Christmas Cookies!

Here are all the holiday cookies I baked this Christmas. Above we have Ghirardelli Chocolate Crackle Cookies. The recipe is on their box for double chocolate brownie mix.

Lemon ricotta cookies with lemon glaze. Giada Delaurentiis' recipe! She has you spoon the cookie dough onto the baking sheet. If you want perfect circles, it's best to pipe the dough.

Oatmeal cookies with dried cranberries and green raisins... because red and green is Christmas. Recipe is from the Quaker oatmeal box!

Chewy ginger cookies. My friend's gramma's recipe. Here, I tried to get all fancy with the decorating.

Sadly, I did not have time to bake traditional gingerbread cookies. Wish I had :(  But these are quite enough to last me throughout the holidays!

Animal Graham Crackers

While I was in Korea, I bought these super cute animal cookie cutters at Daiso. When I came home, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to use them to bake cookies to send to relatives as a 'thank you' for showing me around.

I used these recipes for regular and chocolate graham crackers.
Cutting these guys out of the dough was so much fun!

Bunnies!

Lions!

Elephants!

Bears! Oh my!

Wild blueberry scones.

Helen's mom picked these wild blueberries while on a hiking trip. 
"Give these to Gina," she told Helen, "She'll know what to do with them."

Eh... okay.

What to do... what to do...
I had bought clotted cream on a whim the other day.
Might as well make some wild blueberry scones!

I used Ina Garten's recipe as a basis.
They look pretty good!
I'm about ready for some tea.

I Heart Oreos.

I baked homemade Oreos last night. I used the same recipe for festive Oreos, except this time, I used a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut out fun shapes. I had found some heart shaped sprinkles at the supermarket and used them to decorate. Also added some red food coloring to make a pink cream filling.

Celebration cookies for me.

I'm celebrating a birthday today. Party will be on Saturday. I made festive Oreos as a giveaway for my party guests using THIS recipe. I think next time I will roll the dough out and cut out shapes with a cookie cutter instead of slicing a log. Makes for prettier looking cookies.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

^___________^

Christmas Cookie Trio

[Shot by Tony]

In preparation for a little holiday party, I baked cookies for my friends. I made a variety of three kinds: chewy ginger, chocolate crackle and lemon ricotta cookies. I packed them in separate Ziplock bags as I've heard cookies end up tasting the same if you put them all together. Target had super cute holiday treat bags and sticker labels to package the cookies nicely.

Chocolate & Pumpkin Cake for Ve.

[Shot by Tony] 

"A party without cake is just a meeting."

                       - Julia Child

Veanne is leaving for London in a couple weeks. I baked her a chocolate and pumpkin cake for her farewell potluck. I am notorious for leaving an ingredient out when trying new recipes. This was no exception. Cake turned out okay though.

[Shot by Ve]

Blueberry Upside Down Cake

Every time I visit my mom, she always loads me up with some kind of fruit.

This time, she gave me 2 pints of blueberries. What do I do with all those blueberries?

I found a recipe for blueberry upside down cake and baked for tea time with co-workers.

Turned out pretty yummy!

But I think next time, I would like to make the cake portion thicker.

Ginabread Cookies.

[Hello gentlemen!]

Ginabread! Er... gingerbread cookies! Icing is hard. Luckily I gots a steady hand. Martha Stewart has a good gingerbread cookie recipe. Here's a helpful tip: Make sure baking time correlates to the size of your cookies (big cookies = bake longer, small cookies = bake shorter).

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Peanut Butter Cup Cookies.

[Peanut butter cup cookies via Glorious Treats]

As part of a holiday cookie medley I've been trying to put together, I found this recipe for peanut butter cup cookies. I knew I'd be baking lots of cookies so I tried to find things that were fairly easy and fun to make. I used Alton Brown's sugar cookie recipe. 

[Sorry OCD people!]

Chocolate+Caramel+Pecan+Pretzel

[I like this kind of math!]

