baking

Holiday Recipe: Gingerbread

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Gingerbread in pan fresh from the oven.

If you know me in person and see me around the holidays, you’ve probably had my homemade gingerbread.

This past week, a recent work project ended. I baked a couple of loaves and brought it in to thank the firm for the warm welcome.

This morning, I baked another loaf to bring for Thanksgiving dinner later today. Gingerbread has been my signature holiday dessert for over 20 years. At this point, it’s part of my identity. I bake gingerbread.

I first found the recipe in a magazine that my maternal grandmother gave me. It’s called Mother’s Gingerbread and is from the book  Cleora’s Kitchen. Over the years, I’ve adapted it. So it is somewhat different from the original.

It’s one of my favorite things to eat and most other people love it too. So I often give it as a gift. It’s easy to make and maybe you might like to bake it too. Here’s the recipe below.

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Gingerbread (makes 1 loaf)

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup butter (softened)
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup molasses
2 eggs
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
2 cups flour
1 cup hot/boiling water

INSTRUCTIONS:
Place parchment paper in loaf pan or grease pan with butter, then shake flour in pan until the pan is covered with flour. Dump out excess flour. Set oven to 350 degrees.

In large bowl, combine butter and sugar. Stir in molasses and eggs. Stir in cinnamon and ginger. Stir in baking powder and baking soda. Stir in flour. Stir in water. This should be a very liquid mixture.

Pour mixture into loaf pan. Depending upon your oven, and maybe the pan that you use, bake for 60 – 75 minutes. When the gingerbread is almost done, you should smell it. The scent is amazing! Sometimes I’ll bake it at night, so I can fall asleep to the wonderful aroma in the house.

Use a toothpick or fork, etc., to test it before removing from the oven. It should come out clean. If there is some liquid on it, then put back in the oven.

When it’s finally done, let cool for a few minutes. I usually wrap it in foil and store it in the fridge if I am keeping it. It’s great served warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

It can be frozen as well. Usually I make gingerbread to give away or bring someplace else, so I don’t refrigerate it. Just keep in foil and bring with you or package it well in order to mail. It will remain fresh and moist even in the mail for  2- 3 days. So choose your postage accordingly!

Happy Thanksgiving and all the best to you for this holiday season!

Recipe: Brown Sugar-Almond Shortbread Cookies

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There hasn’t been a lot of baking on this blog. Not like I used to. But I like to document when I try something new, so I can look back and remember, “Yeah! I baked that!”

I baked these shortbread cookies as a gift, because I wanted something simple, but special. A dessert, but not too sweet.

The recipe is from the cookbook, Baking, by Dorie Greenspan. It’s one of my favorite cookbooks ever. I’ve had the book for years and have a few tried and true recipes. I’ve decided to venture out a bit more and bake some of the other recipes in the book. There are so many to choose from!

For this recipe, I didn’t have pecans, so I used almonds. I cut the recipe in half, and used ground cardamom instead of cloves.

While my cookies aren’t as pretty as the ones in the book, I think they’re still pretty cute! And the taste is wonderful! I highly recommend trying them. They’re great as a gift. To bring to a brunch or an afternoon tea. Or just for yourself. If you try the recipe, let me know what you think!

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Brown Sugar-Almond Shortbread Cookies (Makes about a dozen cookies)
(Adapted version of Brown Sugar-Pecan Shortbread Cookies, from Baking, by Dorie Greenspan)

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 cup flour
2 T cornstarch
1/8 tsp. salt
pinch of ground cardamom
1 stick (1/2 cup) softened unsalted butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup ground almonds

Optional for dusting
2 T powdered sugar
1/4 tsp. crushed edible lavender

INSTRUCTIONS:

Place the butter in a medium sized bowl and microwave, just until it gets a little soft. Then add the rest of the ingredients (except the ones for dusting) and combine.

Use a rubber spatula to put the mixture in a gallon size resealable zipper storage plastic bag. Don’t seal it yet. Use your hands to shape the dough into a log, by pressing and rolling. When it seems to be the right shape, so it will slice into nice sized cookies, press the air out of the bag, seal it and put into freezer for about 45 minutes or so, until very firm.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line a cookie sheet or two with parchment paper. Remove dough from the freezer and take out of the plastic bag. I wash plastic bags and reuse them until they break. It is Earth Day after all! Reuse and recycle!

Place the dough on a cutting board. Use a sharp knife to slice into pieces. Put the pieces on the cookie sheets, then take a fork and prick each cookie twice.

Bake cookies for about 20 minutes. They should not brown.

In a small bowl, combine lavender and powdered sugar.  When you remove the cookies, sprinkle the powdered sugar lavender mixture on top while they are still hot. Let cool a bit and they’re ready to eat!

Holiday Baking Recipe: Swedish Spritz Cookies

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It’s December, so holiday baking season is in full swing! This was the first Thanksgiving in decades that I didn’t cook or bake anything. And I was perfectly fine with it. But I had a few good reasons to bake these Swedish Spritz cookies today.

One of my brother’s housemates lost his mom a few years ago and she left him her cookbook. Out of the blue one day, he shared one of her recipes with me. I was so touched. A family recipe is a treasure.

He gave me the recipe this past summer, but I hadn’t had a chance to bake them.  Well, time just kept passing, as it’s known to do. He asked me a few times if I had tried them yet and I promised myself that I would make them soon. My family has Sunday dinners each week and I thought these would make a festive dessert. Plus, I was in a baking mood today!

