Gingerbread Men

I am choosing to write about the Christmas Day Gingerbread People today as a little trip down memory lane.  Today is my birthday, and many years ago (I cannot believe how many!) my mom and I made Gingerbread Men for my Kindergarten Birthday Party at school.  Back when you could take a treat to school to share with your classmates, and they were just gingerbread men (not people).  I am 99% sure we made our own stencil and cut out each cookie - no cookie cutter for us.  They had pink frosting decorations and in my mind they were the best gingerbread men ever!

These were kind of a rush job since we made them Christmas afternoon and I was about decorated and baked out.  We made several large cookies and a ton of small ones.  Next time they will just be the large cookies - they are much easier to decorate.  I finally made a small batch of royal icing for the decorations, but I did not take a lot of time for details.   I had not worked with royal icing before, so it was a little more stiff than I thought it would be.  I just quickly gave the tiny people dots for eyes, mouths, and buttons.

The cookies were good and had a very strong ginger flavor.  I would make this recipe again, using only the large cookie cutters and taking more time to decorate.  Be careful not to over bake, so they stay nice and soft.

These cookies are long gone, and I am looking forward to birthday cake tonight!  My favorite dessert I don't have to make! :)


Recipe from Cuisine at Home's Holiday Cookies.

Spicy Gingerbread People
Whisk together:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 Tablespoon ground ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream:
1 stick of unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar

Blend in; Beat in:
1/4 molasses
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream butter and sugars until smooth.  Blend molasses in to butter mixture, then beat in egg and vanilla until fully incorporated.  Add half the dry ingredients, mix until nearly incorporated, mix in remaining dry ingredients.  Shape dough in to a disk, wrap in plastic and chill at least 2 hours before rolling out.

Roll out on floured work surface, to about 1/8" thick.  Cut out and place on parchment paper lined baking sheets.
Bake 10-12 minutes at 350.
Cool on pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to rack.  Decorate and store in airtight containers for up to one week.

Gingerbread Man

Molasses Spice Cookies

This was a new Christmas Cookie I tried this year.  The recipe is from the Cuisine Holiday Cookies book.  I have loved most every recipe I have tried in their two holiday baking books that I have.  I have made several and there are many more I want to try.  I was debating on making these Molasses Spice Cookies or Ginger Spice Cookies.  I did not have any candied ginger at the time, so I decided on these. I do have candied ginger now, so I will have to try the others too.  The only problem is that now I want to think about Valentine's Day - chocolate, pink, red........ahhh.  Anyway, back to a cookie that far exceeded my expectations.

Two common themes here - one, I think they are a perfect cookie and two, I did not have the time to chill the dough before I baked the first batch.  With all my planning, you wouldn't think this would be an issue, but it always is. (Gingerbread Men we baked on Christmas Day because they had to chill and I mixed them up Christmas Eve).

I ended up making these for Small Group and then freezing the rest of the dough and baking for our Christmas party.  The batch that had not chilled, and the batch that had been frozen and then baked both came out great.  Very moist and full of flavor!

Molasses Spice Cookies
In a medium bowl whisk together:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 Tablespoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon each ground cloves, freshly ground black pepper, and salt
(yes, pepper!  I did not use that much salt; just a few grinds of sea salt)

In mixing bowl cream until light and fluffy:
1 cup packed dark brown sugar (I used light)
1/2 cup shortening (8Tbsp)
4 Tbsp unsalted butter softened (I do not like shortening, so I used all unsalted butter)

Add 1 egg; mix until combined.
Beat in 1/2 cup full flavor molasses and the minced zest of one orange. (I didn't have/use orange)
Add the flour mixture, beating just enough to combine.
Chill the dough at least 6 hours or overnight.  Or if you didn't plan like me, just bake them now. :)

Preheat oven to 350.
Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
Scoop dough using a small cookie scoop.  The recipe used a #100/1tsp scoop; I used a #70 because that is the smallest I have.
Roll in granulated sugar and place on the baking sheet, about 2 inches apart.  I think I had 5 rows of 3 on my sheets.
Bake cookies until edges are set, about 10 minutes.  Mine were perfect at 10 minutes.
Cool on the baking sheet.  I moved them to a cooling rack after about 5 minutes.

Enjoy the cookies and the "these are so good" comments you will get!

Molasses Spice Cookies

Peppermint Crunch Marshmallows

One of my favorite flavors....peppermint!
I made Peppermint Marshmallows for our Christmas party and then for Little C to take to school for her classmates for their Christmas "penny presents exchange."

This recipe is from King Arthur Flour.  I think I like these marshmallows better than the ones I made a couple years ago.  These are perfectly fluffy!  Of course, the others were plain and I coated them in sugar sprinkles rather than powdered sugar.  The powdered sugar lasts longer and doesn't affect the flavor of the marshmallows.  These are great by themselves or in hot chocolate!

