sugar cookies + secret santa

I did a secret santa exchange this year that had two stipulations: you must get the person a piece of clothing that reminds you of the person, and you must make something homemade. So of course, I baked cookies!

I recently saw a post over at The Curvy Carrot about decorating cookies with royal icing, and I figured this was a great opportunity to try my hand at it. Worst case, I failed, and could just make a batch of regular, yummy sugar cookies.

Well, I did fail... the first time... kind of. My first set of cookies were absolutely delicious—they were flaky, crisp, buttery, light and airy and had just a hint of vanilla. They disappeared quite quickly into my belly (sans decoration) because frankly, they were ugly.

The second round, I found a recipe intended for rolling and cutting shapes. These cookies retained their shapes almost perfectly, and kept a nice even color and sharp lines. Unfortunately, they taste pretty bland. Eaten by themselves, they crumble in your mouth with an indifferent flavor, that tastes mildly of butter, but mostly of flour.

So, I present to you both recipes. Do with them what you will! (If you use the second recipe, go to Curvy Carrot and trying your hand at decorating! It's easier than you think!)

As usual, these are both one-bowl, no electric mixer versions of the original.

[Note: I apologize for the lack of pictures. My wonderful photographer is currently inundated with architecture homework.]

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Delicious Sugar Cookies
adapted from AllRecipes.com

Ingredients
0.75c butter, room temperature
1c white sugar
0.5t salt
2 eggs
1t vanilla extract
2.5c all purpose flour
1t baking powder

Directions
1. Cut the butter into 0.5 inch cubes and microwave until it's almost as soft as whipped cream cheese. (Microwave it 15 seconds at a time. Once you see liquid, it's soft enough.)
2. Add the sugar and salt and mix it with a fork until they're incorporated (and slightly fluffy). You might need to take a break, unless you have an arm of steel.
3. Add the eggs and vanilla extract; beat again until they're fully incorporated.
4. Add the flour and baking powder in a small heap on top of the liquid ingredients. Mix the flour and baking powder together gently on top of the wet ingredients before stirring them in.
5. Chill the dough for at least 30 minutes.
6. An hour before you want cookies, take the dough out of the fridge. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
7. Either roll the dough out into shapes (they won't work very well), or make a log and cut off slices. Bake on parchment paper, or a greased baking tray, for 6 minutes. (Once any of them show golden brown on the edges, pull them out.)
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Book Review: Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter

This book is perhaps the polar opposite of the last book I read, Culinary Artistry. It wasn't quite as jaw dropping or awe inspiring, but I think I probably learned more from it. Cooking for Geeks is all about food science. The book explains why some dishes are cooked at 325°F, and others at 375°F; it teaches you why beef stew is better with cheap meat; and it delves into the insane world of sous vide cooking, among other scientific cooking techniques.

I'll start with the good. The main portion of the book is very well written, and to somebody with a basic or even rudimentary knowledge of the sciences, Potter makes all of the food science concepts incredibly clear. I learned a lot about cooking, baking and recipe selection (especially important with the huge range of recipes available on the internet). More importantly, I didn't forget it all once I put the book down. Potter has a way of making it so intuitive that it actually sticks. So while I've read at least 20 times before that baking soda is basic and baking powder is neutral, this is the first time I've been sure I've got those the right way around.

Still, the book isn't perfect. Personally, I found the first two chapters, basically an introduction to the kitchen and cooking, to be somewhat patronizing. Of course, Potter recommends that those of us who have some practical kitchen experience skip the first chapters—but why would you buy a book to not read a third of it?!

Also, by the time I got to the chapters on sous vide cooking and cooking with chemicals/additives, I had lost interest. Perhaps these chapters were too irrelevant to my life right now (my pantry barely has room for whole wheat flour, let alone ordering liquid nitrogen!), or perhaps it was because I read the book in about 3 days, but they just weren't that interesting.

Finally, unless you've taken some computer science, expect to miss some of the humor. In fact, I've taken computer science and I STILL missed some of the humor.

The highlights:
- a very clear presentation of basic food science
- lots of cool, easy experiments to try at home
- witty humor and funny interviews with chefs

The verdict:
This would be a perfect book to check out from your local library. It's an easy read, so you should be able to finish it in the typical two week loan period. If your library doesn't have it, it's a good enough read to buy, especially if your bookshelf is lacking in food science books. Still, it's not really a reference book, and is well enough presented that you don't need to keep it, you just need to read it.

Pecan Cinnamon Rolls

We bought Panera bagels recently and they always come with too much cream cheese. What do you do with extra cream cheese? Make cream cheese frosting of course. What goes well with cream cheese frosting? Cinnamon rolls!!!

Well, as it turns out, these cinnamon rolls are so good that they don't need any frosting. (Good thing, because we don't have any powdered sugar.)

Any suggestions on using up extra cream cheese?

One cinnamon roll didn't fit, so we baked it in its own ramekin.

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Pecan Cinnamon Rolls
makes 30 small rolls
adapted from For the Love of Cooking

Book Review: Culinary Artistry by A. Dornenburg and K. Page

I picked this book up the day I got it from the library and have had trouble putting it down since. I put off school work and (yes) sleep, just so I could tuck into its pages. This book is for the food lover—for the person who wants to think about food all the time, who wants to rethink the way they cook, the way they eat, the way they order at a restaurant. This is a book about beautiful food.

Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page work systematically through the creation of food. They begin with a brief introduction to food—why cooking is an art and all the things that make it special and different. They then slowly work their way up from composing flavors to creating a cuisine, and each step is tantalizing and mouthwatering.

By the chapter on composing a menu, I was mildly overwhelmed by all of the possibilities. I had no idea how much went into the planning of a menu, let alone the development of a 'signature' cuisine. Hungry for knowledge, I literally devoured this book and all of its wonderful insights.

The highlights:
- Lots of inspirational, insightful and just plain witty quotes from world-renowned chefs
- Illustrative recipes, that have the why explained as much as the how
- A comprehensive list of flavor pals and ingredient matches
- The 'desert island lists', where numerous chefs make a list of the 10 foods they would take with them to a desert island, and why

The verdict:
Get this book! It's a little bit obvious that it was written in the 1990s, so if you're up-to-date on your food trends, it will seem behind the times. Still, it's a beautiful book about beautiful food, all about the why and the how of food as an art, not a science.

Pumpkin Muffins: Take Three

A few weeks ago, I did a comparison of my original pumpkin muffin recipe and a new, low fat version. The low fat version blew the original recipe out of the water.. so much so that even if you were trying to gain weight, I'd recommend putting butter on the low fat version instead of eating the original.

The new recipe still wasn't perfect, though. It wasn't as tender as I'd like them, and still needed a little bit more oomph. In this iteration on the recipe, I've fixed the tenderness. I still need something to make the flavor out of this world amazing, but I think I trip to get more spices will help. (Right now I've only got cinnamon and nutmeg; I think I need some ginger.)

The changes: I replaced the white sugar with brown sugar; I added back in one more whole egg, replacing two egg whites; I used milk instead of carrots; and I decreased the baking time.

What I'd do next time: Use milk and carrots, but increase the amount of flour by .25 cup to compensate; bake at a lower temp for longer; add ginger to the spices.

Just tuning in? Check out the rest of the pumpkin muffin saga, including more recent recipes!

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Pumpkin Muffins
12 muffins