Gingerpeople, to be politically correct

I don't personally like gingerbread that much. I find it a little bit bland, like it needs to be sweeter or something. It does, however, make excellent cutout shapes which is why I continue to make it year after year.
This year seems to be a defining year for me in terms of my design and execution skills; last year my decorating cookies were a hot mess, but this year? Excellence. My pumpkin carving skills seem to have undergone the same transformation, but that's another story for an unexpected and hilarious time.
On Tuesday night I decorated sugar cookies with my mother until my student came for tutoring, and then once all students had been dismissed and my mom had gone to bed, I hunkered down in front of the TV with a rack full of gingerbread men (people, persons, its?) and two squeeze bottles of royal icing (note to all cookie decorating enthusiasts: THIS WAS THE BEST DECISION EVER! I will continue to use squeeze bottles instead of icing bags for as long as I only need straight semi-thin lines), a glass of milk and both Home Alone 1 and 2, and off I went until 1:30 in the morning.

I didn't get all of them finished, but what I did get done I quite enjoyed. I'll either finish the rest when I get back from my weekend in Rochester, or leave it up to mom to finish. Regardless, enjoy my pictures. I'm becoming a more efficient cookie-roller, and had all the gingerbread men rolled, baked and cooled in just inside of an hour.

I'm going to go curl up in my warm bed now and settle down for a long winter's nap.

-Laur

Classic Gingerbread Cutouts:

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup molasses
2 eggs
4 cups all-purpose flour, divided
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar until smooth. Stir in the molasses and eggs. Combine 1 1/2 cups of the flour, baking soda, salt, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger; beat into the molasses mixture. Gradually stir in the remaining flour by hand to form a stiff dough.
3. Divide dough into 2 pieces. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8 inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes using cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 inch apart onto ungreased cookie sheets.
4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cookie countdown

So here's my first round of cookies: blue snowflakes. I think they're really pretty, and they happen to taste really great, too. The cookie cutter set came with 8 shapes but three of them are weird little tiny things that aren't much use. The biggest one, top left, is about the size of my hand and very sturdy. I made up a batch of Royal Icing to decorate them with, but didn't finish the job; I'll be using white icing and pretty sugar to complete the effect.
Here's the recipe for the cookies:

Best Rolled Sugar Cookies by Jill Saunders

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.













And now for the Royal Icing recipe:

Royal Icing by Veronica

Ingredients
3 cups confectioners' sugar
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 egg whites, beaten
Directions
In a bowl, sift together confectioners' sugar and cream of tartar. Using electric mixer, beat in 2 beaten egg whites for about 5 minutes or until mixture is thick enough to hold its shape.
I think this post is going to look a little strange, but what can you do.
Do you like my little Christmas tree? Or Hanukkah bush? It's blue and white, but it's a tree, so I suppose it transcends the lines of holiday religion. I like it, anyhow.

Happy baking!

-Laur

Christmas time is here

It's December 1st. Well, it's almost over, but today was mostly December 1st. I've been ignoring my blog because of Nanowrimo, but that's over. I didn't win. I hated my book. Oh well, serves me right for not planning.
So today I decorated the house a little bit and baked half a batch of snowflake-shaped sugar cookies. They're really awesome snowflakes, and I'm going to bake and decorate the rest of them tomorrow. Mom and I also made the awesome centrepiece to your left, and we'll probably put it in the front vestibule to be festive and such. But only if I can find a table to put it on.
The other pictures are ones I doctored up with Picnik after my friend Samantha and I went to the Santa Clause Parade on November 15th. It was an almost balmy day and the parade was lovely and short, about 2 hours long, and we had a good spot right at St. George station across from the Bata Shoe Museum. We could see everything, and afterwards we went for a little window-shop in Yorkville.
I'm taking my holiday baking very seriously this year, and starting tomorrow I'm going to blog my cookie recipes and photos every time I bake a new kind.
Cheers!
-Laur

It's getting to be that time again...

Well, when the web badges are up you KNOW that it's on its way...National Novel Writing Month 2009, in its 11th proud year, will be starting at 12:01 am on November 1st, and though I will probably still be partying my grass off, I will definitely be plotting this year's masterpiece in a small, inebriated corner of my mind.
This year I want more of my creative friends to get involved; I have so many people in my life who are capable of such greatness, and few of them every try to achieve it.
Here is my hit list for people who should do Nanowrimo this year:
Aleks Sagan
Marisa Williams
Samantha Feder
Aaron Armstrong
Robert Hull
There are more, but I can't think of them right now. So, my friends, this is an open challenge: write your hearts out in November, and see what happens. It may be one of the most meaningful experiences you ever have. Go sign up at the Nanowrimo website and find me, Lolowin, so I can support you through one of the most challenging and rewarding months ever.

