Rolled Sugar Cookies

I decided that I was going to bring some heart shaped cookies to work for Valentine's Day this year. My coworkers put in an amazing amount of effort each and every day, and I want them to feel some love. (The manly kind that does not make people uncomfortable!)

Cookies have the ability to make just about anyone happy, and sugar cookies are always a nice little treat, so I went for it. For some reason, I ignored the fact that I have my mother's traditional recipe, and looked this one up. It's pretty much your average sugar cookie recipe, minus the calls for lemon juice or zest, and felt familiar so I ran with it.

First warning, don't double this recipe! I did, because I have well over 100 people around the office that I want to give cookies to. I needed to double it, for the volume, but I should have made two separate batches. As one big batch... it's too big! 

The Recipe

It's linked above, but I'm going to write out my shorthand version, because I converted it to grams for use with my digital scale and now you won't have to!

Rolled Sugar Cookies

The Wet Goods

• 340.5 grams softened butter (room temperature)
• 400 grams white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 4.2 grams vanilla extract

The Dry Goods

• 625 grams flour (white for visual appeal on finished product, wheat if you are healthy!)
• 9.2 grams baking powder
• 6 grams salt

Making It

This one is quite easy. Using a hand blender cream the sugar and butter. I went for a very smooth cream, where you couldn't find the grains of sugar even if you finger tasted it. I like it super smooth. Once the sugar and butter are one, beat in eggs and vanilla.

After you have a nice consistency on the wet goods, simply add all the dry goods, stirring with a large wooden spoon, and fold it into a nice cookie dough.

Chill that dough for an hour in the fridge.

Remove the cold dough and roll it out to 1/4" thickness. Attack with a cookie cutter, putting the shaped cookies on a baking sheet and rolling the remnants back into the cold dough. Because I had so much to work with, I would take large sections of dough off the main, and put it back in the fridge to keep it cold.

After a baking sheet is full of cut cookies, decorate them with sugars if you like. This is a simple step that nobody ever told me, and it helps keep the sugar on the cookie after it's baked. The sugar can take the heat, and if you put it on after you bake it the sugar will just fall off. Then you have a sad cookie.

Bake the cookies at 350 for about eight minutes. The recipe as linked says 400, but I found that a few of the cookies were burning at that temp, and I really had to watch the oven like a hawk. Cutting the temp back a little will give you more time to think while you are rolling and cutting and baking. 

Plating

I didn't plate these cookies for visuals yet. I have them in a large container that will travel well to work. Making a nice plate would be pretty easy though, I used a very small cutter so I have a few hundred cookies, and my daughters helped me decorate them so I have all kinds of colors. It's not exactly Valentine's colors, but who's going to complain? Nobody in their right mind that's who!

We ran out of sprinkles about half way through, so my wife jumped in and made some cookie frosting using my mother's recipe. She added a twist to mom's standard (which is tried and true) and replaced normal vanilla extract with French vanilla extract, and the frosting gained a level. I'm not kidding, we had a guest over last night, and everyone was sneaking in cookies as fast as they could, especially the frosted ones.

I broke down and plated them anyway, for this picture. NOMM!

Afterthoughts

These cookies are awesome, my coworkers will probably gobble them up in a few quick minutes! That's my hope at least, because I like them a lot and do not need to eat a full double batch of sugar cookies all on my own! Next time I will go back to my mother's recipe for the cookie itself, but these are fantastic. The cookies are light, crisp, and melt in your mouth. They are full of sugar and butter after all. Your doctor will tell you these are bad for you, so will your nutritionist - and then they will both grab a few and run out the door.

Yes, it's been a while. I didn't stop making food, but I got too busy to blog. Whoops! Also, I need to give thanks to my eldest daughter, who put a lot of effort into rolling, cutting, and decorating the cookies with me. One day she's going to own the kitchen.

Blonde Brownies I

A family tradition in my house for Christmas Eve is to put on a spread of sweets and other guilty pleasures, watch Christmas movies, and just be with whomever happens to be around. This year we are cranking it up a notch and adding a chocolate fountain to the mix.

Yeah, I must be going crazy, they are cheap though!

Work has taught me that you need a spread of bite sized things to dunk under the fountain of chocolate and I can vouch for the fact that brownies pretty much rock the chocolate. So they are mandatory.

The Recipe


I wanted some light brownies as well, for folks who don't want chocolate on chocolate, and did some searching for a good recipe. This is what I decided to go with:


Blonde Brownies I


The Dry Goods

• 125 g sifted all-purpose flour
• 2 g baking powder
• 0.6 g baking soda
• 3 g salt
• 60 g chopped walnuts
• The Wet Goods

The Wet Goods

• 75 g butter
• 220 g packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 15 ml vanilla extract
• Breaking the Recipe

Also, chocolate chips!


Making It


This one is easy as pie. Put the dry goods together and mix them, put the wet goods together and mix them (melt that butter), then put them both together and mix them. Pour in a 9x9 pan and bake!


Breaking the Recipe


Because this was going in the chocolate fountain, I held back the chocolate chips and walnuts. My goal is for the flavor to be simple and nice and then to let the chocolate add the zing to it.


Plating


It's not really going to plate, because it's not ready until its on a stick and drenched in liquid chocolate, so I took a picture of it in the pan I'm keeping everything. I cut the brownies down to small bite size nibblers, which should work well with the fountain.

Afterthoughts


Once things were cooled and cut, I tried them. OK, I tried them while cutting them! They are good, but not quite what I hoped. They have a nice flavor, reminiscent of a caramel. In my mind I was looking for something golden and cake like. I think the blame falls on me, I should have gone from the cake angle. I can't blame the recipe. 


