Christmas Cookies 2011 - Part 1

It's double posting time! Today is Friday and the day before Christmas Eve. Figure I should start posting the first half of these now and not after the weekend when Christmas starts getting associated with the 1/2 off aisle.

Start here with my Christmas playlist to put you in the mood.

Photo Cookies and Edible Frosting Sheets: A tutorial

Warning: This is a fairly dense tutorial post.  When I started doing photo cookies, I had a very hard time finding cohesive information and had to put together bits and pieces from a bunch of different sites. Hopefully this puts it all together in one spot.  Drop me a comment if I've missed something or you want more information on something, I'm more than willing to share all the hours I spent trolling the internet and talking to people to get this working!

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A girlfriend of mine asked me to make her some Pokemon character cookies for her son's 6th birthday. When I looked up the characters, my jaw dropped. How was I going to ice this figure onto a cookie?!

Holy Gliscor!
And then I remembered - photo cookies, of course!

Photo cookies use printed images on edible frosting sheets, just like you would print an image on paper using a regular printer. Edible frosting sheets are basically frosting/icing pressed really thin to paper width. 

Printed sheet of edible frosting which will later become...

"Photobooth" style wedding cookie favors!

So for those that want to experiment with edible images you can do one of 2 things:

1.  Buy the printed sheets from your local bakery/supermarket
2.  Buy all the equipment and materials and do it yourself.

For option #1:
I know for sure that the A&P in Fort Lee (right by GWB, next to McD) will print out images on frosting sheets for you. I know because I've done it! They charge $10 per 8.5" x 11" sheet.  You need to bring a USB with your image ready to print.  It's pricey, but you'll see that unless you're printing a lot, it's not worth buying all the equipment and materials to do it yourself (just you wait and see when you get to option #2!). 

The only problem I had with this method though is that there's less precision and control to get the images to print exactly how you want. Jpegs seems to mutate from computer to computer so when I got it printed at A&P the actual images came out a little smaller than what I had measured them out to when I created the file in InDesign/Photoshop. So be flexible. You can go in the morning and get your images printed right then and there with a 5 minute wait. Done!

Another option for those with more time is to check out this shop on Etsy: EyeCandey.
The woman who runs that shop, Joy, was THE most pleasant person to deal with! I used her the very first time I tried photo images on cookies for my friend's then boyfriend (now husband)'s birthday.  You send the photos you want printed and she will print and send you your edible prints in the mail. Prices are comparable but you have to pay for shipping. (argh that blasted shipping!) I will say that the quality of the frosting sheet through EyeCandey was better than the one from A&P (thinner, more flexible and easier to work with in general).  Plus she also offers images you can choose from. How cute are these!

Other sites also recommend checking in with your local bakery, especially if they offer photo cakes and cookies and such themselves.  I think Minnesota bakeries must be much friendlier than those in North Bergern, NJ because the 2 bakeries I went into denied my request.  One even went off on me on how I was so brazen to come in to try to use their equipment to steal their business? .......wow. All I wanted was to make 12 cookies for a friend....

For option #2:

You'll need to go big or go home!

• You'll need a printer. I bought (and recommend) the Canon IP3600 Inkjet.  Basically, you want a printer that will be used SOLELY with edible inks. DO NOT use an old printer that has already be used with regular (TOXIC) inks.  Let's keep it clean folks! There is no "special" printer, you can buy any old printer but I would just check to see that your particular model has corresponding inks to buy for it. It seems that Epson and Canon are the most popular and widely used brands in general (for edible printing).

Look at all the pink stains on my desk from messy ink cartridge handling! BOOOO.

•  You'll also need edible inks and frosting sheets.  Make sure you get the right inks for your particular printer. I'm linking you to ones that compatible to the printer I bought and listed above.

Edible Ink Cartridges for the Canon IP3600 (5 cartridge set)

Frosting Sheets 8.5" x 11" size from Kopykake

 You can also check out the site for Icing Images: they have a slew of products and information regarding printing edible images. 

A couple of caveats for those that want to plunge into option #2:

• edible inks clog fairly easily (for some reason, its always my yellow ink that gives me a problem!!!) so they recommend that you print something (anything) at least once a week (you can just use regular paper instead of wasting valuable frosting sheets!)
• edible inks also get used up fairly quickly and they're not cheap. One solution is to buy refill inks and to refill them yourselves. You can refill your cartridges up to 3 times before you need to swap out the entire cartridges and buy new ones.

Refill inks. Make sure you buy the appropriate refills for your model ink cartridges.  Mine actually came with 4 bottles - black is not shown in this picture. 

That being said, i LOVE my edible printing system! You can make endless designs and pretty cookies relatively simply. I don't love it when it clogs on me, or jams my paper feed or just feels like doing nothing. But a few coaxing words, a refill here and a swift karate chop there and we're good to go!

Once your sheets are printed, you'll want to let them dry a little bit (I wait around 30 min to be safe) and then you can start cutting out the images to work with.  If you're not going to use them immediately, make sure you store them in an airtight container or ziploc so they don't dry out.  Frosting sheets last pretty long as long as they're store correctly so this is a good step to do in advance is time is against you.  (I believe the expiration on my package of frosting sheets is 12/2012 and I bought them in July!)

Now that you have your images, you'll want to:

1.  Outline your cookie

2.  Flood your cookie (flooding just means filling in the outline with icing)

3.  Apply your icing image on the wet icing. 

Just place your image where you want it and drop it into the wet icing. As it dries, the frosting image will magically meld together with the wet icing. Carefully smooth it down so the image touches the frosting but be careful because the image is very delicate and senstive to moisture.  If a drop of water falls on it, watch the colors run as you cry out in anguish (reminds me of the execution scene from Braveheart, 'cept you won't be screaming FREEDOM!!!!)  The image will become more and more "wet" as it merges with the moisture from the icing...if you try to move the image once the moisture sets in, the image might tear.  So try to do any manipulation within the first few seconds of application. 

4.  Let dry (at least a few hours)

This for me is the "danger' period.  For some reason, a stray cookie crumb always happens to find its way on top of a freshly iced cooke. It's like the one day you wear a white shirt - of COURSE this is the day you spill black coffee on yourself. Of course! Show restraint and DO NOT TOUCH! Wait until it dries and then flick it off with a toothpick. Handling the wet icing with photo image is never a good option. 

5.  Pipe a decorative border (or not!) of your choice. 

For the photobooth style wedding favors above, I purposely did not any additional borders to give it that photograph look. You have to be really careful about application of the photo if you choose not to do a border.  Most times a border is preferable - it adds a little oomph AND it covers up a not so even edge.

Variety of "picture frame" style borders. The one on the right has no border at all!

Classic "dot" border. Also shows you don't have to use photographs...can use any kind of image. Anything you can print you can eat!

Line border with accent sugar pearls

"Double dots" wide border
There were the first ever photo cookies I did! I ordered the sheets from the Etsy link mentioned above. I actually thought the photos would come out much larger. Lemons --> Lemonade! Made the difference into the design.

Simple piped line border

Go crazy! Play with different piping tips. This was the first time I tried the star shaped tip - make sure your icing is fairly thick so it can hold it's shape!

6.  Let dry COMPLETELY. 

If you don't let the image dry completely, it will stick to the packaging and fall apart. I've had cookies dry for the full 24 hours but still seem to stick later in packaging. Not sure why so give yourself plenty of time.

Voila!

So do you want to see how those Pokemon cookies turned out?

From left to right, top to bottom:  Pikachu, Azelf, Mesprit, Uxie, Gliscor, Snivy.
Yup. I know the names of the Pokemon characters now. I am not proud.

Pikachu! I see you! (omg, so cheesy I just barfed a little!)

When a nut is not a nut...

I had a hard time titling this post because it is actually a recipe post for Peanut Butter Blossom cookies. But I wanted the non-bakers to read (at least the intro) because here's a fun fact (to me): the peanut is NOT a nut. 

"Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don't."

Thank goodness that catchy jingle is referring to the almond because if it were referencing the peanut I would write a letter of false advertising. The peanut is, in fact, a legume. Related to beans! Go figure. I was just recently theorizing (real word?) on the growing case of kids with allergies and figured that was what was attributing to the growing case of peanut allergies as well...but that theory is shot since peanuts do NOT grow on trees. The plants flower above ground but the peanuts themselves grow in the pods (shells) underground. So what gives! I wonder if peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are not the standard lunches these days? Man, what I wouldn't give for one of those right now...with the crusts cut off please!

