{Eat} Winter Holiday Treats

Happy 2012!!

I finally had some time during the holidays to bake even though it was already past Christmas. They ended up being for friends only anyway since most of the office was gone between Christmas and New Years Eve. I was the sucker who stayed behind, but I'm taking three days off this week to head off to NYC, so it's all good!

I baked two batches of sugar cookies which yielded about 70 2-2.5" cookies, but next time I need to either bake three batches, or somehow alter my icing recipe to make less. I was trying to use as much icing as possible when decorating, but I still had a lot left over.

 A sampling of the designs I did. It gets a little repetitive always doing the same few designs...

 My progress after night one of decorating.

 Snowflakes.

 Personalized cookies!

 Christmas trees.

I call the right one "Rudolph's nose" and the two on the left "Rudolph blinking in a blizzard", as inspired by Calvin and Hobbes' "Polar bear blinking in a blizzard", seen below.

I hope the cookies were good (I only tried one iced one but I ate a lot of plain ones) and that everyone had a wonderful holiday!

{Eat} Skeleton Men

Happy Halloween!

Both the chocolate cut-out cookies (minus espresso powder) and royal icing recipes via Bake at 350.

No closeups because the icing was a little too thick so it didn't go on nicely at all. Cramped hands are no fun.

I started to run out of time (had to rush to a concert!) and steam so I just swirled the icing on the last few men.

Our Best Bites' are way cuter!

{Eat} Cinnamon Sour Cream Coffee Cake Recipe

I wish I knew where this recipe came from. I just have a photocopy of the handwritten instructions, but I love this cake and it's super easy!

Ingredients:

Batter:
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar (I used 3/4 cup)
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups flour

Topping/Ripple:
1/2 cup pecans, chopped (toasted or untoasted)
1/4 cup butter, melted
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease 9-inch loaf pan or line the bottom with parchment paper.
2. Mix the Topping/Ripple ingredients together in a small bowl. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Beat eggs in one at a time. Add sour cream and vanilla. Scrape down sides of bowl as needed.
4. In a separate bowl, sift together baking soda, baking powder, salt, flour.
5. Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients until mixed thoroughly.
6. Pour half of the batter into the pan. Then spread half of the topping on top. Repeat with the remaining batter and topping.
7. Bake for 55-60 minutes until a knife inserted in center comes out clean. Let cake cool in pan for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack. 

The inside is nice and moist and the top is a little crunchy due to the brown sugar! It'd probably be better if the pecans were toasted, which these are not because I'm lazy like that. 

 Cinnamon and pecan topping.

Yum. Not sure what the last person who cut a piece was doing. My slice was missing a corner and not cut straight at all.

I've used walnuts instead of pecans before and it tastes just as good! Supposedly you can substitute the sour cream and pecans with apple slices, so I'm going to try adding apples with some pecans instead. I'm not so sure about replacing a major batter ingredient (sour cream) for apples though.

{Eat} Fall Cupcakes

After another few days at the hospital here, my mom finally had surgery to have her femur screwed together, though apparently it wasn't broken as the first ER doctor here thought. But she's now back at home and resting.

And for the cupcakes, I guess they'd be more appropriately themed for fall if I spiced them up a bit, but these are just plain ol' vanilla cupcakes.

My boys are always hounding me to bake cupcakes for them and I had promised them some in the summer but never got around to baking, so with my remaining vacation before work tomorrow (no NYC) and some unopened food colouring that I've been itching to open, I decided to make some fall coloured frosting.

The next time I bake these I'm going to modify the recipe a bit because they're a bit denser than I would like, but it could be because I always cut out 25-50% of the sugar listed. And for the frosting, I halved the recipe but forgot about that when I was adding the liquid so I poured some out after creaming with the butter/shortening and didn't put enough icing sugar in. Oops. Still, everyone always says this recipe is the best I've made so I'll just have to play around with the ingredients a bit more next time.

Also, don't mind the terrible photos. I was in a rush running out of the house to meet my girls so I just snapped the photos real quick and Photoshop couldn't save them.

 Nekkid cupcakes!

 

 I wanted to swirl the colours on each cupcake but that failed miserably... They were too ugly to even take pictures of to remind myself the next time I attempt to do that.

Packed up and ready to go!

More baked goods to follow soon I hope - Halloween cookies next week and mom wants coffee cake for all her visitors, though everyone's been bringing food anyway. But my cousin did bring Style at Home, Oprah, and Elle which my mom's not going to read, meaning they're mine!