrup!
• The cinnamon maple glaze is there for a reason. Have you ever splashed a little maple syrup on your breakfast bacon? Its not half bad. It bridges the gap between pork and cookie.
• if you change the recipe or the ingredients and you’re not happy with the outcome, Sorry. Don’t blame me.
• If the idea of bacon cookies doesn’t sound good to you, pass on through. Complaining is optional and most likely to be ignored.

And lastly-

• PLEASE OH PLEASE remember to cook your bacon before using it to make the cookie. No one wants a bit of uncooked pork in their cookie. That would be the opposite of delicious.

——————————————–
This whole thing started the other night when my husband and I were having a conversation about what foods could and could not be made better with the addition of bacon.

Sure, that was a good salad, but it would have been so much better with bacon. That was a delicious baked potato.. I wish it had some bacon on it. You know what was missing from breakfast this morning?- bacon. I think we’ve come up with so many foods which bacon can enhance, that we really were wondering what foods it wouldn’t.

We came up with quite a few ideas… Lemon and bacon should stay far far away from each other, at least as far as a direct contact with the lemon juice goes (and this is just my personal opinion). The tartness of the citrus would render bacon’s smoky rich undertones utterly useless.

This would definately be bad for bacon. Also, bacon and peaches are a no go (at least for me, as I’m not a fan of peaches). This means no bacon peach cobbler, no peaches and cream with bacon. Actually, bacon and milk should probably stay far away from each other (again, as far as direct contact with the milk itself goes). Bacon panna cotta? no. Not good. Bacon Jello also wouldn’t work. I think the bacon might actually interfere with gelatin’s jelling properties, but I don’t know for sure, because I haven’t yet tried it. And there will definitely be no boiling of the bacon. Have you seen ‘Better off dead’? Ew.

Then we started talking about what bacon has successfully been added to, and the thought of the maple bacon bar donut at Voodoo donut back home, and Vosages bacon chocolate bar made me wonder..

Could I make a cookie with bacon? How about a chocolate chip cookie?

My husband cringed. He asked me to make a small batch, just in case. He’s a big fan of standard chocolate chip cookies, so to see a whole batch go to waste if the bacon addition didn’t work, I think it might have made him cry.

But I had to do it. The bacon and chocolate chip cookie had to be made.

So I did it. I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, split the dough in half and added a whole mess of bacon to it. I probably would have called it quits at half a cup of bacon bits, but I couldn’t see the bacon in the dough, so I added another half cup. That’s a whole cup of bacon bits in half a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

(this photo is iso you can see the bacon bits in the cookie itself)

Typically, I would never advocate the addition of meat to a sweet cookie, but I’ve always viewed bacon as “the candybar of meats” so I only felt slightly weird about it.

Amazingly enough, these cookies are DELICIOUS.

I topped them with a small amount of cinnamon maple glaze and a little piece of bacon, just so people know, YES! There is bacon in here.

So if you’re feeling adventurous, or if you know of a bacon obsessed nerd who might appreciate these cookies, you should definitely make them. Here is my recipe-

Bacon chocolate chip cookies-
(this is for a FULL batch)

3/4 cup butter(It has been suggested that using 1 full cup of butter works best due to cookie dough dryness)
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon hazelnut (or almond) extract

*Edit- It has been suggested that the almond flavouring may be overpowering to the flavour of the cookie, feel free to add this ingredient to taste*
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg (It has been suggested that using 2 eggs works best due to cookie dough dryness)
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup dark or semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 cups bacon bits (if preferred, you can separate the dough into two parts and only make half of the dough into bacon cookies, in which case you’ll only want to use 1 cup bacon bits)

*An important note- Be sure to use real bacon bits, not Bacos *See large print at the bottom of this post*

Also, you can make your own bacon bits, just make sure you pat down the bacon chunks with paper towels to remove as much extra bacon grease as possible. *Edit* one of my readers made their own bacon bits and found out that apparently it takes about 2lbs of bacon to make 2 cups of bacon bits, just for future reference.

Directions-

preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.

