Holiday Cookie Recipe Exchange!

Happy Holidays to all of you! I love to bake during the holidays. It is a tradition in my family, I have great memories from when I was growing up. We had a schedule on the bulletin board so everyone knew what their jobs where for the baking process. We boxed them and passed them out to friends and family. I still do that with my daughter and I love to give out cookies to our friends. I am hoping you might share some recipes on your blogs so we can all try each others treats. I am going to start with cut-out sugar cookies. They do take a little extra work and time, but it is so worth it and these are delicious.

Sugar Cookies:
1 cup softened butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp. baking soda

Mix together and form dough into a ball. Cover tightly and refrigerate for 2 or 3 hours to get it firm. I use a combination of powdered sugar and flour to roll them out in. I take a handful of dough and roll out and use my favorite cookie cutters. Keep the dough covered when you are rolling out the cookies. Don't let it dry out.
Place them on a cookie sheet and use colored sugar or sprinkles to decorate them.

Bake for 8-10 minutes until the bottoms are lightly browned

I love these cookies, they are so pretty in a gift box and they are so good and melt in your mouth. Sometimes(when I am patient enough) I leave them plain for baking and frost and decorate them. I use a sugar substitute as my husband is diabetic and they taste just as good.

God bless you all and go bake some cookies!

Anne

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween to all of you!! We love Halloween in our house. I think because we all love Fall so much. I am following the Brenda Photo Challenge and this weeks theme is "Halloween". http://brendaphotochallenge.blogspot.com/2009/10/next-challenge-and-theme-10-31-09.html

I like to bake cookies for the neighbors and for the adults to enjoy while the kids are trick or treating. We get between 100-200 kids every year. It is a fun night, I hope the weather holds up this year. It has been raining and cold the past few days. My husband bought me a wonderful present just for fun. It is a baking pan that has dividers for brownies or bars. When you are done baking and it has cooled slightly, you just lift out the divider and you have 18 perfectly cut pieces of whatever you baked. I have seen it on TV and mentioned it, so he surprised me with it.

I have used it for brownies and bars and it works wonderfully for both. It didn't do so well with a regular cake mix, it came up too much and baked over the divider and was hard to get out. I was just experimenting with it. The bars I have here are apricot bars and the recipe follows. You can use a regular 13x9 pan, I just wanted to show you my new pan.

Apricot Bars

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1 and1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 and 1/2 cups quick cooking oats

1 and 1/4 cups packed brown sugar

3/4 cup butter(1 and 1/2 sticks)
1 and 1/2 cups apricot jam(or any flavor you like)

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Preheat oven to 350

Grease a 9x13 inch pan

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In a large bowl mix flour, baking powder, salt, oats and brown sugar. Cut in butter until very crumbly.

Pat 2/3 crumb mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan and then spread the jam over that. Sprinkle remaining crumbs on top. Bake for 35 minutes and cool before enjoying.
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Nothing on Earth so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night. ~Steve Almond

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Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen,Voices whisper in the trees, "Tonight is Halloween!"~Dexter Kozen

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I'll bet living in a nudist colony takes all the fun out of Halloween. ~Author Unknown

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A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween. ~Erma Bombeck

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Be safe and have a wonderful weekend

Anne

Breakfast Puffs for Recipe Swap Monday

I love this recipe, these are melt in your mouth sort of muffins, rolled in cinnamon sugar.

Spray 24 mini-muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray and set aside. Heat oven to 350.

Sift together the following ingredients:

1-1/2 cups flour

1-1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

Set this aside and in with a mixer cream together:

1/3 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

Mix well and then add the flour mixture alternating with 1/2 cup milk beating well. Fill each muffin cup 2/3 full and bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes until golden brown and they bounce bake when you push on them.

While they are baking mix together 1 cup sugar and 2 tsp. cinnamon. Melt 1/2 cup butter.

When muffins are done, turn pan over on a flat surface and while warm, dip each into the butter and then the sugar/cinnamon mixture. Serve warm if you like or they are delicious cool also. If they don't all get devoured as mine usually do, put them in a tight container overnight.

Hints: My husband is a diabetic so I use Splenda instead of sugar which does cut back the calories. I have also just dipped them plain (omitting the butter dip)while still warm into powdered sugar. One other thing I tried was making a glaze with powdered sugar and dipping them into the glaze while warm. All were enjoyed by us. I hope you like them as well.

COCONUT COOKIE NESTS

I always make these for Easter and my family loves them, but they are so easy to make, I think they would be good for any time of the year. It sort of tastes like a Mounds candy bar.

Start with 2 egg whites, whisk them until frothy and add 2 cups coconut, 1/3 cup sugar, 2 TBSP flour, 1/2 tsp vanilla, 1/8 tsp salt and mix together well.

Now for some fun, you can divide the mixture and put food color in to make a few different colors or just leave them plain, its up to you. Green is fun, but I usually make them different pastel shades for Easter.

Lightly grease a baking sheet, if you have parchment paper I really recommend it for these. Drop by tablespoons into mounds, you can control the size of the cookie, here but after you drop the cookie, form a little well in the center for the treat you are going to add after it comes out of the oven. This recipe only makes about 12 - 15 cookies, depending on how big you make them.

Bake at 325 for about 20 minutes until they are just slightly golden browned. As soon as you take them out of the oven, add a chocolate kiss or a few chocolate chips or chocolate covered raisins or use your imagination to the well in the cookie so that it looks like a nest. The treat will melt slightly but keep its shape. Transfer to a cooling rack and let them sit until the chocolate is set again.

These need to be stored in a container with a tight lid, they do dry out pretty quickly. Better yet just eat them and then you don't have to worry about storage. I like these also because I can adapt them for my diabetic husband just by changing the sugar to a sugar substitute and they taste just as good to us.