Wednesday, December 3, 2008

COOKIE MAKING!!


Here is a recipe for successful cookie-making:
Start with 1 family, 1 kitchen, and a box of recipes. Add an uninterrupted period of time. Subtract phone calls, televisions, or any other distractions. For best results, add the Prayer Before Baking from CHRISTMAS COOKIES ARE FOR GIVING:
"God bless this mixture with the sweetest and tastiest ingredients: joy, faith, family, friendship, love, and health. Let the scent of this holiday offering rise to Heaven and make the angels sing, for the happiness of mankind is their feast. Let us taste our blessings with each bite as we share the company of our loved ones. Amen."
Sprinkle with laughter. Add amusing family stories with a lavish hand. Fold in 1 cup patience and understanding, blended with 1 gallon youthful enthusiasm and a pinch of baking know-how. Eat your mistakes with joy. Bake lovingly and well. Enjoy warm, delicious, Christmas miracle cookie-baking memories for years to come!

Baking cookies at Christmas is an old tradition that so many people treasure. I found out that the tradition of leaving Christmas cookies and milk for Santa isn’t a very old one. It is believed to have started around the 1930s during the time of the Great Depression. So, if you were nice, you thank Santa for the hard work on Christmas Eve, and if you were naughty you can still try to bribe him with some cookies.

Colored Sugar Recipe:

Make your own colored sugars and save yourself a lot of money over the holiday season. This recipe is easy and can be kept in the jars for months

Ingredients:
2 drops any color liquid food color
1 c white sugar
Directions:
Step #1 Place sugar into a jar with a tight fitting lid.
Step #2 Drip the food coloring onto the sugar, close the lid, & shake vigorously for about 1 min.
Step #3 Adjust color with extra food coloring & repeat if the color is too light.
Step #4 .
Enjoy the Colored Sugar recipe!

Sugar Cookie Icing:

"This icing dries hard and shiny and the colors stay bright. Choose as many different food colorings as you desire”.


INGREDIENTS:
1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons milk
2 teaspoons light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
assorted food coloring

DIRECTIONS:
In a small bowl, stir together confectioners' sugar and milk until smooth. Beat in corn syrup and almond extract until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup.
Divide into separate bowls, and add food colorings to each to desired intensity. Dip cookies, or paint them with a brush.

Chocolate Mint Surprise Christmas Cookies:

Ingredients:
A little bag of mint hersheys kisses1 cup
(2 sticks) of butter thats been softened

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup packed light brown sugar

1 teaspoon almond extract

2 cups allpurpose flour

1 cup of mini chocolate chips

2 big candy canes

Drizzle:

1 1/2 cups of white chocolate chips

6 teaspoons shortening

Green and red food coloring

Heat your oven to 375: and unwrap your candies.
Directions:
Bring out your handy dandy stand mixer.
Put your butter in the mixer and it'll warm up faster if its cut into little peices, giving it more surface area.
Get your almond extract, brown and white sugars measured out.
Mix, mix, mix! Until it's all together nicely, about 2 minutes, to make sure you can stick your CLEAN finger in it and if it isn't grainy you're good to go.
While the mixer is going, unwrap the candy canes and beat the heck out of them with a rolling pin while they sit inbetween two sealed plastic bags.
Until you get them fairly finely ground.
Add all of your flour in and mix slowly so your kitchen doesn't end up white.
It'll look pretty firm but don't worry about it, thats how its supposed to be.
Get your mini chocolate chips measured out and your broken candy canes ready.
Mix it for about 30 seconds on slow so you don't totally crush everything, finish it off with a wooden spoon if you need to.
Take about a teaspoon of dough out and put it in your hand then stick a mint kiss right in the middle.Roll it around to wrap the dough all the way around the kiss.
Place it on your parchment paper lined cookie sheet and place the rest about two inches apart.
Put them in the oven and bake for 10 to 12 minutes. They'll be done when you poke the top and its set.Let them cool on the sheet for two minutes then move them off to a wire rack. If you only have one cookie sheet that you like, just run it under cold water and it'll be good to go again in seconds.
To make the drizzle get a double boiler together but if you're like I am you have to make your own.Get a small pot and put about an inch of water in the bottom, then go to find a bowl that will fit on top of the pot nicely.
Put your white chocolate chips and shortening in the bowl and turn the heat onto medium, make sure to keep stirring so it doesn't burn.
Split the melted chocolate into three cups, one for red, one for green and one for white. Add a bit of green to one cup and a bit of red to the other cup until you find a shade that you like.
Place the rack of cookies over a cookie sheet because its going to get a little messy. Put a seperate fork into each chocolate color then start flinging the different colors all over the cookies, one at a time.


Rice Krispy Santa:

Copied this idea straight out of the Popcorn Factory catalog. Rice Krispy bars dipped in chocolate candy coating. Pipe the faces on with red and white chocolate.

The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies


"Whenever you make these cookies for someone, be sure to bring along several copies of the recipe! You will be asked for it, I promise!!!

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 cups butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely .

2 comments:

Rooster Inn Primitives said...

Sue wonderful recipes, especially the first one. I think people have forgotten the real meaning of Christmas. Family, friends, joy and happiness. Now it's gimme gimme gimme....I would love to live back in the olden days.

Have a wonderful Christmas.

hugs pam

Farmhouse Blessings said...

Oh they're just tooo pretty to eat!

Smiles,
Lea