Beat together the butter, sugars, flavouring and eggs until creamy. In another bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and stir together. Dough will be slightly soft. If you want a cakier cookie, add another half cup of flour. Add in chocolate chips and bacon bits. Stir until well integrated. Place dough on a sheet of waxed paper and refrigerate at least an hour. Remove dough from fridge, pinch off 1 1/2 inch pieces of dough and roll into balls. Set dough balls about 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten dough balls slightly with your fingers in the center.

Bake cookies for about 10 minutes, or until the dough starts to turn golden brown. Allow cookies to cool on a cooling rack while you ready the glaze.

Maple cinnamon glaze-

2 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon maple extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon *edit- it has been suggested that 1 teaspoon may be a bit much, so go ahead and add to taste*
enough water to make a thick glaze (I used about 3 tablespoons)

Mix all ingredients together until smooth and creamy. If lumpy, use a whisk.

Spread a small amount of the glaze on the top of each cookie and top with a small piece of crisp cooked bacon.

Voila! Delicious!

-A.

Just a little note-
I am in no way saying that I am the first person to create “bacon cookies”, I’m just sharing with you how I came about making a batch of them myself (although I did do a web search and wasn’t really able to find much on cookies with bacon in them, not everyone posts stuff on the internet.) And the recipe that I came up with.

If you’re upset because they’re made with meat, you can just as easily make them with egg substitute, earth balance instead of butter and fake bacon.

Also, if you do not like the bacon cookies, don’t make them. Insulting me because you can’t handle the bacon/cookie combo is completely unnecessary. You’re more than welcome to keep your opinion to yourself. These are purely a novelty/experimental cookie.

I am not planning on making meat cookies a regular part of my baking profile, so don’t worry. There will be no sausage patty cupcakes or beef candy… Although I did make meat cupcakes for April fools day…

I just needed to try something fun. Bacon cookies ARE fun. Bacon is funny.
It just so happened to taste pretty good.

So it snowed here in Seattle on Saturday.
To celebrate, I made a batch of iced sugar cookies with snowflakes on them.

The first cookies of the Christmas season!

I have always been a big fan of snow.
Snow days and snowflakes and snowmen are some of my favourite things.

Something about a cotton filled sky and a landscape of white just makes everything look happy and festive. It makes me want to turn off the TV and curl up infront of the window and watch the fluffy stuff accumulate on the green grass below, with a mug of hot cocoa at my side. Part of my inner child craves snow. I was always the kid who would run out into the snow in the middle of the night if I saw that it was snowing. I would spend my days making snowpeople and snow angels and catching snowflakes on my tongue while praying that the snow would keep going just one more day.

…And just one more day after that.

Snowdays were a hot commodity for school children.

I was lucky as a kid. I had my best friend living just down the road from me. Even though we lived in the middle of nowhere, we could manage walking to each other’s houses, so long as the snow wasn’t too packed, slick, or ice covered. I can remember many instances where my face, elbows and butt made quick contact with the ice covered snow when I wasn’t being very careful.

The long winter season in the northwest provided us much time to cultivate a system for lowering ice caused accidents while walking from place to place. Within this system, there were three guidelines-

Walk hard. Step down heel first.
Walk slow. Keep your feet shoulders width apart and brace yourself between steps for the possibility of slippage.
Carry a big stick. Roosevelt had this part right, as a big stick makes you into an instant walking tripod, and with a steady base, its nearly impossible to fall.

There were still accidents though. Like the time I didn’t realize that our porch steps were shiny because the snow on them had melted and then frozen again. Yeah, I was really glad that we only had 5 steps, but I was even more grateful that I only made contact with two of them as I fell to the fluffy snow below. Ouch.

My best friend was a little more prepared, it seemed. Her parents had moved to our neighbourhood from Minnesota a few years before she was born, and since the winters were much more harsh where they were from, they came with full winter battle regalia, a regular snow-pocalypse preparation kit. The day she made her way to my house in snowshoes, I seriously wondered why she had strapped tennis racquets to her shoes. The fact that she was wearing some strange polar ice cap rated snow suit was beside the point.

