60 in 60: Day 14-Almond Biscotti

Today's Cookie Biscuit: Almond Biscotti
Today's Recipe: AllRecipes.com (slightly modified)
Today's Guest Baker & Blogger: Jesse ""Mickey" The BF" Persons

Today started with a sniffle and a moan.
"I hate you," she said.
"I'm really sorry babe. You know I didn't mean to make you sick," I offered.
"I hate you," she replied.
"I'll bake biscotti and write your blog today." -- me
"I hate you." -- she

So here we are.

Ingredients:

• 0.5 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2.25 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• Dash kosher salt
• 0.5 cup chopped almonds

Ingredients ASSEMBLE!
Gentlemen start your ovens!
Preheat to 375℉ for great justice!

Cream softened butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl.
(You can soften and cream at the same time if you know what you're doing)


Add in the eggs one at a time and beat thoroughly.


It should look something like this (beautiful).


Combine dry ingredients.


Slowly mix dry ingredients into creamed butter/sugar mixture.
Stir in the vanilla extract and then the almonds.


Cover a cookie sheet with foil, and grease the foil.


Divide dough in half; spread into two 12-in. x 3-in. rectangles on foil.
(Please don't use this picture as a guide. Also that's a light reflection in the picture, not me.)


This soft and gently yielding cake-like mass is your reward for waiting 15 minutes.


Golden brown and delicious.


A pastry scraper is a nice, easy way to cut this
stuff up, but don't take my word for it...


Place the cut pieces in the oven at 300℉ for 10 minutes.
Then, turn them over and let them bake for another 10 minutes.


Just when you think you're done, turn off the oven and let them
rest in there with the door open until it cools.

These crunchy, "almondy", twice baked beauties are the result.

Recipe Yield: 42
My Yield: 20 thin, 10 thick (so 30)

60 in 60: Day 13-Pumpkin Pecan Cookies

(Because I managed to catch a bout of the death this weekend, I haven't made any cookies since Friday. I didn't blog Friday, because I was running late for my friend's birthday party. So, while I will post Friday's cookies eventually, I've found a sub to fufill your cookie fantasies.)

Today's cookie: Pumpkin Pecan Cookies (minus the pecans)

Today's recipe: Better Home and Garden's

Today's Winky-Faced* Guest Baker and Blogger: Heather (from Be My Villain)

*So no one'll know the difference!

You need:

Step 1. Put on music - an album you can listen to all the way through without touching the buttons with your cookie-covered hands. Red House Painters' Songs for a Blue Guitar is a good example.

Step 2. Combine dry ingredients

Step 3. Beat butter for 30 seconds

Step 4. Add sugar

Step 5. Add egg

Step 6. Stir in punkin with a wooden spoon (also useful for smacking fingers of those who try to steal a taste)

Step 7. Stir in dry ingredients

Step 8. Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes (actually took mine about 14), 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet

Step 9. Make frosting. Also forget to take step by step pictures and just trust readers to follow directions.

Step 10. Frost cookies and have a whole bunch of frosting left over for eating on graham crackers later.

Yield: A little more than 4 doz.

Comments:

• These were tasty, but next time, I'd use pumpkin pie spice instead of just the allspice.
• They were very cakey, which my friend liked, but I did not. I was hoping to send some in the mail, but they would not ship well, I can tell.
• They were really easy. Went together quickly, and there were no complicated surprises.
• I used 1/4 cup eggbeaters instead of the egg.
• The frosting is really good. I bookmarked the page so I can make that again to go with other stuff. It really did make more frosting than you need, and I really piled it on the cookies.

60 in 60: Day 9- Cream Cheese Cutouts

Today's cookie: Cream Cheese Cutouts
Today's recipe: From here.
Today's guest blogger: The Boyfriend (my comments in parentheses)

Cream Cheese Cutouts

Ingredients:



2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup butter, softened
2 T cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

A new, more powerful mixer to muscle through even the thickest of cookie dough.

(This was because a)I needed the dough to form a ball and this mixer has all the fancy doo-dads and b)I was sick of the burning electric smell I got every time I used the white one.)

Combine dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

Mix in the butter with the mixer on medium.

Mix in the cream cheese and vanilla. Dough hooks are very helpful here.

Continue mixing until the dough forms a ball.

(It's going to look way too dry for this to happen, but give it some time and it'll work itself in to a ball.)

Divide the ball in half, and roll each out on a floured surface.

Bag or cover the dough with plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough for half an hour.

(We thought about getting plastic wrap, but ultimately decided that we really didn't need it.)

Roll out the dough once more on a floured surface. It should be approximately 1/8" thick.

Cut the delicious cookie dough into amazing shapes. It's not "My Little Pony", they're "My Little Puppy Hippos!"

(Yay for dollar store cookie cutters that don't really look like anything without a dose of imagination!)

Bake cookies in the oven at 375 for 7-9 minutes.

No amount of Jack Johnson's music can help this broken heart.
(Yes, I made a dozen or so broken heart cookies because I found it amusing.)

These cookies are a hair on the dry side, but they provide a perfect vehicle for whatever leftover cream cheese you may have. The girlfriend also suggested that these cookies could be made with flavored cream cheese. A fitting modification for an already delicious recipe.

Recipe Yield: N/A
My Yield: 51 (plus some leftover dough that I really couldn't cut into a shape.)