This recipe kicks off our year of baking through Baking With Kids. I guess I should say ‘their year’ of baking though this book. I have promised to be there for any and all things the cookbook tells them must be done by an adult, but otherwise it’s totally their thing.

Wee One #1 started with the very first recipe in the book, Apple Crumble Muffins.

Apple Crumble Muffins – from Baking With Kids (p. 10)

First, make the crust by mixing all of the topping ingredients together. Set that aside to sprinkle on later.

Then sift your flour into the mixing bowl, add sugar and mix with a wooden spoon. Grate the lemon zest (being careful to avoid the white pith), mix in and make a well in the middle of the ingredients. Melt the butter (either in the microwave or stovetop) and pour into the well. Then break the eggs into a small bowl and mix them with a fork till they’re broken up. Add the eggs and milk to the well and mix with a wooden spoon. Or in our case….

…mix with a wooden spoon until it becomes really tricky, and then turn to the trusty Kitchen Aid!

Once all the ingredients are combined, spoon the batter into your paper muffin cup lined tray. Using all of the batter, and almost filling the cups, you will have 12 good-sized muffins.

Now, chop up the apples and sprinkle the pieces over the batter. We left the skin on for a little burst of fiber, and we had about half an apple’s worth of pieces left over.

Now, on top of the apple pieces, sprinkle the topping mixture you made earlier! He tried a spoon, but soon realized that clean hands were much, much easier to sprinkle with!

Now bake them at 375 for about 30 minutes. These were done in 20, in my crazy supernova oven. 😉

I helped just the brown sugar and the baking powder, and that was only because my containers are a little tricky to get into. This entire recipe was done by my 10 year old – aside of course from putting in and taking out the pan from the oven. He even poked a tested into the muffins to check if they were fulled baked!

The topping burnt a little, as you can see, but I think in hindsight the topping should go in a little later through the baking. Other than that, this recipe was good! The muffins are dense, and 2/3 the kids didn’t love them, but Wee One #3 loves them!

1 recipe down, 52 to go!

There is so much going on here for the blog I hardly know where to start. Tomorrow is my first proper post of the year but I thought I’d outline a little of what I’m cooking up!

With my Uncle Bob passing last spring, my Granny last summer and then our big move in the fall, Cake Year 2010 did not go down as I had hoped. The official count for 2010 was 45 different cakes or cupcakes, but I did not do as well as Pie Year 2009 – when I made 57 different pies or tarts. Now that we’re settled into our new house and I’ve gotten comfortable in my new kitchen, I’m taking on two cookbooks, one with the kids help, and declaring 2011 to be Cookie Year. All of my long distance friends just got really excited because they know I’ll totally mail cookies.

I’m also going to make a separate gallery for my handmades because I knit more socks than I can keep track of!!

The first cookbook I’ll be baking from with the kids, the oldest two anyway. It’s called Baking With Kids and I’ll supervise them baking one thing from it every week – there are 53 recipes so we’ll double up one week. They’re really excited about this so I’m super looking forward to it!

Last year for Christmas my dear friend Brigitte got me Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food, the cookbook about hiding veggies in unusual places (like french toast and brownies). I’d see it on my counter and flip through it and think about cooking from it and now it’s been a year! This year, my aunt got me the next book, Double Delicious!: Good, Simple Food for Busy, Complicated Lives and getting this second book was the kick in the butt I needed to really get into the first one! I’ll be making something from Deceptively Delicious slightly more often than once a week. Thankfully my husband is on board to try out these new recipes! He is getting a lot more adventurous in the kitchen (ever since I really mastered some recipes he’s been asking me to figure out), so that’s a win for us as a team for sure!

My adorable friend Sammie has asked me to help her pull together a little DIY cookbook for a good friend of hers who has had gestational diabetes in the past and is blessed with another wee one on the way! Good thinking on her part, to be proactive about it before it becomes a problem!

Between these two books, Cookie Year 2011, our light on the sugar project and all the random seasonal and holiday themed baking that is sure to fill in the gaps, this promises to be a busy year for my kitchen and I could not possibly be more excited!

I’ll leave you with that as I made a mad dash to my kitchen to get baking!!

2. January 19 – No Tears Socks

1. January 12 – Princess Curtains

04. January 27 – Baked Alaska

03. January 18 – Scones

02. January 13 – Basic Bread

01. January 3 – Apple Crumble Muffins

9 more sleeps till Christmas!! Which means there is about to be a serious baking explosion going down in my kitchen over the next week during the day, and a whole lot of knitting every night. Thank goodness for online shopping or I’d not have any actual gifts to give out!

