Daily Read #31: Get your bake on

So I know that I've razzed Christmas enough. This post will only be about one of the few things that I honestly and truly love about Christmas: Cookies. Although I'm not really ready to give the holidays too much credit for baked goods, I eat enough of them year round that it's not like I'm staring at the calendar every year starting in January saying, 'Come on Christmas. Need me some cookies'

I remember being in a church class as a young teen where the instructor had us write down characteristics we would look for in a spouse. Now it might surprise many of you to know that perhaps the most popular response among the boys as the number one trait wanted for Future Mrs. Me to possess was that she could bake.

Now given even a few years there would have likely been a shift in what 12 year olds were looking for in a wife from Betty Crocker to Betty Boop as we stopped thinking that we would like to marry our mothers, but for 12 year olds baked bread was a priority. However at the time baking didn't make my list. That's not to say that it wasn't important to me; contrarily, it was too important to me to leave up to the crap shoot of love.

I knew that baked goods needed to be a part of my life, whether or not they were made with love by a wife.

So I bake.

I'm a man and I bake.

Now I know that men cook but it's most always slanted as a natural extension of our inner hunter. Our gender is not supposed to admit to cooking unless by cooking we're talking about what we have recently killed, gutted and butchered before roasting it before us with its blood splattered on our smock (manspeak for apron).

If you ever show up on my doorstep and I've got blood spattered on me---it's likely a nose bleed not a wildebeest. However on any given day, you may show up and find me splotched with flour. Although our society has 'modernized', if you're a guy and someone opens the door and you've got flour dusted on your cheeks, you're going to have some explaining to do.

Sad though it may be sometimes I like to go with the quick answer and tell them I'm sheet-rocking. No follow-up questions with that response. However, if I happen to confess that I'm actually just doing a little holiday baking most everyone with one eye-brow raised, begins to question me like Barbara Walters

Don't even get me started on taking the finished product to friends and neighbors. I cannot tell you the number of times I've had to just nod in affirmation to phrases like, 'Ooh! She didn't need to make us anything." "I need to get the recipe for these from your wife", or my favorite, "My husband wishes his wife could bake like this too!". Under very rare instances do I correct them, but to all you in the blogosphere be forewarned that if you get Cookies from the Harts. 95% of the time, Jan's contribution was cleaning up not baking.

So suffice it to say, I bake and I bake well.

Here let me show you.



Yep I made these. And actually I've uploaded them with a new blog widget called scratch and sniffer. Go ahead and scratch your screen to get a whiff of how delicious they smell.

I won't tell anyone that you actually tried that.

These are family favorites. I think for a couple of reasons. First they are delicious. Second we are chronic multi-taskers; anytime we can consolidate two great things into one, we'll do it. We eat cookies; we eat candy. At some point someone got the genius idea that we should start putting candy in our cookies.

You've heard of Turducken right? Well I at some point I'm going to bake candy in a cookie which I will then bake in a cupcake and then Freeze, wrap in Ice Cream, freeze again, dip in hardshell and serve with hot fudge--I'll call it Molten Icecupcooken.

As far as I know there is no hex on any of these recipes by one of my foremothers that will make anyone eating the end-product prepared by someone out of the bloodline breakout in hives but let someone you wouldn't mind seeing suffer from boils try the first one just to be sure.

Will you be able to make them as well as me? Probably not, but there is only one way to find out, preheat your oven.

A couple of cookie basics.
Two words: parchment paper; don't bake without it. Get yourself some precut sheets from Orson Gygi. Tell them Judson sent you.

Second, other than your sugar and any mix ins like chocolate chips, always always pre-mix your dry ingredients. Put the flour, baking soda, powder, salt, [cocoa] into a gallon size ziplock bag and give it a few shakes before adding it to your wet ingredients.

Lastly it doesn't apply so much to these featured cookies because you have to form the dough but for your basic drop cookie get a cookie dough scoop. It portions out your dough so you get uniform cookies and you don't end up manhandling all of the dough.

Peanut Butter Cup Cookies:
***Warning these contain traces of peanuts***** [and by traces I mean gobs]
Cream:
1/2 c. margarine
1/2 c. peanut butter (smooth)
1/2 c. white sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar

Beat in:
1 egg
1 t. vanilla

Add dry ingredients:
1-1/4 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
3 t. soda (not a typo you really need 3 teaspoons. It is what makes the cookies rise up so much that you can press the peanut buttercup down into the cookie"

Roll dough into small balls 1 tsp or so place in miniature muffin tins with paper liners.

Bake 10 minutes at 350. Remove from oven.

While still hot press 1 peanut butter cup into each cookie(Generic peanut butter cups like sam's choice or Palmer's work better than Reese's).

Rollo Cookies:

Cream:
1 cup butter (softened)
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar

Add:
2 eggs

Mix together then add to wet ingredients:
1/2 cup cocoa
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups flour

Mix wet then dry ingridents with creamed butter and sugar. Wrap about 1 tsp of dough around a rolo. Roll in powdered sugar and then Freeze (Absolutely essential). Bake at 350 for 12 minutes. Maybe a little less (hard to tell because the cookie's already brown) once the rollo has flattened out they are pretty much done.

Cool before eating unless you like scorching your taste buds with molten caramel.

Hidden Mint:

These cookies are delightfully minty fresh. Has the Holiday rush left you no time to brush? Don't worry about it--grab one of these on your way out the door and eat it on your way to the next party--you'll be ready for even the most intrusive personal space violators. They apparently also travel very well which I wouldn't know because they usually don't make it far from the oven. [I guess technically I'm still carrying them around everywhere I go so yes they do travel well].

Cream:
1/4 c. butter
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 c. brown sugar

Add:
1 egg
1 T. water
1 t. vanilla

Mix in dry ingredients
1-1/2 c + 2 T. flour
1/2 t. soda
1/4 t. salt

Form dough around mint (I prefer to use the smallest York peppermint patties I can find). Bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes.
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Also pictured were pumpkin cookies and while combining vegetables with butter and sugar is also a strategy our family cookbook frequently employs. You'll have to wait on that one.