Holiday Foods

Here are a few pictures of things I made over the holidays. I'm not going to go into much detail here, but I wanted to get these posted. If you have any questions about the stuff listed, leave a comment and I'll add more. Oh, and you can click on the picture to see it better.

Chocolate Streudle: I had some thick philo dough that had to get used so I made this. It was a bit crunchier than I would have liked. Great flavor.


Baklava: Great as always. This one I did on my own. The filling was walnuts I believe. I did make too much syrup so they were a bit stickier than usual.


Assorted Candies: Peppermint Bark, Chocolate Chews, Caramels, Chocolates, and Cashew Coconut Brittle: These were given out as Christmas gifts. This was the first time I made candies such as these. The peppermint bark and the brittle went over the best. I've been asked to make more brittle next year.


Fig and Walnut Tart: I saw this in a magazine and thought I would give it a try. It was good, a bit time consuming though. Everything was made from scratch. In the future, I would use the crust again but would pass on the figs and walnuts. Figs still are not my thing.

And many cookies were made.....

There is the assortment of cookies that I took to work this past Monday. Over the weekend my family and I made all of these treats. I helped with the making of many (except for the peanut butter and chocolate fudge which were made by my brother). I don't have pictures of every cookie, but here is a quick run down of what was made.

Cinnamon/Cherry Swirl Chip Cookies: Top of right side tray: My aunt made these before the rest of us made it to her house so I'm not sure of the name of these cookies or what all went in them, but they look nice and tasted good.

Peanut Butter Cookies (with Hershey's Kisses): The batter for these was also already made by the time we arrived, they followed the standard recipe.

Chocolate Graham Walnut Scotchies: Bottom of right tray: There were supposed to be oatmeal pecan scotchies, but after I already started making the batter I found out that my aunt did not have any oatmeal. After looking through her supplies I found a box of chocolate teddy grahams and figured that I could use those. I ground them up and put them in to replace the oats. Then since I had already changed the recipe and a lot of walnuts had already been chopped, I opted to use walnuts instead of pecans. Other than those changes, I pretty much followed the recipe. The chocolate flavor is very mild, the main flavor you taste is butterscotch.

Sugar Cutouts: My brother made the dough for these cookies a few weeks ago and froze it. It thawed nicely and was easy to roll out. My mom and grandmother did about all of the work on these, I only made the icing. I found a nice royal icing recipe but it was too thick so we thinned it down. Then that was a little thick too so we thinned it more. We shouldn't have thinned the second time, the icing on those cookies didn't get totally firm and were still sticky. That's something I will have to remember for next time.

Chocolate Raspberry Cream Cookies: The top right side of the right tray: I don't know where my mom got these baking chips from, but apparently Hershey's makes a raspberry cream filled chocolate baking bit. We just followed the recipe on the back of the package for these ones. Here is the recipe off Hershey's site. We went with the chocolate cookie variety. The cookie itself is alright but the texture is sort of dry; however, as soon as your tongue hits one of the raspberry cream bites you'll love it.

Fudge: As I mentioned before those were made by my brother. He's always been the one to make it, so I don't even try.

Peppermint Patties: These are hard to see, but they are in the upper middle next to the sugar cookies. These are a lot like the York peppermint pattie, but homemade. I mixed together baking powder, evaporated milk, and peppermint extract to make a dough. I rolled the dough into small disks and let them dry for a few hours. Once they were dry I melted some dark chocolate and shortening. I dipped the dried peppermint disks into the chocolate and set them on wax paper to dry. They have a nice flavor, the peppermint isn't too strong and the flavor of the chocolate comes through quite well.

Baklava: I saved this one for last. Every year we make baklava, my family is not Greek (or even remotely from that area of the world), but somehow making baklava became a family tradition. As usual we make 2 big trays and this year was no exception. However, we mixed things up a little this year and made 2 different types of baklava. We made one batch with walnuts and a lemon sugar syrup glaze and the other batch was made with pecans and a honey based glaze. If you only tried one of the batches I'm certain that you would enjoy it; however if you try them both, the pecan batch was the better of the two. Another interesting thing I wanted to mention about this year's baklava was that the philo dough (the very thin sheets of dough that make up the top and bottom of the baklava) came from the import store at the West Side Market. Up until now we had been using the stuff in the grocery store but had a difficult time with it last year since they changed the size of the sheets. While looking around the market one day earlier this year I saw the philo dough and made a note to go back and buy it from there. That was one of the best decisions I could make. The sheets held together quite well and didn't dry out easily. They were also much more affordable than that of at the grocery store.