I have a soft spot for the Robin Hood flour characters, Elizabeth and Andrew. They’re adorable and remind me, in reverse, of my Wee One #1 and Wee One #2. So I do a lot of their recipes and recently, Robin Hood came out with a new recipe booklet, The Love of Baking. Elizabeth and Andrew are painfully absent from the collection of recipes, but I can forgive them because there are a lot of fun recipes in here.

Citrus fruit and Christmas never really went together in my mind until I married into a family that always puts clementines in the stockings. I will openly admit my parents tucked a ridiculous amount of toys in our stockings as kids, sometimes candy but never clementines – or nuts or anything else like that. I mean, we always had that stuff out on trays and in bowls around the house – but it wasn’t a Christmas thing. So, since we’ve been married (11 years in the spring!), I have developed a connection between Christmas and citrus fruits (my mother-in-law puts clementines in my stocking too!) and my husband now eats clementines year round, though he still calls them Christmas oranges!

In the spirit of adopting this citurs = festive feeling, I made these for my husband and my in laws. Hopefully, they love them. If they do, I’ll make them every year!

Sugary Citrus Twists – from The Love of Baking

Beat sugar with butter and rind until fluffy, beat in the eggs, yolks and vanilla until well mixed. Add the flour and salt. Beat until blended.

Flour your counter a bit and knead the dough – but don’t over handle it! Shape the dough into two 10″ long logs. Mine were so long I couldn’t get a decent photo. Slice these into 12 pieces each and I found it worked best to roll each of those pieces into a little ball and set them aside till I was ready for them.

Then, working with one dough ball at a time cut it in half and roll each half into little ropes, about 4″. The Robin Hood recipe says to roll the whole thing into an 8″ rope and cut that in half, but I found this to be a lot easier.

Then make an X with the two ropes and twist them around each other! Simple and cute! Set it on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and do the rest!

Sprinkle with sugar before you pop them in the oven – 8 minutes or so at 350.

*This recipe is great to make the day before decorating sugar or butter cookies, because you have 4 egg whites for the royal icing.*

Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’m off to bake gingerbread cupcakes, craft with the kids and knit my little fingers off. <3

In this post, I’m participating in three WIP Wednesdays; Freshly Pieced, Tami’s Amis and Musings from the Fishbowl.

I am aware that it’s already well into the evening on Wednesday, but I really wanted to check in with my Christmas knitting progress and still blog about some tasty creations in the morning. 🙂

This morning was Wee One #2’s last day of school before Christmas vacation, so I packed up her teacher’s Socks of Kindness, that I blogged about earlier. I also packed up a few of the mini stars and tree cookies I made last weekend for her kids (she has three also), but she wasn’t there today! Bummer!! Hopefully she checks in before the school is officially closed for two weeks (kindergarten is only a few days a week out here). Anyhoo, here’s her little package!

Since my last knitting post a few days ago, I’ve finished a stack of facecloths and one mitten. I posted about the first two facecloths here. They’re all knit from the same pattern, Mock Cable Facecloths, in three colours of Shine Worsted. Clementine is pretty obviously the orange pair, Wisteria is the light purple and Green Apple, of course is the green. I really adore this yarn and will be using it for more facecloths for the fam and for gifts!

I’m on a serious Knit Picks bender lately, this time using Wool of the Andes Worsted in Dune Twist. These mitts are for the kids’ school bus driver. He’s a new addition to our list of gift recipients since we have moved out to the woods! He’s a very nice guy and the kids always say that he’s not a yeller! I’ve never taken the school bus to school personally, but I always heard about mean school bus drivers. Glad to know he isn’t one! Also, wee one #2 tends to move slowly in the snow and he never gives her a hard time about waiting for her so he deserves something special. He’ll get a tin of treats too of course!

I will be baking a whole lotta cakes and cupcakes in the next three weeks to catch up on my self-inflicted cake challenge. Which may prove extra tricky since we’re away for 5 days, but I can do this! I made a little dent tonight with cake #45, Candy Cane Cake. No adult could stomach this. Maybe Andrew. Maybe. Don’t take that as a challenge, I even tried it in milk and the peppermint still knocked me on my butt.

In this post, I’m participating in Peace on Earth and Marriage Mondays

Last week’s challenge was to read the story of the birth of Jesus in Matthew 1, 2 and Luke 1,2 and to have a serious bubble bath. I opted for a serious pampering night instead, but with the same mission. Time to think about life and love and God and time to reflect on whole reason we celebrate Christmas!

