Chipits Toffee Crunch Blondies

With a bag of Skor Toffee bits in the pantry and a craving for something sweet, this week I decided to try the recipe on the Skor package.  Here is the simple, fast and delicious recipe for Chipits Toffee Crunch Blondies:

Hersey's Toffee Crunch Blondies

and here are my end result... although not as beautiful as the ones at their site:

Christmas Sugar Cookies

This Christmas, in order to see my entire extended family (siblings and niblings), Hubby and I decided to host two evenings of our annual family open house.  Because these dates were 9 days apart, I knew I would need to bake twice for freshness purposes.  Nothing like a hard, stale, Sugar Cookie to turn people off.

I used my Mom's standard Sugar Cookie recipe.  I used a Poured Cookie Icing to give the cookies a shiny, hard surface.  Here's the simple recipe for that:

Poured Cookie Icing

1 cup icing sugar

2 tsp milk

2 tsp light corn syrup

extract of your choice ~ peppermint, almond, vanilla, etc

Place sugar and milk in bowl.  Stir until mixed thoroughly.

Add corn syrup and extract.  Mix well.

For filling in areas, use thinned icing (add small amounts of light corn syrup or hot water until desired consistency is reached).

I used different colors of food color paste for each batch.  I also used different sized tips for the tubing.  You can see the difference in each case.  For the latter cookies I used #1 round (which I'd received for Christmas... along with the mini cookie cutters).

Dec 18 batch

Dec 27 batch

Christmas Standards

I am so behind in my baking blog entries, but before January is completely gone, let me take you back to my Christmas baking.  I will try as best I can to give you the information you need to recreate some of these delectable goodies for yourself next Christmas.


Here are some of the annual treats I bake each Christmas:

A)  Honey Biscuits
B)  Empire Cookies
C)  EggNog Thumbprints

A:  Honey Biscuits

This recipe is a family favorite I got from my sister, Cathy. These delicious spice cookies with lemon glaze icing are addictive! Mixing this recipe is not for the faint of heart though... it takes a LOT of elbow grease to stir in the total amount of flour. Once I broke a wooden spoon trying to mix it. Now I use plastic surgical gloves so I can get my hands in there without fear of honey sticking my fingers together. Here's how you make these:

Ingredients

2 cups liquid honey
1 cup packed brown sugar
2TBSP butter
1 tsp each of ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves and mace
1 egg, beaten
rind of 1 lemon
5 to 5-1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda

Heat in Dutch Oven pot, until just boiling, the honey, brown sugar and butter.
Then add the ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves and mace.
Remove from stove and place pot in a sink of about 2-3 in of cold water to cool
Once cool, mix in the beaten egg and lemon rind.
Sift together the flour and baking soda.
Add flour to honey mixture, stirring well, adding flour until dough is workable (usually 5 cups)
Roll out and cut with cookie cutter (I use a round fluted cookie cutter)

Note: The dough is quite sticky so be sure to flour your surface very well (using the last 1/2-1 cup of flour)
Press a raisin (almond or what I like to use, a Cranraisin) in the center of the cookie.

Bake at 325F for 10-15 minutes on greased cookie sheet (or until edges turn brown). Brush with lemon glaze while still warm.

Lemon Glaze:


2 cups icing sugar juice of 1 lemon hot water as needed to thin 
Brush glaze over warm honey biscuits

B: Empire Cookies

These are some of Hubby's favorite cookies. I think I got this recipe from my Mom years ago, but I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with the cookie texture and taste. I'll be looking for (and experimenting with) a new recipe before next Christmas. Perhaps a more "shortbread" type cookie would work best.

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, softened 

1/2 cup white sugar 

1 egg 

1 tsp vanilla extract 

2 cups all-purpose flour 

1 tsp baking powder 

Cream butter.  Add sugar, creaming well.  Beat in egg and vanilla.

Combine flour and baking powder and add gradually to creamed mixture. 

On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8 in. thickness.  Cut into 2 in. rounds

(or whatever shape you choose) and place on ungreased baking sheets.

Bake at 350F for 10 minutes or until very lightly browned at edges.  Cool thoroughly. 

Filling and Frosting 

1/2 cup raspberry jam 

1 cup icing sugar

1/4 tsp almond extract 

1 TBSP hot water

1/4 cup candied cherries chopped

Spread half of the cookies with raspberry jam and top with remaining cookies. 

Combine icing sugar, almond extract and enough hot water to make a thin icing.  Frost tops of cookies. 

Top each cookie with a small piece of candied cherry.  Makes approximately a dozen cookies.

C: Eggnog Thumbprints

This is one of my all-time favorite (and easy) recipes. I found this delicious cookie online years ago, at a friend's website and it was a huge hit. Similar to a cookie my Mom used to make, I think it's the "rum" flavored icing that tops off the taste!

