Easter Sugar Cookies

Easter is next weekend, but my sister and her boyfriend only have his daughter this weekend, so my parents are having an Easter egg hunt for her. I thought some Easter cookies would be a fun treat.

Easter Sugar Cookies



These are delicious and buttery and fantastic. I got the recipe here from Dinner and Dessert. I did not use the royal icing. Instead, I used a modified version of this icing. Instead of mint extract, I used vanilla and colored some pink and some blue. I used Wilton's Icing Writers and some spring sprinkles for details.



Ingredients
-1 cup butter, softened
-1 cup sugar
-1 large egg
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (I used 1 1/2 cups AP flour and 1 1/4 cups plus 2 and 1/2 Tablespoons cake flour)
-2 teaspoon baking powder

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. In a small bowl combine the flour and baking powder. Set aside.
3. In separate bowl beat butter until soft and smooth. Add in sugar and combine.
4. Add egg and vanilla and mix until combined. Add dry ingredients. Beat until just combined.
5. Roll to 1/3 inch thickness on a floured surface. Cut into desired shapes.
6. Place cookies on ungreased baking sheet and bake for 6 to 9 minutes until edges are lightly browned.

Honey Teriyaki Chicken

Sometimes I crave the Mongolian restaurant, but if we ate there every time I did, we'd be broke. To remedy, I make my own Asian cuisine.

Honey Teriyaki Chicken



Usually I use a store bought marinade for teriyaki chicken. This week, I decided to make my own. It did not taste the same as the store bought, but it was still delicious. I served it with fried rice, which is Walter's favorite.

Ingredients
-2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
-1 10-ounce bottle of teriyaki sauce
-5 Tablespoons Hoisin sauce
-1 Tablespoon honey
-1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
-1 teaspoon curry powder
-1/4 teaspoon sesame seed oil

Directions
1. Combine teriyaki, Hoisin, honey, lemon juice, sesame seed oil, and curry powder and mix well. Add chicken and marinate for 1 to 24 hours.
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bake chicken in a 9 by 13 inch baking pan for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the middle of the breast reads 165 degrees on a meat thermometer.

Orange-Glazed Honey Crisps

Since the last cookies turned out to be biscuits, these were a backup. I cooked the second two batches a little darker than I meant to, but they are certainly still edible. Ugh. What a day for baking.

Honey Crisps



I got this recipe from Reader's Digest's Cookies: 1,001 Mouthwatering Recipes from around the World. They are sweet, but they are not as crisp as perhaps the recipe wanted them to be. Maybe I did not roll thin enough. Regardless, they tasted good, although they did not taste much different to me from regular sugar cookies (however, I was apparently incorrect...see below).

Ingredients
-2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour (I used 2 cups plus 4 Tablespoons cake flour and 1/3 cup all-purpose flour)
-1/2 cup sugar
-1 egg
-1/3 cup butter, softened
-2 Tablespoons water
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-2 teaspoons honey
-1/8 teaspoon salt
-2 Tablespoons milk

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease cookie sheet and set aside.
2. Combine all ingredients except milk in a bowl and mix until dough is formed. If necessary, chill dough for 30 minutes.
3. Roll dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into squares and reroll scraps until dough is all used.
4. Place on cookie sheet 1 inch apart and brush with milk. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until edges are lightly browned.

Orange-Honey Glaze

When Walter got home and tested them for me (my cookie palate is pretty pathetic...all cookies taste the same to me, and I do not like them), he told me that they do not, in fact, taste like sugar cookies. They taste like "nothing," he says. Well, they certainly don't taste like nothing, but this caused me to think that they are not good enough for the office. And so, I decided to whip up a quick and easy orange-honey glaze with which to ice them.

Ingredients
-1/2 cup powdered sugar
-1/2 Tablespoon hot water
-1 Tablespoon orange juice
-1 Tablespoon honey
-1 teaspoon orange extract

Directions
1. Combine all ingredients and whisk until combined. Pour over cookies.

Buttermilk Biscuits

These were supposed to be cookies. This recipe makes me very frustrated. What am I supposed to do with 30 or so biscuits (I doubled the recipe)? Luckily, a friend of mine will take many of them.

Buttermilk Biscuits



I got this recipe from Reader's Digest's Cookies: 1,001 Mouthwatering Recipes from around the World. That's right, they came from a cookie cookbook. The recipe was called "buttermilk cookies." They were cutouts, and I had some buttermilk to use, so I thought it'd be good for Walter's office.

Well, first off, I had to add another half cup of flour just to get the dough even close to thick enough to roll. Then, when I took them out of the oven, they had puffed up quite a bit, which surprised me. I tasted one, and it tasted like a biscuit. Not a cookie. So while the recipe was delicious, it was not a cookie at all.

This also explains why I made heart-shaped biscuits.

However, after looking over the recipe again, it occurs to me that I added 1/3 cup buttermilk instead of the 3/4 cup they called for. Could that have made the difference? Would they hav been cookies instead if I hadn't goofed that? I think the extra liquid would have meant that I needed even MORE flour to get them to cooperate. Ugh.

Ingredients
-1 cup all-purpose flour (I used 1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons cake flour and had to add another 1/2 cup cake flour)
-1 teaspoon baking powder
-1/2 teaspoon baking soda
-1/8 teaspoon salt
-1/3 cup butter, cut up
-2 Tablespoons sugar
-3/4 cup buttermilk (I used 1/3 cup)

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl. Stir in sugar.
3. Cut butter into dry mixture until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in buttermilk.
4. Roll out on a a lightly floured surface to 1/2 inch thickness(Since they are more biscuits than cookies, rolling it to about an inch thickness is what I recommend)
5. Using a 2-inch cookie cutter, cut cookies from dough, rolling scraps and repeating until all dough is used.
6. Place on baking sheet 1 inch apart and bake for 5 to 10 minutes, or until lightly browned.

