Happy Healthy (kinda) Holidays!

"Tilley", coloured pencil on Mi-Teintes
Copyright Rita Woodburne
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So this is the last cookie posting and also my last post until after the Christmas holiday. In fact, I probably won't do another post until next Friday when, as was hinted at in my previous post, I hope to have somewhat of a solid plan outlined for next year's adventures in art.

But you're here for cookies, aren't you? ... That's what I thought.

This final cookie recipe is great because it incorporates fruit so you can eat them and justifibly tell people that you're being good because you're getting your daily serving of fruit. In fact, the more of them you eat, the more servings of fruit you get, and nothing helps fruit go down easier than with a good dose of chocolate to go with it, right?


Strawberry Chocolate Rugelach

Dough
1 cup butter (no substitutes), softened
1 240 g pkg of cream cheese, softened
2 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (optional)
1/4 tsp salt
3 cups all purpose flour

Filling
3/4 cup strawberry jam (sugar free...trust me on this one)
1 cup chocolate chips or coarsely chopped chocolate
2 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon

1 egg whisked with 2 tbsp water for brushing
sugar for sprinkling

Beat butter and cream cheese until fluffy. Add sugar, nutmeg (optional) and salt and blend. Stir in flour to combine. Shape dough into 4 discs and wrap with plastic wrap. Chill for at least 1 hour or unti dough is firm.

Mix together jam, chocolate, sugar and cinnamon in bowl and set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. On a lightly floured surface roll out one disc in a circle about 8 inches in diameter (if you can roll it out into a square shape so much the better, less waste). Trim outside edges of dough (if in round shape) and cut dough into 12 triangle wedges. Place a teaspoonful of filling at wide end of each triangle. Roll up each cookie into a croissant shape and bend gently to bring ends together.
Repeat with remaining discs and arrange 1 inch apart on prepared baking tray. Brush cookies with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for about 20 min., until light brown. Let cool, then devour.


You can also dust them with icing sugar after baking if you want that extra kick of sugar or want to make them look purty. Also, the filling for these cookies can easily be changed depending on your own tastes. Raspberry jam also tastes excellent or you can even use chopped prunes or apricots, although if using dried fruit up the amount to 1 cup instead of 3/4.

So that's it until next week after Christmas. I hope everyone has a fanastic holiday full of good times and that Santa is good to all of you. Happy Holidays!!

11 more sugar-filled days...

Walking in a Winter Wonderland, somewhere on the back 40...

Once again, I bring you another cookie recipe. This one is easily one of my favourites because it involves chocolate and mint, a combination I simply adore! This recipe is fairly easy and, like the sugar cookie recipe, provides a multitude of cookies. Enough chatter, here's the recipe for:


Chocolate Mint Truffle Cookies

1 pkg. bittersweet chocolate (if you don't like really dark tasting chocolate, semi-sweet will do)
3/4 cup butter, no substitutions
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
approx 1/3 cup chopped candy canes or mint candies

In one bowl, melt the butter in the microwave. In another large bowl melt the chocolate in the microwave on medium (should take about 2 minutes). Stir chocolate until no lumps remain and then add butter to chocolate and stir until well blended. Stir sugar into the mixture. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing until well blended after each egg is added. Add flour and baking powder; mix well.
At this point the dough will be extremely soft and should be refrigerated in a covered bowl for at least 2 hours.

Once the dough is sufficiently chilled, preheat the oven to 350. Take a heaping teaspoon of dough and roll into a ball, approx. 1 inch in size. Place each ball about 2 inches apart on a non-stick cookie sheet.
Bake cookies for 9-11 minutes, taking care not to overbake. After removing from the oven sprinkle immediately (while the cookies are still soft) with chopped candy canes and push down slightly into the cookie. Cool completely and devour. It should make about 3 dozen cookies.

A note on the melting of chocolate...
It is very, and I mean very, easy to burn chocolate. When using the microwave to melt chocolate if you're afraid of burning it stop it halfway through melting and stir quickly then return to melting. This will give you a good idea how far along it is and whether or not you need to run it for a full minute more.
However, don't dilly-dally when you stop it mid-melt, as the chocolate can harden up quickly too and nobody likes lumpy melted chocolate.

These cookies are awesome for when you want to treat yourself, you know, like at breakfast.

Until next week, keep on art-ing and baking!