Well, that's it for now. This coming weekend I have plans to make some candy type treats. I'll post more on that soon. If you have any questions about any of the cookies shown in this post, please leave a comment or drop me an email.

50th Birthday Cake (Take 2)

Yesterday another coworker of mine turned 50. To celebrate, I was asked to make another cake. Since he is a chemist, I thought a "beaker" type cake would be appropriate. And as you can see in the image, the beaker is filled up to 50.

For simplicity (and lack of time) I used a box cake mix. And as usual, I added pudding powder to the batter. The cake itself is a vanilla cake. To make the beaker shape, I used an oval cake pan and made 4 cakes. I cut the cakes in half along the longest side of the oval and stacked them against each other on the board. To help hold them together, I put a chocolate mousse between the layers. The mousse was a "just-add-milk" mix but to make it thicker, I made it with heavy cream.

The icing was my typical butter cream. If you want more info on that, check out my previous cake posts.

The green "liquid" in the beaker is decorating sugar that I poured over the icing. It set in place once the cake was put into the fridge and the icing set.

To make the numbers and the information box on the beaker, I used melted chocolate. So that I would get everything even and written out nicely, I first got a piece of wax paper and cut it to the size of the cake. I then drew the numbers and the box on the wax paper. I flipped the wax paper over and wrote out everything in chocolate backwards (well, I traced over what I wrote on the other side). Once it was starting to set, I laid the wax paper over the cake (chocolate side down) and pressed the writing into the icing. Then when the paper was peeled off, the chocolate writing remained. The lines for the beaker were done by hand on the cake, so they are not as straight as they should be.

To finish it off and cover up the edges, I put some Mike & Ike candies around the cake. I thought they kind of looked like molecules or something. Actually, they remind me of the pills from Dr. Mario but that's not important here.

As usual, the cake went over well (even if it was confused for a football field for a little while). Pretty much everyone cleaned their plates off and birthday guy took the rest home to his family. He said this morning that they really liked it.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

The other day there was a box of old bread left in the break room at work. The note on the box said that the bread was free and could be used to make breadcrumbs or croutons. I had other plans.

Originally I had thought that I would make a french toast type of bread pudding but while I was at the grocery store I saw that pumpkin was on sale and I changed my mind. The process was really simple since I basically just followed the directions for pumpkin pie that is on the back of can of pumpkin. Instead of pouring the batter into pie crusts, it was poured over the bread.

Alright, lets get into this post. This is another step by step posting since people seemed to enjoy the last one.

As usual, I like to have all the ingredients out before I start. That way I know if I'm missing anything and can then make changes to the recipe beforehand. As you can see, there is a loaf of bread, some eggs, sugar, a can of pumpkin, 2 cans of evaporated milk, and some cinnamon and nutmeg (the nutmeg is whole, I grind it by hand because it tastes better that way).

As you can see, I have cut up the bread into about 1" size pieces and I combined the sugar and spices (well, I didn't stir them together before this picture was taken, but you get the idea). The next step is to add the eggs to the sugar mixture and stir well. Then you have to stir in the can of pumpkin and finally you stir in the two cans of evaporated milk.

Now that all the liquids are combined, you just need pour the wet mixture over the bread. Be sure to pour it evenly and not to put too much into the dish. The bread will soak up some of the batter, so just pour it slowly.

Now that everything is combined, you should let the dish sit for at least an hour in the refrigerator. This will allow the bread to soak up the pumpkin mixture. Once the mix has sat long enough, you can bake it. I baked the pudding at 325 C for approximately an hour. Just check it periodically to see if it is set in the middle.

And this is what you end up with. To serve, I just dished some of it into a bowl and added some whipped topping. It definitely tastes like pumpkin pie, but isn't as rich as the pie usually is. The bread makes it taste lighter than it really is. It was a good way to use up old bread and it tastes good.

La Bete Noire

This dish was the cover feature of the September 2006 issue of Bon Appetit Magazine. A link to the recipe is here if you are interested. Also, if you click here you can see in image of the cover (at least until the new issue comes out).