This week’s challenge was amazing timing for me because my husband bought me a big box of goodies from Sephora so I had new gear to pamper myself with. I’m going to go on an unrelated rant for a quick minute here. As you know, we live in the woods, and I rarely leave the house. When I do it’s usually to the post office. My husband actually likes running errands (I know, he should be studied), so I never have to go to the grocery store or Walmart or anything like that unless I want to, which is pretty much never lol. Also, visitors are few and far between, the mail is dropped in the box at the end of our (ridiculously long) street, and the kids take the school bus to school. That’s all to say that for fairly long stretches of time, the only people that see me are my husband and our children. You can stretch that to include the bus driver waving to me as he drops the kids off and the lady at the post office every Tuesday when I pick up and drop off packages. And yet, every day since my Sephora package arrived, I’ve done a full face (with false lashes, no less) and not left the house. In part it is for my husband and kids, sure. I want them to see that their wife/mother hasn’t frumped out because that’s the easier thing to do. More than that though, getting all sparkly and dolled up just feels good. I think it’s wonderful that Courtney has included ‘me’ time in this challenge, of course to read your Bible and think about God and the meaning of Christmas, but also to just shut out the rest of the world and have a moment with yourself. I used my pamper time to blast away sore muscles, do my nails and think about how we can happily mix wish lists and Christmas parties with the birth of our Savior and how I can really instill that in my children.

Ok, rant over. Moving on. I recently came upon a blog that I am instantly in love with, A Holy Experience. They have made a beautiful Advent calendar with prayers and readings to count down to Christmas with – and it’s free. Amazing. Clearly a lot of work went into making it and I adore it. This, in addition to the introspection time I had on my pampering night has led me to look at Christmas a little differently this year and I think honestly, all of this thinking and reading has peppered my outlook on life in general.

I will still keep on baking my 300+ Christmas treats, but I will do so with the spirit of giving in my heart as I knead and roll and bake. My kids play in the kitchen with me quite a bit, but I will be sure to include them even more than I usually do when baking for others. This year, we’re also choosing a gift from the Samaritan’s Purse catalog for a child and their family in a developing country, in additional to our annual Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes. Generally, when we do shoeboxes we include more ‘hygiene items’ and school supplies than toys. As much as I’m sure they’d adore a little Winnie the Pooh toy set, having pencils, paper, a toothbrush, toothpaste and even underwear is far more treasured, you know?

If the idea of this appeals to you, but you don’t have time to pack a shoebox yourself, you can make a financial donation. Some of that money will go to pack more shoeboxes and some will go to the transportation costs involved in getting all our boxes to the children that need them!

Now, this week’s challenge is to schedule a night when we go to bed early! Take a few minutes to read your Bible and get a connection and then actually go to sleep early. This too is in good timing, as I started feeling sick on Saturday night and actually had a 3 hour nap after the kids were in bed. I woke up to a silent house, did some knitting and put myself back to bed again. I’m was still sick, but much better than if I hadn’t taken the rest when I could get it! I think I will make Thursday night my bed early night this week. What a great challenge!

In this post, I’m participating in Foodie Friday, Friday Potluck, and Food on Fridays

Sugar cookies are amazing because they have got to be the most versatile treat when it comes to being festive with themes. You can cut them into any shape you can imagine and then decorate them however you want. The only trouble is, unlike tasty drop cookies, you can’t just mix them, bake them and walk away!

I’m repeating this recipe for the eleventy billionth time here, but at least it’s organized, right? Really, this post is all about the dramatic photos.

Basic Sugar Cookies

1/2 cup + 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 cups + 3 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 cup caster sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream butter, sugar and vanilla. DO NOT OVERMIX. Beat in egg till well combined and not a second longer. 😛

Add flour and mix till a sticky dough forms. Kneed into a ball and divide into 2 or 3 balls. Roll out each ball between two sheets of parchment paper for about half an hour. Preheat to 350, then take it out, peel off the first layer or parchment paper and slice it into strips like french fries!

Basic Royal Icing
2 tsp lemon juice
2 egg whites
3 cups icing sugar

Beat your lemon juice and egg whites together for a little bit before adding your icing sugar. You’ll want to thin it out a little for spreading (add drops of water till it’s the consistency you’re after), or add a little more icing sugar to make it that seriously thick stuff you typically find on gignerbread people in bakeries. I find this recipe just needs the smallest little touch of water and it’s perfect for spreading. It hardens just right and has a lovely shine.

The fun thing about this icing really is the colours! I used paste food colouring for vibrant colours (and because it’s all I know – I grew up with a cake decorator)!

I first made these trees about a week ago, and tucked them away in tupperware for my massive decorating weekend. That weekend turned into another sugar cookie extravaganza so by Tuesday I had over 200 cookies to frost. Thankfully, frosting the cookies is one of my fave cookie activities!

Grand total sugar cookies to package up with the others; 22 stars, 22 trees, 44 small stars, 33 small trees and 11 mittens. Honestly? I loved every second of them. There were even more, but every time one broke, I had to give the kids the broken one – and the rest of the set lol!

I’m backtracking a little here, because while I do have a stash of mini snickerdoodle cupcakes in the freezer for Christmas, I made this for my sister’s birthday party two weeks ago.

