2nd Day of Baker's Dozen Day's of Christmas!

Oh! Us lazy blog hosts have to make it easy on ourselves sometimes!! A lot of cookie doughs are really versatile and you can make multiple types of cookies with them! Well, at Christmas time when you are making a ridiculous amount of cookies to share with loved ones, why not make it a little easier on yourself?

When I was thinking of the cookies I wanted to make for this project, I reached about 10 and started to draw a blank! Of course, my husband ever eager to throw out some input suggested M&M cookies with the Christmas colors instead of the traditional multi-colored. I thought it was a great idea! And would show how you can take one cookie dough and do two things with it!

So without futher ado, I present to you the 2nd day of Baker's Dozen Day's of Christmas! And uh, it's going to be really easy for you and me! It's the Snickdoodle Wheelie's dough!


The Cast:
Sheet pans
parchment paper
cooling rack
kitchen aid fitted with paddle or mixing bowl and beaters
scoop

The Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter, room tempertature
3 ounces of cream cheese, softened
1 1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 2/3 cup all purpose flour
1 cup candy coated chocolate candies, like M&M's



The Procedure:

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees and line your cookie sheets with parchment

Like any good baker, you know you should cream your fats and sugars first! Get those kitchen aids going! Cream together your butter, cream cheese and sugar. After they are nice and combined add your vanilla and eggs. Then add your baking powder and flour when half way incorporated add the M&M's.

Portion  your cookie dough with your scoop or into about walnut size pieces of dough. You are going to want to push them down significantly!

I baked them for about 10 minutes and they were perfect! 

You could easily double this recipe and make half snickerdoodle pinkwheelies and the other half M&M cookies! Enjoy!!

The Baker's Dozen Days of Christmas Cookies!

Everyone does the 12 days of Christmas in cookies, well I thought I would be different! Part of my challenge to myself is to come up with unique and different recipes, well why should that exclude original ideas! Sure, someone else thought of 12 days of Christmas cookies, but I thought of The Baker's Dozen Days of Christmas Cookies!

*sung to the tune of 12 days of Christmas* On the first day of Baker's Dozen, my pastry chef made for me, Snickerdoodle Pinwheelies! 

A new and unique twist on a favorite! I don't traditionally make Snickerdoodles at Christmas, however, I couldn't resist the new spin (HA GET IT!) on snickerdoodles!

The Cast:
Sheet pans
parchment paper
cooling rack
plastic wrap
kitchen aid fitted with paddle or mixing bowl and beaters
knife

The Ingredients:
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup butter, room tempertature
3 ounces of cream cheese, softened
1 1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 2/3 cup all purpose flour
3 Tablespoons butter, melted


Melt the 3 tablespoons of butter

Like any good baker, you know you should cream your fats and sugars first! Get those kitchen aids going! Cream together your butter, cream cheese and sugar. After they are nice and combined add your vanilla and eggs. Then add your baking powder and flour until combined.

From here you divide the dough in half and roll it out on a well floured surface to about a 12X8 rectangle. Then brush the dough with the melted butter, top with the cinnmon sugar mixture and roll like a cinnamon roll. This is how I roll yo! I start it off by rolling over about a 1/2 an inch into the middle and then from there I just put my hands on both ends of the dough and push forward! Easy, peasy, lemon, squeezy!

Repeat with the other half of the dough and then wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate the rolled up cookie dough for at least 4 hours. This is what I do! I make all the dough that needs to be refrigerated in one day, so that the next day I can just bake all the cookies at once! Makes sense no?

When it comes to baking, you want the oven at 350 degrees, use parchment lined sheet pans! Trust me, your elbows will thank me when you don't have to scrub off any of the sugar that leaks out of these cookies onto a bare sheet pan.

Slice the cookies with a knife to desired thickness, I went with about 1/2 an inch or so. They are a nice bite size. 

Since the dough will be cold you should allow a little extra time for baking, mine took about 15 minutes.

  

I hope Santa enjoys the Snickerdoodle Pinwheelies!

Meyer Lemon Sugar cookies!

