Gingerbread and Royal Icing

These two recipes are made to go together!

The gingerbread recipe makes soft, sweet, and spicy gingerbread cookies. And when you pair it with the royal icing, it's a match made in heaven. Or maybe in fairy-tale world.

My daughter made her annual batch of gingerbread cookies this week. Her recipe is from Martha Stewart, and it's fabulous. I didn't take pictures...I think I was taking a nap while she was baking.

Honey Gingerbread Cookies

ingredients:

5 1/2 cups flours
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
4 teaspoons ground ginger
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature (if you use salted butter, cut the salt back to 1 teaspoon)
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup honey
1/2 cup molasses

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Beat the butter and sugar together in your mixer until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the honey and molasses.

Using your mixer's low speed, add in the flour mixture gradually, beating just until the dough is combined.

Divide the dough into three portions, wrap each portion in plastic and refrigerate for at least one hour.

Preheat your oven to 350°.

Roll out the dough and cut into shapes. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, or until firm and lightly browned at the edges.

Cool before decorating.


Royal Icing

This icing is the perfect match for these cookies. The pristine white icing against the brown cookies brings out the gingerbread goodness visually, and the light sweetness brings out the rich spicy flavor.

The easy way to make this icing is to use this:

No worries about using raw eggs, no fuss, and no muss.

Pair it with some confectioners, or powdered sugar, and you're all set.

ingredients (makes 3 cups icing):

3 Tablespoons Meringue powder
4 cups powdered sugar
5 Tablespoons warm water (at our elevation, about 3500 feet, we use 7 Tablespoons water)

Beat all ingredients about 7-10 minutes, or until stiff peaks form.


To decorate the cookies, you can use decorating bags with tips, or you can use a plastic zip-lock bag with one corner snipped off.

I used the bag with the snipped corner until Carrie bought herself some decorating bags.

(Just another one of those things I'm going to have to buy for myself when she moves out!)

Another tip - get one of these glasses. I think it's called a Pilsner glass. It's the perfect size and shape to hold your decorating bag while you fill it with icing. :)

So now that the decorating bags are filled and the cookies are ready, it's time to grab a handy boyfriend and get to work.

Josh and Carrie look like they were having a good time, aren't they?

Wait until the icing is dry, and you have gingerbread perfection.

Enjoy your gingerbread and your Christmas week!

From my family to yours, may your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white!

September: Time for Apple Pies!

Look at those ingredients.

Apples, caramels, cinnamon, flour, sour cream...

Is your mouth watering yet? Just wait until you see what my daughter Carrie did with this humble beginning!

The original name of this recipe is "Salted Caramel Apple Hand Pies," and even though Carrie only used caramel without the salt, I'll include it in the recipe in case you want to add it in.

She got this recipe from one of her favorite food blogs, Just a Taste. You'll have to go and browse through the site. There's some delicious looking stuff over there!

Meanwhile, here is Carrie's version:

Caramel Apple Hand Pies

ingredients:

For the pastry:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) cold butter, cut into cubes
1/2 cup cold sour cream

Hmm, sour cream in the pastry dough? You bet! This dough turns out to be something in between a puff pastry and a pie crust. I couldn't believe how good it was!

For the filling:
2 cups Granny Smith apples, peeled and diced small - the size of corn kernels
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoon all-purpose flour
8 soft caramels, roughly chopped
Large flake sea salt (we left this out)
Egg wash (1 egg lightly whisked with 1 Tablespoon water)

directions:

First, make the dough.

Whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder in a large bowl. Add the cubed butter and work the butter into the flour with your fingers until it's the consistency of wet sand.

Stir in the sour cream - the dough will be very wet - and then turn the dough out onto a well-floured work surface.

Knead the dough a few times until it's workable, adding more flour a little at a time as needed if the dough is too sticky to handle.

Roll the dough into an 8x10 inch rectangle, dust both sides with flour again, and then fold it in thirds, as if you're folding a letter.

Rotate the dough 90° and roll it out again into an 8x10 inch rectangle. Fold the dough again into thirds then wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes while you make the filling.

The Filling:

In a small bowl, combine the apples, lemon juice, cinnamon, sugar and flour, stirring until thoroughly mixed. Set the bowl aside.

By the way, Carrie only had to use one apple to get two cups of pieces. Those were big apples!

Ignore the pieces of caramel mixed with the apples.
They're supposed to go in later. 

Assemble the Pies:

Preheat your oven to 425°.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator, unwrap, and unfold it onto a well-floured surface. Roll it out to a 14x14 inch square.

Using a 3" diameter cup or cookie cutter, cut out as many circles as possible. Re-roll the scraps and continue cutting out circles until you run out of dough, making sure you end up with an even number of circles.

You should have about 20 circles.

Place about 6 circles on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Spoon a small portion of the apple filling into the center of each circle, leaving a border around the filling. Top the apple filling with a portion of the chopped caramels (and a pinch of the sea salt, if you're making the salted caramel variety).

