Gingerbread Bears

Another Christmas cookie for gift giving - gingerbread men. This is Dorie Greenspan's fabulous gingerbread recipe: it's traditional in taste, and the texture of the baked cookie is variable depending on how you like your gingerbread (bake less for a softer, chewier cookie and the suggested time for a firmer cookie).

Spice Roll Out Cookies
Bon Appétit
Makes 60 small or 20 large cookies

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/2 cup mild-flavored (light) molasses
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Sift flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, allspice, nutmeg, mustard, and cloves into a large bowl. Beat the butter in a second large bowl at medium speed until smooth.

Add brown sugar to butter and beat 1 minute. Add the molasses and beat until fluffy. Add egg and beat until well blended, about 1 minute. At low speed, beat in vanilla. Add the flour spice mixture and beat till just blended.

Form dough into ball and divide in half. Form halves into balls and flatten into disks. Wrap separately in plastic and chill until firm; 4 hours to 2 days.

Preheat oven to 350F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Work with just 1 disk at a time, leaving the other chilled, roll out the dough between 2 sheets of wax paper to 1/8 inch thickness for small, 2 inch cookies and 1/4 inch thickness for 3 to 4 inch cookies.

Using whatever cookie cutter you prefer, cut out cookies and transfer to parchment lined sheets, spacing 1 inch apart. If the dough becomes too soft to work with, place in freezer on waxed paper lined sheets for 5 to 10 minutes. Use scraps to re roll and cut more cookies until all scraps are used.

Bake until cookies are firm on top and slightly darking around edges, about 8 minutes for smaller cookies and 12 minutes for larger cookies. Cool completely on rack.

Decorate with royal icing, then sprinkles or other decorations, if desired. Let stand till icing is set.


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Homemade Caramels

We're including handmade caramels as one of the gifts we're giving this Christmas. This recipe? Solid gold. The caramels are silky soft, absolutely delicious, and completely addictive.


Candy making is definitely a love it/hate it affair. Candy making is time consuming. I hand wrapped every.single.caramel. It was a labor of love.

I think it was worth it.

There are just a few simple rules to follow for this failproof caramel recipe:

1. use a candy thermometer,
2. have all of your ingredients and equipment at the ready, and
3. ensure your sugar stays in the middle of the sauce pan so as to avoid crystallization

On to the recipe.

Failproof Homemade Caramels
Givers Log
Makes about 60 (I cut my caramels approximately half the size of AmberLee's, so I got 120+)

2 1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1 - 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup butter, unsalted
1 teaspoon vanilla

Line a standard size baking sheet with parchment paper. Allow parchment to rise up the sides rather than just lining the bottom of the sheet.

Cut butter into small cubes and melt over low heat in a medium size sauce pan.

Add and mix sugar, corn syrup and condensed milk. Remember to pour sugar in center of pan, and if any sugar crystals stick to the side of your pan, brush them down with a damp pastry brush.

Cook and stir on medium high heat until boiling, then clip your candy thermometer to the side of pan. Do not allow the thermometer to touch the bottom of the pan.

Reduce heat to medium or a temperature which allows for a steady, moderate boil. Stir often.

When the thermometer reaches 244F (this will take approximately 30 minutes), remove pan from heat and stir in vanilla. Pour the caramel into your prepared baking sheet - use caution! This is a very hot mixture.

Allow to cool overnight then use a pizza cutter to slice into desired slices. Another idea (but one that I have not tried) is using mini cookie or hor doeuvres cutters to create shaped caramels. Wrap each caramel in wax paper and twist the ends to close.

I found that cutting worked best for me after the caramels sat overnight, then spent some time in the freezer. I also froze the cut caramels prior to wrapping as they are quite soft when room temperature.
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Best Sugar Cookies Ever

The quintessential sugar cookie. I think it's one of the trickiest cookies to bake simply because everyone has their own idea of how a sugar cookie is supposed to taste or what the textures is supposed to be like. Mine are either dry and crumbly, or they're a perfect crumb with hardly a flavor to speak of. The sugar cookies that make me cringe are the ones you see so covered with decorative icing that the cookie goes undetected.

