Sweets for the Sweet

Sweet treats...


because it's Valentine's Day on Wednesday, of course.

At Christmas Belle brought me some cookie cutters, which reminded me that I used to make elaborate sugar cookies for all of the holidays. Haven't done it in ages.

So it was time.

I'll take them to work, share with the neighbors, pass them out to friends.

Sugar cookies are a bit of a process since the dough has to chill so I planned on making the dough Friday night and baking the cookies Saturday morning.  Snow was forecast for Saturday afternoon so I would ice them then. What a plan.

After the dough was made, happily cooling in the fridge, I mentioned to a friend that I was making cookies and he said "Can you bake at this elevation?"
Shit.
Yes, I can but I know good and well I need to make adjustments. And I definitely did NOT make adjustments for this recipe.

(For more reading on my adventures with high altitude baking, click here and here and here.)

So Saturday morning the dough was thawed, water was added, then it went back to the fridge to chill again.

Kinda set my schedule back.

But eventually the dough was ready and I got out the world's most adorable cookie cutters.

These hands are my kids from when they were 1, 3 and 7. (Heres a link to a company that will make some for you. Fabulous baby present.)

I also have a collection of hearts although really wouldn't it have been perfect if I had THIS one?

An anatomical heart cookie cutter. 

Wish I had one yesterday.

I mean, I do work for a cardiologist.

The dough was rolled out. That required sprinkling flour everywhere. I'm a messy cook.

Rolling out the dough under the watchful eye of the plastic parakeet. 

Soon enough I had hearts and hands baked and waiting for icing.

Cookies make it easy to hand over your heart.

I had great plans. Rings for the hands, bracelets, maybe a watch. Then reality set in when I discovered the only food coloring I had was neon pink, orange, purple and green. Guess the good food coloring was lost in the move.
O well. Pink hearts and flesh colored hands, sprinkles and sugar confetti would have to do.

And the final product? Pretty cute, huh?

Literally sugar, flour and icing everywhere. 

Had to mop the floor today. 

Here's the sugar cookie recipe. I doubled it for this batch. They aren't too sweet so they really need the icing.  If you are baking at a high altitude like I am, add 2-3 tablespoons of water. I didn't add extra flour since I used flour on the rolling pin and counter (plus floor, me, cabinets, etc) when the cookies were rolled out.

Ingredients:

⅓ cup butter

⅓ cup butter Crisco shortening

¾ cup sugar

1 egg

1 TBSP milk

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

Cream the butter, sugar and shortening. Add the egg, milk, and vanilla and mix well.

Sift together the dry ingredients and add slowly.

Chill for at least two hours or overnight. 

Preheat the oven to 350º.

Roll and cut the dough.  Bake for about 10 minutes. 

For high altitude I added a couple of tablespoons water, lowered the oven to 340º and baked them a little longer. 

Sugar Cookie Icing:

3 cups confectioner's sugar

¼ cup water

1/2tsp vanilla

I usually add a little lemon juice to the water to give it a little edge.

Mix all until smooth. It should be thick and white. Color as desired. 

To thin, add water, drop by drop. It doesn't take much. 

To decorate, I use paint brushes. Just paint on the icing. It works. Just make sure you get all the paint out of them first. 

Happy Valentine's Day all!  Wish I could send cookies everywhere.

Baking at High Longitude or...

Baking at High Longitude or...
More Adventures in Living in the Middle of Nowhere


Friend Diane just came back from Steamboat and she had this little story to tell.

While riding up the elevator one night, two very inebriated young ladies got on with her.

Tipsy #1 commented that she was "so drunk" and she just had no idea how she got that way, she didn't think she had THAT much to drink.

Tipsy #2 reassured her that she didn't drink that much, it's just that "at this longitude, the alcohol hits you harder."

From here on out I am going to stick to the theory that I live at 8000 feet longitude and it makes it difficult for me to assimilate any alcohol.

If you don't get what's funny about this story, I'm not going to help you.


Anyway...

Bunny turned seventeen on Monday and she requested an Angel Food cake for her birthday.

I will refer you back to September a year ago when I made the mistake of ordering a birthday cake for Belle rather than making her one. I thought by ordering and paying for a cake I would be spared the embarrassment that would accompany an ugly cake. I'd never baked at 8000 feet and knew it could be tricky.

Here was her cake:

Here is what she expected:

Belle wanted something elegant and maybe with a little bling, but definitely cheetah printed.   Apparently I did not convey that clearly.

Now September a year ago we had just moved up to this high "longitude".  Since then I have done quite a bit of baking and pretty much figured out some of the alterations required to make baking successful.

BUT.

I have also heard that Angel Food cakes are a little harder to master than some of the other baked goods.

So I started a day early and planned to just make an Angel Food cake from a box mix.

I neglected to actually read the high "longitude" instructions on the box. Usually it requires more water or higher temps, nothing out of the ordinary.

Ha! This time the high "longitude" instructions required corn starch, something that wasn't in the pantry. And the grocery store is about 18 miles/30 minutes away.

Thinking I could figure this out, I went on the internet and found a different brand cake mix that just required some extra flour. Ok, that should work. I had a Betty Crocker mix, that was for Duncan Hines but seriously, how different could they be??

Apparently quite a bit.

Here's what I ended up with:

 Cake #1.

