Some baking tips to catch up

Sorry for the extended absence! I feel especially bad now that I know someone’s actually following along (hi Aunt Sherry!), but last week ran away from me, particularly since it culminated in a Cookie & Cocktails party the Other and threw on Friday night—I didn’t even have a chance to start baking until the day before!

I was thinking of you, though, and while megamultitasking the five types of cookies, I learned a few things worth passing on…

• Snowflake cookie cutters minimize rerolling of dough: This was my first foray into sugar cookies, and with the party’s start time looming, I was glad to discover how well snowflake cookie cutters interlock, which meant I could cut lots of cookies out before having to reroll the dough. The fact that the snowflakes coordinated with the theme-y goodness was an extra bonus—well, actually, that part was planned, so I guess the interlocking was the bonus.
• Multiple sizes make flexible servings: Using snowflake cookie cutters in several sizes (along with six-pointed stars, which can be decorated to become snowflakes) helped stretch the dough, but it also meant my cookie trays had a mix of tiny cookies for the nibbly eaters, big ones for the sows (namely me), and everything in between. A lot of people hesitate to take the whole thing if baked goods are big, so smaller options gave such persons an easy out.

• Bake mini butter tarts right alongside their big brothers: Since the best butter tarts are a little gooey, I didn’t want to cut up muffin-size tarts into bite size portions to accommodate those less piggy than myself. My first thought was to use mini muffin tins instead of the standard ones, but at 32¢ a piece, tartlet tins were more economical (and better for tarts, of course). Using one pack of two premade refrigerated pie crusts and a single recipe of the filling, I was able to make 12 muffin-size tarts and 12 mini tarts. I thought I must have done something wrong, as the original recipe is for only 12 tarts, but they came out just fine. At the Mother’s recommendation, I pulled the mini tarts out of the oven earlier than the big boys—10 minutes at 350°F rather than the full 15—but I could have pulled them out even earlier. Next time I’ll try pulling out the minis 5 minutes after lowering the temperature; they were perfectly tasty but a little less runny than ideal.

I’ve got some cool ornament tutorials in the works and plenty more snowflake projects, so I’ll get back to proper flurry speed this week.

Snowflake ornaments 3–5

Though I was hardly slacking yesterday (and I’m in fact skiving off work to post this even now), it’s true that I missed a day in this Flurry of Feed Dogging. Will you forgive me if I show you not one, but three snowflakes?

The basic ornament comes from the December 2010 Martha Stewart Living; a photo (but alas not the tutorial) is here. Essentially, they’re each three loops of ribbon stacked and glued together—Martha’s minion used glittered cardstock snowflakes in the middle, but I used a few different things for the centers.

The one above starts with a white flake die-cut from stiffened felt using Sizzix’s Snowflake Layered die. (I got a great deal on a Sizzix BigKick machine a while back, and it makes cutting fiddly things like snowflakes v. easy. If you don’t have one, though, click the link to the die page and use the line drawing as a pattern—shh, don’t tell!) The darker flake was cut with the same die, and the be-rhinestoned flake in the very center was one of the stickers from the pack I used for my beaded snowflake.

I used a more glittery (I’m so tempted to say glitterier…) ribbon for the next ornament, so I kept the center simpler with another felt sticker. And a rhinestone, natch.

Again, sparkly ribbon meant simple innards—this time a snowflake “flat,” that is, a shank button without the shank. And I could keep making other versions (maybe with snowflake-shaped sequins?) and they could all be different.

Snowflake ornament 2 (store-bought)

I didn’t make this one, but I like its retro-atomic take on a snowflake. A crafter handy with jewelry-making tools would probably have no problem recreating it…

Snowflake pillow by Youngest Brother

Just a photo today, since it’s the weekend… Youngest Brother made this lovely fleece snowflake pillow for me a couple years ago, and it’s still fitting right in with my Christmas deco.

While trying to figure out what magazine he got the pattern from (Quick Quilts from January 2008), I discovered that he’d given me more of a gift than I even knew: according to quilt.spot, the magazine calls for velveteen. Thankfully Youngest Brother knows that touching velvet, velveteen, and similarly nappy fabrics makes me cringe in fingernails-on-a-chalkboard fashion. Seriously. It creeps me out royally—I can honestly say I will probably never sew anything with velvet. I know, never say never, but even the thought makes my skin crawl. Velvet ain’t no luxury fabric in my book. Is that weird?

Thanks for remembering my delicate sensibilities, Bro!

Recipe: toffee bark

Need a quick recipe for one of the many seasonal potlucks? I whipped these up from the Mother’s recipe last night for a lunch with my appliqué pals this afternoon. Very easy, very tasty, and very fattening—but calories don’t count this month, right? You could make them slightly less offensive to the waistline by substituting saltines for the Club crackers (as the original recipe had it, apparently), but they wouldn’t be as buttery-tasty.

Ingredients

• 1 box Club crackers (a 16-ounce box will do 2 batches in an 11×17" pan)
• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup brown sugar (packed)
• Chocolate chips to taste (typically the better part of a 12-ounce package)
• Chopped almonds, pecans, etc. (optional)
• Nonstick cooking spray

 

Preparation

1. Line a rimmed cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Spray foil with nonstick cooking spray. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Cover the cookie sheet with a single solid layer of crackers.
3. Heat the butter and sugar in a medium pan on the stove until foamy, stirring to prevent burning.
4. Pour the butter-sugar mixture over the crackers in the cookie sheet. Spread the mixture over the crackers evenly with a spatula.
5. Bake at 350°F for 10 minutes.
6. Remove from oven. While still hot, sprinkle chocolate chips over the top. When they’ve melted, spread them into an even layer (if necessary, pop the pan back into the oven briefly to help melt the chocolate). If desired, sprinkle bits of almonds, pecans, or whatever you have on hand over the chocolate—I had walnuts waiting for butter tarts, so that’s what I used.
7. When the cookie sheet has cooled, put it in the fridge to harden the bark (I left it overnight, but a few hours is probably plenty). Break the bark into pieces and store in the fridge.