Sweet Sunday Afternoons January 16, 2013

First a confession about the picture above; not mine. This is the lovely picture of what Madelines should look like, care of www.allrecipes.com. My first attempt at these delightful little biscuits looked more like this.

Yes, they’re slightly burned. Crispy, if you will. This was a very good lesson of not every oven is the same. Seems that my mom’s oven is a super oven that bakes things in record time.

Theses crispy little cakes were part of the prep for a Sunday tea visit. Something about Sunday, tea and biscuits on a frosty winter morning that makes the whole day relaxed. Even after burning them, my relaxed self found a very appropriate solution. Icing sugar.

There we go, no one will be the wiser. Also, they’re not shaped like the traditional Madelines, but acorns. So really, we can say they’re snow covered acorns.

The recipe itself is quite simple.

Ingredients

2 eggs

3/4 tsp vanilla extract

1/3 cup white sugar

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 tbsp lemon zest

1/4 cup salted butter or margarine

First, set the oven to 375°F and melt the butter. I went for the fast option and used the microwave, but be careful not to boil it. The butter can be left off to the side to cool down to room temperature or put outside. Again, be careful if you’re doing this in Winnipeg. I had to warm the butter up to room temperature after leaving it in the garage for too long.

Beat the eggs and vanilla at high speed until they look fluffy and have little air bubbles in the mix. Then, still at high speed, add the sugar slowly and beat it for about five minutes or the mixture looks soft and pours like you see in the picture.

It should “pour like a ribbon” according to the original recipe.

Next, sift the flour and fold it into the egg mixture, one third at a time.

Finally, add the lemon zest and fold in the melted butter. I have to admit, in all the baking I’ve done, this is the first time I’ve zest-ed. My mom happily demonstrated her zest-ing tool.

Pour into molds and bake for about 14 minutes, or 12 minutes in the case of the super oven. Don’t get distracted by a cute face while timing your baking.

Come to think of it, the super oven might not have been solely to blame for my crispy Madelines.

Cheers to lazy Sundays and tasty cakes … even the crispy ones.

Happy baking!

Christmas!!! It’s not too early! November 17, 2012

Christmas 2010 in Dublin. I remember Eric’s mom telling us to be “really excited about Christmas”. Pfft. We didn’t even have to try.

I have to admit, we are a bit of a Christmas loving family. For all the time Eric and I have done the long distance thing, our one rule has always been to have Christmas together. No matter what. At least two jobs and $4000 worth of plane tickets have made sure that we spend Christmas together.

Last year was the first time it was just the two of us, plus cat. We bought our very first Christmas tree as a couple … and had it up on October 30th. That’s right, we beat Starbucks. Even when we were in Dublin with zero money for a tree (we did, after all have a wedding to fund) Eric went out and splurged on two very tiny LED Christmas trees that were about three inches tall. Why two? That’s what came in the package. Turns out they were supposed to go into one of those little Christmas villages. Well, they went on out coffee table instead.

This year has been slightly different. With a new member of the family, this luxury called time seems to have gone into hiding. Add that to the fact that we’re going back to Manitoba for Christmas and the house is looking rather bare. There’s no tree, no lights out and no snow outside (not that I’m complaining too much about that last bit). So last night, I declared that I would be damned if there wasn’t going to at the very least be some Christmas baking in this house!

So I made some Egg Nog logs

 

 

These are cookies that were absolutely mandatory at my mom’s house during the holiday season, but seeing as I haven’t been there for Christmas since 2009, I’ve been missing them. This is the first year I attempted to make them on my own, remembering my mom saying something about them being a pain in the hole to make. They were actually quite quick and easy … at first.

The first step is to make the dough with this recipe:

Ingredients

1 cup of butter, softened

3/4 cup of sugar

1 and 1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 egg

2 tsps vanilla extract

3 cups flour

*the original recipe also calls for 1 tsp rum extract but that wasn’t in my cupboards so I didn’t use it. Really didn’t change the taste as far as I’m concerned but, as always, feel free to experiment.

In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. The butter should be at about room temperature and like most people I keep my butter in the fridge, so I cheated and microwaved it for ten seconds at a time until it was soft but not melted. Continue mixing, adding the nutmeg, egg and extract(s). Once everything is  mixed together well, add the flour. You might have to stop the mixer and do this part by hand. My mixer struggled and slowed, poor thing. When everything’s mixed together you should have what looks and feels like play dough.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degree Celsius. Take your (play) dough and roll it into thick log -like dough sticks. The original recipe (and my mom) tell you to make sure they are uniform in length and thickness. Bah. Thickness, sure, so they bake equally. Length? Make them whatever length you want. This is what I ended up with.

For anyone wondering why there is a pig staring at the logs, that is my oven mitt. You know, one of those silicone deals.

Moving on, as you can see some of the logs are stumpy, others are quite long. If you’re going to serve these at a party and someone says it’s not fair because someone got stuck with the stumpy ones, well, they should have made it to the dessert table sooner.

These need to bake for about 15 minutes or until they’re slightly browned.

You could leave your logs like this, essentially making them sugar logs, but there is one more step to elevate these to the level of Egg Nog logs. That’s right…..

 

FROSTING!

This is a Christmas recipe, so naturally it needs frosting with the highest fat and calorie content possible.

Ingredients

1/4 cup butter, softened

2 cups + 1 cup icing sugar (they need to be separate)

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tblsp cream (I used whipped cream)

Cream the butter until it looks light and fluffy. Add the first two cups of icing sugar and the extract and keep mixing. Add in the cream and, yup, keep mixing. Add the last cup of icing sugar and keep mixing. You want to end up with very thick icing that looks like something you could plaster the wall with so once everything is mixed together well, you may have to add more cream or icing sugar. Do so slowly! A tiny bit of cream goes a long way!

Again, when you add the vanilla extract you can also add a 1/2 teaspoon rum extract (or actual rum, depending on who’s coming to dinner) but it’s up to you. I had neither, so it didn’t go in. In fact, I sadly realized I had about two tablespoons less a full cup of icing sugar so I wouldn’t be able to make quite so much icing. I did a bit of math to adjust for my lack of ingredients and made this much icing.

 

 

Yeah, sad, I know. Didn’t help that my natural instinct when baking is to stick my finger in to check that it tastes right so I had even less to work with than what you see.

With whatever icing you have at this point, slap it onto the chilled cookie logs. Nothing fancy, just slap it on there. Then, with a little fork, scratch into the icing to make it look like bark. Final added touch? Add a bit of nutmeg. I like the big chunks you have to grate yourself as you can see from the photo.

 

Yes, it’s that brown lump beside the grater, not left overs from the Halloween cake, I promise.

Like I said, I taste things along the way. However, nothing quite prepared me for that first bite of this little log once it was all put together. The taste instantly took me back to my childhood Christmases. Ah, let the Holidays begin!

Oh, a quick word about the name; I have absolutely no idea why these are called Egg Nog logs. There is egg, they are logs, but there is nothing egg-nog-y about them. I also said it was a recipe from long ago; originally found in Country Woman magazine, November/December issue from 1992. That’s right, I’ve been lucky enough to have these for Christmas for twenty years (minus a couple years when I was in Ireland and Vancouver).

 

Happy baking!