So today I'm gonna post a favorite cookie recipe of mine. It's actually from a coworker of mine (who by the way makes THE BEST COOKIES, PIES, CAKES, CHOCOLATES of all time).  I've made it numerous times and it's always a crowd favorite. And it's easy, I promise!

PEANUT BUTTER BLOSSOMS

YIELDS ~4 DOZEN

INGREDIENTS1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup shortening

1/2 cup peanut butter

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg

sugar

48 milk chocolate candy kisses, unwrapped

Kudos to those that caught the random photo of Will Ferrell as The Elf.  I mistakenly included an ingredient that is not used in this recipe and thought he'd be a festive way to disguise my mistake. Happy Holidays! :)

1.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees

2.  In a large bowl, combine the following:

     flour
     1/2 cup sugar
     brown sugar
     baking soda
     salt
     shortening
     peanut butter
     milk

     vanilla
     egg

    
     Mix at low speed until stiff dough forms.

This is why I think this is a simple recipe. You're literally combining all the ingredients (minus the extra sugar and the milk chocolate kisses) in one shot. Gotta love it! Don't forget how to measure your flour (spoon into the measuring cup, don't pack it in) and sift if possible. Mix until all the ingredients come together and you should end up with this:

It will literally just self form into a dough!

3.  Shape dough into 1" balls. Roll in sugar.  Place on baking sheets spaced 2" apart.

I lined all my baking sheets out of habit with parchment paper but the original recipe says you can use ungreased baking sheets. Since the dough has shortening in it, I doubt it'd have the sticking problem but for me parchment sheets saves me cleaning time. Just have to throw the sheets away after I'm done!

4.  Bake at 375 degrees F for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.

5.  Immediately top each cookie with 1 candy kiss, pressing down firmly so cookie cracks around edge.

6.  Remove from cookies sheets. Cool and enjoy!

The chocolate kisses get really soft from the heat of the freshly baked cookies, be careful when handling them until they cool down and re-set.  HOWEVER, this is the best time to sneak a taste test, I love melted chocolate! With warm chewy peanut butter cookie...YUM.

Here's one last fun fact before you go:  A 12 oz jar of peanut butter contains ~540 peanuts.

Since this recipe has 1/2 cup of peanut butter - how many peanuts go into each cookie?

If you get it right, maybe you'll score a few from the batch I'm making this week! (Sorry, this does not apply to anyone who lives far enough that I'd have to ship)

Penguins + Holidays + Cookie = ...

Penguin Holiday Cookies. Duh.

My first holiday cookies! I baked a whole bunch of gingerbread men, trees, stockings...and then I ended up decorating plain squares instead. Go figure. I think I don't like to be contained. Haha

I think my favorites are the ones with arms/fins and the ones with earmuffs:

I also learned:

Don't assume they are dry because you left them out overnight. I put them in bags in the morning and I guess they were still wet because all the candy eyeballs sank way back into the icing. And I think one of the penguins lost a partial fin. I won't tell you which one so you continue to think I'm a perfect icer. I'm just really, really good at photoshop.

Also, I added the "snow" onto wet (blue and white background) icing before I added the penguin thinking I was clever and skipping a step.  I had a difficult time piping the actual penguin on top of stray "snow" - it created uneven lines whenever I had to run across a "snowflake."  I should have left more negative space for the little guy but I was aiming for a more realistic snowy background. Gosh, I'm getting to anal with these cookies. Stop. Breathe. Relax. It's just a cookie.  (Funny, this is what I used to say at work..."Stop. Breathe. Relax. It's just a shirt.")

Not my favorite batch ever, but for a spontaneous freehand icing project I'm satisfied with the overall result. I do like the colors. Says "Christmas" without using red + green.  And even if they're uneven, or have wonkey eyeballs, when is a penguin NOT CUTE?

When you google 'ugly penguin' and see this:

Now THAT'S an ugly penguin.

Peppermint Meringues

It's Christmas time! Which translates into lots and lots of baking. I tried meringues for the first time - it was a lot simpler than I thought! I did have to make them twice though and I'll tell you why later in this post.