I've always heard of cakes "falling" but I've never experienced it. Until now.

So, off to the store again anyway. One hour round trip.
Another cake mix and this time I got some corn starch,too.

And here is cake number two:

 Cake #2.

While it may not look much better, it actually rose very high, overflowed and then settled back down to a manageable shape.

Flipped over and drizzled with pink icing, it didn't look too awful.

Bunny turns 17!

And it tasted just fine.

So happy happy birthday Baby Bunny.  

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And two weeks ago, while I was in Texas, the Big Guy also had a birthday.

It was a busy, crazy week and there was very little time for baking, celebrating, anything-ing. 

The Big Guy was very understanding.

I did go to the kids' favorite breakfast burrito place for burritos to bring back to Colorado. Big Guy asked if I would bring him some, too. 

Voila!  A Breakfast Burrito Birthday "Cake".  Candles stuck between the burritos, the Happy Birthday song sung and my oldest officially turned 23. 

Yikes!

Really there are candles between those burritos. 

Just hard to see. 

A Recipe from the Blue Ribbon Winner

Blue Ribbon Baker, Blackberry Crumb Bar

After hearing her mom had been declared a Blue Ribbon Baker,  Bunny sweetly asked me to make some Blackberry Crumb Bars for her.  She had found a recipe online and sent me a text saying "Can you make these at some point please".   Notice the "please". That's about as sweet as we get around here.

Now baking in my tiny kitchen in the woods can be a challenge. Appliances are limited. Gadgets are even more limited. Heck, space is limited.  The handy dandy hand mixer we have is at least 30 years old. There's a food processor from the consignment store. It has two speeds: on and off.
I also learned to bake at sea level. This kitchen is almost 8000 feet in the air. Concessions need to be made and I am doing my best to learn how to make them. Some things come out, some things don't.

I've written a couple of posts on baking and cooking in our version of a Green Acres kitchen. If you want to read about my little kitchen, click here.  If you want to read about high altitude baking, click here.

The cozy kitchen in the woods.

Just don't plug in a 3 and a 5 at the same time.

(And if you have never watched Green Acres- go find it online.)

But the Crumb Bars got made.  And devoured. They were yummy but we felt they could be improved upon. So more were made. I think we have it right this time.

See for yourself:


Blackberry Crumb Bars

The cast of characters-minus the oatmeal and graham crackers
I forgot to take a picture the second time I made them. 

For the filling:

• 4 cups blackberries (Frozen is ok) 
• ⅓ cup granulated sugar
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• zest of ½ lemon (No micro plane here in the cabin kitchen, so I used one of those choppers that you slam down with the palm of your hand. Worked ok. Necessity is the mother of invention.)
• pinch of salt

And for the pastry:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• ¾ cup oatmeal  (I chopped it up just to make it a little finer but you don't have to.)
• ¾ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, cold and diced into cubes (Or just melt it. I tried both ways and both ways worked.)
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg, well-beaten
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 5 or 6 graham crackers-crushed

Place rack in center of the oven then preheat to 350 degrees. Coat a 13" x 9" cake pan with cooking spray or line with parchment paper then set aside. (I lined the bottom of the pan with parchment paper/sprayed the edges with Pam.)

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, toss blackberries with sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest until well combined then set aside.  (Frozen blackberries were used- didn't even bother to defrost them.)

Doesn't this look yummy? 

In a separate large mixing bowl, sift together flour, oatmeal, baking powder and salt. Cut the cold butter into flour mixture using a pastry cutter or fork until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs, then add ¾ cup granulated sugar and stir until combined. (Since there is no pastry cutter here at Green Acres,the first time I made it I used the ancient hand mixer on low. It worked. The second time I just melted the butter and stirred it all together. That worked too.)

In a small bowl, whisk together the beaten egg and vanilla then add to dry ingredients. Mix until well combined—the mixture will be dry and shaggy-looking. (Shaggy-looking? It was dry. Don't know about Shaggy. And if you decide to melt the butter- it won't look dry. But it will still work.)

 This is with the butter melted. 

It was a lot easier to do than "cutting in cold butter".

An option if you also happen to be lazy. Like me.

Transfer 2/3rds of the pastry mixture to the bottom of the prepared pan then press into an even layer. 
Add an even layer of the crushed graham crackers. (Use about 2/3rds of the graham crackers here, save ⅓ to add to the topping.) 

I find a wine bottle and a plastic baggie the perfect set up 

for crushing crackers. Put the graham crackers in the bag, roll the bottle over.

Feel free to sample the wine after you are done crushing.

Pour blackberry filling—including juices—over the crust then spread into an even layer.

Mix remaining graham cracker crumbs with remaining pastry mixture and crumble evenly over the top of blackberries. 

Ready for the oven.

Bake 40–45 minutes until the top becomes a light golden brown. Remove from oven then allow to cool until crust becomes firm. Serve slightly warm, or at room temperature.

Lightly browned all over at about 46 minutes. 

No adjustments were made for the high altitude and it didn't seem to matter. 

Bunny declared these "Yummy" and requested that they be made with great regularity.

Yum. 

I'm going to a Wine Festival in Lake City this weekend. These can come along with me.  
Of course, I will leave some for Bunny. 

Maybe. 

 (The original recipe was courtesy of the website CherylStyle.com BUT alterations and additions were made.)