I was invited to a Labor Day cookout and I wanted to make something unique so this is what I brought. I also brought some little smokies wrapped in bacon which were a real crowd pleaser (but they were nothing unique so thats about as much mention as they will get). When I saw the cover of the magazine on the rack I had to buy it. The chocolate "cake" looked very tempting. I had also never made anything like this before so I was up for the challenge.

If you clicked on the recipe you can see that the cake is flourless and uses very few ingredients. It was fairly simple to assemble but I do encourage that a bigger pot than you think necessary be used. I had a hard time stirring the eggs into the mix because I was close to spilling over the sides of the pot.

I found the recipe to be very straight forward and detailed. I can't think of any advice I can give to make it any better.

The final result was a very very rich chocolate dessert. Only a small slice is suggested because it is very rich. Some people at the party gave suggestions for another layer that is lighter and either flavored vanilla or coffee. When I make this again, I might try to change the recipe around a little to reflect such a change. I'll be sure to post the results.

50th Birthday Cake

I was asked last week to make a birthday cake for a coworker for just turned 50. The above is what I came up with. I do have to admit, I searched around the internet and found something similar that I liked (and my boss liked) so I went with that design. The one online didn't have chocolate ghosts however.

This was a rush order so I didn't have a lot of time to prep everything so I relied on box cake mix and canned icing. Since I'm not a fan of doing exactly like the directions say, I decided that I would add some extra pudding to the cake mixes. I went to the store and picked up 2 cake mixes (dark chocolate and white), 2 packages of pudding (dark chocolate and cheesecake), and 2 tubs of white icing (I made 1/2 sheet marbled cake). I did a quick check in my head and I was confident that I had everything at home that I would need to make the cakes (eggs and oil). When I got home and prepped to bake the cake I realized that I was short half the eggs. It was already getting late and I knew that if I was going to get the cake done by Friday morning it had to be baked Wednesday night and then decorated on Thursday. So I thought about what I might be able to use to replace some of the eggs and I decided that heavy cream might do the trick. I mixed together the eggs that I had and the heavy cream and split that between the two batches.

The consistency of the batters were pretty similar to a standard cake so I went ahead and baked them. Although a bit on the heavy side, everything appeared normal after baking. After cooling a bit the cake was put into the refrigerator for the evening.

The next night I turned the cake onto a board and started decorating it. I cut two corners off the cake to make the tombstone shape and I tinted the icing grey (which is somewhat blue/purple) with black food coloring. For the writing and the ghosts I used melted chocolate. The writing was done directly on the cake whereas the ghosts were drawn out on wax paper and allowed to harden before being put on the cake. The "grass" around the edges of the cake is colored coconut.

The cake was a big success and I don't think anyone turned it down (nor left any on their plate). The cake was really dense but the mixture of the dark chocolate and cheesecake flavors made it so it wasn't too rich.

So the lessons learned from this cake were that heavy cream can sort of be used to replace a few eggs and that chocolate makes a great decorating medium.

And, I think my skills are getting better with each cake I make, but the writing still needs work.

Zucchini Bread

I'm actually going to do something different with this post. I had my camera sitting on the counter when I started making the zucchini bread so I took a couple pictures throughout the baking process.

The bread started with this recipe. I got out all the ingredients and made sure that I had enough of everything. As you can see, I had plenty of zucchini.

Before I could get things going I had to shred the zucchini. I took one of the bigger ones and cut in half; I scooped out all of the seeds. I then put it through the food processor. I made a whole lot of shredded zucchini. The recipe only called for 2 cups, I made about 7.

So, following the rest of the recipe, I mixed the wet ingredients together in one bowl and the dry in another.

All that was left was to mix everything together. Since I had shredded 7 cups of zucchini and didn't want to make 3 batches of bread, I put all the shredded zucchini into the batter. Now, some people might think was crazy, but I had faith that it would still come together alright. The zucchini isn't that wet of a vegetable and usually holds up okay when baked and I've always put extra in when making bread. Now, I haven't ever put in 3.5 times as much as called for, but I gave it a shot anyway.

After everything was mixed together really well, I added the chopped walnuts. The batter was divided between 2 silicone bread pans and put into the oven.

The recipe said to let them bake for an hour at 350 F. I'm pretty sure they took about an hour. I tested them with a kabob stick to check them for doneness and when the stick came out clean I pulled them out of the oven. Here is the final product:

I took one into work this morning and it was gone in no time flat. Everyone said that they thought it was delicious.

