Tag Archives: baking

PW Weekend: a lesson in cookie decorating

During the food fest that was two Saturdays ago at the Pioneer Woman’s Lodge, there was a beautiful cookie decorating demonstration by Bridget, a cookie maker and food blogger extraordinaire with the sweetest personality you ever saw.

And the most adorable red ringlets.

Cookies had been prebaked and brought in for us, and you can get the recipe for those fantastic Vanilla-Almond Sugar Cookies here. Loads of supplies were standing by, just waiting for us to get our grubby little hands on them.

Sprinkles, glittering colored sugar, edible gold dust . . .

Squeeze bottles for the icing, and little bottles of food coloring.

Women were starting to trickle in–local women, friends of Ree’s, friends of the Drummond family. This is Ree’s godmother!

An amazing woman.

I should probably also introduce you to the other guests. I’ve been so caught up in talking about Charlie the basset hound that I’ve barely talked about the wonderful, wonderful people! Sorry, ladies. There were 4 winners, and each of us brought someone with us. Molly brought her mother Susie:

Christy brought her (adorably pregnant) best friend Kathryn:

Jennifer brought her friend Ann . . .

. . . and finally, I brought my Mom.

I’m trying not to make apologies, but I have to be true to myself. Why is the color balance off in every single one of those pictures? What was I doing?? Was I on Photoshop drugs or something? In fact, did I even process these pictures myself, or did the Photoshop gnome villains hack into my system . . . again?

Definitely the Photoshop gnome villains. Those little squirts with their little red caps and hairy little toes.

Or we can just pretend I did it on purpose to give each picture individuality–a pink/red tone for Molly and Susie, a yellow tone for Christy and Kathryn, and a bluish hue for Jennifer and Ann. And my color balance problems don’t end here, but I’ll try to shut up about it. For the most part.

We enjoyed Ree’s coffee–big time.

As all the women gathered, Christy and I ran around snappity snapping with our cameras. We were still slightly freaking out.

Hi Christy! I’m sorry I made you so yellow earlier, and now so pink. Your skin is actually a beautiful, normal color.

I met the lovely Hyacinth, who I’ve been reading about for over a year.

Her haircut is seriously the cutest thing. “Hyacinth, will you tattoo your name and the name of your hair stylist on my left arm?” I asked.

“Um, you’re a very weird girl, but I’ll pose for a picture with you if you promise to stay at least 10 feet away from me the rest of the day,” she responded graciously.

I jumped at the chance.

We actually had a lovely conversation, and since she didn’t get a restraining order against me afterwards, I assume she thought it was lovely too.

Once we were all gathered, Bridget passed out recipes and instructions.

I studied them carefully in case there was a pop quiz at the end.

Ree was looking slightly impish.

Bridget demonstrated how to make Royal Icing–the stiff kind that you use to pipe your outlines on the cookie, and the ‘flooding’ kind that is a little more liquidy, and fills in the piped area with the color of your choice.

It was so delicious that I grabbed the mixer attachment and stuffed the whole thing in my mouth, to the horror of all the guests. Then Ree screamed “get this crazed woman out of my house!” and the icing and I fled across the open prairie in shame, where I hoped the wild mustangs would take me in as one of their own.

I kid! But you probably knew that already.

Ree would never send me from her house in a fit or rage. She’s just not the ‘fit of rage’ kinda lady. She’s the kind who would join me in licking every ounce of frosting off that mixer. The picture above is my proof.

The demonstration was so much fun.

All the ladies were so warm, so friendly, and so conversational.

Once the icing was mixed, it was time to start decorating 5 tons of cookies.

These all-important pictures show Bridget piping the outline with the royal icing that she will later fill in with flood icing.

Well this should be easy, I thought to myself. You kind of draw on a cookie, type of thing.

Hah! I couldn’t draw a straight line to save my own sorry hide.

Everyone suddenly got very, very focused.

Ree’s girls were so into it.

What if the PW sees my wonky lines of icing and rejects me forever? I thought. Maybe I should just destroy the evidence and slip this mangled cookie into my mouth.

But I didn’t. I proceeded as planned, and tried to erase the error of my ways with the glossy, gorgeous flood icing. Use a toothpick to get it to the edges–if it goes on its own, it’s too liquidy and the cookies will never dry. Let’s take a look at Bridget’s progress:

It’s so easy to make beautiful designs with the flood icing, simply by making swirls with a toothpick.

Unfortunately my little beauties got a little bashed up on the plane ride the next morning.

I’m not a baker by nature, but I could have decorated these cookies all day long.

My Mom’s cookies turned out beautifully.

She’s such an artist.

You can read Ree’s blog post about the experience here.

It was so much fun to see the Pioneer Woman in action, snapping the step by step photographs that you can click on over and see on her blog. Wild stuff, I’m telling you.

Simply wild. And her camera has a wicked fast shutter speed.

Christmas is approaching, and how much fun would it be to get together with a bunch of girls and have a massive cookie decorating party?

Lotsa fun, I’m telling you. Especially if you send me a little care package with the results . . . see, I’m an FDA-approved, um, cookie analyst.