I was fairly comfortable in my jeans over sweatpants over leggings over bike shorts- situation, with my winter coat, which was sort of like a fleece lined windbreaker. I had a pair of gloves, but they were useless to me as they became waterlogged after one snowball had been formed, so they went on the ground, where I’d plan on picking them up later, but forget about on my way back into the house, so they’d stay there until the snow melted.

My mom was prepared for my daily snow outings. She set up a ‘decontamination’ station in the entryway of the house, laying out a layer of black plastic sheeting from the doorway to the heater, about 10 ft away, and setting up a quilt drying rack for me to lay my clothes on as I shed my layers of snow drenched clothing. I wasn’t allowed to set foot in the house until she set up this area, and I had to shake as much of the loose snow off of myself before even entering the prepared area. Anything to keep from dampening the carpets I guess.

For me, snow days were all about fun, freedom and friends, so when I see snowflakes, I’m reminded of those three things.

My snowflake adorned sugar cookies were simple to make, and could easily be decorated in a multitude of different ways.

So here is the recipe-

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup powdered sugar
2 teaspoons almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

In a medium sized bowl, whisk the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the sugars, flavouring, and eggs, and whisk thoroughly. Add the flour, baking soda and salt (I put the baking soda and salt on top of the flour and sort of stir it around before mixing all of the dry ingredients with the soft ingredients) and mix together using a spoon (wooden or plastic, just not a whisk). Dough will be soft and slightly sticky. Scrape all of dough onto a sheet of waxed paper and fold waxed paper over the dough. Refrigerate for about an hour.

Preheat oven to 350. With clean hands, roll a heaping teaspoon full of dough into a ball and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Make sure each dough ball is about an inch and a half away from the dough ball next to it. With cleaned and dried hands, press down on the top of each dough ball to flatten it slightly before baking. It will take anywhere from 6-10 minutes for the cookies to bake through. When the edges of the bottom of the cookie start to turn golden brown, pull the cookies from the oven. Either use multiple cookie sheets or allow the cookie sheet to cool between batches (otherwise the bottoms of the cookies will burn).

For icing, you have a few options.

If you are planning to give these cookies as packaged gifts, you might want to decorate them with royal icing, which is a thin icing that hardens as it dries so that when packaged, the icing is more sturdy and difficult to break. Recipes are available *HERE* .

If you’re planning on just eating them yourself or perhaps bringing them to a party, or some other use where they’re not really going to spend much time being looked at before being snarfed down, I’d suggest either using regular buttercream, cream cheese or boiled frosting.

If you’re looking for a thin icing that tastes better than royal icing (and isn’t made with egg whites or meringue powder) You can use this recipe from my archives that I’ve used on many occasions to decorate sugar cookies with very good results (there is also another recipe for sugar cookies on there, if you’re looking to make rolled sugar cookies).

Although the snow melted away nearly as fast as it came, for a few brief moments I found myself gazing out the window with the same seasonal excitement that I felt as a child on a snow day. I hope it snows again, it would be a wonderful year for a white Christmas!

-A

P.S. If you’re looking for ideas for packaging cookies for shipping, here is a link to some helpful tips and tricks!

… Just so ya’ll know I’m not crazy, Pigs and peppermint have gone together for quite a long time- Click HERE for mor information on the Peppermint Pig Christmas tradition.

One of my favourite things about winter is the sudden availability of peppermint ice cream.

You know, the pink kind with the little chunks of peppermint candy in it. The kind that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy and wintery just smelling it.

In my teens, I was obsessed with Schwans brand peppermint ice cream. My mom had started making regular orders to the schwans delivery man when I was 13 or so, and that was one of my first requests for her to order. It was smooth and creamy and perfect. It was a beautifully bright shade of pink, filled with all sorts of chunks of peppermint candy that was oddly easy to bite into, and not toothbreakingly hard like one might assume “hard” candy would be when frozen.

Through my teens I never had to search for another brand of peppermint ice cream. It was all about the Schwans.

