This Baking Blog is Moving... and the First Scone Recipe Is Already Posted!

In the spirit of posting more frequently, Justin and I are merging That Would Be Lovely with our Foodspiration blog. What does that mean?

1. All of my future baking posts including one that I just wrote tonight on the cream scone recipe will now be at www.foodspiration.com

2. We will be posting 2 to 3 times a week instead of 1 to 2.

3. You should change your link from this blog to www.foodspiration.com

After all, baking is inspirational too! Please click over...I've got so many ideas in the queue: all three scone recipes, pavlovas, and did anyone see this month's Martha Stewart Living?? It's all about cupcakes- hooray! I'm definitely making cupcakes.

Thanks for your patience with this changeover!!

Coming Soon: In Search of the Perfect Scone... for Jam!

Mmm...we just came into some delicious spreadable fruit:

• Summer Sweet Peach & Rose Geranium Conserve from June Taylor Jams
  
• Blenheim Apricot Jam from We Love Jam
• Apple Butter which was a homemade gift from Nonna C
• Ginger Pear Preserve which also was a homemade gift from Nonna C

And of course, I need something delicious to spread it on! So I am looking for the perfect scone recipe that is slightly crumbly, flavorful but plain enough to deserve one of these lovely spreads. If you have a favorite recipe, please send it my way...in the meantime, I'm considering:

• Mummy's Sweet White Scones ( with milk)
  

• Cream Scones ( with heavy cream)
  

• Mary Hearty Bye's Scottish Scones ( with buttermilk)
  

Chicken and Mitten Cookies

After Mama A and Little I left, I decided to decorate some of the chicken and mitten cookies a bit more elaborately. First, a few FAQs:


Q: Why chickens and mittens?
A: Because those are two cookie cutters that I have been meaning to try out...they have nothing to do with each other besides that.


Q: What does elaborately mean?
A: It means 5 colors or frosting: white, red, yellow, blue, green and black and two consistencies: outline- thicker for outlining and flow- to flood the cookie with frosting.

Which all equals- a very messy kitchen!

Q: You can buy black food coloring?
A: Yes, I highly recommend the gel paste food colorings because they are extremely concentrated and don't change the viscosity of your frosting as much. I have a gajillion colors thanks to Mama A who hit a sale at Sur La Table.

And here are the results:

Chickens... (some in more formal attire and wearing pearls)


Mittens...
Chickens and Mittens...

Just Mittens...
My buffet is full of mittens and chickens...to be distributed amongst my neighbors.

As you can see, I am still in holiday mode...and I will be until January 10th when the Boy Scouts come to pick up our tree. Christmas felt too short this year...plus I like to leave the Christmas stuff up until Epiphany which is January 6th.

Look What Little Hands Can Do!- A "First Cookie Decorating" Experience

Well, I really wanted to do some low-key baking that wasn't for a party or work but just for me. It worked out really great because my friend,Mama A, brought her daughter, Little I, over to help with the cookie decorating! It was Little I's first time decorating cookies. Good thing Mama A brought their aprons!

First Mama A showed Little I how to put just a few sprinkles...

I baked the cookies ahead of time and used a royal frosting recipe that uses meringue powder. Raw egg whites are traditionally used but you can find meringue powder at Michael's to use instead (which won't have the salmonella risk). The icing will harden which makes it easy to stack these cookies once they are dry.

We had sprinkles, sanding sugar, and even edible glitter to put on these cookies! Mama A got their aprons at Anthropologie- on sale after Christmas! So cute!

Little I caught on pretty quickly and took over! She definitely had a vision for many of these cookies- which colors and sprinkles went on which cookie.

There's no time for laughing, Mama A, this is serious stuff.

Ok, maybe a little laughing...Little I was amazingly gifted at sprinkling cookies. Perhaps a future Martha in the making???

Voila! The results...And how did they taste? To quote Little I, "Crunchy!" Well, this was so much fun...there will definitely be more baking projects with Mama A and Little I in the near future!