While prepping for this recipe I learned a LOT:

•  difference between kosher salt and table salt - it's just the size of the salt grain (kosher being larger). At the end of the day, salt is salt. But it does make a difference because if you use large quanitities of it, you can't just swap one out for the other (as I did in this recipe - up to a tsp the swap is negligible (did I spell that right? more importantly, did I use it right grammatically speaking?!)
• difference between a French, Italian and Swiss meringue. Actually maybe I should delete this off the list because right after I typed that, I seem to have forgotten what it was...
• difference between food coloring and food gel - I use the latter for my cookie decorating and thought it was the same thing. Turns out it's not and I have the photos to prove it.
  
  

ALSO - did you know that peppermint oil aids in digestion and is good for the respiratory system? Nevermind that the Peppermint Meringue recipe I'm about to post only has 1/8 of a teaspoon of oil in it...divide that into the 48 meringues that came out of the recipe and you have .26% of a teaspoon of healing benefits coming your way.  There's an excuse to eat a lot of meringues guilt free..."it's for my lungs!!!"

This recipe is lifted off from Bon Appetit's "Cookie-A-Day" slideshow.  It's a fairly simple recipe. You do need a stand mixer though...I suppose you could use a hand mixer if necessary. You'll get the added benefit of ripped upper arms after as well.

PEPPERMINT MERINGUES
by Bon Appetit magazine

INGREDIENTS

3 large egg whites, room temperature

1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/8 teaspoon peppermint extract
12 drops red food coloring

1.  Separate your egg whites and let them come down to room temperature.This isn't a step on the original recipe but its the WORST when you're all ready to start but can't because of 1 small thing like that. I even bolded, italicized AND put this comment in RED in the ingredients portion so you wouldn't forget. Maybe I should have underlined as well. But I thought that wuold be overkill.

2.  Preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Line baking sheets (I needed 2) with parchment paper.

3.  In mixer, beat egg whites and salt on medium high speed until white and foamy, about 1 minute.

4.  With mixer running, gradually add sugar in 3 additions, beating for 2 minutes between each addition
Total beat time of 6 minutes....are your arms sore yet hand mixers?!

5.  Add powdered sugar and peppermint extract, beat to blend, about 1 minute

6.  Dot food coloring over surface of meringue - DO NOT STIRThe coloring will form swirls when piped.

Actually I was already suspicious about this food coloring vs food gel swap and only dotted 9 drops from the suggested 12.

7. Spoon meringue into a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2" piping tip.This is the metal thing up in my ingredients picture for those that might not be familiar with piping tips.  Mine is actually a little bit larger than 1/2"...wait a second...NO WONDER!! I just had a lightbulb moment but I'll continue and explain later. (Sorry, I'm like the friend that calls to say something very important and then "forgets" - YEA RIGHT!! )



I really have to comment bloggers who take such nice pictures. This photo teaches me to take the extra minute to wash my hands before taking pictures. 

8.  Pipe 1" rounds onto prepared baking sheets, spaced 1" apart all around

9.  Bake meringues until dry, about 2 1/2 hours
Yup. TWO and a HALF hours. Crazy how long these suckers take to dry. You're basically just drying them out in a low heat...it's not "baking" like how you normally think cookies do.  They pretty much look the same when they're done as when they go in...just...dryer.

10.  Let cool completely. ENJOY!

Maybe I should have used the 2 1/2 hours waiting to get a mani...

DO AHEAD: meringues can be made 2 days in advance and stored in an airtight container at room temperature between sheets of parchment or waxed paper.
I had a slight problem stacking these for storage cuz I found all the dainty tips of the meringues broke off while being handled and stacked....maybe no one notices the tips? I DID. I was staring at all the missing tips when I was laying them out for Sunday's post-concert spread....

So let's go back to the food coloring versus food gel:  food gel is WAY more concentrated. I did a 2nd batch with only 2-3 drops of food gel and this is what I got:

Much prettier.

My lightbulb moment! It's because the recipe says it yields 60 meringues. The first time I got 40. The second time I made them smaller to the suggested 1" and I got 48. But Maybe its because my tip is larger than the suggested 1 1/2".  A quick calculation shows that I used a tip that was 17% larger than the suggested....so if you think of each meringue as having 17% more than its supposed to, you'd have a 17% shortage right? 17% of 60 is ~10 meringues....does this even make any mathematical sense? I'm grabbing strings here. But the numbers are (correctly or not) working out for me so I'll take it!

One more shot of the finishd product up close:

Also - for those that were trying out the basic sugar cookie and royal icing recipes, I've updated them with photos so check them out.