Raspberry (Almond) Thumbprint Shortbread Cookies

Its a pity that I have not tried making these cookies before. They're so super simple to make and taste delicious. I've seen them on so many websites but I always pick a vanilla or chocolate flavored cookie over an almond flavored one. 

I was looking for a recipe without chocolate for a change and this one from the Land O'Lakes website seemed ideal.  I rate it 10/10 for ease of making and 9/10 in taste.

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter at room temp

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 tsp almond extract ( I used 1 tsp only)

Dash of salt

2 cups flour

Jam of your choice (about 1/2 cup)

Preheat the oven to 350 deg (I set it to 340 so that the cookies wouldn't flatten too much)

Cream the butter, almond extract and sugar for 3-4 minutes, scraping down the bowl a few times.

Add salt, sifted flour and stir on lowest speed a few times until it comes together. Turn off the mixer and mix the rest by hand a few times to incorporate. Kneading or stirring too much will toughen the cookie.

Roll the dough into 1 inch balls and place on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Use your index finger (sorry not the thumb :) ) to make an indentation in the dough. I used a chapstick tube on a few cookies. Add about 1/4 tsp jam into the indentations. Do not overfill (jam will heat and run over) and do not underfill (jam will bake into a thin layer and cookies will look quite sad...this happened to a lot of the cookies).  It takes some trial and error on the 1st few cookies to get it right,

Bake for about 10 - 18 mins depending on the size of the cookies. Start checking on them at 10 mins and take them out when the edges are golden and the tops are still pale brown. Overbaking can make the cookies too crisp.

While the cookies are cooling, mix about 3/4 cup to 1 cup of confectioner's/10x/icing sugar with about 2-3 tbsp of water and a couple of drops of almond extract until it is a smooth pourable glaze. Keep adding water in drops if you feel it is too thick. Add some more sugar if it ends up too thin. Spoon it into a ziploc bag and zip shut. Snip off the very end of one corner and drizzle the glaze over the cookies.

Enjoy!

 



Our Current Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie

This is our current favorite recipe for Chocolate chip cookies. Its from the King Arthur Flour website. I do not use the almond extract as recommended by the recipe and I use milk chocolate chips or butterscotch chips instead of semi-sweet.

• 2/3 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup Crisco/Vegetable shortening
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon vinegar, cider or white
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 large egg
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups milk chocolate chips/any chips

Bring your eggs, butter to room temp.
Add the sugars, butter, shortening, vanilla, salt, baking soda, vinegar in this order in a bowl and cream on medium speed for atleast 2 minutes, scraping down the sides and bottom intermittently.
Technically speaking. creaming is a process of mixing the sugar and butter well so that the sugar is partially dissolved in the softened butter. So if its looking grainy because the butter was too cold or the brown sugar was too hard, beat it some more until you see a creamier, sticking to the sides of the bowl kind of mixture. Make sure your butter is not melted before creaming because you will never be able to cream melted butter and sugar.
Enough about creaming! Add the eggs one at a time, stirring lightly between additions. Mix well for about 30 seconds. Add the 2 cups of flour, sifted and mix in spurts to avoid overmixing, After about 10-20 seconds of mixing, I usually mix the rest by hand. Add the chocolate chips and mix well. Drop tablespoonfulls on wax paper lined cookie sheet and freeze the sheet for atleast 30 mins. Once frozen, I dump them all into a bag and place in the freezer for about 12-24 hrs. Next day, I preheat the oven to 350 and bake the cookies for about 9-12 mins until the cookies are pale golden at the edges. The top may look underdone but it continues cooking for a few seconds after you take it out. It also yields a chewier cookie.
Freezing the dough is supposed to bring out the caramel flavor in the cookies. For me its a make-ahead kind of conveninence. I can bake smaller batches as required. Nothing beats fresh from the oven, warm, chewy chocolate chip  cookies!

Happy Holidays!

Nothing but the usual....decorated cookies for the Holidays.

Also pictured here are my new stackable cookie racks. I bought a set of 3 racks on sale for 7.99 at ACMoore yeah..!

These cookies were part of a tray of goodies I prepared for Altaf's workplace...I heard they got good reviews. Yay! Happy Holidays Everyone!

Rainbow cookies

These were cupcakes for little birthday girl Shivani who loves rainbows! The toppers are rainbow shaped iced cookies. I don't have a rainbow shaped cookie cutter but I was able to combine a few cutters to make these cookies ("jugaad" as they say back home in Bombay).
From the picture below you should be able to see I used a round cookie cutter, a tiny scalloped circle cutter and the bottom of a tulip shaped cutter. Each circle I cut into two using my bench scraper (not pictured but a knife would do). Then cut off the corners with the same. Cut out two scalloped circles and cut off a small portion. Shaped the  inner curve of the rainbow using the tulip cutter bottom (any small circle would do) and then pieced it all together.