Can you dig it?

- Laur

Thanksgiving experiments

The Dulce de Leche cutouts cookies I made. I doubled the recipe and got all the conversions right except for the eggs. The dough, as a result, was extremely dry and hard to work with. But, in the end, I managed to get it all out onto the pans and they look pretty good, I think.
The works in progress.

Today I had the day off and I baked and cooked up a storm. I made that squash soup again, with some small changes; I forgot that I used up all my celery the other night in a pan-Asian stir fry, so I nixed it and made up for it with carrot and Spanish onion, which I sauteed in a very small amount of bacon grease (OH MY!). Then I figured out how to cut a pie pumpkin in half (above), gutted it and roasted it for an hour and a half. Then, using oven mits so I think I wasted some of it due to reduced dexterity, I scraped the flesh from the skin and mashed it and pureed it with my immersion blender (below). Pumpkin puree doesn't smell nice, just so everyone knows.

Below is the pumpkin cookie dough that I made with aforementioned pumpkin puree. I used real, fresh-ground cinnamon in it. I think I left some residue in my coffee grinder, but that cinnamon packs a punch, and leaves some heat on your tongue. WOO!

The finished cookies. They have oatmeal and chocolate chips in them. And a shitload of butter and sugar, woah now. They have a very cake-like consistency.

Becoming a Foodie

I've been cooking up a storm in my house, woohoo! After a weekend journey to St. Jacob's Farmers Market, I brought home 4 butternut squash, 3 pie pumpkins, 6 huge leeks and 2 gorgeous Spanish onions. Mom and I proceeded to make the best soup of life, pictured above.
I find that I really enjoy cooking, moreso now than ever before. The thing I missed most about home in Europe was not being able to do my own cooking; mind you, a lot of the food I ate was stupendous and probably something I could never reproduce, but I still missed being able to make myself a simple omlette in the morning or a pan-Asian stirfry for dinner.
Tonight for dessert after a dinner of aforementioned squash soup I made cinnamon buns from a recipe I found on Allrecipes.com (my new recipe go-to site). Even though I had to alter the bake time (15 minutes was not enough to prevent some still-raw dough in their centres), they turned out far better than I ever could have imagined and I am so pleased. Being able to make interesting desserts is important to me; I don't have an array of parlour tricks or whatever to pull out when guests are around, but by golly I can cook a delicious 3 course meal! I'm not going to go all Julie Powell (Julie and Julia) on you, especially since I was reading Chatelaine and I found out that after her book became a success she went out and cheated on her husband, her biggest cheerleader during her cooking blog experiment, and ruined her marriage. Now, I don't exactly have a marriage to destroy, or even a romantic relationship, but I feel like this journey should be shared in bits and pieces. I'm learning; I didn't blog about every class I attended throughout my university career, so I probably won't do it for this particular segment of my education. I will, however, share with you, my faithful readers, a selection of my triumphs, and my failures.
The cinnamon buns are rolling unpleasantly in my stomach, but you know what? They were worth it.













- Laur

Quichey quiche

Today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of repentance. You're supposed to fast all day and reflect on the sins you have committed throughout the year. Being a non-believer, I've decided that you should reflect every day in an effort not to do things that hurt people so often, so I ate a delicious breakfast and lunch, and I just sampled the spinach and mushroom quiche I baked for tonight's feast at my house.
I've been cooking a lot lately, way more than usual, and using recipes properly so that I don't have as many screw-ups in the kitchen. The other day I made potato gnocchi all by myself, and my mom gave it her seal of approval. Now all I have to do is get a real Italian to tell me how to improve it and I'm all set! I made an Alfredo sauce from a recipe too, but it was awful and I'll never make it again. I like my own white sauce, that I make with butter, flour, garlic, salt, milk (or cream, when I'm feeling ultra-indulgent) and a little bit of Parmesan cheese. I've also been baking bread; I seem to be pro at white bread, but whole wheat isn't going so well. I'll try it again on Wednesday.
Anywho, I'm going to take a nap before getting up to vacuum, sweep, and shower. My house smells amazing.

-Laur