Shortbread: You can have Scotch, I'll take the shortbread

ooo It's been so long (that was a squeal)! I'm sure the seasoned bloggers would glare with disapproving-cyber-eyes at me for skipping so many days...or is it weeks? Apologies! I have SO many new things to share - Santa brought me something that will be my new bf from now on, can you guess?... but I'm going to try to maintain a bit of excitement by only blogging a bit about my adventures in baking each time. I do feel really sad that Christmas over so I will begin to make up random holidays and reasons for baking. Is it really another year away?
I had a full week of planning and baking (I made gift boxes for some of my best friends as well as family friends!!) - I honestly lost sleep from the whole thing! But it ended up being really fun and it was great being able to gift my loved ones with something I spent a lot of time on. Made with love...aww... I'll blog ALL about that excitement soon, but FIRST - before I left for home, I made a batch of shortbread cookies that I dipped in dark chocolate. They came out looking really fantastic, with the chocolate hardening/drying very smoothly. That might be the key to professional-looking cookies, stuff like "dipped chocolate" or a dust of confectioners sugar. So I passed on the shortbread to my regular test subjects, and they were sort of rejected = ( but at least I have learned that Asians don't really like that sort of consistency or flavor. Or perhaps the butter I regularly use just isn't pure or fragrant enough? Maybe I should invest in a few moo-cows and begin churning my own butter in my cozy munchkin kitchen - actually I have churned my own butter before, in fifth grade, we were learning about the colonists and dipped our own candle sticks, made butter, learned simple embroidery.

Simple Shortbread Dipped in Dark Chocolate (...when I rediscovered my extreme impatience for butter, it takes light-years to soften)

1 cup unsalted butter (two sticks)
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups all purpose flour
1 large ziplock bag

Pre-heat to 149C

1. Wait for the butter to soften if you're like me and didn't plan ahead to bake.
2. Steps to soften: cut into pieces cut into smaller pieces, mash and smoosh with a knife - fork - aaaaanything you can get your hands on. At this point, if you're like me, you're wishing you were an X-Man so you would use your eyes to will the butter to soften to a point at which it will cream well with the sugar - oh, did I forget to mention? That's the goal. To cream the two ladies. My last resort = placing the metal bowl on my lap -> hoping that my 5th grade science knowledge is correct -> heat rises -> my thighs are warm -> warmth from thighs rise to the butter -> A+
   
3. Pat yourself on the back, that was hard work. Cream together the butter and powdered sugar.
4. When creamed, add in vanilla. Continue to mix.
   
5. How does is smell? Like love?
6. In another bowl, sift together flour and salt.
7. Mix flour mixture into the Love (butter & sugar)
   
8. This part is cool, take the dough and place it in a plastic ziplock bag. Push the dough into the corners of the bag, lifting the plastic occasionally to make sure there are no creases. Press around so the dough forms the shape of the baggie and it is around 1 cm in thickness
9. Place in the freezer for about 10 minutes.
10. After around 10-15 minutes of waiting, during which you have dutifully washed up all the dirty dishes (a clean kitchen is a happy kitchen, kids!), take the dough out and cut the dough out of the baggie. Was that magic? Do you now have a perfectly rectangular piece of shortbread dough that you didn't even have to measure? My my my, I think you do!
11. Place on cookie sheet and mark off squares or rectangles just on the surface of the dough. Use a fork to poke pretty holes so you can look professional and impress your test subjects.
    
12. Place in oven for around 40 minutes or until slightly browned
13. Cut the cookies into the squares/rectangles you marked when they are still warm and soft
14. While waiting for them to cool off, melt some dark chocolate in a microwave safe bowl with 30 second intervals, stirring between each 30 second time period. Dip Dip Dip!

P.S. currently I have a bowl of eggs aging on the counter. It's all kinds of grossness (the French might be immune to germs) but after exhaustive research on the art of Macaron making - and by exhaustive, I mean it: I watched 3-4 French youtube videos (oui) to observe the are of the folding as well as the consistency the batter should hold before piping onto the sheet...etc. AND then I read a whole bunch of other wonderful blogs, which I will cite, that recorded their adventures and misadventures - I will just follow the yellow brick road that has been paved by many other courageous bloggers before me and report back to all of you after wards. Macarons and bread-making are two things I WILL conquer. That was a long P.S.

