Cookies

Festive Fruitcake Cookies à la Pioneer Woman Cooks

~ Hilary ~ 3 Comments

Okay, so maybe these aren’t that festive anymore since it’s now January, but shush.

So I know it must seem that all I’ve been doing lately is baking.  This is, in part true, but only because I haven’t had much time to eat anything but my copious amounts of reheated, leftover soup.  To add to my massive amounts of baking, I present to you these fruitcake cookies.  After I made my dad’s fruitcake back in December, I was left with several bags of leftover gooey fruit and peel.  In a stroke of genius, my roommate Britt came across this recipe for fruitcake cookies on one of our favourite blogs, The Pioneer Woman Cooks.  When we measured out my leftovers ingredients, I had EXACTLY the right amount of fruit.  It was like the fates wanted me to make these cookies and really, who am I to deny the foodie gods anyways?

Now, these are technically called cookies, but they’re really more of mini whoopie-pie-like cakes.  I didn’t actually like the fruitcake that I made for my dad (although he loved it!), so I was a little skeptical as to how these were going to turn out.  In the end, they wound up being fantastic and, although not for everyone I’ll admit, had a hearty taste and a chewy softness that made me super happy.  Also, there was a cup of brandy/whiskey in these babies, which absorbed quite nicely into the fruit…

PS: WHY do I blog before bed?!  All I want now are the enchiladas that the Pioneer Woman has on her homepage.  Deadly.

Happy Birthday Amanda! ft. white chocolate macadamia nut cookies

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

Yesterday one of my dear roommates Amanda celebrated her 21st birthday.

Seeing as she is the first of us to hit this age of eternal youth and glory, we were obviously expected to celebrate in style.  No one, and I repeat with emphasis NO ONE loves their birthday more than Amanda loves hers.  She even has a name for her week of birthday festivities: Amandapalooza.

One of her birthday wishes this year was for me to make her white chocolate macadamia nut cookies.  You see, Amanda almost loves cookies as much as she loves her birthday.  And so, a birthday wish was granted, and three dozen mini clone cookies were created.

But WAIT!  Just because Amanda’s birthday was yesterday doesn’t mean that the fun has stopped.  I may be out of town this weekend with my other roommate Britt, but the festivities continue.  Amanda, have a blast this weekend and have a shameless time feasting on cookies and cupcakes (calories also don’t count on your birthday weekend!!!).  Have fun and make this the best Amandapalooza ever (until next year, that is)!

PS: the recipe for these cookies can be found here. :)

Radio Potluck Party aka Christmas Baking Part ONE

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

It is currently 12:23 a.m. and I am sitting at the kitchen table waiting for a chocolate cake to bake.  This cake is for the family potluck (i.e. my six roommates and close friends) are having tomorrow eve.  While I listen to Glee music (which is WAY too peppy for my current mood), I figured I might as well type out a new blog post.  Please excuse me if my sleepiness is greatly apparent within this post.  Grammatical skills depart as the evening goes on.

So today was our last radio class of third year (sob).  Through newsroom days and the rest of the semester our class has gotten pretty close, and I’m hoping that most people will be in Thursday TV next semester so we can have more delicious potlucks.

PAUSE: One of my cake layers just finished baking!!  This is very good news, the other half has now entered the oven and sleep time crawls more and more near by the minute.  Hoorah.

ANYWAYS, back to radio.  Since I baked something for two out of three newsroom days, I figured it was only appropriate to end off the semester with a Christmas-themed potluck.  Also, I actually look for ANY excuse to hold a potluck and was extremely eager to once again display my baking skills to an audience other than my roommates.  At one point in the afternoon, Mary (our professor) actually said: “this is the reason why I don’t believe journalism students are too busy,” or something along those lines… Not true.  I just have ZERO life and spend any time that would normally be consumed by a university student’s social life baking.  It’s an addiction.

Okay, but seriously.  This potluck dealt me the perfect opportunity to begin my Christmas baking.  And so, I spent approximately 10 hours this past Sunday baking to my heart’s content.  Although some people dread it, I LOVE doing this sort of thing and the unfortunate “woman slaving over a hot stove” thing totally applies to me here.  Did I just set feminism back decades?  Apologies.  Let me explain: I’m actually the LEAST domestic person in the universe.  Sure, I love cooking, but I’m not a domestic diva or anything.  Yes, I occasionally answer to the name “Martha Stewart,” but I really want nothing more than independence, adventure, and zero children (until I’m old and have lived my life).  There, perhaps feminism has been restored to its 2010 level.

Okay, so here’s what I made:

1. Peppermint brownie bites
2. Ricotta cookies
3. Chocolate-dipped orange shortbread rounds (don’t these cookies look like little Spock heads?)
4. Gingerbread cupcakes with a cinnamon cream cheese frosting – SO amazing.  The recipe came from the blog Sweet Girl Confections and they were just wonderful.  Thank you so much!

