The Nifty Foodie

I’m so excited that I can pull out the Christmas tree, blast my Christmas Pandora station and start the holiday baking (without getting judgey stares from others)! It’s officially CHRISTMAS SEASON!

I pretty much sang Christmas carols the whole time while making these. My sous chef, aka my four legged friend who just lays on the cold kitchen floor as I work, probably was not very pleased. I will say that the sous chef really couldn’t care less about the Christmas tree so far…whew!

Back to the cookies. The hubs LOVES a good chewy sugar cookie, so when I saw this recipe on Christen’s blog, I couldn’t wait to make these happen! The ingredients sound a little weird at first (cream cheese in sugar cookies?!), but trust me, it works. The hubs said these were probably the best cookies I’ve ever made! SCORE!

Chewy Sugar Cookies
Source: mildly adapted from Cooks Illustrated (Nov/Dec 2010 issue), as seen on Cooking with Christen

Ingredients:

•  2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1.5 cups sugar, plus extra for rolling the cookies in
• 3 oz cream cheese, cut into small pieces
• 6 tbsp butter, melted and warm
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large egg
• 1 tbsp milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Line a baking sheet with silicone mat.  Whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together in a medium-sized bowl.
3. In a large bowl, place the 1.5 cups sugar and the cream cheese, then pour the warm butter over it and whisk to combine.  It will be slightly lumpy.  Whisk in oil, mix well then add the egg, milk and vanilla and whisk until smooth.  Add flour mixture and mix with a scraper spatula until dough forms.
4. Using a medium cookie scoop, scoop cookies onto a baking pan, leaving adequate space for baking. Using the bottom of a drinking glass, gently flatten each cookie to make them uniform in size. Sprinkle additional sugar on top of each cookie (and sprinkles, if you’d like).  Bake 11-13 minutes, until edges are just set. (This step is much different from Cooks Illustrated, because I found the resulting dough to be too sticky to work with.) This made about 30 cookies.
5. Cool on wire rack.

Can you believe that tomorrow is Thanksgiving? It seems like just yesterday I found myself still writing 2009 on papers, when it should have been 2010. Now, 2011 is pretty much around the corner. Crazy, eh?

I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time last year. It was so wonderful to have our families in our home together, and at the time, I actually had the Christmas tree up for the family to see. My Dad gave me a hard time about it, but hey, what’s a little early Christmas cheer gonna hurt?

This year, we’re going to my in-laws’ for Thanksgiving, so the hubs and I are only making a couple of dishes to bring over, rather than coordinating a good portion of the meal. While I love hosting a good party, I’m a little relieved to just chill for the holiday.

I’ve noticed that I’ve gained some new readers since last Thanksgiving, so I thought it would be fun to share some of my Thanksgiving favorites with y’all. Some of the pictures will probably not look so great in these posts, but hey, I promise these dishes are super tasty!

Some of my favorites:

• Mom’s Cornbread Dressing

• Mom’s Sweet Potato Casserole

• Green Bean Casserole

• Pumpkin Pie

• Pumpkin Cheesecake

• Turkey Cake Pops

I hope you and your family have a wonderful Thanksgiving! What are your favorite dishes for Thanksgiving?

Happy 4th of July everyone! I hope y’all have a great holiday with family and friends!

Today, hubs and I are headed over to the in-laws for a seafood feast. I cannot wait! We volunteered to bring dessert, and I knew this would be the perfect opportunity to make some cute cupcakes!

I’ve been wanting to make a white cupcake from scratch for a while now, and when it came to finding the perfect recipe, a fellow blogger (The Way the Cookie Crumbles) wrote an amazing post comparing white cake recipes to find the best one! In the end, Cook’s Illustrated’s version was one of the front runners (no surprise there).

I decided to go all festive and make red, white and blue batter. Why not?

I had some fun assembling these cupcakes too. I tried layering (top cupcake) and marbling lightly with a toothpick (bottom cupcake). Both are equally fun and cute!

I’ll admit, this recipe is very yummy! It wasn’t overwhelming, like wedding cake, and was surprisingly very moist as well. I topped the cupcakes with frosting that was another recommendation from The Way the Cookie Crumbles. It kicks Wilton frosting’s booty, for sure! Just really yummy and simple to make. I wouldn’t recommend this frosting for making decorations since it is very soft, but for spreading over a cake, heck yes! This is my new favorite.

Classic White Cupcakes
Source: The Way the Cookie Crumbles (originally from Cooks Illustrated)

Ingredients:

• 2¼ cups cake flour (9 ounces)
• 1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
• 6 large egg whites (¾ cup), at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons almond extract
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1¾ cups granulated sugar (12¼ ounces)
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon table salt
• 12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1½ sticks), softened but still cool

Directions:

1. Set oven rack in middle position. (If oven is too small to cook both layers on a single rack, set racks in upper-middle and lower-middle positions.) Heat oven to 350 degrees. Put cupcake liners in cupcake pan/pans.
2. Pour milk, egg whites, and extracts into 2-cup glass measure, and mix with fork until blended.
3. Mix cake flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in bowl of electric mixer at slow speed. Add butter; continue beating at slow speed until mixture resembles moist crumbs, with no powdery streaks remaining.
4. Add all but ½ cup of milk mixture to crumbs and beat at medium speed (or high speed if using handheld mixer) for 1½ minutes. Add remaining ½ cup of milk mixture and beat 30 seconds more. Stop mixer and scrape sides of bowl. Return mixer to medium (or high) speed and beat 20 seconds longer.
5. Scoop batter into cupcake liners until 2/3 full. Arrange pans at least 3 inches from the oven walls and 3 inches apart. (If oven is small, place pans on separate racks in staggered fashion to allow for air circulation.) Bake until thin skewer or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 14-18 minutes.
6. Let cupcakes rest in pans for 3 minutes. Loosen from sides of pans with a knife, if necessary, and place on cooling rack. Let cool completely, about 1½ hours.

Easy Vanilla Buttercream
Source: The Way the Cookie Crumbles (originally from Cooks Illustrated)

Ingredients:

• 20 tablespoons (2½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 2½ cups Confectioners’ sugar (10 ounces)
• 1/8 tablespoons table salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons heavy cream

Directions:

1. In standing mixer fitted with whisk attachment, beat butter at medium-high speed until smooth, about 20 seconds.
2. Add confectioners’ sugar and salt; beat at medium-low speed until most of the sugar is moistened, about 45 seconds. Scrape down bowl and beat at medium speed until mixture is fully combined, about 15 seconds; scrape bowl.
3. Add vanilla and heavy cream, and beat at medium speed until incorporated, about 10 seconds, then increase speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, scraping down bowl once or twice.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a local nestie GTG to meet up with some gals that I “talk” to on the forums. There was so much food to be had there, and I made sure to try a little bit of everything. One of the nesties brought these little bars, and WOW are these bars just amazing! She insisted that they were super easy to make, and boy, were they! I made a batch of these to include in the family holiday tins, and of course, snuck a few bars for me as well.

Scotcharoos
Source: MrsSpell of the Baton Rouge Nestie Boards

Ingredients:

• 1 c. sugar
• 1c. light corn syrup
• 2 tbsp. butter
• 1 c. peanut butter
• 6 c. rice krispies cereal
• 1 – 12 oz package semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 – 12 oz package butterscotch chips
• 1/2 tsp. vegetable oil

Directions:

1. In a large pot cook sugar, corn syrup, and butter over med heat. Stir until completely dissolved and mixture comes to a low boil.
2. Remove from heat and add peanut butter. Stir until melted together. Add cereal and stir until coated.
3. Spread mixture evenly into a greased 9 x 13 pan and pat down using slightly wet hands.
4. Melt chocolate and butterscotch chips with the oil together in the microwave approx. 2 minutes stopping to stir every 30 seconds. Pour over the top of cereal treats and allow to cool for min. of one hour. Cut into squares and enjoy!

Ever since I found out that you could make your own marshmallows, I wanted to make them. The problem? I had a cheap hand mixer before our KA mixer. Now that we had the KA mixer, I had nothing holding me back from making these.

These are delicious, light and have a subtle peppermint flavor. I’m definitely putting the leftover ones from the gift tins in some hot chocolate ASAP.

Peppermint Marshmallows
Source: adapted from Alton Brown

Ingredients:

• 3 packages unflavored gelatin
• 1 cup ice cold water, divided
• 12 ounces granulated sugar, approximately 1 1/2 cups
• 1 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon mint extract
• 1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• non-stick spray

Directions:

1. Place the gelatin into the bowl of a stand mixer along with 1/2 cup of the water. Have the whisk attachment standing by.
2. In a small saucepan combine the remaining 1/2 cup water, granulated sugar, corn syrup and salt. Place over medium high heat, cover and allow to cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Uncover, clip a candy thermometer onto the side of the pan and continue to cook until the mixture reaches 240 degrees F, approximately 7 to 8 minutes. Once the mixture reaches this temperature, immediately remove from the heat.
3. Turn the mixer on low speed and, while running, slowly pour the sugar syrup down the side of the bowl into the gelatin mixture. Once you have added all of the syrup, increase the speed to high. Continue to whip until the mixture becomes very thick and is lukewarm, approximately 12 to 15 minutes. Add the vanilla during the last minute of whipping. While the mixture is whipping prepare the pans as follows.
4. Combine the confectioners’ sugar and cornstarch in a small bowl. Lightly spray a 13 by 9-inch metal baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Add the sugar and cornstarch mixture and move around to completely coat the bottom and sides of the pan. Return the remaining mixture to the bowl for later use.
5. When ready, pour the mixture into the prepared pan, using a lightly oiled spatula for spreading evenly into the pan. To get red striping, add drops of red food coloring to the mixture in the pan and quickly swirl the coloring in. Dust the top with enough of the remaining sugar and cornstarch mixture to lightly cover. Reserve the rest for later. Allow the marshmallows to sit uncovered for at least 4 hours and up to overnight.
6. Turn the marshmallows out onto a cutting board and cut into 1-inch squares using a pizza wheel dusted with the confectioners’ sugar mixture. Once cut, lightly dust all sides of each marshmallow with the remaining mixture, using additional if necessary. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks.