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Archive for TWD
December 16, 2008 at 10:50 pm · Filed under Recipes: Cookies, TWD, Recipes: Quick & Easy, Recipes: Baking
Tender and buttery with a hint of sweet orange marmalade. Think buttery biscuits. That’s what these cookies taste like. With a cake-like texture, they go best with your favorite tea. Don’t be fooled by the plain appearance, they taste great. I had them for tea with my earl grey. Oh, so buttery.. as much as I would like to resist, I can’t help going for seconds or thirds!
The recipe asked for ¼ cup of apricot jam which I replaced with sweet orange marmalade. You can replace it with any jam or marmalade you can get on hand. The marmalade in the cookies are very subtle, detectable only when I chewed those with the orange peel. I had wanted to add more but I’m left with only that much in the jar. This recipe has to be the easiest among all the recipes in the book I’ve attempted so far. The dough is thick and stay in shape. No more chilling and rolling of the dough like the previous cookies. Simply just scoop them onto the baking sheet with a spoon or scoop once the dough is done. Easy peasy! These cookies don’t spread much in the oven so you can bake as many as you like on one sheet.
Heather of Randomosity and the Girl chose this recipe for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie. I say, this is a good pick!
December 9, 2008 at 11:05 pm · Filed under TWD, Recipes: Baking
Yay! It’s Tuesday again! This week, we are churning out Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies from our ovens. Still a novice in baking, this is only my second attempt at making cookies. I encountered some minor problems especially when handling with the dough. Yes, again!! Argh! But compared to last week’s Thanksgiving Twofer Pie mishaps, I would say this was a smaller problem.
After receiving tips and advices from readers last week, I went to read the recipe again. Finally, I knew what went wrong. Or at least, a big part of why the tart came out so wrong. The recipe asked for one and a quarter stick of butter. It didn’t occur to me that I actually bought the bigger stick of butter(doubled the size). I googled and found out that one stick of butter is only 115g which explains why the tart was so greasy. LOL!
Ok, back to sugar cookies. This cookie dough gets soft easily after rolling out and getting warmed, making it hard to cut them into shapes. One useful tip I got from Hannah for cut-out cookies is to lightly floured the cookie cutters to prevent sticking. However, the dough was still too soft for me to handle. I had to keep chilling the dough to make the cut-out perfect. Although not exactly a breeze, still a little frustrated when cutting the cookies, I’m glad that the whole rolling and cutting process was still manageable.
Baking the cookies was a pretty fast job, just a mere 9 to 11 minutes. Judging from the browned sides, they might have been baked a little too long. I’m really happy that these sugar cookies turned out well. They tasted like the sugar butter cookies in the blue round tin that most of us grew up with, probably crispier.
I might just use this recipe for the nieces whose been pestering me for a whole month to bake cookies. Is there anything I can add to the recipe to make the dough more manageable for the kids to cut out? Any simple ideas on the kind of icing design they can decorate on the cookies?
With Christmas nearing, be prepared for more cookie posts this December!
Thank you, Ulrike of Kuchenlatein for choosing sugar cookies this week. Head over to her blog for the recipe.
November 30, 2008 at 10:45 pm · Filed under TWD, Recipes: Dessert, Recipes: Baking
Finally! I have joined the fun group, Tuesdays With Dorie. I read about great reviews of this book, Baking from home to yours by Dorie Greenspan and had wanted to buy it since. I got it for only SGD20.00 after a 20% discount with the addition of a $20 voucher.
I’m already late with this entry. Although we do not celebrate Thanksgiving, I don’t mind trying out the recipe as this will be the first time I’m making a pumpkin pecan pie. Sounds delicious, isn’t it? Vibi from La Casserole Carrée, is the host this week. Check out her site for the recipe.
The recipe asks for shortening and I didn’t managed to buy them, so I just skipped that totally by adding more butter. With no food processor or a pastry cutter, I went ahead to make the pie dough using my fingertips, the rubbing-in method. I knew that I had to work fast. But it seemed that there wasn’t enough flour for me to work with and the butter starts to melt a little. The whole dough seemed so greasy and wet and I’m not sure if I was doing it correctly.
The dough was to stay in the refrigerator for an hour for it to harden up before rolling. The rolling was tough with a new rolling pin, although I made sure I rolled the dough on a floured kitchen counter. First roll out, and the dough cracked. Gee.. was the dough too hard? This is really tough for me! The rolling was so frustrating with the dough sticking to the rolling pin which I’ve floured it as well. With the help of B, we managed to place the pie crust onto the foil tin, with holes, of course. We patched up the crust with the remaining dough. Whew! Ugly, but finally done. After all, it’s my first pie! If only I knew earlier, I could just use a stand mixer to help me out on the dough.
With a badly done crust, it might not hold the filling well after I cut the pie. Will it just crumble? This has to be the most challenging and time-consuming bake I’ve ever done. And I’m glad I managed to come out with a decent looking pie. Oh yes, it’s ONLY decent looking from the outside.
Being the first attempt, everything looked and tasted so wrong!! Just as I cut the pie, it feels so soggy. The pie was already baked for 60 mins but the pumpkin filling didn’t firm up. What went wrong? I’ve no idea. Can someone enlighten me on this? The pie crust is no better. There’s just oil oozing out as I cut the pie. It seems under-baked. Did I used too much butter? Or was it the mishandling of the pie dough in the initial phase?
Ok. The pie can’t be eaten, it’s just too greasy. I’m glad that I tried. At least, I have gain some experience making my first pie. No, I’m not showing my unsuccessful bake this time round. LOL