Baking is for the Dogs: Peanut Butter and Bacon Biscuits

Well, it can be. We have a black lab named Beaker who is 9 going on 10. Because we have no children yet, we probably focus a bit too much on our sweet dog- and we love doing it. Beaker has several dog friends in our neighborhood and for the holidays, I decided to bake them some homemade dog biscuits. Mindy, Maggie, Kinsey, Bailey, Izzy and Oscar will all be receiving a homemade Peanut Butter and Bacon biscuit.

Beaker seemed to know I was baking for her and kept me company in the kitchen. She gladly offered her quality control sampling skills for the bacon.

The rising interest in where food comes from and how it is made is not limited to people food- in fact if you go to a pet store, you will find quite an array of dog food and treats from standard kibble and biscuits to mix it yourself/ handcrafted food and treats. After seeing some really nice dog biscuits for a fairly expensive price, I decided that I could make them at home. I went to the library and found this book- which I bought.


I actually met the author at a food show and she was kind enough to autograph our copy.


This recipe for Peanut Butter and Bacon biscuits has great ingredients in it: natural peanut butter, oats, baking flour, whole wheat flour, uncured bacon, and water. In fact, we should probably be eating this instead of Beaker. Justin has pointed out that I bought more premium ingredients for Beaker than for ourselves.


Essentially, the dough is mixed and rolled...then baked and dried in the oven.


And the result is...voila! Peanut butter and bacon biscuits that look just like some familiar granola bars.

Did I try them? Of course! You saw the ingredients- nothing out of the ordinary. They actually taste pretty good- like a savory cookie. A little sugar and it could be pretty delicious.

Perhaps it can be a future flavor for people...after all bacon is in.

Are You Baked Out? The Last Christmas Cookie of the Year is a No-Bake!

Merry Christmas to you! Here's the last Christmas cookie of the year: White Chocolate-Peppermint...and it's a no bake cookie if you want it to be! After baking and making

gingerbread snowflakes,

rosemary butter cookies,

chocolate crinkles,

lemon bundt cake,

and chocolate peppermint cake,

I was baked out and needed my last cookie to be simple. I originally planned to make the White Chocolate Peppermint cookies from scratch from this Martha Stewart recipe here. But I was running out of steam and needed a shortcut! I found these Nabisco Chocolate Wafers in the cupboard. They aren't easy to find but you can get them at amazon.com. These are known for being used in an icebox cake.
So, I decided not to bake my own wafers but instead to use these. I melted Ghirardelli white chocolate in the microwave in 30 second intervals, stirring in between until melted. I added a teensy bit of peppermint extract. I dipped the wafers into the white chocolate and put them on wax paper.

As the recipe suggested, I crushed some candy canes with a rolling pin and used a strainer to sift the pieces. This resulted in two sets of crushed candy: one that was very fine and one that was chunky.

This is was a great idea! I topped some of the cookies with the chunky candy cane and some with the fine.
These cookies were then transferred to the fridge where they did take a few hours to really harden. I kept them their overnight. They turned out very well and were a crowd pleaser (click the photo for a close-up).

Merry Christmas to you and your family! I hope you are enjoying the holiday as much as we are! Check out some of our other family holiday food traditions on Foodspiration.

The Cookie That Will Make You a Foodie: Rosemary Butter Cookies

Once in a while you find a recipe that is so easy but tastes like it might have taken you all day. This is that cookie: Rosemary Butter. The profile is somewhat unusual- a delicate balance of sweet butter with sanding sugar on the edges, fresh rosemary and salt. It's a slightly savory cookie that is perfect for a party- surprising, unusual yet impossible to stop eating.

The recipe for this cookie came from my Martha Cookies book but can be found here. It is a basic dough with fresh rosemary that is shaped into a log and frozen. Once frozen, the log is rolled in sanding sugar, sliced and baked. You'll notice that I didn't have a perfectly round log but I think it gave the cookies some character. I also didn't have sanding sugar but used a coarser sparkling sugar. I went to three stores and called two others and learned that December is a bad time to look for white sanding sugar! But, I highly recommend this recipe for an exceptional yet simple addition to your cookie portfolio- which is a long way of saying you should try it.

Christmas Dessert Gets Simple: Peppermint Chocolate Cake

I wanted to share this lovely holiday-inspired cake that is easy to make and delicious to eat! I like it so much that I have made it three years in a row! This recipe came from Everyday Food a few years ago and it is much easier than cookies (which take lots of baking time) and pie (which can be tricky).