It's that time of year again when the meyer lemon's start to show up in your grocery store! I love the taste of them, but I am always left wondering what I should do with them? I've done the limoncello, I've even made lemonade in the bitter cold with meyer lemons! It's time for something new!!

When I was younger my mom use to buy the Krusteaz Lemon Bar mix and make them into delicious lemon sugar cookies. I always loved them, well I thought I would do the same thing with meyer lemons, only it would be homemade!

The Cast:
microplane
sheet pans
parchment paper
mixing bowl and mixer or kitchen aid with your beater blade
measuring cups (I always forget this on the cast, but maybe because it's a given?)
portion scoop
cooling rack

The Ingredients:
2 sticks (1 cup) of room temperature unsalted butter
2 Tablespoons juice from the meyer lemons
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
4 meyer lemons, washed
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

extra sugar for dusting
extra meyer lemon juice for dusting sugar

The Procedure:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and place parchment paper on your sheet pans.

Start by creaming your butter and sugar together. After they become lighter and fluffier, add the eggs, zest your lemons right on top of the bowl into the wet ingredients and then squeeze the juice from the lemon and add 2 Tablespoons. Mix the eggs, juice and lemon zest just until they are incorporated and then add your flour and salt until they are just incorporated.

Mix the extra sugar and a tablespoon of the left over meyer lemon juice in a seperate bowl. It will look clumpy, but try and get as many clumps out as possible. Portion the cookie dough with a scoop into the meyer lemon sugar. Place on your sheet pans an inch apart and press down on the top of the dough, you don't want it completely flat, but enough that they won't come out of the oven looking like dough balls.

Bake the cookies for 11 minutes and allow them to continue to bake on the cookie sheets for another 5 minutes until you can transfer them to a cooling rack.

 

I'm fairly happy with the results! Little cookies that melt in your mouth and have a great citrus flavor!! 

Fresh baked bread!

Is there anything better in the world than the smell of fresh baked bread? I can attest that there is not. It has been snowing here in Seattle all day long! This is very unusual for Seattle, but a great time to be inside baking some bread!!

This bread is an Italian bread and is similar to the "french" bread that they sell at most grocery stores. I am using it for my Thanksgiving day stuffing! I will cut it up into cubes and bake it in the oven until it is nice and dry! It seems like such a waste of a beautiful loaf of bread, but that the dressing will be just as good!

The Cast:
Mixing bowl or your kitchen aid with hook attachment
sheet pans
parchment paper
lame (if you have one)
plastic wrap
cooking spray 
thin kitchen towel
oven safe dish

The Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon active dry yeast
2 cups lukewarm water
3/4 teaspoon barley malt syrup
5 cups of bread flour
1 Tablespoon salt
1 1/2 Tablespoons olive oil

The Procedure:
 Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

In your mixing bowl add the yeast and then pour in the lukewarm water and barley malt syrup. While this is blooming, measure out your flour and salt into a bowl. Allow the yeast, water and barley malt syrup to bloom until it is looking a little foaming on top and then add your flour, salt and olive oil.

Mix all the ingredients together and mix until the dough feels elastic. Another way to test this is to take a piece of dough and spread it with your fingers to see if the gluten is developed, if it is, it will stretch apart and not break.

After it is mixed and desired elastic consistency, spray your bowl with some cooking spray and put the dough in and wrap with plastic wrap. Let bulk ferment for at least an hour. My favorite place to let it bulk ferment is in my laundry room with the dryer running! It get's all warm and humid in the room, which is perfect for fermenting bread.

Once it has done it's magic in your laundry room, take it out of the bowl, expelling the gases and cut the dough in half. Roll the two pieces of dough into about 10"-11" loaves. Place on parchment lined sheet pans with the seam side down and cover with a thin kitchen towel and place back in your warm, cozy place. Again, it is going to take about 45 minutes to an hour for it to reach to desired "double in size".

Check on the bread at 45 minutes and then slash with your lame.

 

After slashing let them proof for another 10 minutes or so. Then remove the towel and place in 425 degree oven with your oven safe dish filled with about an inch of water. Bake for 25 minutes. The bread should be a nice golden brown on the outside and give a nice hollow sound when thumped. 