This particular sugar cookie recipe turned out to be a huge winner - it was the first time I've tried this cookie recipe and I've already made it twice - that's over 150 cookies. They are tender and almost chewy. The vanilla comes through just enough to give the cookie great flavor without overpowering and they are delicious even without frosting - we haven't actually had them with frosting yet.

We'll definitely be including these in our handmade Christmas gift baskets.


Granny's Sugar Cookies
Recipezaar
Makes approximately 84 cookies

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups butter, softened (do not substitute!)
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
4 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 350F.

Cream sugar and butter till fluffy; add eggs and vanilla, beat well.

Combine dry ingredients and gradually add to creamed mixture till completely blended. Cover and chill at least 30 minutes.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4 inch thickness and cut with cookie cutters dipped in flour to prevent sticking. Transfer cookies to a parchment lined baking sheet.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until just faintly golden around edges. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely on wire racks. Decorate with frosting if desired.


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How To Set A Table

Here's how to properly set a table:

Start with the dinner plate. Set it in the middle of the place setting, directly in front of the chair. Place the bread plate above and to the left of the dinner plate with the butter knife resting on the bread plate. Fold the napkin and lay it to the left of the dinner plate with the folded edge facing away from the plate.


A handy bit of info I've brought out numerous times deals with which side of the plate to lay your utensils. Fork has 4 letters and so does left, therefore the forks go on the left side of the plate. Knife has 5 letters as does right, therefore the knife and spoon go to the right of the dinner plate. The knife's blade is always pointed towards the plate and the forks should rest atop the already laid napkin.

Always ensure your utensils are laid down in the order that they'll be used from the outside in.

The wineglass and water goblet are positioned above and to the right of the dinner plate. The wineglass will be the closest glass to the plate, and the water glass above and just slightly to the left of it.


Lastly, dessert utensils. While it is completely acceptable to lay the table with the dessert utensils already placed, proper placement is important. They'll be situated above the dinner plate with the spoon on top and pointing towards the left, and the fork below the spoon with the tines pointing towards the right.



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Hamburger Cupcakes

For the Bear's birthday I made these hamburger cupcakes - my sister said "Ew! I don't know whether to be grossed out or not but that is so cool!!"

These Hamburger Cupcakes are pretty awesome. And they're unbelievably easy, too - I promise. I first saw the tutorial on Flickr - you should check it out, there's a pictorial step-by-step.

Buy yourself a box of chocolate cake mix, and a box of yellow cake mix. Don't forget to grab a few tubes of green, yellow and red frosting. If you want to get fancy, you can tint some shredded coconut with green food coloring and call it lettuce. Or pick up a box of fondant, tint it orange and cut up some 'cheese' squares. This is all really quite versatile - go with what works for you!

Bake both boxes of cake mix in lightly oiled muffin tins. Let cool, then slice the yellow cupcakes into 'buns', and slice the chocolate cupcake tops off to use as 'patties'. You can do what you'd like with the bottoms of the chocolate cupcakes...I tossed mine in the freezer and am thinking they'd work great in a trifle.

Decorate as you wish with the frostings - coconut and fondant if desired, then assemble into a burger. Add a few sesame seeds and serve!
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Super Epic Rainbow Cake

First spotted this cake on Whisk Kid - of course I bookmarked it and knew that this, this was going to be Bear's birthday cake. How could it not be? It's unbelievable!

Tinting the cake batter was no big thing, once I did a bit of research and decided to shell out $16.00 for a box of fancy Wilton food coloring gel. That stuff is incredible. The colors, as you can see, were intense and true - although the picture makes the red and orange look similar, in reality they were obviously different.

In my opinion, the most difficult and labor intensive part of this whole thing was the buttercream icing. She's a fickle bitch. I went with a recipe I've never tried before - but it's Bon Appétit, it'll work, right? Remind me (again, please) that trying out a new recipe on something that has to be seen by other people is never a good idea.

While I was beating the egg whites and sugar for the second batch (with a hand mixer - I really, really need a stand mixer!!!), my other hand was stirring the sugar syrup on the stove. The thing about sugar is that when it starts to caramelize, it happens fast. I did take the pan off the heat before the browning started - but as I was pouring it (in a slow, steady stream so as not to cook the egg whites), the residual heat from the pan nearly caramelized the sugar! In layman's terms: almost caramelized sugar syrup = golden sugar syrup = pinkish buttercream.

