Recipe Roundup

25 Treats of Christmas Round Up

I’m a little behind on my cookie notes! It has been a busy couple of months and I’m still getting back into the swing of blogging. I thought you might be interested in seeing some more of the recipes though. In case you forgot, these were the cookies I made before the party. I’ll share our party treats in another post. I officially made all 25 treats, but some of them didn’t get photographed. Everyone was quite amazed. I ended up making about 2 batches of cookies every couple of days, sometimes three doughs, if they needed to chill.

These cookies are Chocolate Orange Pecan, Ginger Sugar cookies- hearts, and Norwegian Spice Cookies-snowflakes.

I thought the ginger sugar cookies didn’t have enough ginger. I was very into spices and unusual cookies this year. The Norwegian Spice cookies reminded me of apple pie and were one of the hits at the office. The Chocolate Pecan Orange cookies were also delicious, although I found that the chocolate cookies didn’t hold well and got kind of weird and dry. I would make a smaller batch of the chocolate cookies next time and wouldn’t bother making the ginger cookies. The spice cookies I would make again.

The chocolate cookies were from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookie magazine from 2019. The Ginger Sugar Cookies were from the Food Network December issue from 2016. The Norwegian Spice Cookies were from this website: https://roamingrosie.com/tag/norwegian-spice-cookies/

These Lemon Poppyseed cookies are from the Food Network December 2016 issue too.

The cookies were not super sweet and I accidentally left the poppyseeds out of the dough. As you can see, I just added them to the glaze. They almost started an office war between the Office Manager and another therapist who was trying to steal the tin. 🙂 Oh, and another therapist hip checked me away from my own cookies! It was a shocking, but hilarious display of cookie rage. 🙂 There was one other kind of cookie involved in this particular cookie mob and were also delicious. I found I tended to use the same magazine for a couple of different recipes- this one is also from FN Dec ’16.

Peanut Butter Crinkles with mini chocolate chips. I would make both of these cookies again. They both held well too.

The next one up was hotly contested and may have caused a not very Christmasy disagreement between the Husband and myself. These Cookies and Cream Drops from the Better Homes and Gardens magazine were either the favorite, or very much disliked. I was in the middle, but wouldn’t make them again.

They had frosting made from melting the middles of Oreos. It was weird and I didn’t like that part. They were either supposed to taste under-baked or I accidentally under-baked them. I baked them at the correct temperature for longer than it called for and they still tasted that way. They were also not sweet, which was really weird considering how much sugar there was in the recipe. I think they were supposed to be soft and cakey. The Husband had one bite, spit it out, and loudly declared them to be “an embarrassment to your reputation” and refused to take them into work! According to him, they were inedible. 🙁 However, at least a couple people at my work liked them, so they did mostly get eaten. As you can imagine, I will not be making them again.

Sadly for the Husband’s office, I declined to send many more cookies after that little incident. I was much offended. The Husband has since apologized and I have forgiven him his ridiculous statements… well, mostly…

I also made Malted Milk Brownies, Tahini Blossoms, and Dulce de Leche Thumbprints, all from the BHG magazine. The Thumbprints were too plain for me. They were a recipe that you made a large quantity of basic dough and then added to it. The second batch of them had cinnamon and other spices added to the dough and it still didn’t taste good to me. I won’t be making that dough again.

Lessons learned this year was that I definitely needed to add up amounts of ingredients like butter, flour, and sugar before the start of baking season. I definitely wasn’t prepared for the need for brown sugar this year and had we not had extra flour, I would have run out. The butter stores were good. I ended with about 10 pounds left, so probably used around 12 pounds total, just for the cookies. We did run out of regular chocolate chips, so I had to make a small Costco run to find more in the middle of baking season.

It was helpful to list out the specialty ingredients and know which recipes I was going to make ahead of time. I spread those purchases over a couple of shopping trips too, so that was good.

Getting into a routine of “make this dough to chill, then make this recipe to bake right away” was another good organizational tool. I felt very organized with all my lists in the same spot too. My blog notebook is full of all the lists! I still have about half of the notebook left too, so room for many more. 🙂

I still have a bunch of recipes I want to try, so I’m sure you’ll see more cookies this year. Hopefully not everyone at the office is on diets!

Please bear with me as I catch up on blogging again! I’ll bribe you with cute Fancy pictures, if I have to! Here’s one, so you know I’m serious. 😉

With that done, please excuse me while I head to bed. I have to have rest to bake up more cookies! Have a sweet night!

Party Posts · Recipe Roundup

Battle Cheesecake- Party Pictures And Recipes

Battle Cheesecake was the most delicious battle I have ever been in! It was lots of fun. Fancy was completely worn out, as you can see.

The votes broke down to K winning the fruit and unusual category and I won the chocolate. Overall, it was a tie though. There was a tied vote on the fruit category. Here are all the cheesecakes.

I was a little distracted and didn’t get close-ups of K’s cheesecakes. They are the top ones.

I just want to take a moment to brag that I fit 6 full size cheesecakes in the fridge. 🙂 Who knew my stackable cooling racks would be so handy?

We had seven people attend. We cut tiny slices and put the three categories together. K brought meatballs and we had a salad from the garden lettuce which exploded into growth. Everyone voted anonymously and a friend counted the votes for us. I had a lovely set of kitchen towels and some rubber spatulas for prizes. I kept the jar of jam which was the third prize. 🙂

Here are K’s recipes. She made a Death By Chocolate from Delish.com, a Thimbleberry (with four Yoopers in the room, she totally won this one,) based on the Blueberry recipe from Rae-Gun Ramblings, and a tiramisu one from Allrecipes. 

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/7757/tiramisu-cheesecake/

https://www.raegunramblings.com/2010/04/recipe-blueberry-white-chocolate.html 

She took out the white chocolate and subbed thimbleberry jam for the homemade blueberry jam in the recipe. Also had a thimbleberry mousse on top.

https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/recipes/a50419/death-by-chocolate-cheesecake-recipe/

Her cheesecakes were softer than mine, more mousse texture. They were all delicious and I think her chocolate one was definitely smoother than mine. I had lumps! 😳

Here are my cheesecake recipes. I tried to find some in my cookbooks, but am apparently low on baking cookbooks.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough from Delish.com. 

https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/recipes/a46039/chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-cheesecake-recipe/

The Husband casually sent me this recipe on a list and there was a strong suggestion that I try it. 🙂 He enjoyed it, but felt it was missing something. This cheesecake must have weighed 5 pounds.

Raspberry Swirl from Martha Stewart. https://www.marthastewart.com/340227/raspberry-swirl-cheesecake

The raspberry puree doesn’t go deep enough for me. It was softer, possibly slightly under baked. Pretty good though. I would make it again.

Kahlua Chocolate Cheesecake by Baker By Nature. https://bakerbynature.com/kahlua-chocolate-cheesecake/

I used homemade kahlua from my Mom. It was good, but not as smooth as I would like. It was topped with a bittersweet chocolate ganache. Mmmm…. chocolate.

It was fun and I would totally do cooking challenges again. We think the Husbands were a little more serious about it than we were. I think we both used mostly new recipes. It was a fun excuse to have a smaller party and have quality friend time.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s Shark Week and The Great White Abyss is on. Have a great night!