"Bacon Goes with Everything" - says the vegetarian

What do you give to a sports-loving, uber-manly (I'm talkin' pitchers of beer and steaks the size of my head - preferably for breakfast), food-blog lovin' man on his 26th birthday? Perhaps...some Peanut Butter BACON cookies? I know that J. really likes his red velvet cake (mascarpone cheese frosting?!!) and I really wanted to make it for him, but as you all know, my shoe box of an oven just can't take the height of a cake - of course I could continue to "experiment" but I'd likely end up with a third thigh, and with the holidays rollin' up next week, I don't have much room for that sort of dilly dallying.

Anyway, I went for Peanut Butter Bacon cookies, which I had been dying to make for a really long time. The cookie really has his name written all over it. As for the whole idea of savory and sweet, sorry to all the slow-food folks, but McDonalds did a wonderful job at mass producing McGriddles (at one point I was calling them McGirdles - sexy eh? In my defense, I had jet-lag and had been up for hours watching Cantonese gang-films). Griddle cakes with tiny (or not so tiny) pockets of warm maple syrup that pop and mix together with the greasy juices of the sausage. I obviously wasn't a vege-head at that point in my life.

Some notes on this recipe, the ingredients are so simple, I had to check the article quite a few times, I couldn't believe there was no BUTTER or FLOUR involved...insane, I know. I didn't want to trust it. But, I soldiered on, browning and crisping the bacon (I almost threw up...apologies - the "aroma" was too intense for my oh-so-delicate nose, which is used to the floral fragrance of steamed...spinach. *sigh).

I also folded in a quarter of a stick of cream cheese, which I chopped into teeny-tiny cubes so there would be creamy surprises snuggled up with the bacon.

I used Joy the Baker's recipe.

Preheat to 177C

6 slices of bacon (maple infused bacon would be quite lovely too)

1 cup peanut butter, either smooth or it's chunkier cousin are fine for this

1 cup sugar (half brown sugar, half granulated white sugar)

1 egg

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 block of cream cheese - tiny cubes (optional)

1. Cook the bacon slices until they are crispy.
   
   Cool on a paper towel until it's cool enough to handle. If you have scissors you use for cooking, cut up the bacon into tiny squares, like bacon-bits! If not...like myself...grab a chair and hunker down, the cutting takes a bit of time. All I can say is, good thing I'm not a meat eater, or there wouldn't be much bacon left after the half hour of strenuous square cutting.
   
2. Mix together the peanut butter and the sugars until they are well combined. No need to sift here! This is a man-ly cowboy cookie aiiiite?
3. Add egg and baking soda and mix for around 2 minutes.
4. Fold in bacon pieces (this is when I added the cubed cream cheese).
5. Roll the dough into walnut-sized balls and press down on them with a fork to make a criss-cross pattern. The original recipe gives the option of rolling the balls in granulated sugar before criss-crossing them, but really...more sugar? At this point I have my dentist on speed dial.
6. Bake for around 10 minutes or until they start to brown a bit.
7. As usual, the hardest part: wait for them to cool (five minutes should be enough right?) These end up being a bit crumbly, so handle with care - especially when gifting!

Icebox Cookies w. Candied Ginger

I've discovered icebox cookies and omigosh I am going to be the best hostess EVER from now on. Anytime someone stops by my humble abode, I will sweetly offer some freshly baked cookies - just call me Martha. Basically, icebox cookies are cookies that you can keep frozen for a couple of months, and you just slice and bake whatever you need - it only takes around 10 minutes to bake, so your guests will be completely blown away by yo craay-zay kitchen skills. I'm totally going to be Betty from Mad Men, all I need now is to sleep with my make-up on and invest in a floral apron. Christmas gift idea?

There are millions of icebox cookie recipes and the ingredients are all pretty much the same. White sugar, butter, flour...etc (I realize last week I was all about making shortbread cookies, which are actually very similar to icebox cookies except they use confectioners sugar - I will get to the shortbread, I promise!) I can't over emphasize the umm...simplicity of these cookies, but it's one of those beautifully simple things, you know? The way a nice sugar and butter cookies crumbles and melts in your mouth...BUT of course, simple was too boring for me, especially when I had a container filled with homemade candied ginger. I just HAD to incorporate it. I went with the Butterscotch Icebox Cookies by Pam Uribarri (her grandmother's recipe, I'll make anything by anyone's grandmother. That's the ultimate seal of approval). I halved the recipe since I don't have that many cookie-eaters around...also, instead of pecans, I folded in candied ginger at the very end....

