The 2013 Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap!!

Yay! I'm so excited!  I've just received the email confirming my participation in this year's cookie swap!  I should receive the two names and addresses of the Canadian food bloggers to whom I'll be sending a dozen of my most favourite cookies by this coming Monday.

Now, to narrow down the choices for which cookie recipe I'll be making....

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...durnit, this is harder than it sounds; I have literally THOUSANDS of cookie recipes, in books, in Word documents, and online. How do I choose?!?

Last year I made the Gingerbread Biscotti shown here, as mentioned before in this post; they are absolutely delicious and one of my favourite biscotti recipes. So, not those.

Should I do a Christmas-themed cookie recipe? Or stay away from them since everyone does those?

Should I develop a brand new recipe for the swap? That's always a cool idea.

So many choices! I am not allowed to post the recipe in advance of the cut-off date for baking off and sending out the cookies to my chosen bloggers, but I will definitely post as soon as I can!

Wish me luck!

Recipe and Tutorial: Gingerbread Biscotti

I have a regular customer who loves loves LOVES my gingerbread biscotti! While he is Croatian, he has a poker party nearly every weekend, and his fellow players are mostly Italian...and Italians know good biscotti, letmetellyou. I am constantly informed of how GOOD these are, and that no matter how many dozen he buys, there are never any left over at the end of the evening.  My father used to call this phenomenon "moreish", as in when you eat something that is so tasty, you end up having a little bit more, and then some more, until they're all gone.

This recipe is one I developed specifically for this customer, and is one of two "go-to" favourites of his; the other favourite will be the topic for another post! This gingerbread biscotti recipe can be made with or without nuts, but I usually make it without, since I am often pairing it with the other biscotti recipe that's chock full of them!

Don't be nervous or afraid of making biscotti if this is your first time; they are essentially cookies, but baked twice so they dry out crisp and firm, which leaves them the perfect vehicles for dunking in your coffee or espresso to soften.

The recipe below is a bit fiddly and involved, but most of the ingredients are spices and fruit, so once those are combined, it's much easier.  Don't skip the processing of the rolled oats; this makes for a firmer cookie.

Gingerbread Biscotti

Yield: approximately 30 biscotti

• 1 cup (100g) old fashioned rolled oats, divided
• 1 ¾ cups (225g) all purpose flour
• ¾ cup (160g) dark brown sugar
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ¾ tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp ground ginger
• ¹/₈ tsp ground cloves
• 2 large eggs
• ¼ cup (60ml) fancy molasses
• 2 tbsp light oil
• ½ tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp crystallized ginger, minced
• 2 cups of three of the following: raisins (any kind), dried cranberries, dried blueberries, currants, pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds), chopped dates, chopped dried apricots, white chocolate chips, mixed nuts, lightly toasted and chopped

Topping:

• 2 (60 g) egg whites, lightly beaten
• ½ cup white sanding sugar

Preheat oven to 350˚F and place the oven rack in the center of the oven. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat (silicone baking mat). 

In a food processor, finely grind ½ cup (50 grams) of the rolled oats. Combine the finely ground oats with the remaining whole oats and the other dry ingredients.
 
Whisk together the eggs, molasses, oil, and vanilla extract in a separate bowl. Slowly add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients, and beat just until combined. Mix in the chopped mix-ins until just incorporated.
 

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and divide in half. Form each half into a flattened bar about 12” long and 5” wide. Transfer the bars to the prepared baking sheet, spacing at least 3” apart.

Bake for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown on the edges and firm to the touch. Remove from oven, immediately brush the top lightly with beaten egg white, and sprinkle generously with sanding sugar; let cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes, or just long enough so you can hold the cookie bar for cutting without burning your fingers.


Reduce oven temperature to 300˚F.  Transfer the partially cooled bars to a cutting board and cut into ¾” slices.  Place the biscotti back on the baking sheet face-up, leaving about ½” between each cookie.

Bake for 6-8 minutes, rotate pan, and bake for another 8-10 minutes or until dry and firm. Remove and let cool completely.

Can be stored in an airtight container for several weeks.

Commission Tales: United Way Rocks!

Just finished up a large-ish commission last week for one of my corporate clients, making 225 hand-decorated sugar cookies for their 2013 United Way campaign kick-off.

Considering the original order request was for 1500 cookies, a "mere" 20 dozen was far easier!

This much, doubled....ay yay yay....!