The dough was very firm, straight from the freezer. I roll out the dough into sheets between freezer paper/wax paper/parchment/cling wrap and then freeze for 15 mins before cutting cookies. It preserves the shapes well when transferring to the final baking sheet.

Once the cookies bake, the shapes merge together to form a single cookie. They should still be handled carefully as the joints are a bit fragile. Let them cool completely before picking them up.
Here they are all ready to be iced!

The icing was Royal icing (Sweetopia's recipe) iced in 6 colors of the rainbow...I didn't feel like doing indigo :-) and piped on with parchment cones. I realized I did not have 6 piping tips in size 3 or 4..so I had no choice but to try parchment. This was my1st ever attempt with making and using parchment but it went a lot smoother than I thought it would and results wise you wouldn't know the difference. Speaking of differences...do you spot the odd one out in the cookies below? Arsh got to eat that cookie :-)

 The icing consistency I kept thicker than usual (about 8-9 seconds on Marian's 10 second scale) so that they wouldn't run or spread but at the same time would blend with each for a smooth top. I was afraid that the colors would bleed into each other but thankfully nothing of the sort happened.

Here they are with the clouds piped on in white.

And the final result...as toppers on the cupcakes!

Biscotti 1st attempt

My 1st ever attempt at biscotti. They were chocolate vanilla biscotti for our PTA meeting (I'm on the hospitality committee) and they turned out well. Everyone who tried one said they tasted good. It wasn't very difficult to make either...I just didn't expect the baking times to be this long. Biscotti is twice baked for crunchiness which had me worried. But these turned out somwhere between soft and crunchy without being rock hard. I did not have the vanilla bean paste or the mini chocolate chips or the espresso powder called for in the recipe below but I subbed regular vanilla extract, regular chocolate chips and instant coffee powder instead.
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2009/10/12/stacking-up-the-flavors-black-and-white-biscotti/

I'm going to try a fancier biscotti recipe the next time around, with more confidence!

Easy Burger Buns

Another easy to make KAF recipe :
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/beautiful-burger-buns-recipe

We tried them last night to make Sloppy Joes. They require just basic ingredients and no potato flour and milk powder....so two thumbs up there. The buns turned out very good..soft but not pasty.

I used almost 1 cup of water and felt the dough was a bit too sticky so I added 2-3 tbsp more flour. Also based on reviews I used a little less than 1/4 cup of sugar (maybe a tbsp short).  I mixed the dough in my kitchenaid stand mixer with the dough hook for about 6 mins or so. The rest of the recipe I followed as is and the result was excellent. Total time was 10 mins to measure and mix, 1 hour to rise, 10 mins to cut and shape, 1 hour to rise, 12-13 mins to bake.

Let me know if you have any questions when making these.
- Serene

Golden pull apart buns

This weekend was Papdi chaat and Vada pav for our get together with friends. The Pavs were the Golden pull apart buns from King Arthur Flour's website. The KAF blog has really detailed step by step instructions with  lots of pictures so its hard to go wrong. 
Two ingredients the recipe calls for, I usually do not have in my pantry so I had to go get that: Potato starch or instant potato flakes like Betty crocker etc. and dry milk powder. As per the blog post, the potato helps with the softness and helps it keep longer. The milk powder helps the dough rise better.
The  other thing that makes this recipe super easy to pull together for me is my Kitchenaid stand mixer. That machine is a workhorse and its a must have for any serious baker. I've used it to make roti atta too and it does a great job. For this bread, it does the kneading in 7 mins...so we'd need about 15 by hand...not impossible but not easy either.


I baked the rolls in two 8x8 square pans so they came out square just like the pavs from back home. They also weren't too soft and had a bit of a texture to it. 


The ingredient list:
3 1/2 cups All purpose flour (I use KAF unbleached AP flour)
2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 tablespoons potato flour or 1/4 cup instant potato flakes ( I have used both and they've both come out well) 
3 tablespoons nonfat dry milk
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons soft butter
2/3 cup lukewarm water
1/2 cup lukewarm milk


The step by step instructions from the KAF blog are in the link below. But the gist of it is, dump all ingredients into the mixer bowl, adding the warm liquids last. Knead on med speed for 7 mins. Remove and place in a greased bowl. Keep in a warm draft free place for about 60-90 mins to rise until almost doubled in volume.
I usually heat my oven for about 2-3 mins and then turn it off and place the dough in the oven to rise. This has worked everytime.  After the dough has about doubled in volume, deflate/punch the dough down and divide into 18 rolls. Shape the rolls (not like chapati dough..see pictures for this one) into balls and place 9 in each lightly greased square pan with room to spare (the dough will rise again). Place in a warm spot again for the 2nd rise..about 60 to 90 mins. When the rolls have risen, heat the oven to 350 deg F. Bake the rolls at 350 for 18-22 mins until the top gets a nice golden brown. Brush with butter and take the rolls out after 10 mins to cool.
Good luck!!


KAF blog:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2009/11/12/the-one-thing-i-have-to-bake-every-thanksgiving-pull-apart-butter-buns/