…Then they switched from pink peppermint to GREEN mint, with primary coloured mint chunks, and it was no longer strictly peppermint flavoured, but rather a more generic mint flavour, combining the wonderful peppermint with a hint of wintergreen, my least favourite flavour on the planet, causing the whole mess to taste a bit like toothpaste.

I was not happy.

But I also could not locate another pink peppermint ice cream.

Over time, I moved on in ice cream flavours.

Peppermint fell by the wayside in order to make room for more common, generic flavours, like Blue Bunny’s Classic chocolate and Ben and Jerry’s Karamel core and Häagen-Dazs strawberry. There was a brief stint with Tillamook orange cream, but that didn’t last long.

Then suddenly last week, after sort of boycotting ice cream due to tooth sensitivity, I began craving peppermint ice cream. Still unable to really enjoy ice cream to its fullest, I decided to try and make a cupcake version of the delicious ice cream flavour.

Vanilla mint cupcakes with peppermint cream icing-
(magnolia vanilla cupcake recipe + a few alterations)

1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 teaspoons pure peppermint extract
In a small bowl, combine the flours. Set aside.

In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the dry ingredients in 3 parts, alternating with the milk, cream, vanilla and peppermint (you can mix the liquid ingredients together if you wish). With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not over beat. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about 3/4 full. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

Cool the cupcakes in tins for 15 minutes. Remove from the tins and cool completely on a wire rack before icing. This recipe will make about 2 dozen standard size cupcakes or about 48 mini cupcakes. (give or take a few, depending on your how full you fill the muffin cups and how large your muffin cups actually are.)

Peppermint cream icing-

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
6 to 8 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 teaspoons pure peppermint extract Place the butter in a large mixing bowl. Add 4 cups of the sugar and then the cream and peppermint. On the medium speed of an electric mixer, beat until smooth and creamy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Gradually add the remaining sugar, 1 cup at a time, beating well after each addition (about 2 minutes), until the icing is thick enough to be of good spreading consistency. You may not need to add all of the sugar. If desired, add a few drops of food coloring and mix thoroughly. Chill for about 15 minutes in the refrigerator before using, and only use to ice COLD cupcakes.

Trust me. They’re delicious.

-A.

P.S. If anyone knows a brand that makes pink peppermint ice cream that is smooth and creamy and TO DIE FOR, Lemme know.

It never fails.
Every winter I get this overwhelming craving for cinnamon rolls.

It probably stems mostly from my family’s tradition of getting Cinnabon cinnamon rolls every Thanksgiving and Christmas eve. Growing up, fancy store bought cinnamon rolls were a luxury that could only be afforded for super special occasions, and originally, we only had them on Christmas eve. After a while my mom decided that Thanksgiving was a good day for Cinnamon rolls, because we ate “dinner” anywhere between 2pm and 4pm, right in the middle of the day. A nice, big, delicious cinnamon roll could tide us over until our feast was ready to be devoured… even if it did take a few glasses of milk to wash that turkey down.

But as with many things, our family has changed. Theres that whole matter of my cinnamon allergy (which I ignore each and every time I smell fresh cinnamon rolls, by the way. I’d gladly trade a swollen tongue for just one delicious cinnamon roll.) We don’t all live under the same roof, my older sister and I are not the only “kids”. My younger sisters have grown up wholly different than we did, my parents matured and are more secure financially, so there is no need to set aside special days for treats that could not be afforded during the rest of the year, and special treats like Cinnabon cinnamon rolls for Thanksgiving and Christmas seem pointless to them, because they can have them whenever they’d like.

…And they don’t even LIKE cinnamon rolls.
I know. Its sad, isn’t it?

Needless to say, it just doesn’t seem right in my heart (or stomach, for that matter) to eat a Cinnabon cinnamon roll outside of Thanksgiving day or Christmas eve… But there is nothing wrong with making my OWN cinnamon rolls during the rest of the winter.

Just the other morning, early on Saturday, I found myself unable to sleep.

Its been cold and blustery up here lately, Fall seems to be turning to winter a lot faster than I remember in previous years… Or maybe I’m just getting older faster. I decided it was a great morning to wake up and make some tasty little cinnamon rolls for my husband, who was sleeping still.