So, one quick question for the few people who read this blog regularly. Did you prefer this style of post? or do you like the old way, with one picture? Comment and let me know.

Tropical Muffins

So what do you get when you have 4 very ripe bananas and a pineapple cake mix? Well, I don't know, but if you add in a can of mandarin oranges, you get Tropical Muffins!

I had 4 bananas that were very very ripe and it was at the point where I either make something with them or I toss them. Not one to waste, I thought about making some banana muffins. But also one to take a somewhat lazy approach, I went looking for cake mixes. Since I've been eating healthier lately, I haven't been buying any mixes so all that was left in the cabinet was a pineapple mix. At that point I thought that banana and pineapple would go well enough together, but that something it still needed something else. Upon opening another cabinet, I found a can of mandarin oranges. Then I thought some more about it and came the conclusion that if I didn't add any nuts to the muffins they would just be uniced cupcakes. Thankfully I keep a bag of walnuts in the freezer (they stay fresh longer that way).

Everything was now set. I prepared to make Pineapple-orange-banana walnut muffins. The cake mix called for 3 eggs, 1/2 cup of oil (I think), and a cup of water. Since the oranges were packed in about a cup of light syrup, I omitted the water. And I knew that bananas and such were great for keeping things moist, so I also omitted the oil. The batter came together like normal cake/muffin batter consistency.

To make getting the batter into the cups easier, I used an ice cream scoop. Its a great idea for anytime that you have to get a lot of equal sized portions out quick. The muffins only took 20 minutes to bake at 350 C. I probably could have left in the oven a little longer and gotten the tops more browned, but this way they were extra moist.

I brought them into work this morning (letting my fitness class get first dibs). There were about 30 muffins on the tray and between a few people at the gym and my coworkers in my building they were all gone in under an hour. I've gotten lots of compliments so far, so I guess they came out really well.

Kolachki from Rudy's Strudel and Bakery

Since it was a very nice night last evening, I walked to the comic book store. It wasn't that long of a walk, 15-20 minutes, and it felt good. While heading towards the shop I came across Rudy's Bakery. The bakery is right near the comic book shop and although I had seen the sign many times before, I never read the whole thing to see that it was a bakery. After buying my comics, I made a quick stop into Rudy's.

Its a small place, but very nice. They have some tables set up in case you wanted to eat your treats there and they have a few display cases showing off everything. I couldn't decide between all the choices so I opted for a variety of Kolachki. Rudy's makes kolachki in raspberry, apricot, pineapple, cheese, nut, and prune flavors. I bought a dozen (2 of each) for $2.75.

Rudy's also has a wide variety of cakes, strudels, breads, and cookies. They also make traditional polish foods like pierogies (I'll have to try them sometime) and stuffed cabbage.

I tried a few of the kolachki last night and each one was great. They were very fresh and the dough was tender and flakey. I brought the extras into work this morning to share. Everyone agreed on how good they were. I picked up a copy of their menu and I will be sure to try more of their offerings. If you are ever over in Parma on Ridge Rd. look for the maroon sign for Rudy's. I'm pretty sure you will like whatever you get.

Baby Shower Carrot Cake

Alright, I'm not going to say much about this one since its basically the same carrot cake that I made back on Easter. This time the cake is much larger and twice as thick. There is additional cream cheese icing in between the cake layers.

I posted this because I mostly just wanted to show it off since this is probably my most professional looking cake so far. My handwriting isn't great, and its even worse when I'm writing with icing so I decided to use only decorations. I think it came out looking really nice. The mom-to-be really appreciated the cake and everyone commented on how good it was.

Carrot Cake and Bellinis

So although it wasn't my plan to be making any desserts any time soon, I was asked by my Mom to make her Signature Carrot Cake. She got the recipe for this cake back in 1992 and has been making it often since then. The cake is from a restaurant called Egg Castle which went out of business years ago. I know that the article was from 1992 because my mom got the recipe from the newspaper and she still has the original article (I made myself a copy of the article this weekend).

So this past Saturday when we started baking, my mom got busy with other stuff so I ended up putting it together myself. In the end, I had some extra icing so I decided to do a little decorating too. If anyone wants the recipe for this cake, email me; I might be willing to share.

