What are you Baking the Week of December 18, 2022?

[RiversideLen]

Aaron, your biscuits and gingerbread house look good.

It's snowing and cold here, winds are expected to pick up. Earlier this week they said we could get up to 18 inches, they've brought down their estimate every day, so now they say up to 6 inches depending on location but it might be hard to measure due to drifting.

Today I baked chocolate chip cookies, Alton Brown's recipe, The Puffy.

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[Mike Nolan]

Diane made dough for mushroom cookies today, and has a couple more planned over the next two days.

I plan to make a cherry pie for Christmas Eve, and she'll make a trifle for Christmas day.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike - Thanks. I looked up gingerbread house kits and found a bunch too. I mostly stay away from Amazon these days unless I know exactly what I want. It's just too complicated otherwise. Walmart has some as does Michael's (not sure if Michael's is in the Midwest) as well as Etsy. I think I still may make my own to give as gifts with a gingerbread mix. Fun project for after the holidays.

Len - those look beautiful. I looked up the recipe and they have baking powder instead of baking soda and shortening to make them puffy. Did you use butter-flavored shortening and if you did does it really add butter taste?

I remember the episode where he made these and made chocolate chip cookies four ways. I read something recently - I think on Test Kitchen but I cannot find - and they talk about using baking powder AND baking soda in cookies to make them chewy and give a rise. I may have to try that.

[Mike Nolan]

My mother's chocolate chip cookie recipe (https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/forums/topic/oatmeal-crisps-chocolate-chip-cookies/) uses both baking powder and baking soda. They tend to rise and have a lot of internal air spaces, which makes them great for dipping in milk, but they're crisp, not chewy.

I think the sugar/fat ratio has more to do with crispness/chewiness than the leavening.

[Mike Nolan]

We do have Michaels stores in Lincoln, there's even one near us, and we also have a Hobby Lobby, though it is further away and I don't get there very often. JoAnne's Fabrics also has a good kitchen section.

I seem to recall on one of the baking contest shows they were doing gingerbread construction and what they did was to make full sheet pans of gingerbread and bake them about half way, then use a paper template to cut them into shapes and finish baking them so that they were solid enough for construction.

Several years ago SFBI sent out a link at Christmas to a video showing their staff constructing an eight-foot tall Christmas tree out of bread, which they then had on display in the lobby. There may still be a link to the video on their website. It was impressive!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Here are the candy cane cookies. A little wonky. They were very soft and we needed to work faster. But Violet's happy.

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[BakerAunt]

I'm thinking that I posted an alternative gingerbread house recipe link a year or two ago that used some kind of Swedish cookie instead of gingerbread. I'll have to see if I can find it by searching the site.

[RiversideLen]

Aaron, I have used butter flavor shortening and it will give it a buttery taste but I can tell the difference between the artificial and real thing. But when I have used it, I have gotten compliments on the cookies. Yesterday, I used Nutiva organic which is a blend of Red Palm and Coconut oils. It has no butter flavor but the cookies have a good chocolate and vanilla flavor (I used double the amount of vanilla called for).

[BakerAunt]

I must not have posted the link. I did some googling and found a cookie house. It has some tips that might also help with building gingerbread houses:

[BakerAunt]

Ok--this is the one I was thinking about. It uses cardamom cookies. I remember regretting that I cannot bake these butter-rich cookies:

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/mid-century-modern-cookie-house

It's at Epicurious, so there may be a paywall when you go to the site after two or three visits.

[BakerAunt]

On Friday, I baked Cranberry Pistachio biscotti and sprinkled it with red, green, and a bit of white decorating sugar.

On Friday evening, I baked a half recipe of my beloved Pfeffernusse. It is not Christmas for me without that cookie. It is the one cookie that I still bake with butter. They last well, so I spread out eating them over a longer span of time. A special thanks to Italian Cook for recommending Frank and Sal as a source for candied citron!

It was good to stay inside and bake cookies today. We only got about two inches of snow, but the temperature was -10F to -2F today.

[Joan Simpson]

Aaron those biscuits looked really nice with all the layers, yummy!Wishing Violet well soon and you all enjoy your Christmas.

Today I made 5 pie crusts ,baked two coconut pies and one Lemon Supreme Pound cake.

Len your cookies look very good.One of our favorites.

[Mike Nolan]

Today's cherry pie:

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[BakerAunt]

I baked a pumpkin pie on Saturday for Christmas dinner tomorrow..

[Joan Simpson]

Good looking cherry pie Mike.

[Author]

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