Mouth Sugar Cookies

It's mid-June which can only mean 1 thing, the end of school and a looong vacation..... I wish.  For kids with autism, school is year round.  I actually had the option to take off, but I decided to stick around for the summer.  Even though I'm not looking forward to a long break from work, it's still the end of another successful school year which feels like a big accomplishment.  A large division of SLPs in the DOE (or Speech Language Pathologists in the Department of Education for those of you who don't know the lingo) got together today to celebrate with something we call "Feeding Therapy."  For our "Feeding Therapy," we had a luncheon in which we all brought our own meal... and volunteers were asked to bring dessert.  How could I say no to another opportunity to bake.  I thought about what to make for 40 hungry and tired speech therapists, and I decided to go full out 'speech dork' and try to make people smile.  I made sugar cookies in the shape of mouths.  What better way to honor SLPs and Communication, and the hard work we've done all year long.
I had some fun experimenting with how to ice the mouths.  Here are some of the outtakes.

And here is how I eventually decided to do them.

 

Wine Glass Sugar Cookies

HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY JUSTIN!!!!!   For my husband's birthday, 15 of our closest friends traveled with us to Ithaca (his alma mater).  We went on a Wine Tour around Cayuga Lake, enjoyed the annual Ithaca festival, shopped in the Commons, and hiked around the gorges.  First of all thank you so much to everyone who joined us, we have the greatest friends ever and we had an amazing weekend.  Second of all, hope you enjoyed the party favor cookies I baked!

Teddy Bear Sugar Cookies

I had a VERY busy week last week baking two batches of sugar cookies.  I didn't have a choice as I had two very cookie friendly events. 
1- school bake sale
2- a very special husband's birthday

These were two events I couldn't pass up!  I'll post about each separately, but note that my trusty photographer husband was not around when I was baking these, so my pictures are not as clear.  Here's the first:

My school had a bake sale to raise money for Autism Speaks, a charity dedicated to increasing awareness of autism spectrum disorders, to funding research into the causes, prevention and treatments for autism.  

The pink ones are chocolate sugar cookies with blackberry jam/chocolate icing and the brown ones are regular sugar cookies with chocolate icing

Peanut Butter Truffle Brownies

Ok I missed the boat on the Pinata cookies... but they were cute to look at right?  But I did get to bake this week.  In honor of my friend Sarah's birthday, I made Peanut Butter Truffle Brownies.  I work with Sarah so I brought a batch to work and they were gone in about 5 seconds.  I wasn't even going to write a post about them, but when I got the comment "These are the best brownies I've ever had in my life!," I thought it would be worth it to post the recipe.

Peanut Butter Truffle Brownies

Ingredients

Brownie Base                  Filling                                          Topping

6 tablespoons cocoa        1/3 cup butter, softened                3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1/4 cup butter                1/3 cup creamy peanut butter        3 tablespoons butter

1 cup sugar                    1 1/3 cups powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla        1 1/2 teaspoons milk

1/4 teaspoon salt 

1/3 cup flour 

2 eggs

Step 1:  Brownie Base

Preheat oven to 325°F degrees.  Grease an 8-inch square pan.  Dust lightly with cocoa and shake out excess.  Melt butter and mix it with cocoa powder. Then add sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour and salt. Mix to combine.  Spread brownie batter evenly in pan and put in oven to bake for 35-40 minutes.  Allow to cool completely, about 1 hour.

Step 2: Filling
In medium bowl, beat filling ingredients with electric mixer on medium speed until smooth. Spread mixture evenly over brownie base.

Step 3: Topping
In small microwavable bowl, microwave topping ingredients uncovered on High 30 to 60 seconds; stir until smooth. Cool 10 minutes; spread over filling. Refrigerate about 30 minutes or until set.  Store covered in refrigerator. 

Pinata inspiration

Click here for a sneak peek at the inspiration for my next batch of cookies!  I usually don't like to follow recipes to a tee, but these look so yummy that I may have to make an exception!!

http://www.sheknows.com/food-and-recipes/articles/958083/cinco-de-mayo-pinata-cookies

Puzzle Cake

Happy Birthday Mom!  I wanted to make a cookie creation as a gift for my mom for her birthday, so she was the inspiration for this project.  Growing up, one of my favorite things to do with my mom was to put together puzzles while we watched our favorite tv shows and chatted.  Now that we don't live in the same house, we have puzzle swaps so that we can still enjoy the hobby.  A perfect personalized gift for my mom would be a sugar cookie puzzle cake.  It's quite an ambitious task, but to be cookie queen, I have to try everything right?