Place a second dough circle on top of each filled circle, then use a fork to crimp the edges together, sealing each pie.

Brush each pie with the egg wash, and using a sharp knife, cut two or three vents on the top of each pie. Repeat on another baking sheet with the rest of the dough circles.

Bake the pies for about 15 minutes, or until they're golden brown. Remove them from the oven and let them rest about 10 minutes before serving.

We had ours with vanilla ice cream.

But they really didn't need it. The crust is so rich and creamy, and the filling perfectly delicious, that they're just the thing to eat, well, "out of hand!"

So with apple season here and pumpkin season right around the corner, do you have a favorite? Are you an apple pie person or a pumpkin spice person?

Basic White Cake with Guest Blogger Carrie

Jan here, stepping aside for my daughter to make another guest appearance at the cafe.

Long story short - last January, when I was asked to take over the Christian Education duties at our church, VBS was just a distant cloud on the horizon. No problem, I thought, I'll just plan around that one week in July....

Yeah, right.

What I didn't know then was that I would have two (2!) deadlines looming, and what I had conveniently forgotten was what a time-sucker VBS is for the director!

So here we are, the first day of VBS 2013, and Carrie offered to make a cake for the blog.

"Sure!" I said, "I'd love it!"

So, take it away, Carrie!

All right, Folks, it’s Carrie again! This is beginning to become a habit, but it’s a habit I’m not sure I want to break. This blog is going to be a lesson in making recipes for the first time, and realizing that not everything you make will look a) pretty and b) exactly like it does in the picture.

On Sunday afternoon, I set about to make a basic vanilla cake with a white chocolate frosting and cookie crumbles on top. While what I got was exactly that, I also found out that this is not my favorite cake recipe, and it's hard to keep people from eating Oreos before you need to use them!

Here is the cake recipe I used (you can definitely substitute your own favorite vanilla cake recipe). I found it in a Food Network Magazine. I had made the chocolate version earlier this month for my mom’s birthday. The chocolate version was delicious, fudgey and moist, so I figured the vanilla would be the same right?

Basic Vanilla Cake

Ingredients:

2 Sticks Unsalted Butter, at room temperature.

3 C. All purpose flour

1 TBSP Baking Powder

½ tsp salt

1 ¼ C. Sugar

4 large eggs

1 TBSP Vanilla Extract

¾ C. Heavy Cream mixed with ½ C. Water

1) Preheat the oven to 350. Grease a 9"x13" pan.

2) Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Set aside. Beat butter and sugar on medium until light and fluffy. Reduce the mixer speed and beat in the eggs, one at a time. Beat in the vanilla (The mixture may look separated at this point) Beat in the flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with the heavy cream mixture. Beginning and ending with flour.

3) Pour batter into pan. Bake until the cake is lightly golden on top and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. About 30-35 minutes.

Sounds easy enough? It sure was, the cake went together great, but the batter was much thicker than I expected. I even reread the directions to see if I had missed some extra liquid. I hadn't, so I soldiered on. I baked my cake and it looked and smelled delicious. It even tasted delicious after I had let it cool. But the texture was something more like a coffee cake or a muffin than a delicious cake.

The frosting, that was a different matter. This frosting turned out delicious and I can see it being extra tasty on a chocolate cake.

White Chocolate Frosting:

Ingredients:

3 oz. White Chocolate, finely chopped

1 ½ sticks butter, at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

a pinch of salt

1 ½ C. Confectioners’ Sugar

10 Oreos, or other chocolate sandwich cookie, crushed

1) Melt the white chocolate in a microwave safe bowl, at 30 second intervals, stirring until smooth. Beat butter, vanilla and salt together in a mixer until smooth. Add the melted white chocolate and beat until combined. Gradually beat in the confectioners’ sugar until smooth.

Frost the cake and then sprinkle on crushed cookies to top it off.

It didn't quite end up like the magazine. But it was worth a shot, and next time I get the hankering for a cookies and cream cake I'll definitely use the chocolate recipe!

Jan here again. One step Carrie left out is that she cut her 9"x13" cake in half and layered it. It was a VERY rich cake, but tasty. I agree with her, though - next time, it should be chocolate!

We'll leave you with some shots from the hike we took on Carrie's birthday earlier this month...at least, from the first half of the hike. We watch the thunderheads gather, and then the heavens opened up, and we were almost a mile from the car! Yes, we got soaked, but it was worth it!

And finally, a gratuitous puppy picture! Here's Thatcher at 17 weeks, playing with his best buddy, Maggie-the-Cat-who-thinks-she's-a-dog:

Wasn't it smart of me to get color coordinated pets?

We've had recipe fails at the cafe before, but we still keep pushing on, don't we? What's the next new recipe you're planning to try?

Monkey Bread to the Max from Guest Blogger, Carrie Drexler

Hi Everyone!

Carrie and her youngest brother.
Isn't he every girl's dream?

