Sugar Cookie Buttons

It’s always slightly depressing after Christmas is over.  Extended family members disperse back to their humble abodes, the Christmas lights stashed away, and the waiting for ‘A Christmas Story’ to return to TV begins again.  I did however have one small keepsake from the holidays to take with me…a small piece of leftover sugar cookie dough.  So needing to satisfy a baking urge, I made these: small, buttery, almost bite-size sugar cookies with a crunchy coating of colorful sprinkles.

Recipe:

Since I made these cookies with leftover dough, I’m not certain how many cookies the full recipe will make.  I’m guessing about 50 cookies.  This recipe was adapted from Baking by Dorie Greenspan.

 

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teas. salt
1/2 teas. baking powder
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 teas.vanilla extract
colored sprinkles

Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together in a bowl.

Using a stand mixer with a paddle attachment or a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed until creamy. Add sugar and beat for 2 minutes, until mixture is pale and fluffy. Add the egg and yolk and beat for another minute until incorporated. Beat in vanilla. Reduce mixer speed to low, slowly add the flour and mix until just incorporated. Finish blending the dough with a rubber spatula (you don’t want to over mix sugar cookie dough).

Divide the dough in half and place each half on a piece of plastic. Shape dough into a disk and wrap. Refrigerate the dough for about 2 hours, until chilled.

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In the meantime, fill a small bowl with colored sprinkles. Roll dough into one inch balls and then roll into the sprinkles until completely coated. Place on cookie sheet about 1 1/2 in. apart. Using your thumb or the bottom of a glass cup, press cookies until they’re about 1/2 in. thick (you can make them thinner if you want a crunchier cookie). Bake them in the oven for 10-12 minutes until firm and still pale. Let them cool on cookie sheet for 1 minute and then transfer them to a cooling rack until room temperature.

Repeat with the rest of the dough, cooling the cookie sheets between each batch.  The dough can be wrapped and refrigerated for up to 3 days.

Cranberry-Walnut Biscotti Dipped in White Chocolate

Whenever a holiday rolls around I get excited to make a list of cookies that I want to make. The story was no different around Christmas, only instead of baking only for my family, I wanted to share cookies with our neighbors too. I probably spent a whole week browsing cookie recipes, looking for impressive, yet time do-able recipes (I had planned to make seven different things). One cookie that I have wanted to try was the biscotti and I thought that it would be the perfect holiday cookie.


Before I baked the dough, I shaped the dough into logs which gives the cookie its characteristic shape. After the logs baked and cooled, I controlled the length of the cookie by how deep I cut the logs on the diagonal. I cut the logs in a way to make smaller biscotti because they were cute and fit perfectly on a plate of shared cookies to the neighbors. You should have seen me cut the biscotti logs! To be honest, I don’t have a good bread knife, so I had to use two different knives to do the job! If I hadn’t done this, I found that the logs would crumble.

The recipe I used is from epicurious.com but I changed the recipe slightly by using anise extract instead of whole anise. I also used walnuts instead of pistachios. Here is the original: Holiday Biscotti

Ingredients:
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
3/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon whole aniseed
1 cup dried sweetened cranberries
3/4 cup shelled natural walnuts (chopped)

6 ounces white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325°F. Line 3 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Sift first 3 ingredients into medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter and sugar in large bowl to blend well. Beat in eggs 1 at a time. Mix in vanilla and anise extract. Beat in flour mixture just until blended. Stir in cranberries and walnuts. The dough will be sticky and soft. Turn dough out on lightly floured surface. Gather dough together; divide in half. Roll each half into 15-inch-long log (about 1 1/4 inches wide). Carefully transfer logs to 1 prepared baking sheet, spacing 3 inches apart.

Bake logs until almost firm to touch but still pale, about 28 minutes. Cool logs on baking sheet 10 minutes. Maintain oven temperature.

Carefully transfer logs still on parchment to cutting board. Using serrated knife and gentle sawing motion, cut logs crosswise into generous 1/2-inch-thick slices. Place slices, 1 cut side down, on remaining 2 prepared sheets. Bake until firm and pale golden, about 9 minutes per side. Transfer cookies to racks and cool.

Line another baking sheet with waxed paper. Melt white chocolate chips in the microwave and dip the ends of the biscotti into the chocolate. Lay dipped biscotti on the baking sheet and let cool until the chocolate has set.

Coconut-Raspberry Cupcakes

My friend was quite fortunate to blissfully return home from school with a gorgeous four layer cake covered in coconut and raspberry (her two favorite things) and layered with buttercream and raspberry preserves .

My family, however, was not so fortunate. I began to hear rumors circulating the house that went like: “That cake would be so good now” or “too bad she didn’t make one for us”…So needing an escape from studying for finals, looking to satisfy a sweet tooth, and feeling sorry for my family’s stomachs empty of cake, the coconut-raspberry cupcakes were born! Despite being mini-versions of the grand cake I made before, the size doesn’t take away from the beauty (or the taste) of the original…in fact they’re even cuter.

recipe adapted from Baking by Dorie Greenspan:

Makes 24 cupcakes
2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 teas. salt
1 1/4 cups whole milk
4 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 teas. vanilla extract
1 jar of seedless raspberry preserves
1 7 oz. bag of Baker’s Sweetened Coconut Flakes

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place baking cups in cupcake/muffin pan.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Whisk together the milk and eggs in a separate bowl. Put sugar and butter in a large mixing bowl and using the whisk attachment, or a hand mixer, beat at medium speed until mixture is fluffy and light (about 3 minutes). Beat in vanilla extract, then add a third of the flour mixture, still beating on medium speed until incorporated. Next, beat in half of the egg and milk mixture, then beat in half of the flour mixture, with each addition mixing until incorporated. Add the rest of the milk and egg mixture beating again until incorporated then add the last of the flour mixture. Continue beating for another 2 minutes until batter is very smooth and aerated.

Line cupcake pan with liners.  Fill baking cups 2/3 full with batter (I fill the baking cups using a small levered ice cream scoop so all of them are the same). Bake for 20-25 minutes or until cupcakes are well risen, springy to the touch, and toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center. Transfer cupcakes to a cooling rack.

After the cupcakes have cooled, peel off the liners and carefully cut off the top of the cupcakes with a bread knife. Spread about a nickel size of seedless raspberry preserves on the inside and replace the top of the cupcake. If you worry about putting the top on exactly the way it came off, slice a tiny notch on the top edge of the cupcake, so when you replace the top, all you have to do is line up the notch (you’ll cover up the notch with frosting).

For the meringue buttercream frosting:
1/2 cup sugar
2 large egg whites
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 teas. vanilla

Put the sugar and egg whites in a heatproof mixing bowl. Place the bowl over a pan of simmering water and whisk constantly for about 3 minutes. Make sure that the egg whites are hot to the touch and that the sugar is all dissolved. Transfer egg white mixture to a another large mixing bowl and using a whisk attachment on a stand mixer or a hand mixer, beat on medium speed for 5 minutes until mixture has cooled. The egg whites should have about tripled its size and look like shiny marshmallow cream. Switch to a paddle attachment and beat in butter, first the full stick, until incorporated and then the half stick. Once all the butter is in, mix for 6-10 minutes to make the buttercream velvety. Beat in the vanilla extract.

Pile the tops of the raspberry preserve filled cupcakes with the buttercream, then sprinkle the coconut on top to completely cover the buttercream.

Place one raspberry in the middle of each cupcake…that’s it!  Enjoy!