As I was looking at the recipe and comparing it to other similar recipes, I realized that I didn’t have a cookie press. His family is Swedish, so his mom’s recipe didn’t have the part about needing the cookie press, because it was probably pretty obvious to her.

Luckily I have no problem improvising when I bake, so I used a cookie stamp to get a similar effect.

There were some cookies leftover from our family dinner, so I gave them to my brother’s house for everyone to share. His housemate had such a smile when I told him that I finally made the cookies and he gave me the biggest hug. Which he has never done before. Ever.

My mom said that baking these cookies was a way to keep memories of his mother alive. I have to agree. So much about food, especially around the holidays, is about family, memories and love.

These cookies are very good and I will definitely bake them again. Simple, tasty and not too sweet. They are practically as quick as using ready made cookie dough. Perfect for this time of year.

Here’s the adapted recipe below if you’d like to try it. I received permission to blog it.

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Swedish Spritz Cookies (makes a dozen and a half cookies)

INGREDIENTS:

1 stick butter (softened)
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp. almond extract
1 cup plus 2T flour
pinch of salt

INSTRUCTIONS:

Set aside an ungreased cookie sheet or place parchment paper on sheet. Set oven to 375 degrees.

In a medium bowl, stir together butter, sugar and egg yolk. Add extract, salt and flour. Stir until combined. Batter comes together nicely and will be a dough that is easy to handle. If you have a cookie press, use as instructed.

I rolled the dough into small balls, then baked for 10 minutes. Remove sheet from the oven and use cookie stamp to press design onto the top of each ball. Bake for another 5 minutes for total baking time of 15 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cook, then serve or store in a container. Enjoy!

Blueberries Make The Cake

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A simple single layer cake with lots of blueberries.

It’s July, so if you’re on Instagram, you may be noticing that everyone’s feed is filled with blueberries.

Whether you picked them yourself, found them at a farmers market, or bought them at the grocery store, ’tis the season.

My favorite cakes during the summer are simple single layer cakes. They aren’t too sweet. They travel well. Plus, since they aren’t frosted, they hold up in the heat.

One of the recipes that I use as a base is a Norwegian Apple Cake. I’ve been using this recipe for years, with a few changes. One of the easiest ways to adapt it is by changing the type of fruit.

I made the cake a few weeks ago using cherries. Everyone loved it, so this past week I used blueberries. Lots of blueberries!

I used two cups and the cake was bursting with blueberry flavor. Here’s the recipe if you want to give it a try.

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Summer Blueberry Cake
(makes one single layer cake)

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup butter (softened)
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1 cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups blueberries (washed, stems removed)

INSTRUCTIONS:
In a medium bowl, combine butter, sugar and eggs. Stir in salt, extracts, baking powder and flour until well combined.

I use a regular size round cake pan, but a square or loaf pan would probably work fine too. I used to grease and flour the pan, but now I use parchment paper. So whatever way you prefer is fine.

Pour batter into a pan. Pour the blueberries over the batter and press into the cake.

The original recipe says to bake for about 25 – 30 minutes at 400 degrees. I’ve baked this cake a few times and am still adjusting the time and temperature. Blueberries are more wet than apples, so more baking time was definitely needed. The last time I baked this cake (July 13, 2019) for about an hour at 350 degrees. That seemed to work well. Everyone loved the cake and raved about the texture.

After the cake is done, I put it in the fridge and let it cool down. If you are taking it to go, maybe for a picnic, wrap it in foil,  pack it and be on your way!

Let me know if you try it and what you think.

Recipe: Double Berry Almond Breakfast Cookies

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Double Berry Almond Breakfast Cookies cooling on a rack.

Back in 2008, I posed the question, “Cupcake or muffin?” Is the only real difference that one we eat for breakfast or a snack and the other is dessert? Muffins sometimes have glaze, which is basically frosting.

Calorically there is not much difference either. I agree with a recent Vox article stating that we need to get real about our American breakfasts. They are basically dessert.  Although an article found in Essence may help assuage our collective guilt.  Eating dessert for breakfast may help us lose weight. Let’s go with that one!

If you ever think that I will discourage dessert, then you are sadly happily mistaken. I have a healthy (cough, cough) breakfast cookie recipe for you. It’s been a while since I blogged a recipe, so the time is right.

The only reason that I found this recipe is because another one of my favorite magazines abruptly stopped publication — More Magazine. It was a great magazine. Stylish, intelligent and thoughtful. Oh well. Seems that doesn’t sell. I still miss Whole Living. *sigh*

But I digress. For the remainder of my More subscription, I was given Shape Magazine. It’s not bad, but not a true replacement. Anyway, I did find this breakfast cookie recipe. It’s sweet, but uses maple syrup instead of sugar. I added honey and made a number of other changes based on the ingredients that I had at home, my particular tastes and knowing my oven.

As I always say, a recipe is just a starting point. Adapt away! Let me know if you try the recipe and what you think.

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Double Berry Almond Breakfast Cookies (Adapted from recipe on Shape Magazine)
(Makes a dozen)

INGREDIENTS

  • 1/2 cup sliced almonds
  • 1/2 cup almond meal
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 cup whole-wheat flour
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
  • 2 T honey
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1 cup rolled oats
  • 1  1/2 cup blueberries
  • 1 cup cranberries (halved)
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened dried cranberries
  • 1/2 tsp. orange peel

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.

In a medium to large bowl combine ingredients. Mix well. Use an ice cream scoop to put batter on baking sheet. Bake about 30 minutes. Remove cookies and let cool on a rack. Enjoy!

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