1 cup un-salted butter

2 cups packed dark brown sugar

2 eggs

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup chopped pecans (I used around 1/4 cup candied ginger for my halved recipe in the place of the pecans)

Pre-heat 200C

1. Cut the butter into cubes and drop the creamy yellow goodness into a mixing bowl.
2. Cream the cubes of butter and then add in the sugar slowly. Cream together well - around 2 minutes.
3. Beat in the eggs.
4. Slowly mix in the sifted dry ingredients.
   After the salty lemon cookies, I was a changed woman, I now sift! It's annoying - I always make a mess.
   
   
5. Mix in the vanilla
   
6. When the dough is well mixed, fold in nuts (I used candied ginger)
7. Shape the dough into rolls. Wrap in wax paper and the freeze until firm - around half an hour.
8. Slice and place around an inch apart on cookie sheet.
9. Bake for around 12 minutes.

Oh the Possibilities!

9:00 pm and I was itching to start making something - anything! I already decided on the shortbread cookies (sorry D, I know you don't like them) and I'm planning on dipping them in chocolate and somehow incorporating candied orange peels. Good combo right? Not sure where the candied orange peels would get incorporated - baked with the cookies? Tiny citrus gems mixed in with the dipping chocolate? The planner in me decided to go ahead and make the candied orange-peels tonight. Ahead of time you ask? So out of character I know, but I needed to do something.

Anyway, no oranges at home of course (I usually only have apples or guavas, I eat them errrryday) and I wasn't about to risk venturing out in the cold only to find the fruit store closed. I was very close to throw my hands up and give in to zoning out to re-runs of E.R. when I discovered a half-used, shriveled looking root sitting in the corner of my kitchen. So it wasn't such a pitiful scene, but really, ginger isn't the most attractive thing out there. Why not beautify it by candy-ing it right? And BOY did I candy it up tonight!!

I was really good about the photo-taking this time, documenting each step (the process of the water evaporating and leaving the ginger syrup is really exciting to watch!) so I can present my mid-night journey with you guys. I went through a ton of recipes as usual, and I didn't end up following anything. They all called for, like a pound or more of ginger...all I had was one lonely chunk, roughly the size of the palm of my hand. Really not much, but it doesn't matter how much ginger or orange peel you're using, as long as the ratio of ginger to water to sugar is set...it's a fairly easy process in terms of making candy according to David Lebovitz.

Ginger

Sugar

Water

More sugar

1. Use a sharp knife to carefully remove the skin of the ginger. Try not to cut too deep into the ginger, you don't want to end up with a tiny dinky piece of ginger, thats not much to work with!
2. Cut the ginger into whatever type of candy-shape you want. I made long skinny strips, but you can do round slices or even squares. The thicker the pieces, the longer you'll have to cook it for, so if you're low on time, just go with the thin slices.
3. Put the ginger into a pan and add water, just enough to cover the ginger. Boil for one minute and remove from heat. Quickly rinse the ginger in cold water and then drain out the water. Repeat this one more time, but after this second boil, don't throw out the ginger-water! It'll really help to enhance the flavor of the ginger syrup that you end up with. It should also be noted that if you do decide to have bigger chunks, you might need to repeat the boil-cold water process one extra time.
4. So now you have a bowl of ginger-water, blanched ginger pieces, and a ton of sugar waiting to be candied. Pour a bit of water into the pan, around 1-2 cm of liquid from the base of the pan, then add sugar into the water until you start to see the swirls of sugar when you stir (this is really subtle, but if you want a measurement, for my ginger, I used around 3/4 cups of sugar).
5. Add the ginger into the sugar water mixture, all of the pieces should be completely immersed in the liquid.
6. Turn the heat down so it's on a slow simmer.
7. Simmer until it is thick and syrupy and the ginger pieces come up really soft when you try to lift them from the pan with a fork or chopsticks. I simmered my pieces for about half an hour, if your chunks of larger, you'll need more time on the stove (hour to 75 min), but just be aware that the liquid should not become BROWN.It should be yellowish golden...not brown. You don't want it to caramelize! There is a time and a place for caramelization, and as lovely as it is, now is not it. If the ginger pieces aren't soft yet and you're running low on liquid, add more of the ginger-water and stir in more sugar.
8. When the pieces are soft, remove from the syrup with a fork. Let the excess syrup drip off the ginger when it's still on your fork - don't be too ambitious (*sigh, I know it's hard), so don't try and do too many pieces at once.
9. I put half of my candied ginger in a foil pan filled with white sugar, and the other half I separated with chopsticks while they were still hot onto a piece of foil.
10. Let them rest for a few hours - they need time to dry.
11. 
    Cook down the remaining syrup for another 1-2 minutes and then pour into a clean jar or bowl. I'm not sure what I'll use the syrup for, but I think it would be nice in some tea? oooh the glee of coming up with THREE different things with one recipe!