Isn't this candy tin SO CUTE? JoAnns Fabrics had a 70% off clearance sale on their holiday items. This was the perfect size for chocolate caramel pecan pretzel bites. They are super duper easy to make. Put mini pretzels onto a cookie sheet. Place a caramel Hershey Kiss on top of each and bake for 5 minutes at 250 degrees in the oven. Then smush a pecan on top. Let cool or refrigerate. You got an easy treat in just a few minutes.

Banana Bread.

 [Banana Bread in Holiday Loaf Pan]

I like to handmake my holiday gifts when I can. My favorite banana bread recipe is by Emeril Legasse. A.C. Moore had these cute ceramic holiday loaf pans on sale for a dollar! Three were enough to use up all the batter in the recipe. I reduced the sugar down to 1/2 cup and added chocolate chips to balance the sweetness. I noticed if baked in smaller loaf pans for 40 minutes, the bread comes out lighter and fluffier.

I also bought fat quarter fabrics with holiday prints for a dollar each as well. I hemmed the edges to wrap the banana bread. Makes perfect gift on a budget!

Graham Cracker Teddy Bear Cake for Dad.

Thanksgiving means two things in my family's house: turkey and my dad's birthday. This year for my dad's birthday, I tried out a new cake pan I received as a a gift. Laura gave me a three tier cake pan last year. My dad's favorite ice cream flavor is butter pecan so I used a butter pecan cake mix to bake his cake. I found a really easy vanilla butter cream frosting recipe for decoration. I was concerned I'd need a mixer but I was able to use the shear force of my puny muscles to mix it up with a plain old whisk without a problem. I also used a box of Teddy Grahams to decorate each tier. I had ordered a small dark wood cake stand via Etsy last month. It arrived just in time for Thanksgiving. It was the perfect size for this mini three tiered cake!

Jam filled buttermilk biscuits.

My co-worker and I went to Williamsburg last Saturday to graze upon the food stands of Smorgasburg. We stopped by a jam booth by Anarchy in a Jar and sampled their selection of handmade jams. Their most interesting flavor they featured was spiced beer and jelly. It tasted very much like beer with an apple base. I purchased a jar of strawberry balsamic jam and a jar of apricot jam with thyme and vanilla.

Was very excited to use them to make jam filled buttermilk biscuits.

I ate three of them right out of the oven :|

peach tart.

I made a peach tart!

My co-worker and I went to Demerest Farms in Hillsdale, NJ for some lunch and more peaches yesterday. These peaches are delectable! So juicy and sweet! I sliced some up and made a peach tart using a recipe from the Food & Wine website. I'm a sucker for a yummy crust and this crust is bangin'!

*om nom nom*

peach crumble.

I had some leftover filling left from the hand pies so I made a peach crumble.

I made the crust out of gingersnap cookies.
 

The crumbly topping is made out of more pulverized gingersnap cookies, flour, butter, and brown sugar. It took me a while to figure out the spicy flavor was coming from the gingersnap cookies.

Peach hand pie.

I made peach hand pies!

My co-workers and I visited Demarest Farms in Hillsdale, NJ during our lunch hour. It was the perfect day to spend time eating outdoors on a farm. They had a great salad bar and made to order hot/cold sandwiches.

Peaches are in season now so visitors were welcome to pick peaches in their orchards. They had an abundance of picked peaches for sale.

There was no way all the peaches could be eaten before they went bad so I made little peach hand pies.

I used Smitten Kitchen's Bourbon Peach Hand Pie recipe. I cheated a little bit and used store bought pie dough. Didn't have the time to chill my dough and what not. I always found homemade pastry dough so time consuming to do. I used a biscuit cutter to cut out the dough. They sort of look like dumplings.

These turned out okay. I have the tendency to use less sugar than the recipe calls for but I think I shouldn't have skimped on the added sweetness. I also think next time I'll try to make my own pastry dough.
Looks pretty though, don't it?

bourbon praline cake for tony.

Yellow cake mixed with ground up pecans and bourbon.
Recipe adapted from bourbon praline cake.

upside down pineapple cake for rain.

Rain likes pineapple so I used Giada Di Laurentii's pineapple cake recipe.
Helpful tip: Must wear low cup top for this cake to come out proper.