I first read about snickerdoodle cookies in Great Cookies: Secrets to Sensational Sweets in 2003 when I picked up the book (amazing book, by the way – full of fun cookies) and I knew I had to try them based on the name! They’re essentially a cinnamon sugar cookie, then rolled in cinnamon and sugar before they’re baked. We all liked them and made themfrom time time to time. Then in 2008, one of my kids discovered A Barbie Christmas Carol, and the main Barbie’s favorite cookies are snickerdoodles! Since then, it’s become a household staple and Martha’s snickerdoodles, are hands down the best.

Martha Stewart’s Snickerdoodles – from Martha Stewart Holiday Magazine 2005, Cookies Special Issue

Sift your flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl with your mixer, cream together the butter, shortening and 1 1/2 cups of the sugar. Beat for about 2 minutes, until fluffy. Scrap down the sides of the bowl and mix in your eggs, one at a time. Then slowly add your flour mixture and beat until it’s totally mixed in. I also add about 1 tsp of cinnamon to my dough.

Mix the leftover 1/4 cup of sugar and the 2 tbsp of cinnamon in a small bowl. Use a tablespoon to scoop out regular sized cookies or a teaspoon for mini cookies. Shape them into little balls with (slightly) wet hands and then drop them in the cinnamon sugar. Roll them around so they’re covered and then put them on your parchment paper lined cookie sheet and flatten them with a glass. It helps a little of the glass is dipped in the cinnamon sugar as well.

Bake for 10 minutes at 400. Martha recommends rotating your baking sheets after 10 minutes, but I have found that it really doesn’t change anything. These cookies crack on top, but they do not brown – so don’t wait for them to or they’ll burn.

These cookies are alarmingly good for dunking in either coffee, milk, soy milk or, my biggest weakness, vanilla chai smoothies.

I’ve been trying to keep my posts down to just one recipe at a time to make things easier to find later, but this second recipe really goes with the first! I first saw on Bakerella the teaming of snickerdoodle cookies with snickerdoodle cupcakes. For Valentine’s Day 2009, I made heart shaped cocoa brownies and stacked them on top of chocolate cupcakes with a layer of buttercream, which decedent as it is made perfect sense to me. So the idea of stacking cookies on cupcakes with layers of buttercream is totally logical.

For consistency’s sake, I used Martha Stewart’s snickerdoodle cupcakes.

Martha Stewart’s Snickerdoodle Cupcakes – from Martha Stewart Online

First, sift together both flours, baking powder, salt and 1 tbsp cinnamon. In another bowl, with your mixer, cream butter and sugar until they’re ‘pale and fluffy’. Then add the eggs one at a time, and beat in the vanilla. Don’t forget to scrape down the sides of your bowl.

Alternate between adding the milk and the flour mixture until it’s all combined. Now pour the batter into lined muffin cups, about 3/4 full. Bake for about 15-20 minutes at 350.

Now, if you need to (I needed to and then we ate them all), whip up a batch of buttercream, pipe a bit on your cupcake, top with a cookie and then top that with another bit of buttercream.

Divine. Snap photos while you can – this pile of treats wont last long!!

In this post, I’m participating in Tempt My Tummy Tuesdays, Tuesdays at the Table, Tuesday Night Supper Club, and Hearth ‘n Soul

Christmas in our kitchen means a lot of things, it means sugar cookies and almond crescents, and my mother’s truffles and white chocolate snowmen. Above all else though, it means gingerbread! I love making classic gingerbread, and as you’ll see in recipes over this week, I love making other forms of gingerbread-style cookies and treats because of the way it makes the house smell. I also feel like a serious baker when I use this many spices in a single recipe!

Add the dry to the wet and voila! The original recipe says to cover the dough and refrigerate it for an hour. I learned from a Daring Baker challenge in September (sugar cookie recipe) to roll out portions of the dough between pieces of parchment paper and refrigerate that – it takes not even a quarter of the time, so by the time you’ve rolled out the last of it, the first is ready to come out.

People are the most traditional shapes to make, but I also adore the reindeer shapes. This batch was made for the kids to decorate and eat, for the next batch I’ll also make some Santa boots and teddy bears. Painfully cute. I’ll post more pics as I bake them.

Royal icing is the best for decorating these, of course! Mix 2 egg whites with 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and 2 1/2 to 3 cups of icing sugar. The more icing sugar you add, the thicker it’ll be, and I have found that to get those childhood memories of the serious gingerbread cookies you’ll want a thick batch of icing. If you find it too thick, just add a touch of water – tiny drops at a time.

More festive recipes this week! Chocolate-Gingerbread Drops, Milk Chocolate Fudge Crinkles, Sugary Citrus Twists, Sugar Cookies and Gingersnaps!