It does taste good, and chocolate and caramel are a great match, so I think it'll work nice on Christmas Eve.


Special thanks to my daughters, who did the dirty work of making this while I supervised. They bake like pros!

Christmas Pancakes

This morning I made Christmas Pancakes for my girls. How did I do that? Earlier in the year we found a frying pan that is custom molded with four silver dollar pancake molds in the following shapes: Santa, Frosty, Gingerbread Man, and Christmas Tree.

It was at Target, on one of their end-caps, and we do family breakfast in my house so this was an easy purchase. I thought i was getting a cast iron pan, which is great for frying things, but when I got home and put it to use I found out it's aluminum. It does have a non-stick surface, more on that later.

Here is a link to the pan:
Nordic Ware Christmas Morning Pancake Pan

The Recipe

Now pancakes are pretty common, you can buy the mix in a box if you want, or whip it up from any number of recipes. My preferred recipe is from Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking book. I'm a huge Alton Brown fan, and his pancake recipe is visited regularly in my house.

His approach to baking is pretty simple; assemble the wet good and dry goods in separate bowls, do whatever special thing on the side you need to do, and then bring it all together and get it in or on the oven.

For pancakes, it goes something like this:

The Dry Goods

• 2 Cups Flour
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 Teaspoon Salt
• 3 Tablespoons Sugar

The Wet Goods

• 2 Large Eggs
• 2 Cups Buttermilk
• 4 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter (melted and cooled)

Breaking the Recipe

I don't actually do much to break this particular recipe. Pancakes are pancakes after all. Most of the time I'll add some cinnamon to the dry goods to give it a little zip. We are also fond of adding some vanilla extract to the wet goods. When I got my current job, I discovered the joys of almond milk, if you add that to the recipe instead of buttermilk, the pancakes come out almost malted - it's a neat twist that surprises people.

If I'm feeling especially crafty, I add a few tablespoons of vegetable oil to the mix and break out the waffle iron. The oil helps make the resulting waffles (and pancakes) a little crispy on the outside without burning them.

Making It

There isn't much to say here, they are pancakes after all, just assemble both sets of goods, then bring them together, let it rest for five minutes or so, and start making pancakes!

This is the mixture, ready to go. I use a 1/2 cup for pouring because it gives me more than I need and I can play with the size of the pancake. That's less relevant with this special frying pan, but I still need something to pour with!

Here are the pancakes in the Christmas frying pan. It's not much to see because the molded side is under the batter. Just you wait though!

Here they are flipped into a ready frying pan. It's hot and greased so they don't stick. Why do I need a second pan? Look to the picture before this one, the pancake batter is on the mold but there isn't anything giving heat to the other side - and that specialty pan isn't the kind you flip them in. Or maybe you do, I didn't see a clean way to do it.

Plating


Below you see the final product! Note the impressive side of bacon we also had available. I have a trick for cooking bacon, but that's for another day. As you can see, a simple batch of pancake batter makes a good number of silver dollar pancakes. My girls loved it.

Afterthoughts

Pancakes are pancakes. Any simple recipe can work, but they all need that extra special whatever to make them 'home' don't they? In my house that's cinnamon and vanilla. you could pour in fresh fruit chunks, chocolate chips, or anything and they will take it. Pancakes are good like that.

The Nordic Ware frying pan that made these ones Christmas? I wish it was cast iron. The non-stick surface isn't non-stick enough for me, and I like cast iron. I don't hate the product, but I doubt I'll buy one of their other pancake pans for summer use. These ones are worth the not-so-non-stick from Thanksgiving to Christmas to make it more fun for my kids.

Best of luck!

My Thoughts on Social Kitchens

When you blog about fun in the kitchen, you make it social. Other people can see the food you make and share their own thoughts and experiences. While it is not the same as sitting in a kitchen together, it does make the process something social, and I really like that.

In an effort to make sure that I'm being a good social blogger, I'm going to make sure that I do a few things to add to the conversation. Nothing surprising, and nothing unusual, but at least one item on my list is a violation of the rules for many home cooks: I'm going to share my recipes and sources.

Whenever I meet people who don't do that, it makes me crazy in a way. I think it's a selfish behavior that isn't sensible. When someone asks you for your recipe and secret, that's the best compliment you can ever have! Not only does it taste good, they want to try it at home!

So I'll share the recipe I use to make something, as well as the source. That way you know my secrets and can try it at home too! Sharing the source lets you get that book, or view the website, so you know where I found it and why I tried it as well. I've got nothing to hide.

I'll also make note of what I do to break the recipe. The kitchen is a science lab, ingredients at fixed ratios work together in predictable ways - but it's also an art room. Adding something to a recipe to suit your own needs is a good thing, and a regular thing with me. Throwing things together from whatever I have on hand is also part of the fun, so I break the recipes constantly, and will do my best to let you know when and why I do it.

Lastly, I'll try to take a few pictures. Not a ton of them, but enough to show the process and let you see what I see. I'm going to do that from my phone camera, so it won't be food art, but it will hopefully help some.

...and that's it! The next posts will be less about the blog and more about the food - it's the holiday season after all, and I have already done some holiday work in the kitchen (complete with photos to prove it).

The Grim Kitchen

What exactly is a 'grim kitchen' anyway? That is the primary question we will explore in this blog.

More than anything, this is a place for me to express my love for food and fun in the kitchen, and share the things my family and I make with the Internet at large. With any luck, I'll update once per week with an image and recipe for something made in my kitchen, and for bonus points I'll sprinkle in a few commentary posts as well along the way.

If I have no luck, I'll still have a place to make such posts when I can!