Tag: Holidays

Brownie Cookies with Peppermint Buttercream Frosting

December 3, 2011January 22, 2017

This past week, a friend of ours had her senior degree recital at school (she’s a wonderful singer) and for the after party, I wanted to make some cookies. So I went to the store and bought some ingredients, but it turns out I didn’t buy enough of what I needed (2 oz. of bittersweet chocolate when I really needed 5… oops). So then I searched my favorite food blog of all time, Smitten Kitchen, for a recipe involving ingredients I already had in my kitchen. I found these brownie cookies that looked like a perfect combination of a brownie and a cookie, and also they didn’t look too hard.

When the cookies came out of the oven, they were delicious, but a little bit dry in my opinion. I think they would have been greatly enjoyed by themselves, but I decided to whip up some buttercream frosting to put on them to add a little moisture. (My friend Carmelle, who is also a baker extraordinaire, and I decided later to add a little peppermint to the icing to make it a little more festive.)

Brownie Cookies with Peppermint Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

Brownie Cookies

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup butter, softened (she uses one stick of unsalted, one stick of salted, but I used both unsalted)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

Peppermint Buttercream Frosting

1 stick of butter, softened
1 1/2 – 2 cups confectioners sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 tablespoon vanilla
up to 2 tablespoons of milk or cream
1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract

Instructions

Brownie Cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, mix flour, salt and baking powder and set aside. In a mixer (or large bowl) combine butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and cocoa. Slowly add flour mixture, and mix until smooth. Wrap in plastic and chill for at least one hour.

Roll out cookie dough on floured surface until it’s about 1/4 inch thick (I used my counter because I don’t have a super large cutting board and, hey, it’s kinda fun to just roll dough out on the counter). Cut into desired shapes, place on a buttered baking sheet. Bake for 8 to 11 minutes until the edges are firm and the centers are slightly soft and puffed. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Peppermint Buttercream Frosting

Beat the butter for a couple minutes in the mixture to get it nice and creamy. Add 1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar and mix on low speed until the sugar has been incorporated with the butter. Add vanilla, salt, 1 tablespoon of milk, and peppermint and mix for a couple minutes. If the frosting is too thin, add the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar a little bit at a time to make sure you don’t overdo it. If your frosting is too thick, add the remaining 1 tablespoon of milk.

These cookies were a huge hit! And the recipe made plenty of them too. They were easy and you can easily add spices or other fun things to them to suit them to your tastebuds. I’m thinking a little cinnamon and chili powder to make them Mexican hot chocolate cookies, or some smashed candy canes for the holidays, or chocolate chips… So many possibilities!

Holiday Ale Festival

December 3, 2011January 22, 2017

So this post doesn’t have a recipe, but I did say (on the “About” page) that I’d write about cool food related things like restaurants, cookbooks, equipment, etc.

For those of you who don’t know much about Portland, OR, one really cool thing you should know is that the Portland metro area has the largest craft brewing market in the U.S. There are 44 breweries operating in the city, which is more than any city in the world. So we like our beer. Possibly my favorite event in Portland is the Holiday Ale Festival. It usually happens the first weekend of December in Pioneer Square.

They set up big tents right underneath the giant Christmas tree and fill them with delicious beers made especially for the event. Here’s a little quote from the program they give you:

“What makes this festival so special is that you won’t find the beers served here in your grocer’s aisle. We work with every brewery involved to make sure they are sending a product that has either been made specifically for this event, or is a rare or vintage beer that isn’t commonly tapped in the state or won’t be tapped until the festival closes.”

Cool, right? So you buy a ticket, get a cool little plastic mug, a program, and 8 tickets. Each taste of beer (4 oz.) is 1 ticket, unless it’s a limited beer and then it’s 2 tickets. And then you’re free to roam the tents! The beers are so delicious and dangerously strong since they’re often stouts, porters, and really hoppy ales. There were a lot of beers with hints of mint, chocolate, and holiday spices like allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

So here were our favorites:

Annie’s:

Columbia River Brewing’s “Drunken Elf Stout” – Imperial Oatmeal Stout with lots of chocolate and coffee flavors
Gilgamesh Brewing’s “Chocolate Mint Stout ’11” – American Stout with chocolate and locally grown mint (not too minty like some of the other chocolate mint beers I tasted)
Laht Neppur Brewing Co’s “Laughing Boy Stout” – Russian Imperial Stout with cocoa, vanilla, and honey undertones
Rusty Truck Brewing Co’s “Belsnickle’s Strong Ale” – Strong Ale brewed with nutmeg, cinnamon, and coriander

