Gingerbread Cookies

In our family, we always make sugar cookies for Christmas. This year, I had so much royal icing left over that I decided to make a batch of gingerbread cookies to use up the icing. These were easy and delicious vessels for the royal icing. 

Ingredients:

3/4 c firmly packed light brown sugar

1/2 c butter, softened

2 eggs

1/4 c molasses

3/4 c flour

2 t ginger

1/2 t baking soda

1/2 t each: allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt

In a large bowl, beat sugar and butter. Add eggs and molasses. Stir in remaining ingredients, then chill for 1 hour. Roll out dough until 1/4 inch thick on floured board. Cut with cookie cutters, and bake on greased cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. 

Decorate as desired with royal icing or your favorite buttercream. 

Molasses Cookies with Raisins

My mother's favorite cookie is a molasses cookie with raisins. Molasses is what makes brown sugar brown. You can even make your own brown sugar by mixing regular granulated sugar with molasses.

Whenever I bake cookies, my mother requests either these or the basic chocolate chip, but she likes these better. These are best straight from the oven with a tall glass of cold milk. I baked off a batch early in my stay home, but they disappeared within days.

Just before I came back to school to begin the new semester, I made another big batch of this dough and froze it in convenient cookie sized balls for mom to pull out and bake whenever she gets a craving while I'm not at home to make them myself (I also did this with chocolate chip for the siblings). You can do this with any cookie dough.

Yes, I am a fantastic daughter and sister. :)


We usually use a recipe found in an ancient cook book, but that recipe made cookies that were too soft. We wanted something a little chewier, so I tried a recipe I found online on a great blog.

I followed the recipe exactly, except that I added a couple handfuls of raisins.

The cookies were really good, but they did get a little dried out on the second day, so try your hardest to finish these the day you make them. Trust me, it will not be difficult!

Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

Nothing says Christmas like decorated sugar cookies. I made a huge batch of sugar cookie dough and let it chill overnight before rolling it out. The day that I baked them off, I made my royal icing. In retrospect, I would recommend spreading it out even more- for instance, make your dough one day, bake the cookies the next, and decorate them the third day, but I made a lot of cookies and only had a little help decorating. If you have more helpers and less cookies, maybe you can squeeze it all into one day.

What is so nice about Royal Icing is that you can make all sorts of cute designs, and then the icing will harden so that you can bag them or stack them. Some other tips: disposable piping bags, gel food coloring, and stacking cooling racks.



The usual method for Royal Icing is to pipe your outline using a thicker, toothpaste consistency, then flood with a thinner consistency. After you've flooded, wait an hour or so to pipe additional designs on top. If you want to use more than one or two colors, you will need lots of piping bags and couplets. I had to run out last minute to buy more couplets. Additional tips would be helpful too, but you can always swap the same one out (being sure to wash between colors).



I've decided not to do too much of a tutorial on this because it is so complicated- and others already have done great ones! However, here are links to the websites with the recipes I used (Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing). Pioneer Woman also has a great tutorial with lots of pictures. I will say that although this was a big challenge, I'm pleased with the results of my first try. The cookies looked and tasted great- and my family gobbled them up!

Snickerdoodles

I love snickerdoodles. I will admit that this batch came out a little off for 3 reasons-

1) I decided to experiment with the Splenda baking blend. If you are going to go through the trouble of baking, it may as well be the real deal. The splenda made the cookies overly sweet, and had none of the chewy qualities of baked sugar.

2) I didn't have any cream of tartar for that crackly finish.

3) I used margarine instead of butter. Margarine is usually about half the price of butter, and lasts way longer. As a college student, these two qualities make margarine slightly more attractive than butter. But, if you have the cash- Use real butter every time.

Here's the ideal recipe for Snickerdoodles (without my changes). I've made this recipe many times, and the cookies spread out into flaky, chewy, crisp cinnamon goodness- not the strange hockey pucks I got...Maybe the holiday season will prompt me to make these originals- if so, I'll be sure to take a picture for you.

Adapted from Joy:

For dough:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 sticks butter, unsalted, softened
• 1 1/2 c sugar
• 2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. In large bowl, beat butter and sugar on medium until fluffy. Add eggs and beat until well combined. Stir flour mixture into butter mixture until smooth. Pull off pieces of dough and roll into generous 1 1/4 inch balls. Roll in mixture of :

• 1/4 c sugar + 4 tsp cinnamon
  

Space on greased cookie sheet about 3 inches apart. Bake for 8 to 11 minutes.

Because it makes so many cookies, I rolled up the dough into balls, covered them in cinnamon-sugar, and froze them on a tray, then put them all in a freezer bag to bake whenever I feel the need for cookies! You can freeze most cookie doughs like this, or simply in a log to slice and bake.

Chewy Chocolate Cakemix Cookies

Not bad for a $100 camera!

Sometimes I get overwhelming cravings for chocolate. Not just any chocolate, but warm, gooey chocolate derived desserts. Ladies, you know what I'm talking about!

My first instinct was to look for a box of brownie mix, but instead found a box of cake mix. Now, I'm not usually a boxed mix kind of girl, but this was an emergency and I needed chocolate, and I needed it fast!

Thankfully, I came across this recipe at Kirbie Cravings (coincidence!?).
This recipe made about 2 dozen cookies.

Prep time: 5 minutes
Oven time: 8-10 minutes
Ingredients:

• 1 chocolate cake mix
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• halfway in between 1/3 and 1/2 cup oil
• 2 eggs
  

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl mix together eggs, oil, and cake mix. Add chocolate chips. The dough will be very stiff! Drop by rounded tablespoon onto a greased cookie sheet, or use a cookie scoop (one of my favorite kitchen tools). Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until it passes the toothpick test.

I ate a warm cookie straight from the oven draped over the top of a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Chocolate emergency, averted!