On the 19th day of Christmas-Bake Day

December 19, 2016December 18, 20163 Comments

This weekend I started baking all those cookies for the kids. Luckily I’ve been freezing some cookie dough prior to this weekend, so I only had to unfreeze those and bake them. I stored them all in plastic with a little note with the dough’s name and bake time on it.

After a whole Saturday of baking I packed the cookies in 10’s and wrapped them in cling wrap until I can pack them in our little bags on Tuesday.

On Sunday morning I baked some more cookies and then started on the icing, which ended up looking like a blood bath 😦

So….. my husband said he’ll do the icing, it turns out he is more creative than I am.

I have a few more batches of cookies to make before Thursday, but at least most of it’s been done.

On the 14th day of Christmas – Shortbread sticks

December 14, 2016December 13, 20167 Comments

For the past few weeks I’ve been baking every single weekend. It hasn’t been good for my waistline at all… but at least I’ve been able to experiment with various recipes. I feel that I’ve learned a lot these past few weeks. Some of the things might seem obvious to most people but as someone who’s never baked a cookie in her life it wasn’t. I’ve also accumulated a lot of dough. I only baked about 6-10 cookies with each batch, I have frozen the rest of the dough so that I can bake all the cookies this weekend for my schools cookie event next week. From my month of cookie baking I’ve learned the following.

1 Cookies don’t always need eggs. I dint’ know this. When I saw the recipe for the shortbread I thought “this can’t be right”… but turns out, it can.
Use baking parchment paper. This is important for two reasons, firstly it keeps the cookies from spreading too much. Secondly, it decreases the amount of dishes you have to wash afterwards.
Chilling the dough is important. At first I found this really time consuming, I’m not very patient, I want things done immediately, but now I plan ahead. Chilling he dough makes it more manageable and for some reason the cookie just turns out better.
Measuring is important. This past weekend I thought I could get away with not using the instructed amount of cocoa, because its only a flavour , but it turns out, not using the correct amount and not substituting it caused my cookies to be too soft and the spread too much in the pan. The result being extremely big and flat cookies that sticks to the parchment paper and breaks into pieces when you try to remove it.

For today’s cookies I’ve used the rest of the shortbread cookie dough that I had left. I got he original recipe from Sally’s baking addiction. I used her shortbread recipe for her Raspberry Almond thumbprint cookies.

I chilled the dough and rolled little flaky balls of dough in my hand until it formed a ball. I then rolled each little ball of dough into a stick

I baked them for 14 minutes. Once they cooled I melted some chocolate pieces with a tablespoon of milk and dipped the shortbread sticks in the chocolate. Immediately after I sprinkled some rainbow sprinkles on each stick and left the chocolate to dry.

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These cookies are really good with some coffee or hot-chocolate!!!!

Recipe Rating 8/10

On the 12th day of Christmas – Chewy Oatmeal M&M Cookies

December 12, 2016December 6, 20162 Comments

When I was a kid I use to love Oatmeal cookies. We use to make it with butter and syrup so after coming home from school I would melt some butter with syrup on the stove, mix oatmeal with it and eat it, as is… at one stage I even stopped melting the butter and just creamed everything together. I didn’t even bake it.

A while ago I found an oatmeal cookie recipe and baked some cookies but then I found this recipe from Sallysbakingaddiction and I just had to try it. It looked so festive with all the colours and I figured the kids will just love it.

The cookies are chewy and kind of buttery. The M&M’s inside also adds a but more chocolate creaminess to the cookie.

The only thing I didn’t like about the recipe is that the M&M’s cracked open and I had to put some fresh M&M’s on the cookies before I took the pictures to make it look better, but other than that we ate all the cookies I baked and they kept very well in the fridge for up to a week. I’m sure you could store them for longer but mine was only covered with a piece of plastic and not kept in a proper container.

Recipe Rating 8/10

On the 9th Day of Christmas -Double Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

December 9, 2016December 6, 20161 Comment

I love brownies and the best part of the brownie, for me, is always the sides …. where the crispy exterior meets the moist interior. This cookies is exactly that. Crispy on the outside and soft and fudgy on the inside. I made these cookies twice this weekend the first time I baked them for about 15 minutes… I forgot them in the oven, oops! They didn’t dry out completely, however they spread further making BIG round cookies. The second batch I only baked for 9 minutes, they were moist and not as flat as the first lot.

I loved this recipe the cookies were very chocolatey, my husband had three in one sitting. I think they’re really nice but I’m not a huge fan of chocolate so after 2 cookies it became too sweet for me, but that’s just me.

You can find this amazing recipe on sallysbakingaddiction as part of her Christmas Cookie Palooza where you can find a lot of other great cookie recipe’s

Recipe Rating 9/10

On the 8th day of Christmas – Thumbprint cookies

December 8, 2016December 8, 20165 Comments

For today’s cookie I chose the Raspberry Almond thumbprint cookie from sallysbakingaddiction. This recipe is a shortbread recipe with a little bit of jam in the middle of the cookie. I used blueberry!

On Saturday afternoon I started with this as it needs to chill in the fridge for 4 hours so I decided I’ll leave it in the fridge overnight and then bake them on Sunday morning. That way I can also take some pictures when the sun is out.

I made the dough and it seemed a little flaky, I tried to roll it in a ball but it was too flaky so I decided to chill it and see how it works out the next day. It bugged me a little that the dough didn’t look the way I expected and I looked for some advice online. Most people suggest using some melted butter or to knead the dough a little. I was afraid I’d mess up the dough even further and I’m not really a fan of wastage so I decided to take a small piece of dough and knead it in my hand a little. That seemed to work and I was able to roll the dough into balls. So I did that with every cookie, scooping about a tablespoon of dough in my hand and then pressing it a little until it becomes firm. I went back to the website and saw on the comments that some people had the same problem but by kneading the dough in my hand a little I solved the problem. Keep this in mind when making these cookies.

I baked the cookies for 14-15 minutes and they came out wonderfully.

These cookies absolutely just melt in your mouth and is wonderful with some coffee. My cookies didn’t look as good as Sally’s but its my first time and practice makes perfect 🙂