Chocolate Crinkles for the Holiday Season

To be honest, they only stay powdered-sugar snow-crinkled for about half an hour. I'm not sure why, but even in December the moisture level here has the ability to make those beautiful pebbles of chocolate drown into...well, baked blobs of chocolate - equally yummy of course. Oh! and the horror of desperately trying all different methods with many subsequent failed attempts to completely dry out trays of potentially perfect little meringue kisses... I was letting them get a little R&R so I left the house for a hop and a skip, and when I got home, they were sweating up a storm, more on that in a later entry.

I tried Chocolate Crinkles last year for the first time, probably around holiday season after seeing them on a number of blogs. I started out by using regular baking chocolate, SO regular I feel bad revealing the brand (no offense at all to regular chocolate dearies, I think I even bought an extra pack "just in case" I messed up. I didn't mess up and the pack of chocolate was there so... you know the story).

The first batch came out waaaay too buttery, they almost had a fried consistency - still consumed by the devoted test subjects nonetheless (if I recall correctly, they were quite drunk). The second time I made it, I held back a bit of the butter and broke out with the Godiva dark which I chopped into little pieces before melting. I'm not a professional cook by any means, so I'm not too sure if it is a sin in the world of baking to use random chocolate for cooking, but they came out beautifully. The cinnamon in the cookies is such an unexpected, wonderful, and warm kick - not that these need too much convincing when the baking aroma begins to take hostage of your house!

There are so so so many recipes out there, but I used sugercrafter's for this one.

8 ounces chocolate pieces (dark or semisweet, I think both are okay...or a mixture?! be adventurous, if you mess up, you will be punished with having to eat allllll that chocolate boohoo)

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup regular white granulated sugar

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs at room temperature

1 1/2 cups flour (I used whole wheat all purpose flour)

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Edible SNOW! powdered sugar of course...

1. Chop up the chocolate pieces, it'll make the melting process faster and easier. You can do the same for the butter if you want!
2. Put the chocolate and the butter in a double boiler to melt them together. I know I know, it already sounds like bad news. It'll only get worse I tell ya!
3. Beat the eggs together with the 1/2 cup sugar until it's all fluffy. It won't get stiff like egg whites of course.
4. Beat in the vanilla.
5. Spoon in the chocolate mixture and stir together.
6. Leave chocolate on the spoon so you can lick it (not optional)
7. In another bowl, sift together the flour, salt, cinnamon, and baking powder. Mix so it's all even.
8. Add the flour mixture into the chocolate mixture.
9. Refrigerate for 3-4 hours or more so it gets firm enough to form into balls. Here is when I went really really wrong. Sugarcrafter suggested microwaving the bowl if you leave it in over night so it's easier to work with. WELL, I refrigerated the mixture in a metal bowl, which is not okay to microwave...I had to warm it up with my hands which took much too long. If you're smart enough, which I know you are, you'll refrigerate in a glass or plastic bowl and you can microwave for about 15 seconds, you don't want to get it TOO soft!!
10. 
    Preheat to 162C/325F
11. Fill a bowl with the powdered sugar and begin rolling balls of dough around a tablespoon size. This is a bit too decadent for the 1/4 cup per cookie measurement.
12. Roll the lil guys in the powdered sugar until they're all covered.
13. Place on lined baking sheet making sure that their is about 1 1/2 inches between them since they'll spread a bit.
14. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Please don't bake them for too long because they're super good when they're a bit fudgy!!

Ginger cookies or Shortbread cookies this week?