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Today I baked the No Fail Sugar cookies. I used a new cutter that cuts two large and two small trees. There are cut-outs, and supposedly the baked cookies can be assembled as three-dimensional trees. I made three sets of the four to test them out. Unfortunately, the cut-outs closed up when baked, even though these cookies do not spread very much. I'll finish up the rest of the cookie dough with regular cutters, and we will eat these. I'll investigate other cookie recipes for use with that cutter next year.
Here is what I used:
There are no verbal reviews, but I note the one review gave it 1 our of 5, so maybe my experience is not an isolated one.
Aaron--I did not buy a Kitchen Aid because there had been so much negative written about their ability to handle more than a loaf of bread. While I was working, I needed to make at least two at a time, and I really liked doing three and freezing the extra. I bought a 7-quart Cuisinart (ok, I used mostly gift cards from friends when we got married), and it really does a nice job on up to three loaves of bread. I'm still not completely happy with its work on cookie dough, but I don't do a lot of large batches of cookies, so usually I stick with the hand mixer. It did ok with my large batch of sugar cookie dough yesterday.
On the former baking site from KAF, one of our members, pmiker, always baked 5-6 loaves at a time. [He is allergic to oats, so he needs to control what goes into his bread.] After his KA died, he got a Bosch, which, as he put it, chokes on a blueberry smoothie (blender attachment leaked into the motor). He bit the bullet at that point and bought:
[King Arthur was also selling them before Christmas for the same price.]
There was a learning curve, but Mike was very happy with the mixer for bread.
The downside is that it is expensive. So, maybe hold out for that Hobart!
Late Wednesday afternoon, I made the dough for a full recipe of the No Fail Sugar Cookies from the Fancy Flours website. I'll bake the cookies tomorrow.
In the evening, I baked Easy Holiday Eggnog Muffins, from the KAF website.
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/easy-holiday-eggnog-muffins-recipe
I made some changes by using 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour, 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour, and a cup of Pillsbury unbleached flour. (The pastry flour was deliberate; the white whole wheat was a bit of an accident.) I reduced the sugar in the batter from 3/4 to 1/2 cup, as the topping includes an additional 1/2 cup of sugar. For the crumb topping, I used KAF flour. I used the Loran eggnog flavoring in addition to the 1 1/4 cups eggnog. I've concluded that eggnog by itself does not have a strong enough flavor in baked goods.
I'll add a note to this post tomorrow about how the sugar reduction worked.
Note: The sugar reduction works. The original recipe has 20 Tbs. (60 tsps.) of sugar, or 5 tsps. per muffin for 12 muffins. The reduction has 16 Tbs. or (48 tsps.), for 4 tsps. per muffin. While that is better, perhaps we should just call this recipe a cupcake.
On Tuesday, I baked the Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers from the dough I made up last week. I also baked my version of Rye Crisps from a recipe that appeared in KAF's now defunct The Baking Sheet. I have posted my versions here at Nebraska Kitchen. The sourdough crackers are put of a food gift I'll be sending to my twin nieces and their parents. The rye crackers are to go with a Hickory Farms gift we received that includes a couple kinds of cheeses.