Perhaps the smell of baking cinnamon and yeast dough would ‘rouse him gently, or perhaps he wouldn’t notice. Either way, I decided to make some cinnamon rolls.

The plan was simple.
Make the dough. Let it rise once, roll it out, section it off, roll those out, fill, roll up, slice, rise and bake. After they were out of the oven, I would glaze them, photograph them, feed them to my husband, and go about my day.

…but it didn’t happen quite like that.

I got through the baking part just fine. Out of the oven came amazingly delicious almond and cinnamon scented puffs of dough, oozing with buttery brown sugar filling. I placed them on a plate and iced them with an almond and vanilla flavoured thin buttery icing.

I couldn’t resist. I ate one.
Then a second one.

I didn’t feel so bad about eating two, because they were really small. I decided to feed a few to my husband while they were still warm… I’d save about half of them and just photograph those ones. It would be ok.

So I woke up my husband, and told him I made cinnamon rolls. At first he didn’t believe me, but then he smelled them. He grabbed a few and with a few “ooh’s” and “aah’s”… oh, who am I kidding.

He wolfed those puppies down.
They were gone in a flash. A few remained, but after I put the plate back in the kitchen I felt a little sleepy, so I laid down for little while and when I returned… they were gone. Only the residue of glaze remained on the plate.

…and there were tongue marks where my husband had apparently decided to try and finish that off, too.

So this morning I went for round two. Instead of almond I went with orange flavouring, but to be honest, I really enjoyed the almond better. My husband on the other hand… He says he likes the orange ones better.

So I guess its up to you which flavour you make them!
Just make them!

Teeny tiny orange (or almond) cinnamon rolls-

1 pkg. active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees)
1/2 cup lukewarm milk (scalded then cooled)
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
3 1/2 to 4 cups all-purpose flour

Filling-
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon orange extract (or almond extract)

Dissolve yeast in warm water in large bowl. Stir in milk, sugar, butter, salt, egg and 2 cups of the flour. Beat until smooth. Mix in enough remaining flour to make dough easy to handle.

zSB(3,3)

Turn dough onto lightly floured surface, knead until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Place in greased bowl; turn greased side up. Cover; let rise in warm place until double, about 1 1/2 hours. (dough is ready if an indentation remains when touched).

Punch down dough. Separate dough into quarters and roll each section out into flat rectangles about as thick as a flour tortilla.

In a small bowl, mix together the ingredients for the filling. Spread about a quarter of the mixture on the flat sheet of dough and roll the dough up jellyroll style. Slice each finished roll into small sections, each section being a finished miniature cinnamon roll (slices depend on your preference and conditions. You can make larger cinnamon rolls or smaller ones, almost as thin as cookies. Its up to you.) Place each finished cinnamon roll slice on end (one of the cut ends down on the baking sheet) and continue with each of the quarters of dough. Allow rolls to rise for about 35-40 minutes, then bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes (small rolls, like mine) or 20-30 minutes for standard or jumbo sized rolls.

I made tiny cinnamon rolls that were about 1″x 1 1/2″ and ended up with about 30 of them.

For the glaze, mix together a tablespoon of melted butter, a tablespoon of milk or cream, a tablespoon of orange extract (or almond extract) and 2-4 cups powdered sugar, depending on how thick you want your glaze to be. You can also add a drop of food colouring to the mix, like I did for my orange rolls. (You may need to add more or less liquid to thin out your icing, depending on how much powdered sugar you use. Since I only used 2 cups, I only needed three tablespoons of liquid-melted butter, cream and flavouring. If you start out with more powdered sugar, you will surely need more liquid, however you will end up with more icing than is needed for this recipe of cinnamon rolls. Use your own judgement and common sense.)

Glaze the rolls as soon as they’re out of the oven to seal in the softness. Let them cool for a few minutes then devour!

See.. the robot even tried to sneak one!

-A.

I like to believe that I’m a different person than I was in high school.