The inset picture is when we cut the cake at Easter dinner at my Aunt and Uncle's place. This year my Aunt had everyone over and we had all the usual Easter foods (ham, eggs, etc.).

And also for Easter, I brought the makings for Bellinis.


A bellini is a drink which is typically made from peach juice and sparkling wine. For my take on a bellini I made a punch by combining peach, orange, and pear juice. I wanted this drink to be available non-alcoholic too so I also had lemon-lime soda available in place of the sparkling wine. For the wine I served Prosecco. The punch was well liked and very refreshing.

Birthday Party = Lots of Food

Saturday, April 1st, was my 25th birthday and my uncle's 55th. To celebrate I invited the whole family up to my house. The plan for the party was a casual get together with lots of good food and good drinks. I think I succeeded.



The food plan was to have a wide variety of appetizers. There were simple snacks like chips and vegetables (with homemade dips) and then slightly more elaborate hot foods. The vegetables were all purchased fresh from the West Side Market on Friday morning and I washed, cut, blanched (the ones that required it), and arranged them all. The hot foods consisted of skewered chicken (with either a Thai peanut sauce or an Italian basalmic sauce), mini hamburgers, sausage cheese balls, savory parmesan bites, and mini-new potato bites. A few of the foods have links to the Kraft Foods website where I got a lot of my inspiration. The plan for the vegie tray was in my America's Test Kitchen cookbook (which is highly recommended!) and the skewered chicken and mini-burgers were my own creations.



Everyone really liked the mini-burgers and they were the first food to run out. To make the burgers I used an 80/20 beef to which I added some French onion soup mix and some bacon fat (the bacon was required for the potato bites and bacon fat adds a lot of flavor so I figured why not splurge). I cooked the small burgers on the griddle until they were mostly done then placed each patty on a brown-and-serve roll that had been cut in half and topped with colby cheese. The burgers were then tossed into the oven to finish cooking and let the buns brown up. The end result was some really tasty little burgers.



The chicken was fairly simple too. I cut up breast meat into strips and marinated them in either the peanut sauce or the balsamic sauce. The peanut sauce had peanut butter, peanut oil, water, ginger, sesame seeds, soy sauce, and a few other spices. The balsamic sauce was a combination of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, water, salt, pepper, rosemary, and spices. Both batches of chicken marinated overnight. In an ideal case I would have grilled the chicken but since I was making a lot and didn't have the time to stand by the grill I baked the skewered chicken. Everyone seemed to really enjoy these too.



There was a wide variety of drinks for the party but the one that stood out the most was a new rum by Bacardi. It called Ciclon and is infused with Agave Tequila and Lime. When I saw it at the store it looked interesting so I picked up the bottle. And as it turns out, it tastes really good. I thought it was best mixed with a lemon lime soda but my dad preferred it as a shot. He was encouraging others to give it a try too.

And I almost forgot to mention the cake. As I continue to master my skills at cake baking I made this cake. The whole cake was iced in buttercream icing and then I colored a bit of the icing blue for decoration. The border around the cake came out looking nice but my hand writing with icing needs major work. One evening I should put together a small batch of icing and just practice writing. But, back to the cake; the cake is half chocolate and half vanilla and was filled with vanilla pudding (the cooked variety, not instant). The pan I used was an 11x14" pan which I think is a half-sheet size. Everyone enjoyed it and many went back for seconds (or thirds).

By the end of the evening very little food (and Ciclon) remained. There was one piece of the parmesan bites and some vegetables left as well as some cake. I was wore out, but it was worth it. I think everyone had a fun time and that was my goal.

Super Dark Chocolate Chocolate Vanilla 3-Layer Cake

Be sure to click on the picture to view it better.

So today I set out on an ambitious task. I was to make a 3 layer cake, chocolate ganache in between the layers, and homemade vanilla frosting. Other than a lack of good decorating skills for a 3 layer cake, I'm very pleased with the results.

The cake came together really well. I cheated and used a dark chocolate boxed cake mix (actually 2 boxes worth). When I was mixing the batter I sifted the cake mix. I don't know for sure if it make a difference but the batter came out very smooth (no lumps) and all 3 cake layers baked really evenly.

