Time now to quit with the endless family stories and begin slamming out these cookie recipes. Today I made progress on this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge. It’s a secret, to be revealed on the 27th. Which is a shame, because it’s sort of festive. :p

Also began filling the chocolate mint cookie sandwiches. Damn, those little chocolate disks taste just like Oreos. And I learned why Grandma made them so honkin’ big (I made them about 1-1/2 inches round instead) — the recipe made approximately 270 cookie halves. Yes, that’s 135 sandwiches. I’ll post a final total when I finish and get the recipe up. Of course, it will be a tad off due to shrinkage. Shrinkage in this case being little (and big) hands snatching them up and popping them into mouths during the filling process.

bake, gingerbread man, bake

And tomorrow evening I’ll be decorating these chewy oatmeal cutouts with Justin and Maggie. What a pleasant surprise these were. Thumbs up from kids and adults alike, and that was just the ones I tossed cinnamon sugar onto. Crispy on the edges, chewy in the middle, easy to roll and a good deal of whole grains inside.

If you’d like a cutout cookie alternative to the basic sugar cookie, this is the one you seek.

chewy oatmeal cutouts

Reprinted with permission from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, aka My Favorite Baking Cookbook Ever.

bake: 9-10minutes
servings: about 3 to 6 dozen cookies, greatly depending on size
oven: 350 degrees

1 cup (2 sticks, 8 ounces) unsalted butter
3/4 cup (5-5/8 ounces) packed light or dark brown sugar

1 large egg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

2 cups (8 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 cup (2 ounces) whole wheat flour, traditional or white wheat

1 cup (3-1/2 ounces) old-fashioned rolled oats

cinnamon sugar (optional, recipe follows)

To prepare the dough:

In a medium-sized bowl, beat together the butter and sugar, then add the egg, vanilla, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and ginger, beating until smooth. Beat in the flours and oats; the mixture may look dry at first, but don’t worry, it’ll come together. Divide the dough into two pieces, wrap each piece in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.



Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease (or line with parchment) two baking sheets.



To shape the cookies:

Working with one piece of dough at a time, roll it into a circle about 14″ in diameter. Use your favorite cutters to cut out cookies, re-rolling and cutting the scraps. Place the cutout cookies on lightly greased or parchment-lined cookie sheets; set them fairly close together, as they don’t spread.



To bake the cookies:

Bake the cookies for about 9 to 10 minutes: the shorter amount of time will make softer cookies, the longer amount of time, crisper cookies. Remove the cookies from the oven, sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar, if desired, and transfer to a rack to cool. Repeat with the remaining dough. Decorate as desired.


If decorating with cinnamon sugar (easy and highly recommended), sprinkle warm cookies with the cinnamon sugar right out of the oven, or it won’t stick.

cinnamon sugar

It’s a basic, but you know what? I had to look up proportions. Here they are.

1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Mix together. Top cookies just out of the oven, or toast, or whatever you desire. Store forever in a sealed container.

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cinnamon, oats, whole wheat flour

Here’s one amazing thing to do with leftover scraps of puff pastry: make mini palmiers. A good idea for snacks for a crowd. They’ll go fast, though!

Warning: drunken post ahead

My cousin Tone is in town, and he brought a big ass RV and several other modes of transportation with him. I countted five: the RV, the pickup, motorcycle, 4-wheeler and…kayak.

He’s set up house across the driveway. Yay.

He’s from Texas, like his mom —my aunt — who paradoxically was originally from right here. Like, right in this house. The oldest of my paternal triumvirant, Geriann, is his mom, and okay, this is getting both involved and a bit pedantic.

He came over tonight and we played 500 rummy. Four times. He completely, totally obliterated my ass the first two times. He played it a bit gin rummy style, holding things back to kick my ass, playing mind games, and so forth.

I fixed that right quick

Here, have some Wal-Mart wine, Tone.

Did you know that Wal-Mart, like Trader Joe’s, has a house brand of wine that will blow you away? In fact, I think the Wal-Mart brand is even better. It must be, because I’m having to spell-check this very carefully, and I don’t get this buzzed unless the alcohol is very good.

Wal-Mart markets two (at least) wonderful varieties under the Oak Leaf label: cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc. Since I’m partial to reds, I buy the cabernet quite often. It used to be $2.97, and therefore comparable to two-buck chuck. I think it’s better. They just raised it — today— to $3.49, but I still think it’s a steal.

And I’m not some rube. I’ve had some very good wines in my day. This compares.

The first two games of rummy he smoked my ass. However, he was drinking this lovely cabernet the whole time, and by the third game I was able to smoke him, 605 to 390. Yay! I have to say he was a good foil; I’d never played 500 rummy with someone who played so strategically.

And man that was hard to spell.

Ultimately, we went through 2 and a half bottles of Wal-Mart cabernet. He is going to go buy more tomorrow if he knows what is good for him.

As for snacks, we began by stabbing, literally, at a pink brandywine. My tomatoes just succumbed to late blight, and I’m pulling all the tomatoes off the vines. It is very sad, and let us all share a moment of silence for them. He loved it; it was nearly as flavorful as my previous crop of pink brandywines, which means very smoky and rich.

A bit afterwards, in the third game actually — coincidentally, the one where I smoked him — he got peckish again. The cad.

how dare he get peckish

I had a smallish pat of scraps of homemade puff pastry in the fridge, and I whipped it out, sprinkled some cinnamon sugar on it, and made a bit over a dozen mini palmiers from it.

He snarfed them.

Granted, anything puff pastry is going to be melt-in-your-mouth delicious, but include cinnamon sugar and you have little bursts of melty spiciness.

P.S. Did I mention I won the third game? Yeah, the one where the mini palmiers came out.

Song for this recipe: Carrion by British Sea Power.

mini palmiers

oven: 400 degrees

You might not use all of the cinnamon sugar mixture. Simply follow the recipe and sprinkle the cinnamon sugar in a thin, but complete, layer over the rolled puff pastry. Do not ball puff pastry scraps. Instead, stack them before rolling again. They will not rise as much as the original puff pastry, but they work excellently in recipes like these palmiers.

leftover scraps of puff pastry dough
3 tablespoons white granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.

With a rolling pin, roll the stacked puff pastry scraps in a rectangle roughly 1/16 of an inch thick.

Sprinkle cinnamon sugar in a thin layer over the rolled puff pastry, covering it completely.

With your hands, roll one side of the sugared puff pastry to the middle of the rectangle. Repeat on the opposite side.

With a sharp knife or pastry scraper, cut the rolled pastry in 1/8 of an inch wide increments. You now have your raw mini palmiers!

Place the mini palmiers on a parchment paper-covered baking sheet. Leave ample space between them; they may still expand quite a bit as they bake.

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, or until very lightly browned.

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2009. | Permalink | Leave a comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ap flour, cinnamon