Before I started, I drew out a 12 piece puzzle on a piece of paper.  This is the template I would copy for the actual sugar cookies.  I halved a standard cookie dough recipe, rolled the dough out evenly onto an 8''X11'' cookie dough sheet so that it was about 1/2 inch thick, and I popped them in the oven.  I took the cookies out about 2 minutes before the the recipe called for them to be finished.  At this point, I took a sharp knife and copied my puzzle template by slowly tapping at the dough (instead of swiping straight), and removing any excess dough that stuck to the knife.

When I finished, I put the puzzle back in the oven to cook for the remaining 2 minutes.  At this point I found that the dough still looked too soft, so I left it in the oven for an extra 2 minutes.  Must have been because the dough was baking altogether, instead of in separate cookie cutter shapes.  Once the puzzle was out of the oven for good, I ran through the puzzle with my knife again, using the same tapping strategy, and I carefully separated the puzzle pieces.  This was a tough task.  Some of the edges looked jagged, so I used the knife to try to smooth out the edges as best I could.  I put the separated puzzle pieces in the freezer to cool for about an hour.

It was time for the icing.  I used egg whites, lemon juice, and confectioner's sugar.  I halved the icing into 2 bowls, putting purple food coloring in one and sugarless strawberry jam in the other.  I kept adding more and more jam into the one half until the color was just right.  It was super thin at this point.  Perfect, I thought, to paint on the base color with a basting brush.  The icing glided right on, smooth and thin, and I thought it would be perfect.  

I popped the cookies back in the freezer for the icing to dry.  One hour, still wet.  Two hours, still wet.  Three hours... midnight.... still wet.  It was time for bed.  It would have to dry by morning right?  Ten hours came and went and the icing never dried.  I focused too much on the color of the frosting and not enough on the consistency.  Next time I might use less jam and maybe the tiniest dot of red food coloring... or more confectioner's sugar... I'll figure that out later.  For now, I had to move forward.

The good news was that even though the icing never dried completely, it did dry enough to the point where it was just sticky.  I could still easily decorate over it.   I put the pieces back together (cutting the edges of some of the pieces so that it fit) and got to work with the purple icing. I used two tips to write happy birthday over the puzzle pieces, and create a flower border.  Since the pieces were still slightly spaced apart, I easily used a knife around the puzzle pieces to separate the wet purple icing that connected each piece.  

And voila! 

I knew it would be a difficult project to take on, and it was, but it was still a lot of fun.  The best part was when I gave it to my mom and I saw how much she loved it!

Unbelievable Passover Brownies

Ok it's officially been way too long since I've posted.... so I'm sorry to the two people that actually read this blog (mom and one other haha).  And just for the record I have baked since my last post... once...   It was chocolate chip cookies and it was very uneventful (but they were so delicious!)  I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I used the recipe from the Nestle Tollhouse bag (.... but slightly proud.  Come on, we all know that recipe is amazing.)

Now that it's Passover and I have off from work for the week (hooray!), I knew I HAD to bake something.  Up until this year, I have always bought the "kosher for passover" box of brownie mix.  I have been making these brownies every year since I could help my mom mix the batter (I don't eat brownies regularly, but for some reason it's always a must for Passover).  They are always pretty good, but not GREAT.  This year, I was searching through a google document that my family made a few years ago (it has recipes, a basic grocery list, and other little things we need to remember to do for Passover).  There was an "Unbelievable Brownies" recipe posted from my sister.  And I made them.  And guess what.  You'd never even be able to tell that they are kosher for passover!  Thanks Rach!  No more "brownies from a box" for me!

 It's worth it for me to post the recipe for anyone who is interested because the brownies are pretty easy to make:

Unbelievable Brownies

Nonstick cooking spray
4 large eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
¾ cup Dutch process cocoa powder
1 cup potato starch
½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)


Preheat oven to 350

Spray an 11 by 7 inch brownie pan with nonstick cooking spray.  Set aside

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar until smooth.  Add the oil and salt.  Mix.  Sprinkle in the cocoa powder and mix to make the batter chocolatey.  Add the potato starch and mix to combine.  Scrape down the sides with a spatula.  Stir in the chocolate chips if using.

Pour into prepared pan.  Bake for 35-40 minutes.  Allow to cool before serving.

I just have one note to mention.  Usually when I bake, I bake for the minimum time it says on the recipe because my oven is pretty hot and my husband likes things soft.  On this recipe, I put the brownies back in the oven at least three times.  After I baked them a little longer than the recommended time, they came out perfect.