Ingredients 3/4 cup butter or margarine 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup packed brown sugar 1 egg 1/2 tsp vanilla 1/4 tsp salt 2 cups All-purpose flour In a large mixer bowl, beat butter until softened. Add sugar, brown sugar and beat until fluffy. Add egg, vanilla, salt and beat well. Add flour and beat until well mixed. Cover and chill for about 1 hr or until easy to handle. Shape into 1" balls. Place 2" apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Press down centers with thumb. Bake in 350F oven for approx 12 minutes. Remove and cool. Filling 1/4 cup butter or margarine 1 cup sifted icing sugar 2 TBSP milk 1/4 tsp rum extract For the filling, in a small mixer bowl beat butter until softened. Add powdered sugar and beat until fluffy. Add rum extract and beat well. Spoon 1/2 tsp of filling into the thumbhole of each cookie. Sprinkle with nutmeg. Chill until filling is firm. Makes about 50 cookies

Christmas Tea Scones Practice

Next Tuesday night our "Abide" (church ladies' group) Team  are hosting our first Christmas Tea, a wrap-up of the Fall session and preparation for the Advent Season.  What would a Christmas Tea be without scones though, right?  I found this recipe on allrecipes.com for World's Best Scones so I thought I'd give it a "practice run" before Tuesday's attempt to make batches for the Tea.

The recipe was easy enough, although I have to say I HATE the gooey dough stuck on the fingers part.  Thankfully I have a box of "surgical" gloves in my kitchen cupboard I use for baking.  They came in super handy while forming the dough into usable form.  The recipe made 12 medium sized scones and even though I forgot to brush them with the milk/sugar mixture on top and forgot to let them sit 10 minutes before popping them in the oven (thanks to trying to read the recipe on my iPhone I missed those steps), they turned out  nicely.  They were light and fluffy and quite delicious if I do say so myself.  All that was missing was the devonshire cream and jam ... and hot cup of my favorite tea.  Come Tuesday I'll make them a little smaller so to get more from the recipe and I'll remember the steps correctly!

For those of you ladies from the church reading this... I hope you'll join us Tuesday, Nov 30 @ 7:15pm at the church.  We'd love to have you there to celebrate with us.

They really were the World's Best Scones... 

or at least the best ones I've ever made

Mom's Sugar Cookie Recipe

Since my Mom passed away in 2003, one of the treasures that keeps her memory alive is her delicious Sugar Cookie recipe.  Each Christmas Mom would pull this one out of the cookbook and prepare yummy sugary treats glowing in red and green crystal sugar baked on top.  It's a super easy recipe and since Sugar Cookies aren't just for Christmas anymore, this is a recipe I use often.  Here it is for you to enjoy too:

Ingredients:

2-1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup shortening (I use Crisco)
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 TBSP milk

Method:

Cream shortening and sugar together.  Add eggs and vanilla.  Add in sifted dry ingredients and then milk.  You may choose once it's mixed to put it in the fridge to 30 mins to harden or you can do what I do and use it right away but make sure you have flour on hand to prevent it from sticking to the counter and rolling pin.

Roll the dough out until just less than 1/4" thick and cut into shapes.  You may sprinkle them with colored sugar at this point, or leave them plain if you want to ice/glaze them later.

Bake at 375 degrees on lightly greased cookie sheets for 5-10 minutes (depending on how hot your oven runs - mine tends to run hot so my cookies are in for less than 5 minutes).  You'll know they are done when the bottom edges begin to turn golden brown.  Watch them carefully so they don't burn!!

Thanksgiving Blessing Cookies

In Canada, Thanksgiving is the second Monday in October.  The weekend prior to Thanksgiving I was in Michigan with one of my online girlfriends, at the huge Bronner's Christmas store in Frankenmuth, where I found a large maple leaf cookie cutter.  This year, along with my homemade pumpkin pie, I decided to make some Thanksgiving cookies for Hubby's family feast with the new cookie cutter.

I started with my Mom's classic Sugar Cookie recipe.  After the cookies were completely cooled, I made a Glaze Icing using:

2 cups icing sugar,
2-3 TBSP milk,
1/4 tsp extract

(I used almond for one batch, maple for another and vanilla for a third).  I split the icing batches into different bowls for different colors and flavors.  I then added food coloring to each bowl to get my autumn colors:  orange, red, yellow, green and brown.

Once the cookies had been glazed and left to harden for quite a while, I then took a food coloring marker to write on each cookie.  The ones in the top picture are the Thanksgiving Blessings I wrote on the general cookie plate,

 but I also took some of the cookies and made place setting "cards" for each dinner plate at the table:

Since making these cookies, I've picked up a new set of leaf cookie cutters at Golda's Kitchen which I can't wait until next Fall to create an entire "forest" of fallen leaves to accent my Thanksgiving Blessing cookies and name cards.