potato_head (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
potato_head) wrote2011-12-24 05:33 pm
potato_head) wrote2011-12-24 05:33 pm
Entry tags:
MASSIVE BAKE POST
ARE YOU PREPARED
There are a billion photos here and some of them are really crap. BUT I MADE COOKIES
Okay guys let's bake! Derek, you want to help?
Right. Tripper, you're not my ideal baking buddy, but if you promise not to drool on the cookies...
...oh. Um, alright then.
...Nikka?
Right, right, of course not.
SO GUESS IT'S JUST ME AND DAD THEN.
Gingerbread men!
I used this recipe, but replaced the black pepper with 1/2 teaspoon mace instead. Because I am not very fond of pepper, but I love mace in gingerbread cookies.
All baked up and cooling:
And then we made sugar cookies.
What's that? You want a more impressive angle on those?
I used this recipe, but subbed almond extract for the vanilla extract. That stuff smells STRONG, man. And tastes strong too, but it cooks out in the oven. The dough wasn't all that great because of the strong taste of the almond extract, but the cookies are DELICIOUS. I'm glad I decided to try a new recipe, the old one tasted like bread tbh.
As you can see, some got food coloring! I did one-third of the dough green, one-third red. It worked pretty well because that recipe makes a LOT of dough.
Dad insisted on making those tiny ones and sprinkling them with sugar to make them all sparkly. He was right!
He also insisted we organize them by shape. Apparently I put them out on the table-o-cookies wrong and he had to go back and REARRANGE EVERYTHING.
We also did stained glass cookies! I found a specific recipe for the dough you're supposed to use, but it looked like just a variation on sugar cookie dough, so we just went ahead and tried it with this dough.
Basically, we just used tiny cookie cutters I bought (same ones we used for those tiny cookies above) to cut shapes out of the dough. We sent Paige out into the garage with a pan and bags full of lifesavers, and she smashed them to small chunks for us, which we then sprinkled into the holes before baking the cookies. While the dough bakes, the candy melts.
I actually haven't tasted any yet. Next time, I'll sprinkle sugar on top of the cookies as well, to add a bit more flavor, since they're not good for icing.
HALFTIME BREAK
Nikka jumped up on the table while we were waiting for the cookies to cool. JUST TO ANNOY ME. We shooed her off and she ran over to Paige and skulked.
No really. She was so pissed. She twitched her tail at me every time I looked at her.
Speaking of which...hey Nikka, you want to help us ice the cookies?
Oh. You're, um, busy. Okay then.
We did just white icing for the gingerbread men.
I mix icing that's based on this recipe still, but do it by feel now instead of bothering to measure anything. My version is I think something like a cup and a half of confectioner's sugar, two dashes of milk, and a two-second squeeze of the syrup, with a dash of the extract or other flavoring. It seems too thick until just about the moment you're done mixing. I also subbed artificial rum extract for the vanilla extract; it goes REALLY well with the gingerbread men, and is super tasty.
This time I also made two batches - one wetter one for dipping/brushing on, and a slightly thicker mix that we put in one of our new squeeze decorator bottles. Dad used that to decorate most of the gingerbread men, while I dipped the little ones.
I also brushed the wetter icing on the skirts of the gingerbread women, then used the squeeze bottle to decorate further.
Dad proved to be quite good at classic-looking gingerbread men!
His hand got tired towards the end so I took over for a bit, and I'm not too bad either.
Although sometimes I get...urges. Like making an edible Scott Summers. Because we've all wanted to bite his head off at one point or another.
Not all of them are perfect. One on the left is the last one Dad did (when his hand was tiring) and on the right is my first one, when I was still figuring out how to handle the squeeze bottle.
So then I mixed up some colored icing and we decorated the sugar cookies!
Dad and I did all of these as well. For food coloring ratio - I used ten drops of the green and the red, but for the blue only eight, and if I had stopped sooner I wouldn't have added that much; it was rather darker than I wanted. Also, I used vanilla extract in these. It should be noted that this also works out well because vanilla extract is brown and can color the icing, but the rum extract I found - and I assume most of them, since it's artificial - is clear, so it worked so well for the white.
We worked as a team - I mixed one color while Dad did some decorating with the white (we continued to use the white left over from the gingerbread men) then I handed off the mixed color to him, which he spooned into one of the other squeeze bottles while I did some decorating, and so on to the next color. It worked well because we mostly kept out of each others' way, both physically and in terms of the fact that we could only use the white + one other color at a time (we had several squeeze bottles but only two regular icing tips; the others were shaped tips for stiffer frostings).
Then Paige, with Dad's permission, grabbed the red and made one of the gingerbread men into the eleventh Doctor, with a fez and a bow tie.
