Another Cookie Recipe

 (This is also a reprint from my old blog. I thought about it 'cause I made up the dough today.)


SPRITZ COOKIES AND A HINT:

1 C butter, softened
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 Cups flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Colored sugar for decorating

In a bowl, cream butter and sugars. Beat in egg and extracts. Combine flour, baking soda and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture.
Fill cookie press and press dough 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
Decorate, then bake at 375 degrees for 6 minutes, or until edges just begin to brown.
Cool on a wire rack, then enjoy or freeze for later.

Now, my hint: get some zipper type bags and measure out your flour, baking powder and salt. Label the bag! Do this for any cookies you plan to make, and you will have all your messy dry mixes ('cause you know flour makes a mess) ready when you want to bake. You can use quart-size bags to measure out your sugars, too, and put this right down into the flour bag. Another mess taken care of ahead of time!

And another hint: use your weekly 40% off coupon for Michael's or A.C. Moore or Joanne's and get yourself a good cookie press if you don't have one. Wilton makes a nice one. Trust me on this, you want a decent toy to play with, not some piece of junk that is hard to 'press' and will only frustrate you. Consider it an investment! Oh, and something else: I had a battery operated cookie press and hated it. You had to squeeze it really hard, so what was the point of the batteries? Go for the old-fashioned, non-electronic, squeezey handle one!

A Favorite Cookie Recipe

 Truly one of the most delicious and easy cookies, ever! I have also heard them called Butternut Balls and Mexican Wedding Cakes.


MELTAWAYS

Butter Nut Cookies

1 Cup of butter(please don't use margarine--ick!)
1/4 Cup of sugar
2 Cups of flour
1 Tablespoon (yes, that's a Tablespoon) vanilla
1 1/2 Cups of chopped nuts--I like walnuts, but pecans would do if you can swing them
Powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. (Yes, that's 300, not 350.) Cream the butter. Add everything else except the powdered sugar. Roll into balls about the size of a walnut. Put on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 35 minutes.
Let them cool until you can handle them (they'll still be a little warm) and then roll them in the powdered sugar.

Enjoy!

PS--if you ever read my old blog, "Sorta Frugal," this is a copy and paste from that. But yummy is worth repeating!

A few lessons learned

1. While it is a great idea to premix your dry ingredients and keep them in labeled bags, it is NOT a good idea to mix brown sugar with cookies. I needed to mix crushed Nillas with brown sugar and butter for the bottom of toffee bars. When I went to get the mix, the brown sugar had turned hard as a rock overnight. At least I hadn't yet blended it together so it was pretty easy to remove all the sugary boulders.

2. Just because a pan seems to be 9x13 doesn't mean it is. It is a good idea to measure your pans ahead of time. I put my cookie/brown sugar/butter crust in a pan I thought was the right size and it was too big. Probably 11 by 18? So I had these big gaps and not enough 'base' to hold the toffee layer. Therefore, my toffee did not break into nice chunks. In fact, it is very crumbly.

3. Crumbly toffee tastes really good.

Cookies yet again

I made some eggnog cookies this weekend. They are from the "Butterscotch Eggnog Stars" recipe but since they have neither butterscotch nor star-shapes I renamed them. I tried to get the link but apparently you need a code to get to that part of the site. I would bet there are a lot of eggnog cookie recipes on line, though!

The goat, horse and dove cookie cutters came from a local thrift store years ago. I want to set them apart from my sugar cookies so I plan to ice them rather than using colored sugar. I think they'll look cute, but right now they're in the freezer.

I hope to get several more kinds of cookies done this week. I was going to make toffee yesterday but my daughter still has my 9x13 pan. It had lasagna in it, a gift for my future s-i-l. I have to call her so she can bring it by before work today. She goes in at 1. At least I already have my ingredients mixed and ready to go!

Christmas is less than 2 weeks away...aaaggh!

More cookie dough

Today I mixed up dough for Butterscotch Eggnog stars. Actually, they won't be stars. The idea is to cut a smaller star out of a bigger one, then fill the opening with chopped up butterscotch candy. Then it melts and you get a stained glass effect. Very pretty, except I don't have two different star-shaped cookie cutters that fit together. And I really never have much luck with those 'stained glass' cookies, anyway. So I'm going to make any shape I want--maybe a bunch of angels--then I'm just going to sprinkle chopped up candy on top and press it in while it's still warm. I think that could work. I might also do regular colored sugar. The dough is really delicious, you can really taste the eggnog.

Now, did you ever have something to do that is so stuck in your head that later, after you've done a bunch of other things, you are convinced you did it already? I had Light Karo syrup on my shopping list and I would swear I bought it. So I went to make Salted Peanut Rolls this morning and couldn't find the stuff, anywhere. Now I'm not so sure I did get it--unless it rolled under the car seat. But then, I couldn't use it if it's been out in the cold anyway. So all I did this morning was make the base for the cookies--crushed up peanut butter sandwich cookies mixed with butter then pressed into a pan. Sort of like a graham-cracker crust.

Oh, well, at least I have all the ingredients ready to go when I do either find, or buy, that syrup!

I've been working on a lot of projects lately. Here are some hats I've recently crocheted.

Mr. Bunny and Liony-Piony are wearing my own creations, made from scrap yarn. Bun's hat would fit an adult and Lion's hat is sized for a child. Liony-Piony was not too happy when I woke him up to model (yes, he sleeps--he even snores) but, being a cub, he doesn't have much of a roar yet.

Mr. Bear is wearing a creation from AllFreeCrochet.com called "Snowy Ridges." This is also adult-sized. Here's the link if you want to make it:

http://www.allfreecrochet.com/Hats/Snowy-Ridges#

In the cooking/baking department, I mixed up the dough for spritz cookies yesterday. That is a project for this week. Today I made Swedish Meatballs--emphasis on the 'ish.' I did not have some of the ingredients so I'm hoping the sauce (which I'll make closer to Christmas Eve) will make them taste right. Mainly, I was missing allspice and cream. Not sure if the allspice is necessary. I just subbed cream cheese for the cream. We'll see how it goes. They sure smell good!

Starting Christmas Cookies

Today I mixed up the dry ingredients for a variety of Christmas cookies I'm planning to bake. I put them into labeled plastic bags, then put the bags into empty protein powder containers. Mike gives the containers to me when he's done with them and I've gotten such good use out of them. They are short and fat with big, wide tops. You can stuff a lot of filled-up plastic bags in them!

This year I hope to make:

Spritz Cookies (definitely!)
Inside-Out Almond Joys
Salted Nut Rolls (they sound like Paydays--we'll see)
Toffee Bars
Crispy Cinnamon Coins
Lemon Spritz Cookies
Butterscotch Eggnog Stars
Meltaways (aka Butternut Balls)

If you have a lot of baking to do, pre-mixing your dry ingredients means you make the big mess with flour, etc. all at once. When you want to get to the fun part--actually making the cookies, the hard work is mostly done for you!

A lot of these recipes are new to me, from an insert in "Cuisine" magazine. If I can link you to the recipes as I make them, I will. Or I will give credit where it is due. Suffice to say I admit none of these are my own original recipes, LOL! (I should play around sometime, though, and maybe come up with something new!)

In other news: I have a new Wii Fit Plus that Mike gave me for our anniversary (30 years, on Monday). I had a blast playing with it this morning and hope to take off 10 pounds by Valentine's Day. I also 'supervised' (ha,ha) while Mike and James put up our Christmas lights outside!