Baking / Christmas Cookies

While Bradley and I were in NY for Thanksgiving, I picked up a few of my mom’s recipes that I grew up on. One of them was this Christmas cookies recipe. One of my favorites, they are called German Love and have an amazing lemon glaze on the top.

This is the physical recipe from her cookbook, handwritten a few times over.

Step 1: Mix butter, egg, sugar, and vanillaStep 2: Add flourStep 3: Add everything else, including a ton of spices (that’s what makes these cookies great!)

This is what it should look like after that. Now you’ll chill it for an hour or two. I tend to clean the kitchen while cookies chill, but you could also put your feet up and enjoy a sweet cup of joe with eggnog creamer if you prefer.

Step 4: After it’s chilled, flour a cutting board and roll out the dough to about 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick. As you can see, I like to over-flour things because I hate when batter sticks to me, the board or the rolling-pin. Step 5: Cut dough in to squares/rectangles, and other geometric shapes with a knife.
Step 6: Put them on a sheet ready for the oven and cook for about 10 minutes. They won’t grow so you can crowd a cookie sheet if you need to.

Step 7: Make a little glaze for the top, lemon juice, water and powdered sugar. I added red and green food coloring for extra Christmas joy.
Step 8: After the cooking come out, transfer them to a cooling rack.
Step 9: After the cookies have cooled, drizzle icing over top. I like to put a piece of plastic wrap under the cooling rack for easy clean up.

Enjoy with a cup of strong black coffee, milk or eggnog!

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Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon cloves
• 1 teaspoon all spice
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg

Glaze:

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 1/2 teaspoon water
• food coloring

Directions:

1. Cream together butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla
2. Add flour
3. Add walnuts, molasses, lemon peel, cinnamon, clove, allspice, and nutmeg
4. Cover with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 1-2 hours
5. Set oven to 375
6. Roll out on floured cutting board (1/8-1/4 thickness) and cut into squares with a knife
7. Place cookies on sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes
8. Take out and place on cooling rack
9. While cookies are cooling make glaze by mixing lemon juice, water, powdered sugar and food coloring
10. Drizzle glaze over cookies with a spoon and allow time to set

These are great cookies to bring to the family’s house for Christmas or if you’re going to a cookie exchange, whip up a batch! They are some of the most simple to make and simply tasty cookies out there.

What are you go to Christmas cookies?

Baking: Pumpkin Scones

As soon as Joy posted these on her Instagram, I knew I had to make them. I’ve never made anything with pumpkin before and these looked like a great place to start! As this is the week before Thanksgiving, it was the perfect time to try out a prospective recipe for turkey day morning. We are headed up to my parents house and after my mom saw these pictures she asked me for the recipe and requested I make them when I come!

This recipe is full of spices. You’re going to love the intense flavors!

Step 1: Use a whisk to mix together all the dry ingredients

Step 2: No editing needed here, look at that pumpkin color!

Step 3: And mix it together with the other wet ingredients.

Step 4: Cut the butter into cubes and use a pastry blender to mix in.

Step 5: Now combine the pumpkin mixture into the dry ingredients and add pecans.

Step 6: Use a cookie scoop to get the perfect portion on to a well-greased pan.

Step 7: While they are cooking, make the brown butter glaze. It was so simple and amazingly delicious!Step 8: After about 18 minutes pull the scones out and let them cook on a rack until cool. Step 9: Now drizzle the glaze back and forth all over the scones. I put a piece of plastic wrap down under the rack as to ease clean up later.
Enjoy! These were the best scones I’ve ever made. You’ll be a pumpkin believer after munching on a few of them.

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Original Recipe from Joy the Baker

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup, 6 ounces) unsalted butter, cold and cut into small cubes
• 1 cup buttermilk, cold
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans

For the Glaze:

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 3 to 4 tablespoons whole milk

Directions:

1. Place rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and all of the spices.  Add the cold butter to the dry ingredients and toss to coat.  Using your fingers or a pastry cutter, break the butter down into the dry ingredients.  Work quickly so that the butter remains cold.  Some of the butter will be the size of oat flakes, others will be the size of small peas.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together buttermilk, pumpkin puree, and vanilla extract.
4. Add the wet ingredients, all at once to the dry ingredients.  Stir together until almost thoroughly combined.  Add pecans and stir until no dry flour bits remain.  Using a large ice cream scoop, scoop scones dough by the 1/2-cupful onto the prepared baking sheet.  Leave about 2-inches of space between each scone.
5. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until browned slightly with dry tops.  You can insert a toothpick into the center of a scone to test for doneness.
6. Allow to cool completely before glazing.
7. To make the glaze, in a small saucepan melt butter over medium-low heat.  The butter will begin to crackle and pop.  After the crackling subsides a bit, the butter will begin to brown.  Continue to cook until the butter smells nutty and the butter solids begin to brown.  Immediately remove from the heat and transfer to a small bowl.
8. In a medium bowl, whisk together powdered sugar, browned butter, vanilla, and 2 tablespoons of milk.  Whisk together and add more milk as necessary until your desired consistency is reached.
9. Generously drizzle scones with glaze.

Breakfast: Oatmeal muffins

This is definitely one of my favorite muffins and muffin recipes. It comes from my mom’s cookbook Cooking Down East by Marjorie Standish. It was an old book with a faded yellow cover. The pages were all wrinkled and stained from years of cooking with it.

A few weeks ago, I Googled the recipe and found that the whole book had been scanned in to Google books. I was able to make the same muffins I grew to love growing up!

Step 1: Soak Oatmeal in milk

Step 2: Mix dry ingredients and add oatmeal.

Step 3: Spray with non-stick spray and pour mixture into muffin pans

Step 4: Cook, remove from oven, let cool and eat with your favorite hot beverage

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Oatmeal Muffins

Recipe:
Soak 2 cups oatmeal or rolled oats in 1-2/3 cups milk for 2 hours.

Add:
1 tablespoon melted shortening or oil
1 beaten egg

Add: sifted dry ingredients
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 level teaspoons cream of tartar
1 heaping teaspoon baking soda
(I made a substitute here, 3 tsp baking powder for the cream of tartar and baking soda. I didn’t have cream of tartar and there was no taste difference.)

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes
Makes 12 muffins