I made a classic rolled sugar cookie recipe (EIGHT TIMES the original, mind you...whew!) that is very sturdy yet quite flavourful, and can be tarted up quite easily with any flavouring you like. They hold up beautifully to being decorated with royal icing, too! You can find the recipes I used for Rolled Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing here.

The design was to complement their United Way campaign theme for the year, which was "eXplorers" and using superlatives with the letter "X" in them, such as "eXemplary!" and "eXceptional!" to describe employees' outstanding service. The company also had an "eXplorers" themed virtual scavenger hunt (think treasure map-style) that I thought would be fun to mirror in the cookies themselves.

Many pounds of sugar cookie dough!

Rolling the dough to 1/4" thickness

Dozens of rounds cut and baked off (19 dozen, in fact!)

   

Black Royal Icing circles to hold in the flood icing

White flood icing bases

Each cookie had a stylized "X" carefully piped on the dry surface

Each "X" was filled in with red flood icing

When all was dry, each cookie was painted with a custom, hand-drawn "map"

<--- What 20 dozen cookies looks like!

 

 

 

What 20 dozen cookies look like all together! Plus this --->

I'm so glad I was given this commission, as it was a lot of fun!  I'm also incredibly thankful for the unswerving, untiring assistance of my great friend, Erinith, for patiently helping me to flood and paint these cookies, not to mention be with me for the very early morning delivery (after being up nearly all night!). She has her own blog, Balancing on the Edge of the Nerdsphere, which you are welcome to visit.

Tutorial and Recipe: Colourful Spiral Cookies

Another short series I will be working on over the next little while will be to share recipes, pictures, and tutorials of the several dessert table goodies I made for my wedding last month.  

Today, I shall show you how to make these awesome Colorful Spiral Cookies, courtesy of an amazing baker and cookbook author, Heather of SprinkleBakes.

While the concept is not new, I've found Heather's recipe to be both very easy to make and very tasty! A pastry chef friend and I made these last year for another cake commission, as a side gift, and were so impressed with their colour and taste I knew I had to make them again for my own celebration, in my wedding colours, of course!


Colourful Spiral Cookies

Yield: About 3 dozen                                                                             

2	cups unsifted cake flour
½	teaspoon baking powder
¼	teaspoon salt
⅔	cup unsifted powdered sugar
¼	cup granulated sugar
2½	sticks unsalted butter
1	teaspoon vanilla
½	teaspoon strawberry (or other) extract
½	teaspoon(or more) Rose gel/paste food coloring
2	tablespoon unsifted cake flour
1½	cups multi-colored nonpareil decors

Combine the flour, baking powder, salt and sugars in a food processor and process briefly to mix.

Add the butter in pieces; process with on/off bursts until the mixture has the consistency of cornmeal. Add the vanilla and process until the mixture just forms a ball.

Divide the dough into 2 equal portions then return one of the portions to the food processor. Add the extract, food coloring, and the extra tablespoons of flour to the processor and process until just incorporated.

Roll out each portion of dough between sheets of waxed paper. You want a rectangle about 11 × 8½ inches by ⅛ inch thick. 

Leave the dough between the sheets of waxed paper and slide onto a baking sheet. Refrigerate until firm, for at least 2 hours or up to 3 days.

Remove dough pieces from refrigerator. Pour the nonpareil decors into a shallow rectangular dish (such as a 9 × 13-inch pan).

Peel off the top sheet of waxed paper from both doughs. Brush the vanilla dough very lightly with water. Using the waxed paper, lift the strawberry dough and flip it onto the vanilla dough so they are stacked. Press with your fingertips to seal the two doughs together. 

Remove the top sheet of waxed paper and trim the edges even.

When the dough is just pliable (but still cold), roll up the dough(begin with the long side) like a jellyroll.

As you begin to roll, gently curl the edge with your fingertips so you don’t get any air pockets as you roll dough into a log. 

As you roll, the vanilla portion may want to tear; pinch tears together as they happen and keep rolling.

After forming the dough into a log, discard the waxed paper. Gently lift the log on top of the nonpareil decors in the dish and roll until the log is completely coated.

Wrap the log in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm enough to slice (from 4 hours to a week, or freeze for up to 2 months; defrost in the refrigerator overnight before slicing).

Heat oven to 325°. To bake, slice the log into ⅛- to ¼-inch-thick cookies and bake on parchment-lined baking sheets for 15 to 17 minutes, until the cookies are no longer shiny on top and the bottoms of the vanilla portion are golden.