Christmas Cookies!

Nothing gets me in the mood for the holidays more than listening to some god-awful Christmas music and baking. This year, I wanted to make lots of cookies to hand out to people I rarely have the opportunity to show my appreciation for: the doormen who greet me everyday (or at least some days) in my work building, the guys who clean all three steep stories in our apartment building, our lovely neighbor who never complains about our music or the many obstructions we put in our shared hallway.  I'd like to think that a little homemade pouch of assorted cookies can go a long way, as far as making people feel special or loved.

So I (perhaps unknowingly) embarked on a baking expedition of Herculean effort yesterday, churning out three different kinds of cookies: oatmeal cookies with cranberry and chocolate, chocolate crinkles, and of course, the classic chocolate chip. (I intended to maintain a semblance of variety, but it seems as though chocolate made its way into all three recipes.) And speaking of choosing, I got the first two recipes from a Serious Eats annual cookie swap (because I love the idea); and the last one from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion - a comprehensive cookie cookbook with helpful tips, pointers, variations, and lovely hand renderings of instructions.

Cranberry Shortbread Bars

I've had a bag of fresh cranberries sitting in my fridge since before Thanksgiving, causing me great anxiety (luckily, they have a long shelf life); so I whipped up some cranberry shortbread bars for a Christmas party I was attending last night.

This recipe comes from, you guessed it, The Joy of Baking. The base of the bar - and the topping - is a basic shortbread recipe, with the slight variation of adding cornstarch and using brown sugar in place of white. (I also substituted whole wheat flour for all-purpose flour - more out of necessity than a deliberate choice - which produced a more crumbly, rustic-looking crust.)

Toffee Bars

 

I think I fell in love with bars & squares when I made my first magic bars back in high school (or was it middle school?) And while I like to entertain the thought that I've grown more sophisticated in my baking abilities since then, I often fall back on these recipes whenever I'm in a time crunch because they're easy, reliable, and always delicious.

This category of baking seems especially suited for holiday desserts.  Not quite a cookie and not quite a candy bar - or brownie, or pie, depending on what kind we're talking about - these heavenly layered treats have great range and versatility. Many classic desserts can be augmented to the compact size of a bar or square, from cheesecake to pecan pie to lemon tart, which not only puts a new spin on old favorites, it also makes the process of baking, transporting, and storage much easier.  And simplicity is something anyone can appreciate during these busy, blustery days.

H-A-Double L-O...

My oh my where did the time go? It seems like Fall has only just begun and now Halloween is just a couple days away!

Though I love to bake, I've never been much of a Halloween baker.  This type of holiday baking is a category all its own, a special craft with an emphasis on creativity, patience, and detail.  I'm usually too busy throwing together a last-minute costume to even begin to think about breaking out my oven mitts...unless it's part of my costume.

But like a good costume, I very much enjoy seeing what fanciful and festive treats people invent. Below is a round-up of some adorable, some amusing, some just plain strange, Halloween recipes I've come across.

Zombie Marshmallows from the decorated cookie

Ogre Eyes Hot Cocoa from TasteofHome

Cheese Ball Goblin by (who else?) Paula Dean

Wicked Witch Cupcakes from Martha Stewart

Spiderweb Cookies from Martha Stewart

Bizarre Brain Pate from Britta's Halloween Recipes

Spiderweb Brie En Croute, also from Britta

Monster Mouths from BHG

Spooky Witches Fingers from All Recipes

Cupcake Graveyard from All Recipes

Mummy Meatloaf from Family Corner

Mummy Rolls from Unfurled

A very impressive Melting Head Cake from Do It Myself

 Creme Brulee P-Eye from Hungry Halloween

Frankenstein on Spinach Artichoke Dip, also from Hungry Halloween

And last but certainly not least...the Thorax Cake

vanilla cupcakes

Yesterday was my good friend Danielle's birthday, so baking was obviously in store.  Normally I default to brownies for friend's birthdays, but this time I wanted to try something different, so I opted for cupcakes.

When it comes to baking, I think the end product is almost entirely reliant upon picking out a good recipe, because the rest is just about following instructions. But choosing a good recipe can be a difficult task.  In this case, I initially set out to recreate Magnolia's cupcakes (we had them a couple weeks ago at work and they were so good I continued to eat the stale ones that were leftover last week).  Surprisingly (or not), Magnolia has three cookbooks sharing the bakery owner's famous recipes, and the second one, More from Magnolia contains the recipe for vanilla cupcakes. But it calls for an alarming amount of sugar and butter; and after reading a lot of the negative reviews on Food Network ("SO OVERATED!!!!!!!"; "EXTREMELY sweet"; "spongy and dried out quickly") I started second-guessing it.

So I turned to JoyofBaking.com, one of my go-to sites for cakes, quick breads, and bars.  It's not the most sophisticated website, and the ads are pretty annoying, but they have consistently good, very manageable recipes and a nice little introduction explaining the history and summary of each offering.

Like many of its recipes, JoyofBaking's vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting requires few ingredients and the steps are simple and straightforward.  (In fact, this recipe is quite similar to the Magnolia recipe, but with less butter and sugar.)

I used a mini muffin pan for the bite-size variety (...and because that's the only size pan I have).  The recipe yielded almost exactly 24 mini cupcakes.

Pre-oven

The cupcakes browned at the edges after about 18 minutes.  (Please excuse the imperfect ones in this batch.)

Baking complete

The cake had a nice flavor and a decent texture: not too dry, not too spongy.  The frosting, on the other hand, turned out to be too sugary, though it had a nice, whipped consistency.  (From all of the cupcake reviews and "best of" lists, I gather it's really difficult to nail down a good vanilla frosting.)

Vanilla buttercream frosting

Though I hope to one day master the art of piping icing, I like the homemade look on cupcakes.  So I stuck to my tried-and-true method of massaging it around into dips and waves with a butter knife.  My mom instilled in me a suspicion towards food coloring, so I left these au natural and decided to accessorize instead.  I love making and buying things for Danielle because she's the girliest person I know, and doing such allows me to unleash my inner girly side.  So I went crazy with the pink sugar sprinkles and rainbow snowflakes (which, mind you, do contain food coloring...but it feels less deliberate this way).

Girlified

Probably not the best vanilla cupcake recipe out there, but it's a good, traditional, homemade one (and anyway they photograph nicely). Click here for the full recipe.  And please, if you have a great vanilla cupcake recipe, please share!