Red Velvet Daisy Cake

My sister was supposed to visit this Saturday, and this was to be a reconciliation cake. However, she couldn't make it, so I gave it to my cousin instead.



This is the first cake I have made with fondant, and I am so thrilled with how it turned out. There will be three recipes here. The Red Velvet cake, found here on The Nest, the cream cheese filling, chocolate buttercream frosting, and the chocolate fondant, which were all found here at A Year in the Kitchen. The daisies on the cake were made from white modeling chocolate, which I blogged about originally here. I planned on doing them in white chocolate fondant, but I ran out of powdered sugar.

Red Velvet Cake

This cake is moist and fluffy, and the color is fantastic. Once again, I found this here.

Ingredients
-3/4 cup butter, softened
-2 1/4 cups sugar
-3 eggs
-6 Tablespoons red food coloring
-3 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
-1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
-1 1/2 teaspoons salt
-1 1/2 cups buttermilk
-3 1/3 cups cake flour, sifted
-1 1/2 teaspoons cider vinegar
-1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Grease three 9 inch round cake pans and set aside.
3. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
4. In a small bowl, whisk food coloring, cocoa and vanilla. Add to batter and beat well.
5. Stir salt into buttermilk. Add to batter in three parts, alternating with flour.
6. In a small bowl, stir together cider vinegar and baking soda. Add to batter and mix well.
7. Divide batter among 3 pans. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. Let cool for 1 hour. Remove from pans and frost.


Cream Cheese Filling

This is a fantastic filling for this cake. I love cream cheese and nearly ate this filling alone (if only I weren't lactose intolerant). Again, I found this and the following recipes here.

Ingredients
-1 8-ounce brick of cream cheese
-1 cup powdered sugar
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1/4 cup milk

Directions
1. Cream together all ingredients, beat until smooth.
2. Use a serrated knife to level the top of each cake layer. Spread filling between layers.

Chocolate buttercream frosting

This is another thing I just wanted to eat straight. It was so smooth and creamy.

Ingredients
-1 cup butter
-3/4 cup cocoa powder
-6 cups powdered sugar
-1/4 cup milk
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1/2 teaspoon salt

Direction
1. Cream butter. add in cocoa powder and mix together on low. Add vanilla.
2. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency.
3. Keep refrigerated until use.

Chocolate Fondant

The reason I never used fondant before was I had never had fondant that tasted good. I had also never made my own. But when I found this recipe, I was overjoyed. This tastes fantastic! The original recipe called for a stand mixer, but I did it all by hand because my stand mixer does not have a dough hook attachment.

Ingredients
-1 pound dark chocolate candy coating (I used semi-sweet chocolate)
-3/4 cup corn syrup
-1 cup Cocoa Powder
-3.5 pounds powdered sugar
-8 Tablespoons hot water
-1 cup glucose (this is a liquid measurement)
-2 teaspoon vanilla
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-4 Tablespoon shortening

1. Melt the chocoalte chips in the microwave or over a double boiler, stir in the corn syrup, set aside until cool.
2. Put 3/4 of powdered sugar and cocoa powder in a large bowl and make a well in the middle.
3. Mix water, glucose, vanilla, salt, and shortening together in a saucepan. Heat until shortening is almost melted.
4. Pour into the well of powdered sugar and mix with a flat spatula until incorporated. Add chocolate mixture and mix well.
5. When mixture is too hard to mix with the spatula, take it out and turn on a powder sugar dusted surface. Knead in the remaining powdered sugar.
6. Wrap very tightly in plastic wrap, then place in a ziplock bag. It will get somewhat hard, but kneading it will loosen it up. Use within a month. (Do not refrigerate)

Cinnamon Graham Cookies

I wonder if Walter's co-workers love me yet. This is week four of sending tasty baked goods to the office. So far, I have heard no complaints.

Cinnamon Graham Cookies



This week, I may hear a few complaints. These cookies are good, but I overbeat the first batch, leaving some of them a little flat. Not so flat that they are not delicious, but not the best I have ever done. Still...they are good. They taste almost identical to snickerdoodles to me, but I can taste a hint of the graham cracker, which sets them apart. I found this recipe here at Allrecipes.

Ingredients
-2 cups graham cracker crumbs
-1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I used 1 1/2 cups plus 3 Tablespoons cake flour)
-1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I used 2 teaspoons)
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1 teaspoon salt
-1 cup butter
-1/4 cup white sugar
-1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
-2 large eggs
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine first five ingredients and set aside.
3. Cream butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each. Add vanilla and mix well.
4. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture and stir until combined. Drop dough two inches apart by rounded spoonful (I used a 1 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon) on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until edges are brown.

The Nest WC Spring Exchange Items!

I received my spring exchange items a while ago (last week?) but I forgot to blog them until now...oops. Here they are!



A silicone cupcake pan, a curved spatula, some Easter cupcake liners, some Easter sprinkles, and a lovely spring notepad (that I have been using for my many, many obsessive-compulsive lists).



Fantastic! I sent my Elfster an Easter cookie pan, some Easter sprinkles, a monkey vegetable peeler (from Boston Warehouse Animal House--such cute little things!), and some spring cupcake liners. This was my first WC Exchange, and I was totally thrilled with the results. :)