It's Carrie again, filling in for my mom. 

 The problem with having two bakers in the house is that sometimes we want to use the same pan. This happened yesterday morning; I wanted to make this simple monkey bread recipe, and my mom was going to make a sour cream blueberry cake (I think she's still going to make it, check back next week). Both recipes used the bundt pan, but since mine meant getting gooey maple, brown sugar monkey bread for breakfast before church, I won out.

I would not consider myself a Pinterest addict, but there are some great recipes to be found through that site. This was a recipe that's been pinned on my Pinterest board since I joined the site a couple years ago and I've never found the time to buckle down and make it. It was super simple and looks amazing.

First, preheat the oven to 375, and grease your bundt pan.

Then gather up your ingredients!

1 ½ Cans Pillsbury Grands Biscuits

3 TBSP Butter (melted)

½ C. Pancake Syrup

1/3 C. Packed Brown Sugar

½ tsp. Cinnamon

¼ C. Pecans (Optional)

I forgot to clean up behind my ingredients. Don't worry, you can leave out the cat treats and Ritz crackers.

Mix together melted butter and syrup. In another bowl mix together brown sugar, cinnamon and nuts (if using, I left them out).

Pour half the syrup in the bottom of the pan and sprinkle half of the brown sugar mixture over the top.

Layer your biscuits on top of that in a circle. The great part about this is that you can use fewer/more biscuits depending on the number of people (you'll just have to watch the bake time).

Pour the rest of the syrup over the top and sprinkle the rest of the brown sugar. It already looks delicious!

Bake at 375 for 25-30minutes, or until biscuits are golden brown on top.

Look at that gooey maple goodness. They were definitely delicious and super easy. This is a Sunday morning keeper for sure.

I celebrated my birthday at the beginning of the month and since then came across this picture from my second birthday. As you can see, a love for baked goods was instilled at a very early age.

Carrie's 2nd Birthday 

Thank you, Carrie, for sharing your recipe. And yes, it was delicious! And as promised, next week we'll have a Blueberry Sour Cream Cake recipe straight from southwest Michigan.

And what Monday would be complete without a gratuitous puppy picture?

Thatcher heard that puppy kindergarten starts this evening...does it look like he's ready for it?

A Surprise Guest Blogger with Chocolate Nutella Microwave Cake

Don’t adjust your computer, you read the title of this blog post right. You can make chocolate cake right in your microwave and it will be delicious.

Carrie with PRCA Rodeo's Wright Brothers

Hi everyone! My name is Carrie and I’m a recent college graduate. I’m also the daughter of your usual Monday blogger, Jan. I run around as an office gofer and customer service wizard by day and symphony musician by night. Some of you might remember my mom’s Cowboy Chili recipe (here) from last week in honor of the stock show. You can tell by this picture that Thursday at work I suffered through a meet and greet with six of these pro-rodeo cowboys.

I decided to share one of my easiest recipes. Microwave cakes helped me through a lot of late night study session during the last few years of college, and after graduation they’re just the right amount of chocolate for those “I need cake right now” moments. There are lots and lots of recipes out there for microwave cakes - I’ve tried about a dozen. But this one I found while browsing pinterest is my favorite. I also like that this makes 4 servings, they can be saved for the next day or shared with your cake vulture brothers.

We start off with a few basic cake ingredients.

You'll need:

6 Tablespoons butter

2 Tablespoons Nutella

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

8 Tablespoons sugar

4 Tablespoons cocoa powder

1/2 cup flour

a pinch of salt

Step 1: Melt butter and Nutella or peanut butter in a large microwave safe bowl - as you can see we are super exact with our Nutella measurement.

Step 2: Add sugar, eggs and vanilla one ingredient at a time, stirring well after each addition.

Step 3: Add dry ingredients - I usually add cocoa powder and then flour. Stir well to get everything combined.

Step 4: Divide batter into 4 microwave safe mugs/ramekins - make sure to wipe any batter off the outside otherwise it’ll cook onto the cup.
Step 5: Add as many or as few chocolate chips as you’d like to the top of each mug

Step 6: Microwave on high for about 3 minutes. You want the cake to look cooked on the top, not shiny and wet, just like any oven baked cake.

Step 7: When the cake is done, let it cool for a few minutes and then enjoy! Careful, the mugs will be warm coming out of the microwave and chocolate chips can melt into pockets of molten lava. I love the basic chocolate cake, but this recipe can be tweaked to make any kind of cake. Add peanut butter instead of Nutella, top with cherry pie filling for an ode to a Black Forest Cake, or even stir in some M&M’s for a more colorful chocolate fix.

Jan here - I can attest to how scrumptious this cake is. Rich, chocolatey, and easy. Super easy.

And believe or not, Carrie has lost 45 pounds in just under two years - in the midst of graduating from college, moving half-way across the country, and making these microwave cakes. How did she do it? She stuck to our favorite diet program: "eat less, move more".

I also think she saved these cakes for special occasions....