A Bit Off Schedule

Okay, okay. So I know I said I was just going to dedicate Friday's to cookies, but Jennifer over at Fuzzy Dragons said she'd lost her sugar cookie recipe. Quite frankly, a Christmas baking bonanza without sugar cookies just isn't acceptable. In fact, you might as well cancel Christmas altogether.

So, to prevent that from happening I'll post the sugar cookie recipe today. However, I did say that I would have art content this week, didn't I? Far be it from me to go back on my word so it's quite fortunate that the cookie posting today ties in nicely with my art.


At the risk of being overly dramatic I will say that this recipe has been with me many moons, dating back (as best I can remember) to about 1983 when my brother and I would make Christmas cookies with my Mom. Actually, it was more like my Mom made the dough and did the baking while I played with the cookie cutters that looked like little animals and my brother wielded the rolling pin and pretended that he was Luke Skywalker...but I digress.
In the booklet that the recipe was written in I liked to draw things, making my artistic prowess and penchant for eating sugary foods well known to my immediate family early in my life. You can see one of the aforementioned doodles below:

The template was supposed to be for toy soldier cookies and I guess I must've thought they looked a little dull... or too manly. I'm really not sure what I was thinking, but I was 4 years old at the time so it's basically a moot point. Besides which, we're not concerned with toy soldier cookies, we're concerned with:


Sugar Cookies

1 cup softened butter (unsalted)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt


In large bowl, beat butter and sugar together. Beat in egg and vanilla until combined with sugar mixture. Stir in flour, baking powder and salt into butter mixture.
Divide dough into thirds then wrap in plastic wrap, refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

When dough has firmed up sufficiently (don't let it get rock solid though), preheat oven to 350 degrees.
On lightly floured surface, roll dough to approx. 1/4 inch thickness (or thinner if you like crispy cookies). Cut desired shapes and place on non-stick cookie sheet. Re-roll scraps from cut outs and continue to make more cookies until the dough has been used up.

Bake in oven for 10-12 minutes, less time the thinner the cookie.


Note:
Some folks like to put icing on the cookies so make sure that they've cooled off enough before icing them or you'll have some crazy psychedelic looking cookies. I prefer to use the little sprinkles prior to popping them in the oven because after spending several hours rolling, cutting and baking the last thing I want to do is decorate the cookies, I want to eat them.
These are also a great cookie to prepare on one day and bake on another since the dough can be refrigerated up to 2 days. So, you could bake one batch and a day or so after that when you realize that you've eaten most of the cookies from the first batch you can just take another ball of the dough from the fridge and make some more.

Time for baking? You betcha!

Mmmmm, sugar....

"Grateful" ACEO can be bid on here.

Copyright Rita Woodburne

Happy Friday!

So in the sugar-induced spirit of the season I've decided to dedicate the next 3 Fridays to posting cookie recipes.
The first recipe is one that I've made many, many times, mostly for family functions. The best part of making these is that they don't take a lot of time, taste really good and are comprised of only 4 ingredients. So, without further ado:

Caramel Squares

1 box graham crackers
1 cup unsalted butter (do not substitute with margarine, it just won't work...trust me)
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup (give or take) sliced almonds

Pre-heat the oven to 350 Celsius. Line one cookie sheet with aluminum foil, making sure to cover over the edges of the cookie sheet (this is for easier clean up). Arrange the graham crackers over the entire cookie sheet, overlapping them if necessary.

In a pot over medium-high heat melt the butter and sugar together, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil and let boil for 1 minute, continuing to stir constantly. Pour butter/ sugar mixture over graham crackers and then sprinkle with sliced almonds.

Place in oven and bake for 10-12 minutes. Once done baking let stand for approximately 1 hour to cool, do not cool in refrigerator. Separate crackers into squares and devour.


You can use salted butter if you like the flavour instead but just note that the butter/ sugar sauce will be a bit runnier and may take longer to solidify after removing them from the oven. In addition, I've only ever made these with the almonds but I imagine that chopped pecans would taste pretty darn good too.


So there you have it. I'm still art-ing away and I'm hoping to have some more finished art to show off by next week.
Also, tis' the season for having a short fuse, as can be seen in many a mall parking lot all over North America. So folks, while you're out shopping just remember to breathe, count to 10 or whatever else you have to do to not blow a gasket. Mind your P's and Q's and remember that sometimes just being nice to someone else by holding open a door or saying 'Thank you' can really make their day...and yours. Oh, and never forget:

...to smile. It'll make people wonder what you're up to.

Until next week!