 

The end result will be two beautiful loaves of bread that you can proudly butter and eat! This bread is great for sandwiches, dinner bread and for just plain eating! Enjoy! 

Edited to add: If you brush the bread with a nice, thin layer of olive oil you get a nice chewy artisan like crust! 

Cranberry sauce with a new twist!

Thanksgiving has always and will always be my favorite holiday! Now that I have my own home and family (albeit small) it is time for my own Thanksgiving traditions. We have all the usual guests, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans with the onions and bacon, yeast rolls, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. However, we do some things a little different in my house! Everything is as homemade as humanly possible! Pie crust, of course! What kind of pastry chef would I be if bought premade pie dough? Pumpkin pie filling, don't even think about bringing the stuff from a can into my house! Whip cream? Absolutely! Even my stuffing will be homemade, right down the bread cubes from my own bread!

Thanksgiving's in my home are homemade, no pre-made food, just raw, good ingredients turned into a tasty meal! There is another twist as well! I'm a locavore! Well as much as a locavore as I can be! In my home we try to eat as many locally grown and produced items as we can! It is a simple concept and really started for my family this summer. I had gone to Trader Joes after a workout and had forgotten my water bottle. While I was at Trader Joe's I bought a bottle of Fiji water. I was telling my husband about this and his remark was, "I wonder how much gas and oil they used shipping that water from Fiji to America?" Thus, our local food obsession was born. Not only is it better for your enivornment and sustainability to buy local, it's good for your local economy! I am thankful that I live in a part of the country that is so bountiful with many goods! It isn't always possible, but even one meal a week made with local meat and produce can make a huge impact.

Now, I am going to climb off my soap box and tackle the issue at hand! Cranberry sauce!! I dreamed this little baby up last week! I have never actually made cranberry sauce for my Thanksgivings! This is a first in our household! I wanted it to be simple, different, unique and something that I came up with from my own little brain. Of course it has to be homemade, again, nothing from a can in this house! I remember years of people opening that can and out would plop a can sized mass of cranberry gel, it makes me shutter. Yes, I am a food snob! And dang proud!

Back to the cranberry sauce! I took another seasonal favorite and added it to my cranberry sauce, pomegranate! I really enjoyed the results and I hope you guys will too, so without further ado......

The cast:
A knife
A spoon
A pot

The Ingredients:
8 ounces of fresh cranberries (lucky me! They grow cranberries on the Washington and Oregon coast!)
1 cup pomegrante juice
seeds from one pomegrante, plus any juice
2/3 cup sugar
1 piece of crystallized ginger
zest of one orange

The Procedure:

This is a pretty simple procedure, I never realized how easy cranberry sauce was to make! I put the cranberries, pomegranate juice and sugar in the pot and let it start to get warm and a medium-low setting. Let them start mingling, getting really thick and good. While it was working it's voodoo on the stove I took apart and seeded the pomegranate. I cut the pomegranate in half and then took the seeds out with a spoon, it can be a little tricky! Pomegranates have lots of little cavernous places of seeds! Try and do it over the pot of cranberries as much as possible so the juice from the seeds goes into the pot, but make sure to keep the pulpy membrane out, it doesn't taste real good!

Once you get the pomegrante seeded, cut up your crystallized ginger and add it to the pot! You could probably even add two pieces if you like to taste your ginger! Cut it really small, almost minced!

After that is all done, zest your orange directly over the pot! All those essential oils come out when you zest and orange and they add a lot of flavor as well as the zest itself.

From here you are just going to simmer the cranberries until they start to thicken, I believe it took me about 45 minutes to reach the consistency I want! After you refridgerate them, they get really thick and almost like a jam or preserve!

You can most definitely start this recipe today! It will still be good by Thanksgiving and will be one less thing to do this week!!

 
Stay tuned, more Thanksgiving goodness to come in the following days!!