And especially if two amazing chefs, Lia and Tiffany, come in and make you a killer salad for lunch. Here’s Lia, the toffee-making, truffle-creating Chef of wonders.

The toffee and truffles deserve their own post.

Here’s Tiffany, another lovely redhead. Seriously–Ree, Tiffany, Bridget–all redheads. All amazing cooks. I’m thinking something funky is going on here.

This was the best salad I’ve ever had. The components alone were already spectacular, especially the roasted fennel bulbs. I snuck a couple off the baking sheet.

Shrimp, scallops, fresh greens = I love everything and everyone in the world.

Add to that a glass of berry lemonade . . . oh yeah.

There’s more to come in this series. I make no promises on how fast they will appear since Christmas is practically at our door, but fudge, toffee, wild horses, and more kitty cats are in our future.

So don’t be goin’ anywhere!

That was figurative. You should totally get up to pee if you have to.

Sugar Crunch Mini Pumpkin Muffins

I couldn’t tempt you all with the picture of the incredible mini pumpkin muffins my friend Cassia made for her wine-tasting party and then not share the recipe. It would have been cruel and unusual. “Cassia,” I whined, “can I pretty please have that recipe for my blog, pretty please, because if I don’t share it people might get reeeallly angry, and I don’t want a blogmob on my hands! I’m frightened and scared and the only solution is for me to haaaaaave that reeeecipe!” It turns out I didn’t have to whine at all. Within hours, she had emailed me the recipe with all her instructions.

I popped over to Target to purchase a mini muffin tin. It will have been money well spent . . . even if I only ever make these once.

Which is not going to happen.

I’m considering making them once per day for the rest of my life. Except that I also want to be able to fit into my jeans, which are the perfect dark wash. I don’t think I could find another pair like them. I’ll let you know my decision after 24 hours of careful thought.

Cassia found the recipe on this website and proceeded to modify it by absconding with the nuts and then sprinkling sugar all over them before baking. I firmly believe that the sugar topping is 100% necessary. The little crunch it produces is faint-inducingly good. Cassia didn’t make the frosting, and neither did I, but I’ll include the recipe just in case you want to give it a whirligig.

Ingredients

(makes 72 mini muffins)

1 cup vegetable oil

3 cups sugar

2/3 cups water

2 cups pumpkin purée

4 eggs

3 ½ cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cinnamon

Chopped walnuts, optional

2/3 c Cinnamon sugar mix

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

Mix all of the ingredients together except for the cinnamon sugar and walnuts–first the dry ingredients:

And then the wet ingredients:

You won’t have to run your mixer for very long before it’s perfectly combined into a swirly orange fall festival that’s just begging to be dipped into immediately with a finger or two.

Fears of salmonella have never been able to keep me down.

Now let’s grease the mini muffin tin–I sprayed mine down with some baking spray. It feels so wrong, but also so right. Spoon the batter in. If you fill the little cups to the top, it will produce a larger mini muffin. I chose to make a variety. Or rather, my careless spooning produced a variety. But I say yes to diversity!

Sprinkle on some of the cinnamon sugar. With my first batch, I went pretty light on them:

But with the second batch, I really laid it on.

I like laying it on. I used about 2/3 tsp of cinnamon sugar per muffin in this second batch, but you must do what you feel is right.

If you’re a nutty kind of person, sprinkle the chopped walnuts on the top of each muffin, along with the cinnamon sugar.

The nuts by themselves are also vreeeerry good.

Bake the muffins for 20-25 minutes, or until the top springs back to the touch and a toothpick comes out clean.  For some reason, my muffins took more like 30 min. If you make regular-sized muffins, they will need to bake longer.  And lastly, if you choose to go the loaf pans route, you’ll need to bake it for about 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Let the muffins cool for 5 in the pan–or not. I popped them out immediately because I wanted to get the next batch started (yes, I only have 1 tin). They should pop out easily, but if not, you can always run a knife around the edges to loosen them. Let them cool completely on a wire rack.

Take a chomp while you’re at it. It’s called ‘quality control.’

Then try not to scream as you realize that the pile of muffins keep growing . . . and growing . . . and growing. They’re cloning themselves. It’s the only explanation.

Cream cheese frosting:

1 8-ounce package cream cheese

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 tsp vanilla

4 cups powdered sugar

Mix all the ingredients until smooth. When the muffins have cooled down, either make a hole in the bottom of them and pipe some into the hole, or cut them in half and spread frosting on the halves. Or spread frosting on top! You can also choose to spread the frosting all over your face. And hands. Just so you have an excuse to lick it off.

I also experimented with adding ginger salt to the tops. Definitely good. When I make these next, I’ll do all the different toppings so that I can offer a variety to my guests. Because when 72 little sugar-laden muffins are set loose in a household of 2, guests are an absolute necessity.

Tomorrow, the PW weekend series, part 1: the Lodge. For those of you who are getting antsy, please continue to look at this picture and take deep breaths:

Click here for printer-friendly version: Sugar Crunch Mini Pumpkin Muffins