As you can see, it has a dense crumb which makes it even more decadent! I also love it because:

1) it takes one pan

2) it looks fancier than it is

3) it is peppermint, which just tastes like Christmas!

One adjustment: for the frosting, cut the peppermint extract by half as not to overwhelm the cake. You can also melt the butter and chocolate chips in the microwave using 30 second intervals and stirring in between.

So, give this recipe a try. It will wow your guests!

Finally, the St. Nicholas Cookies!

You may have remembered my post about St. Nicholas' day and the special handcarved wooden mold I bought.

Well, I finally put it to use with my former neighbor's special St. Nicholas cookie recipe. When I was younger, she would bring over these cookies that were made in a special mold.

This year, I made her cookies which have a distinct flavor because of the spices- most notably cardamom. I must confess that I am still working this recipe out and it does have a variable addition of flour. The first time I made it, the dough was fairly firm and the cookies turned out fairly thick.

It is important the dough not be too soft as it needs to hold the shape and fine details but still release from the mold. Additionally, this recipe has no leavening in it, which is suspect also helps keep shape. I recall these cookies being thick as a child and I was worried that they were undercooked so....I accidentally overbaked them.

They looked great but the next day, they were hard as rock. I couldn't even take a bite.


So, I made them again and I didn't put as much flour so the dough was a bit softer. I intended for the dough to spread more with the force of pressing the mold which would result in thinner cookies. What actually happened is that they didn't keep the fine details after baking and they stuck to the mold! However, the taste and texture were about right.

You can see the cookies...the two overbaked ones are on the left and the less baked one that lost definition on the right. I also recall that my neighbor's cookies were also somewhat pale and not overly brown.

So, for next year, I should probably talk to my neighbor about the recipe a bit more. I think I might bake the dough again, using the higher amount of flour and erring on the side of underbaking rather than over.

Baking My Brains Out

A new post is coming soon. I have been baking so much that I haven't been able to post. I've made St. Nicholas cookies, white chocolate peppermint cookies, gingerbread, rosemary butter cookies, lemon bundt cake, chocolate cookies and peppermint chocolate cake. Phew. And I am making more gingerbread tonight....

Bake-and-Make Christmas Ornaments

As Justin and I were decorating this year's Christmas tree, I realized that we have some unique ornaments that we have made from food. This year's tree is 8 feet tall and our best by far!

Salt Dough Ornaments- circa 1999

My roommate, LG, and I made these ornaments out of salt dough during my first year of graduate school. We bought a fresh Christmas tree and didn't have many ornaments.We made the salt dough and rolled it out like cookie dough. We then cut it using cookie cutters. After baking them at low temperatures and cooling them, we decorated with paint. LG handpainted this heart ornament. We had hearts, angels, trees and some three dimensional ones like a birds' nest. I think we even used a garlic press to extrude the nest. Here is a link to the kind of recipe we used. I love having this ornament on the tree!

Macaroni Star Tree Topper- circa 2002

When Justin and I put up our first Christmas tree in Minnesota, we discovered that we didn't have anything to put on the top of the tree. Justin recalled making one of these in school and having it on top of his family tree. Out came the cardboard and some scissors to make the base. A little glue, a few kinds of dry pasta, and gold spray paint and voila- behold our tree topper until this day.

Christmas Cookie Ornaments- circa 2005

My tree decorating philosophy is to create a tree decorated with meaningful ornaments. I like multicolored lights with the eclectic collection but I also wanted to make a set of ornaments that had some continuity. Growing up, my mom had a collection of starched, crocheted snowflakes that were made by my Nonnie as well as a handmade angel. Because I can't crochet, I decided to bake these ornaments that I saw in a book called Decorating Cookies by Joanna Farrow. Actually, I had checked out this book from the library and I think it was called Decorating Biscuits because it was a UK version. The book seems difficult to find now and this was the only recipe I made.

The cookies took about a few days to make and frost. The intense colors of the frosting required time to set up so that the colors didn't mix and even so, on a few cookies you can see some color diffusion. I also experimented with the design as you can see (click on the photo for a close-up).

These cookies have lasted 3 years so far are holding up well. They are some of my favorites!