Pan fried apples and pears

For those that have never been to a Cracker Barrel, you don't know the beauty that is fried apples, or maybe you do? However, Cracker Barrel has some pretty amazing fried apples. Last week I went a little crazy at the grocery store buying organic apples! it is the end of the season for the honeycrisps, which are my favorite! So after buying 2 pounds of Braeburns, I decided I need a pound of honeycrisp! As a result, my fruit bowl is over crowded and we aren't able to eat it fast enough as is!

Enter, pan fried apples and pears! I think my version is a little healthier than good 'ole Cracker Barrels, however, the results are still quite tasty!! Not to mention a fairly guilt free dessert to go with that dinner and pretty quick and easy to make! Pair it with a little granola crumble garnish and it's almost like an apple crisp without all the calories!!

The Cast:
frying pan
cutting board
knife
peeler
stirring spoon
cookie sheet
parchment paper
bowl

The Ingredients:
4-6 apples and or pears depending on the size. If they are small, go with six, if they are giant, go with 4. You get the idea
1 teaspoon disaronno amaretto
1/4 cup apple butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cardamom

Granola garnish:
1/2 cup oats
1 Tablespoon maple syrup
1 Tablespoon brown sugar
1 Tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon olive oil or canola oil
2 Tablespoon shredded coconut
pinch of salt

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Make your granola first before you get to the apples. Add all the granola ingredients in a bowl and mix them together and spread them out on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees until light golden brown, it will probably take about 10 minutes.

Clean your apples and the peel and core them. Slice the apples into wedges, I usually cut them in half and then cut the halves into fourths. 

Heat your olive oil in the frying pan at medium heat and add your apple butter. Let the apple butter warm up and then add your apples and pear with the disaronno amaretto and let cook for a minute. Sprinkle the apples and pears with the brown sugar, salt, cinnamon and cardamom. Cover and let cook on low heat for 15 minutes until apples are tender and juicy. Stir the apples and pears occasionally to prevent scalding.
 

It sure does taste good and hit the spot on a cold fall night!! Enjoy!!

S'more Cookies please!

I have been thinking about this recipe for quite some time now. When I was working at my last job I made a plethora of cookies for tweens and teens! Part of the job was trying to come up with new things the kids would enjoy and buy! Everyone loves s'mores, but the recipe didn't come to fruitation until about a month ago, long after I had left that job.

The s'more cookies are a Naulty Bits original! I love when I can say that I came up with the recipe all on my own, because the whole reason I started this blog was to challenge myself and come up with new unique ideas that aren't very common. I have no idea if there is a s'more cookie recipe floating around out there somewhere or not. I came up with this s'more cookie recipe all on my own and I am proud of the results!

The cookies are a drop cookie and are easy to make, good for lunches, care packages and everything in between. Not to mention they are a good go to when you can't get out and roast marshmallows over an open fire!! The rainy season has started here in Seattle, so I won't be roasting marshmallows anytime soon.

I hope you all enjoy and get a bit of summer that we all love while it is chilly and wet out!!

The Cast:
cookie sheets
mixing bowl with paddle attachment or hand mixer
ice cream scoops for portioning
parchment paper

The Ingredients: 
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
2 Tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups graham flour (I found in the natural food section of my grocery store, Bob's Red Mill makes the graham flour I used)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon 
3/4 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup small marshmallows

Procedure
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and get your cookie sheets all ready. I line mine with parchment paper.

Cream your butter and sugars until well combined, then add your egg and mix until combined. From here you are going to add the rest of the wet ingredients, which are the vanilla and the honey, and combine well. After the wet ingredients are all incorporated add your dry ingredients, the all purpose flour, graham flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until there are trace amounts of flour and then add your marshmallows and chocolate chips and mix until the trace amounts of flour vanish.

Portion out the dough on your cookie sheets with an ice cream scoop or with your hands. I made mine about the size of ping pong balls. Portion control and uniformity is a lot easier with an ice cream scoop.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes, let cool on the cookie sheets before transferring to a cooling rack.

Yield about 2 1/2 dozen cookies

Now you can enjoy a camp favorite in the middle of winter!! Don't fear though, I have another version of this classic in the works that is a little more true to it's original form! And more gourmet! Stay tuned readers!