Jonah’s:

Bear Republic Brewing Company’s “Old Saint Chongo” – Winter Chocolate Wheat Ale with some mexican chocolate with hints of banana
Laht Neppur Brewing Co’s “Laughing Boy Stout” – Russian Imperial Stout with cocoa, vanilla, and honey undertones (This was on both of our lists)
Oakshire Brewing’s “The Nutcracker” – Gingerbread Imperial Porter with ginger and cinnamon
The Commons Brewery’s “Little Brother” – Belgian Dark Strong Ale with a bit of toffee, candy, and chocolate

Eggnog Scones

November 29, 2011January 22, 2017

Thanksgiving is over, it’s Christmas time. I think it’s a little silly sometimes how much I love Christmas and the things that come with it (Christmas cookies, Christmas trees, Christmas music, etc.) given that I’m Jewish. My family has some weird hybrid holiday traditions: a few years ago we started getting a “Channukah bush,” which at this point has just devolved into a Christmas tree. Last year my mom knit a miniature Santa Claus outfit, long underwear and all, to hang on her tree. My dad, on the other hand, has started doing a “tree of irony” with weird, goofy ornaments and silly lights. My sisters (my little sister especially) are big fans of Christmas cookies, and we usually spend a few days of the winter in the kitchen covered in flour and sugar baking like 20 different varieties.

My mom has been making these eggnog scones for as long as I can remember. They’re a delicious wintertime treat, especially right out of the oven with a little butter and jam… oh man, my mouth is watering.

Eggnog Scones

Makes 16 scones

Ingredients

3 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar, plus a little for sprinkling
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3/4 cup butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup eggnog
2 tbl milk

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg in food processor. Add butter, pulse until course. Add eggnog, pulse until dough forms a ball. Dump dough out onto lightly floured surface, cut it in half, and form two 1-inch-thick rounds.

Cut each round into 8 triangles. Place the scones on a greased baking sheet. Brush them with milk and sprinkle them with sugar.

Now just stick them in the oven for 12 minutes, or until they’re puffed up and a little golden (see pictures below).

Also, my mom sometimes added cranberries, but I can’t remember if she used dry or fresh… Hopefully she’ll let me know and I’ll update the post. Enjoy! (These would be delicious on Christmas morning…)

Green Mint Crinkles from Honest Pretzels

November 28, 2011January 22, 2017

As soon as we got back from Thanksgiving in Seattle, I was ready to make Christmas cookies. It was all I could think about. I knew the family upstairs had a cookbook that I loved as a kid, and that there was a recipe in that cookbook that I couldn’t wait to make for Jonah.

This is a children’s cookbook, so the greatest thing about it is that after the lists of ingredients and equipment you’ll need, there’s also a list called “Ask an adult for help with” and then the next page shows you, in illustrations, how to make the recipe. I turned right to the Green Mint Crinkles (page 126) and got started.

Green Mint Crinkles

Ingredients

1 stick of butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons peppermint extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 (2.25 oz.) jar of green cake decoration crystals

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a baking sheet with butter or oil. In a large mixing bowl, mix together melted butter, sugar, peppermint extract, and vanilla extract. In a small separate bowl, beat the egg, then add to the sugar mixture along with the milk.

Then add the flour, baking powder, salt, and green crystals. You’ll want to mix this by hand if you’re using a mixer, being sure to mix the green crystals in well. It’s always awkward when there’s a little patch of green at the bottom of the bowl, am I right?

Now make balls of dough roughly the size of a ping pong ball (I did mine a little smaller just so I could have more cookies) and place the balls on the prepared baking sheet. They can be close together because they barely spread, but they shouldn’t touch. Put them in the oven and bake for 12 minutes.

Let them cool a bit before removing them from the tray as they can be pretty fragile when you remove them. My favorite part of eating these cookies is to eat them when they’re still pretty warm and, when your mouth is full of cookie, to inhale. You get this minty steam and it tastes so good and feels like mint oil but in your MOUTH. Ok, I’ll stop. Enjoy with a glass of milk!