I had never made my own icing other than cream cheese icing before so I was a little worried about how it would turn out. To my surprise it was pretty easy. I do have to admit, if I didn't have the kitchenaid mixer it would be a very difficult task (and I would never do it). The icing consists of butter, powdered sugar, heavy cream, vanilla, and a little salt.

To go in between the cake layers I made a really simple ganache by mixing melted dark chocolate, vanilla, and cream together. When it had cooled it thickened and I spread that between the cakes.

And now came the hard part. I shouldn't have made bottom 2 layers so close in size to each other (the bottom layer is 10" and the middle is 9") or I should have made just one size and did a double layer. Icing those two layers and making them actually look like different layers was pretty much impossible. Once I had everything coated in the vanilla icing, I wasn't really happy with how the cake looked so I opened a tub of store bought icing and used that to decorate the cake. Although the decorating didn't go the best I'm still really proud of the cake.

I will be taking it to work tomorrow and I will post a comment to let you know if it was liked or not.

Banana Muffins (from a cake mix)

So what do you do when you have new silicone bakeware and 3 "soon-to-be-overripe" bananas? You make banana muffins.

I had the option of looking up a recipe for banana bread and measuring ingredients and such or I could just find a cake mix in the cupboard that was pretty neutral towards banana and use that. I chose the latter. Cake mixes just make things so much easier to not mess up and for the most part, measurements aren't all that necessary.

I started by pre-heating my oven to 350 degrees and lined up the new bakeware on some cookie sheets. The big 9x9" probably wouldn't need to be put on a baking sheet but it makes it easier to move into and out of the oven. I peeled the 3 bananas and put them in the mixing bowl. While those were being mixed into a mush, I chopped about a cup worth of walnuts. To the mashed bananas I added 3 eggs and maybe a 1/4 cup of oil (I just poured a little bit into the bowl). I then added the whole bag of cake mix and about a cup of water to bowl a little at a time letting them mix in before adding more. The consistency looked right once everything was combined so I let the mixer run for a couple minutes then added the chopped walnuts and just stirred those in.

The batter was spooned into the mini-muffin pans and the bigger muffin cups and the left over went into the square pan. They all went into the oven and baked for about 20 minutes (the mini-muffins came out earlier than the rest).

The muffins came out very moist and had a lot of banana flavor. The mini-muffins turned out to be a lot like those Hostess Mini-Muffins, but much more natural tasting.

For something that I whipped up really quickly and on a whim these turned out really well. And unlike the lasagna, most of these came to work with me today so I won't be eating them for the next week.

Christmas Eve (almost) Dinner

Each year my family gets together with my Aunt and Uncle for a Christmas dinner. We usually try to have the dinner on Christmas Eve, but due to their work schedules, we celebrated the day before Christmas Eve.

The dinner this year was excellent. The menu was salad with a raspberry vinaigrette, standing rib roast, a potato casserole, roasted winter vegetables, and bread. And plenty of wine. My aunt prepared most of the meal with my brother contributing the potato casserole and I contributed the roasted winter vegetables. Everything was delicious (especially the rib roast).

The roasted vegetables included butternut squash, carrots, turnips, parsnips, and yams. They were baked in an italian dressing and parmesan cheese. I was slightly disappointed with them since even after a long bake some of the vegetables were still rather hard (the carrots mostly). The vegetable flavor was really good, but I would have been happier had they been easier to eat.

For dessert we had my Aunt's famous rum cake. As a neat fact, she said that she has been making this same cake for the last 30 years as an anniversary tradition for her and my uncle. I really enjoyed this dessert, but everyone says that my already being slightly intoxicated led me to like it even more. I recorded the recipe into my cell phone as a voice memo (which I still need to copy down). When the right occasion calls for it, I will try my hand at the rum cake.

Annual Cookie Making Day

For the past few years my family and I have been getting together sometime before Christmas to spend part of a day making a bunch of cookies. This year there were actually two cookie days but I missed the first one since I was making periogis (which I really enjoyed); I was determined to be at the second party. As usual we had the party at my Aunt's house since she has a large kitchen with a double oven.

We typically have a few ideas of what will be made with each person bringing the ingredients they would need for what they would like to make. My brother had been on a big sugar cookie kick earlier this week and he brought some already chilled dough which was a major time saver. I had planned on making the carrot cake cookies again (but this time as a double batch with carrot cake and spice cake mixed together). My cousin and her fiance were to make the chocolate chip cookies and my mom had got together the ingredients for the baklava, molasses cookies, and the no-bakes.