When I was a teenager, I was a bit of a loner. I spent the first three years of high school trying to fit in. My senior year, I decided it would just be a better idea to spend as much as possible in the art room of my small rural high school.

Sure, I had friends, but the majority of them were really just situational friends. People who I would never see again once I was in charge of my own “real life” schedule, and high school was over. But during those fragile years, I didn’t see that. I had my blinders on, and my goal was to gain as much popularity as possible.

I know I’m not the only kid who fell into this trap.

I know that many kids think that the only way to get through high school is to pretend they’re something that they’re not, and succumb to peer pressure.

Luckily, I didn’t go about my quest for popularity that way.

I never did drugs or went to rowdy parties or get suspended from school. I never ever had to go to detention or got in trouble with my parents.

Nope.

I tried to be popular by signing up to be my high school mascot…

The Spudder.

If you’re not sure what a Spudder is, it’s a potato. A large, light brown, crowned, hell-bent on glory, potato.

My duties as “the mighty spudder” included, but were not limited to-

-Drumming up support and cheers during football games.
-Partaking in my own personal dance, or.. “doing the mighty spudder”
-Instructing others how to join in. (the directions went something like *shout * “DO THE MIGHTY SPUDDER NOW! OOH- ah ah ah OOH ah ah ah OOH” and flexing my mighty shoestring arms while voguing. Yeah, its one of those “you’d have to see it” kinda deals.)
-Attending pep rallies, assemblies, all football games and related activities
-Posing for photos with adorable little kids who had no idea exactly how smelly the inside of the giant potato suit I was wearing really was.

It was really quite fun, although during the time I donned the costume, I had to maintain the façade of “unaffected teenager” because that’s what my friends were. They hated school, pep rallies, cheer. All that fun stuff.

Thusly, I never divulged my whereabouts during football season during my sophomore and junior years, instead telling my friends that I was busy with family stuff, and couldn’t hang out or whatever.

My secret stayed a secret until about a year after high school when one of my friends found a photo of me with the cheerleaders, holding onto the costume…. And I was smiling. I was actually enjoying the company of cheerleaders, and that was suspicious. I spilled my guts and told them all about my two years of service as the football season spudder.

They laughed.
I laughed.

From then on out I’ve heard constant jokes about potatoes.

My favourite was about three years ago, right around Thanksgiving, hanging out at my parents house while my mom and dad debated the differences between sweet potatoes and yams, and which was better or even acceptable for thanksgiving dinner, as well as which of the two my mom had been serving over the years.

He turned to me and said “Ooh, ooh! You should go in there and announce-‘I yam what I yam, and that’s a sweet potato”.

My recipe for sweet potato cupcakes with brown sugar butter cream cheese icing-

1/2 cup Butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup cooked, peeled and mashed sweet potatoes
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon maple or vanilla extract

Cream the butter and slowly add sugar, eggs and sweet potatoes. Sift the flour, baking powder, soda and spices together in a separate bowl. Mix the maple extract into the milk and Add dry ingredients alternately with the milk into the sweet potato mixture. ( Drier sweet potatoes might require more milk.)

Spoon the batter into lined cupcake cups. (I used parchment paper squares that I folded into the metal muffin tin)

Bake in 350° oven for 20-30 minutes. (this recipe made 36 standard cupcakes for me, though yours might vary depending on the size of your muffin cups and the thinness of your batter.)
For the icing-

1/2 cup butter
2 8oz packages cream cheese
3-4 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar

Beat together the butter and cream cheese until soft and creamy (use a stand mixer). Add in 3 cups powdered sugar. Mix until crumbly. While mixer is still on, add in the brown sugar. Depending on how soft the mixture becomes (the brown sugar will add moisture, so it will thin out the icing) add 1/2-1 cup powdered sugar until the frosting is fluffy.

Spread a generous amount of frosting on cooled cupcakes, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and top with a marshmallow, unless you’re one of those people who think putting marshmallows on top of sweet potatoes is just weird, in which case… spoon on a little whipped cream. But marshmallows work much better.

Eat and enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving day tomorrow!

-A.