Marshmallows are not a last minute whip-up as they need time to cure before cutting.  They are fun to make and it helps if you play Marshmallow World while putting them together, and then while cutting and tossing in the sugar! :-)

Click here for the recipe link.

Peppermint Crunch Marshmallows

Peppermint Crunch Marshmallows

Peppermint Crunch Marshmallows

Peppermint Crunch Marshmallows for Classmates

Vanilla Frosting

Happy New Year!

The cake I baked yesterday morning.....I had not used my Christmas Tree pan in about 3 years, so I wanted to make a cake with it this year.  We had too many desserts already for Christmas Day, so I decided just to make it for New Years as a white sparkly cake!  The only hint of glistening snow we will get around here.

I used to always use a box cake mix (funfetti holiday) for this pan (gasp!), but no more of that!  I wanted chocolate cake so I used the Hershey's recipe that I have almost memorized.   With the tree pan it took somewhere around 50 minutes to bake - I lost track of how many times I set the timer for 5 more minutes after the 30 minutes I started with.

I started using this frosting recipe a few years ago with other flavorings, but made it strictly vanilla with the chocolate cake and was amazed by the flavor.  Little C had gotten straight A's so I made her a celebration layer cake (below) and wanted white icing as the background for the A+ decoration.  I cannot describe how it tastes with the chocolate cake - just dreamy!

After all my talk about the hand mixer and the chocolate frosting yesterday, I still used the stand mixer for this frosting.  I think I can get it a little smoother with the hand mixer (less air pockets).  I recently discovered that there is white food coloring!  I used about 30 drops to lighten up this butter icing, but I stopped there because I think it would have taken the whole little bottle to get it perfectly white.  The white food coloring looks like white-out, but it is neat to see it work.

I frosted the chocolate tree with the white vanilla frosting and decorated it with white pearls, silver foil stars and silver disco dust.  Delicious and pretty!

Vanilla Frosting

1 cup of unsalted butter (2 sticks, softened)

4 1/2 - 5 cups powdered sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

3-4 tablespoons of milk

Cream butter in mixer, add half of the powdered sugar and mix until incorporated.  Add half the milk and mix; repeat with the remaining sugar and milk.  Add vanilla and coloring.  This frosting is great for piping or spreading.

Chocolate Frosting

Happy New Year's Eve!

I am trying something new today - posting from my iPad.  So, if anything looks weird, it's not intentional!  We'll see how this goes.

I have written before on the favorite chocolate cake around here.  It's on every Hershey's Cocoa container - Perfectly Chocolate Cake.   The Perfectly Chocolate Frosting that goes with it is the best chocolate frosting ever!  I had been having a little trouble with the frosting being smooth, due to the way the ingredients are added, but I have played with it and gotten a frosting that I get rather excited about!   Since the butter and cocoa mixture are warm from melting the butter, when I would add the milk, the chocolate would cool and there would be thicker bits of cocoa throughout the frosting.  What I have started doing is making the frosting in the pan that I melt the butter in.   This way there is not any drastic change in temperature and rapid cooling.  (Note: turn the burner off)  I add part of the powdered sugar first, mix it really well with the hand mixer, then add a small amount of the milk.  At this point it looks like it is never going to be smooth, but it gets the sugar and cocoa mixture evenly incorporated so that there are not any clumps of chocolate.  Then repeat with the rest of the powdered sugar and milk.  I just keep mixing and using a spatula to move the icing from the sides of the pan.  I do this for much longer than seems necessary, and add a little more milk if it seems a little too thick.  It becomes this beautiful smooth velvety frosting.  A key thing is to not get caught up in the excitement of the pretty frosting and forget to add the vanilla at the end.  This has happened to me and I was the only one that noticed, but it tastes much better with vanilla.  And, it will keep you from wondering why the cake tasted different this time, and waking up in the middle of the night saying - of course it was different, I forgot the vanilla in the frosting!   A few times I was afraid to add more milk and then regretted it because the frosting was a little harder to spread.  Plus, sprinkles stick a lot better to a moister frosting.

I purchased a Wilton Cake Caddy with the turntable base - this makes all the difference in frosting a round cake!  I can focus on the frosting, not the rotating of the cake.   This also stores the cake very well, which always seems to be a problem with layer cakes - airtight, no smashing the icing....

I had bought the disposable 9x13 cake pans so I could easily take a cake to an dinner and not worry about how I was going to transport it and deal with a pan/platter.  I love making the cakes in these pans!  Since it's not a layer cake and due to the shape of the pans, the cake is a little more dense and so moist!  The clear plastic lids are great too!  

These are not new inventions, but things I just started using and am quite happy with!

Below are a bunch of cakes I have made over the past year.  I guess I didn't take a picture of the first one I made in the disposable pan; it was so beautiful and just pretty icing, not overloaded with sprinkles.  Not that you can have too many sprinkles, but the icing was beautiful.

Now I need to go make one of these cakes to frost with white icing for our New Year's Eve dinner. :-)