Awesome.

Because I'm frugal cheap, I refused to throw it out. Into the fridge it went. And onto the third batch of buttercream. Please keep in mind that each batch of buttercream calls for 5 egg whites and a cup of butter, plus sugar (negligible - I bake, sugar is always on hand). My patience was running out just as fast as the supplies!

I figured I had this recipe whipped by now, and sure enough, the third batch turned out beautifully - silky smooth, and it melted on the tongue. I'd run out of butter and eggs so I decided I'd layer as much of the cake as I could and finish the rest the next day.

One more batch of buttercream the next morning (yeah, I've got that recipe wrapped around my little finger now), and I came to a brilliant conclusion for the pink buttercream: crumb coat!! It wouldn't be noticeable to anyone but me, and that would leave more of the bright white perfect buttercream to frost the rest of the cake with.

When I forced myself to quit fussing with the icing, laid down my spatula and called it good - I was sort of shocked at the sheer size of the finished cake. Sure, the six cake layers are quite thin - but pile icing in between each one of them, frost the top and sides of the cake and goodness gracious you've got yourself, well, an Epic Rainbow Cake.

It went over well at the party though. I was so nervous cutting into it - my hands were shaking. But when I slid that first slice out and saw that hey! It worked! And everyone gasped and oohed and aahed...I was happy. Bear loved the icing.

My warnings?

Go ahead, make the cake. It's a showstopper, for sure. However - don't make it for a small gathering. Because of all of that gloriously rich icing, even the thinnest of slices may not get finished. It's a terribly filling cake - I have a quarter of it in the freezer yet.

The buttercream recipe I used isn't terribly sweet, which in my opinion is a good thing when you're using this much of it.

Super Epic Rainbow Cake
Whisk Kid
Makes one (gigantic) 9 inch six layered cake

1 cup butter, room temperature
2 1/3 cups sugar
5 egg whites, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups milk, warmed to room temperature
red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple food coloring

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease your 9 inch cake pans (I have 2 commercial pans, I just kept washing, re greasing and re lining) and line with parchment on the bottoms.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar, then add the eggs whites a little at a time. Add vanilla and mix till blended. Alternating between wet and dry, add the milk and flour mixture.

Divide the batter amongst 6 bowls - Kaitlin suggested doing this by weight, but I just used a 1 cup measuring cup to start and as the batter decreased, I used a 1/4 cup measure till all the batter was gone. Whisk a fair amount of each food color into each bowl, pour into your prepared pans and bake for approximately 15 minutes each.

Let the baked cakes cool in the pan for a few minutes, then finish cooling on a rack.

Basic Vanilla Buttercream
Bon Appétit

5 large egg whites
1 2/3 cups sugar, divided
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup water
1 pound unsalted butter, diced, room temperature

Note - it is indescribably important to have each and every one of your ingredients at room temperature or your buttercream will fail. That's pretty much guaranteed. Trust me.

Combine egg whites and 1/3 cup of sugar in a large bowl using a mixer. Add vanilla.

Combine remaining 1 1/3 cups sugar and 1/3 cup water in a medium saucepan; stir over medium heat until sugar dissolves and syrup is bubbling.

Meanwhile, beat egg white mixture on medium speed until very soft peaks form.

Increase mixer speed to high and slowly pour hot syrup down the side of the bowl into egg white mixture in a slow, steady stream. Beat until this meringue forms stiff peaks. Allow meringue to cool in the bowl until lukewarm. Do not beat to cool.

Once lukewarm, start beating meringue on medium speed. Gradually add butter, a few tablespoons at a time, beating constantly till each addition is absorbed before adding next. Continue beating until buttercream is smooth.

If buttercream looks 'broken' or curdled, you can try placing the bowl of buttercream over medium heat on a stove burner and whisk for 5-10 seconds to warm slightly, then remove from heat and whisk vigorously or beat again on medium speed. Repeat this process until buttercream becomes smooth. Keep in mind, this may not work and it might not be salvageable.

You will be able to tell when the buttercream is starting to come together by listening to your mixer - all of a sudden it will start to sound as though it is working harder, and then the buttercream will come together quickly.
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