We started around 11 and baked until about 3. Everything went smoothly with only a few cookies getting over-browned and some slightly mashed during the transfer from baking sheet to cooling rack.

What puzzled me the most is that there were 5 cookie sheets (if not more), and I basically only had one to work with. My brother and cousin took the other sheets for their cookies. So, as usual, I was stuck with one cookie sheet and my Silpat.

So the run down of what we made and quantities were about:
Sugar Cookies, 8 dozen
Chocolate Chip, 6 dozen
Molasses, 4 dozen
Carrot Cake, 4 dozen
No-Bake, 3 dozen
Baklava, 12 dozen pieces (between the 3 batches we made)

Everything came out really well and everyone got a lot to take back with them. I brought most of mine into work to share and everyone has been enjoying them. If you want to know the recipe for any of the above, send me an email or post a comment and I will get you the info.

Merry Christmas everyone!

And it became Fruitcake Biscotti...

The original plan was to make fruit cake cookies. I didn't have a recipe for fruit cake cookies and my plan was use a basic cookie base and add some fruit and nuts to it. The results are shown on the left side of the above image. Once the cookies were deemed a failure, I attempted to salvage the leftover dough and make biscotti. This almost worked, but then I overbaked the biscotti. The general comments from the people who have ate the biscotti say that the flavor is really good but they are way too dry.

I'm not too happy about how this turned out and I questioned if I should post it or not. In the end I think its important to admit your mistakes and learn from them. I'm not giving up the fruit cake cookie and will try again. Or maybe I will just try to perfect the fruit cake biscotti instead.

Pistachio Biscotti

Since we had our Holiday Lunch outing yesterday at the Cheesecake Factory, I decided that today's cookie would have to be something not as sweet as the previous two days. I was looking around the Food Network site and came across the recipe for Pistachio Biscotti. It looked simple enough and I decided to give it a shot.

I haven't made biscotti in a while but from what I remember they were easy to make and really well liked. This batch of biscotti went the same way.

Making biscotti is almost the same as making cookies except instead of shaping the individual pieces before baking you bake a long log (for lack of a better term) of dough. After its done baking you have to let the log cool for a bit then you cut it into the individual servings. These slices are then laid back onto the cookie sheet and baked again. In the end you have a very dry cookie that's great for dipping in coffee.

Everyone enjoyed these biscotti and they went quickly. I will probably try to alter the recipe by using different nuts and maybe adding dried fruit in the future.

Red Velvet Bites

The week of sweet treats continues. Today's treat is what I am calling Red Velvet Bites. They are basically everything you love about a red velvet cake, in the form of a cookie. The recipe starts with a red velvet cake mix (its the theme I'm going with right now) that is made into a cookie batter with eggs, oil, and butter, and for an extra kick, I added some semi-sweet baking chocolate.

When I came up with the plan to make these cookies, I was going to roll the dough into balls and coat them with powdered sugar before baking (so that they would have a crackled top); but while making the dough I realized that I didn't have any gloves and I was not about to roll these by hand (my hands would have been stained for days). So instead I baked them as a drop cookie and coated them with powdered sugar afterwards.

They give a bit of a surprise on the first bite since most people do not expect a chocolate taste from a red and white cookie. They are unique and fun for the holiday.

Carrot Cake Cookies

Last night I decided that I should make some more cookies and I have been thinking about how I could another cake mix. I searched through my cupboards and found that I had a couple carrot cake mixes (along with a red velvet and a spice cake mix). The abundance of carrot cake mix persuaded me to make carrot cake cookies.

The recipe was very simple, 1 stick of butter (softened, really softened), 2 eggs, 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts, and 1 carrot cake mix. I mixed them all together in the stand mixer (I would not try this by hand since the dough is pretty stiff). I spooned the dough onto the cookie sheet in about teaspoon sized globs and baked them for approximately 12 minutes at 350 degrees C. Once out of the oven I transferred them to a cooling rack. Once fully cooled I iced the cookies with cream cheese icing. And that was it.

They are interesting little cookies. Eating one is like having a couple bites of carrot cake. I don't know if I will be making these again (it depends on the feedback I get from my coworkers). However, I think I might try to make something with that Red Velvet cake. I'll be sure to post what I come up with.