Thanks for having me, Laur! And she's right, the ginger bread men cookies looked tasty, but as we all know, looks can be deceiving. The important thing is that we can drink wine and
The original recipe can be found here. Those stuffy Williams-Sonoma people. Humph.
The Ingredients:
8 Tbs. (1 stick) butter, melted
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
3 oz. semisweet chocolate, melted (optional)
You mix the melted butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, peanut butter, egg and vanilla extract together in a large bowl. We are currently without a mixer in this house so Holly just used her strong arm and a wooden spoon.
When baking cookies at the Olsen Central, it's a BYOMixer kind of affair. I'll remember that for next time.
You mix the melted butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, peanut butter, egg and vanilla extract together in a large bowl. We are currently without a mixer in this house so Holly just used her strong arm and a wooden spoon.
When baking cookies at the Olsen Central, it's a BYOMixer kind of affair. I'll remember that for next time.
Then you sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. I ignored the hoity-toity rules about the wax paper thing. Because... really?
Wax paper? I've never owned such a thing.
Again mix together. If no mixer use wooden spoon.
It's a labor of love.
We got a bit overzealous here and didn't realize that the dough needed to be refrigerated for two hours. So we covered it and threw it in the freezer for about an hour and that worked just fine.
The freezer was my idea. Because, I'm smart like that. Also, we forgot to read the recipe ahead of time. Woops.
Roll that dough into little balls and put on a greased cookie sheet.
Use a fork to put indentations. I would imagine that at this point you could leave as is... say if you wanted to do a late addition of a Hershey's Kiss or a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Just something to keep in mind.
Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes. Or so.
Tip from the Stayer kitchen: take out the cookies just a tad early (even if they don't look done yet). They will continue to cook on the baking sheet. Result=perfectly baked cookies.
Repeat.
We melted chocolate chips. You know, boil water and put a bowl over said boiling water and stir chips until liquid form? That. Then we attempted to put in a Ziploc bag and I cut a hole a bit too large. A faux icing bag it was not.
I suggested we use the microwave. After all, this is the 21st century, people! But, no. Matt in all his glory and cooking skills reminded us kindly that the microwave will burn the chocolate. Silly me.
So I just spread it out with a knife. No fault of Holly's.
Alas, the hole was just too big.
The second batch I just sprinkled.
That's it for the cooking portion of the program. There will be plenty more cookie recipe's coming your way later on as the Big Gigantic Trovato Night of Cookie Making is soon approaching.
Now moving on to the arts and crafts section. As we were doing mixing and baking and the like Letteria was working on a one-of-a-kind ornament. A wooden snowflake. White paint. Silver glitter. An old t-shirt from my youth. And a little three year old just dying to get messy. Thank you Nonna for the supplies and idea and as usual everything creative.
The end.
-Holly
and...