Now, for any Canadian Living fans out there, I can tell you that the top three recipes came from the magazine’s special “Holiday Cooking” edition.  All three were marvelous, but I especially appreciated (a) their freezing ability from Sunday-Thursday, and (b) the fact that CHEESE can be put in cookies.  Fantastic, right?

Also, I made hand-moulded chocolate Christmas trees.  It was fun.

Alright, better check on the other half of my cake.  Later days!

AND the preparation/chaotic packing mess…

Christmas tree farm?

One more thing… In anticipation of tomorrow night’s cake and the blog post to follow it, please just take a look at what my baking looked like last year at this time.  I hope to improve on this times a badgillion.  Yes, the icing did melt off the cake, laugh away.  I’m so ashamed.  On that note, I’ve come a long way, n’est ce pas?


Snickerdoodles: the perfect road trip companion

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

For those of you who were maybe hoping this was some sort of Thanksgiving post, then I must apologize (however one of those will come in the very near future!!).  These cookies were actually made for a road trip that my friends Iman, Kristina, Jase-Face (okay, his actual name is Jasen) and I took to Montreal last weekend.  I wasn’t originally even supposed to go on this little trip, but after I found out that cutest couple in the universe, K & J, were popping over to our neighbouring province, I knew I had to pester them into letting me go.  This being said, I felt semi-guilty for bumming a ride in the car just so I could shop, so I decided I needed to bake something to apologize for my absurd inviting abilities.

Normally when I decide to bake something, I usually lean towards cheesecakes or cupcakes.  Knowing that the first would be rather difficult to cut in a moving vehicle and since I just made the latter, I decided to switch it up a little and try out a new cookie recipe.

This Snickerdoodle recipe came from one of my favourite blogs, Annie’s Eats.  Now in case you’re just as curious as me as to where this silly name comes from (it sounds like it should be followed by a singing of “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious“), I did a little bit of searching on my favourite research site (Wikipedia) and came up with this…

“Snickerdoodles are probably German in origin. … The name is probably a corruption of the German word Schneckennudeln, which means “snail cookies.” … Yet another hypothesis suggests that the name has no particular meaning or purpose and is simply a whimsically named cookie that originated from a New England tradition of fanciful cookie names.  There is also a series of tall tales about a hero named “Snickerdoodle” from the early 1900s which may be related to the name of the cookie.”

Anyways, kind of cool!

Baking these cookies for half the time and at 75 degrees less in our oven meant that they were perfect and soft on the inside, with a crunchy, sugary crisp on the outside.  ALSO, look at Annie’s Eats, she actually makes baked goods every single day.  If I were her kids I would LOVE homemade lunches.

Happy Birthday Doug (what better way to express birthday wishes than through a cookie pizza?)

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

When my co-worker and good friend Kristina approached me a few weeks ago to help her make cookies for her boyfriend Jasen’s dad, I knew this couldn’t just be any normal baking session.  What Kristina proposed was that, since Doug loved cookies, we make him a plethora of different varieties, in hopes of satisfying his apparent sweet tooth.  Of course, I saw this as an opportunity to do something creative and different – the cookie pizza was born!

Now I must admit I cannot take complete credit for this cookie pizza idea.  Ever since I was an 11 and ate cookie dough by the bowlful, I have known about cookies and their remarkable ability to double as pretty awesome birthday cakes.  The idea for this cookie pizza was actually inspired by two sources.  The first was Ariel, one of my beloved, school-year roommates.  Ariel had made a cookie pizza back in March, and could not stop bragging about how good it was (I unfortunately did not get a piece, which makes me extremely upset, considering I heard about it for weeks on end). The second was a search through trusty google images, to find this gorgeous picture and recipe for a dessert pizza.  Drawing a little inspiration from each, Kristina, Elisabeth (my super cool friend from Norway!) and I managed to churn out something which I think is pretty wonderful.  Ridiculous thing that never happens in my kitchen: somehow Kristina does not own dry ingredient measuring cups, so things like flour and brown sugar were measured in a gravy mixer.

Anatomy of the Cookie Pizza:
– Chocolate chip cookie (using mom’s recipe, of course – mom, I know you love it when I give you shout-outs, so here we are)
– Buttercream icing
– Red sprinkles (to make up for the fact that we completely forgot to dye the icing red…)
– Shredded coconut
– Red chocolate moulding wafers
– M&M’s, star sprinkles, baking gums and whatever your heart desires.
– Chocolate glaze piped through a sandwich-size Ziploc bag (try not to make your letters obese like my “H”)

Result: sugary birthday treat, perfect for a grown up sweet tooth.  Hope he liked it!

I realize that reading my blog right now is like looking into a candy store.  As of tomorrow, this sugar-streak will end and I will once again return to my attempts at healthy-almost-including-vegetables meals.  Apologies.