FINAL COOKIE SPREAD (sans stained glass cookies)
There are a billion photos here and some of them are really crap. BUT I MADE COOKIES
Okay guys let's bake! Derek, you want to help?
Right. Tripper, you're not my ideal baking buddy, but if you promise not to drool on the cookies...
...oh. Um, alright then.
...Nikka?
Right, right, of course not.
SO GUESS IT'S JUST ME AND DAD THEN.
Gingerbread men!
I used this recipe, but replaced the black pepper with 1/2 teaspoon mace instead. Because I am not very fond of pepper, but I love mace in gingerbread cookies.
All baked up and cooling:
And then we made sugar cookies.
What's that? You want a more impressive angle on those?
I used this recipe, but subbed almond extract for the vanilla extract. That stuff smells STRONG, man. And tastes strong too, but it cooks out in the oven. The dough wasn't all that great because of the strong taste of the almond extract, but the cookies are DELICIOUS. I'm glad I decided to try a new recipe, the old one tasted like bread tbh.
As you can see, some got food coloring! I did one-third of the dough green, one-third red. It worked pretty well because that recipe makes a LOT of dough.
Dad insisted on making those tiny ones and sprinkling them with sugar to make them all sparkly. He was right!
He also insisted we organize them by shape. Apparently I put them out on the table-o-cookies wrong and he had to go back and REARRANGE EVERYTHING.
We also did stained glass cookies! I found a specific recipe for the dough you're supposed to use, but it looked like just a variation on sugar cookie dough, so we just went ahead and tried it with this dough.
Basically, we just used tiny cookie cutters I bought (same ones we used for those tiny cookies above) to cut shapes out of the dough. We sent Paige out into the garage with a pan and bags full of lifesavers, and she smashed them to small chunks for us, which we then sprinkled into the holes before baking the cookies. While the dough bakes, the candy melts.
I actually haven't tasted any yet. Next time, I'll sprinkle sugar on top of the cookies as well, to add a bit more flavor, since they're not good for icing.
HALFTIME BREAK
Nikka jumped up on the table while we were waiting for the cookies to cool. JUST TO ANNOY ME. We shooed her off and she ran over to Paige and skulked.
No really. She was so pissed. She twitched her tail at me every time I looked at her.
Speaking of which...hey Nikka, you want to help us ice the cookies?
Oh. You're, um, busy. Okay then.
We did just white icing for the gingerbread men.
I mix icing that's based on this recipe still, but do it by feel now instead of bothering to measure anything. My version is I think something like a cup and a half of confectioner's sugar, two dashes of milk, and a two-second squeeze of the syrup, with a dash of the extract or other flavoring. It seems too thick until just about the moment you're done mixing. I also subbed artificial rum extract for the vanilla extract; it goes REALLY well with the gingerbread men, and is super tasty.
This time I also made two batches - one wetter one for dipping/brushing on, and a slightly thicker mix that we put in one of our new squeeze decorator bottles. Dad used that to decorate most of the gingerbread men, while I dipped the little ones.
I also brushed the wetter icing on the skirts of the gingerbread women, then used the squeeze bottle to decorate further.
Dad proved to be quite good at classic-looking gingerbread men!
His hand got tired towards the end so I took over for a bit, and I'm not too bad either.
Although sometimes I get...urges. Like making an edible Scott Summers. Because we've all wanted to bite his head off at one point or another.
Not all of them are perfect. One on the left is the last one Dad did (when his hand was tiring) and on the right is my first one, when I was still figuring out how to handle the squeeze bottle.
So then I mixed up some colored icing and we decorated the sugar cookies!
Dad and I did all of these as well. For food coloring ratio - I used ten drops of the green and the red, but for the blue only eight, and if I had stopped sooner I wouldn't have added that much; it was rather darker than I wanted. Also, I used vanilla extract in these. It should be noted that this also works out well because vanilla extract is brown and can color the icing, but the rum extract I found - and I assume most of them, since it's artificial - is clear, so it worked so well for the white.
We worked as a team - I mixed one color while Dad did some decorating with the white (we continued to use the white left over from the gingerbread men) then I handed off the mixed color to him, which he spooned into one of the other squeeze bottles while I did some decorating, and so on to the next color. It worked well because we mostly kept out of each others' way, both physically and in terms of the fact that we could only use the white + one other color at a time (we had several squeeze bottles but only two regular icing tips; the others were shaped tips for stiffer frostings).
Then Paige, with Dad's permission, grabbed the red and made one of the gingerbread men into the eleventh Doctor, with a fez and a bow tie.
FINAL COOKIE SPREAD (sans stained glass cookies)
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