Gluten Free Spice Cookies!

          So my mother is gluten free, so I decided to make some cookies for her! I haven't mastered making them from scratch so I use a box that we get from a store a town over from us. I just made them my own.

1 box of Hodgson Mill, Gluten Free cookie mix (the ingredients in that are: Brown rice flour, sugar, tapioca, starch, amaranth flour, cornstarch, baking soda, xanthan gum, and flake salt)
2 eggs
1/2 cup of butter
2 tablespoons of water
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
1 tablespoon of brown sugar
1/3 teaspoon of all spice, nutmeg, and cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon of vanilla extract

For the topping:
2 teaspoon of cane sugar
1 teaspoon of brown sugar
a dash of all spice, nutmeg and cinnamon (you can put as much as you want in)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. First you will beat the butter until it is fluffy(with a electric beater), then you beat in the butter, the oil, the water and the vanilla extract. Then slowly add in the dry box mix. Without mixing them in together, add the brown sugar and spices. Then mix it all together.

Take two spoons, and spoon out the cookies onto a cookie sheet, once that is done put the cookies in the oven for 15 minutes. While they are cooking make the topping. Add the sugars together,  and the spices then mix them together. When the cookies are done, and as soon as you take them out of the oven sprinkle the topping on the warm cookies. Then let them cool and enjoy.

5 Cheese Mac and Cheese!

This isn't going to be a baking post. Kraft mac and cheese is just bad all around, and yesterday that was the only thing we had in the house that I wanted to make. Everything else took a lot of effort (I was very lazy yesterday) So I made some kraft mac and cheese, but I spiced it up with some real cheese.
I had a dream about a month ago, it was very weird. I was making a 4 cheese pasta and I got all the cheeses in it, thank god I remembered it! It was parmesan cheese, the little cheese triangles (The Laughing Cow: Original Creamy Swiss) found in every super-market. asiago, and cheddar. So I decided to make that, but with kraft mac and cheese and the pasta instead of penne pasta. So it would actually be a 5 cheese pasta dish...

1 box of whole wheat kraft dinner(or any mac and cheese box)
1 tablespoon of butter
1 tablespoon of milk
3 tablespoons of cheddar
1/3 cup of parmesan cheese
1 triangle of The Laughing Cow: Original Creamy Swiss
3 tablespoons of asiago
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
1/2 cup of pasta sauce.
A dash of salt, pepper, dried oregano and dried sage.

First make the mac and cheese, everyone makes it different. Then when you put the milk, butter and cheese packet in, put in all the cheeses in. It will be gooey and sticky. Then put in the garlic powder, mixing it all together.
Pour the pasta sauce in, mix that and then put the pepper, salt, oregano, and sage.

Its simple but really good. Then mix it all together and enjoy!

Punk Gingerbread Cookies.

So I decided that I would do something festive and related to the holidays. SO, I made gingerbread cookies, but being me I could not bring myself to do regular-plain-old-happy gingerbread. I made punk-rock cookies, they didn't come out as well as I planed but they were fun making. I tried to make mohawks on the little cookie people, but it didn't come out very well. Oh well.

I used a basic recipe for gingerbread cookies, one that you can find anywhere on the internet. I got the recipe from All Recipes but I changed it a bit.  

6 cups of all-purpose flour 

1 tablespoon of baking powder 

1 tablespoon of nutmeg 

1 teaspoon of allspice 

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

1 cup of butter

1/2 cup of molasses

1 cup of brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup of water

1 tablespoon of vanilla extract 

First and always preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a largeish bowl mix together the spices and the flour (all the dry ingredients except for the sugar.) When that is all mixed together, put that aside.

Grab another bowl, larger then the other one, and beat the butter till it is fluffy. Then add the egg, beat that a little bit. Then pour in the molasses and the water. Once those are all mixed together put the brown sugar in. Then slowly mix in the dry ingredients, folding over the dough till it's all together.  

Then take out a rolling pin and a flat surface and roll out the dough until it is 1 1/2 inches thick. THEN you can cut out little people, OR you could make them like I did and make them all punky. 

What I did was try to cut out little mohawks on the people, but I stopped doing that because the mohawks looked weird. So I just cut out little people and when I decorated them they had punk outfits on and stuff. Another thing I did was cut out a guitar, a rock with a mohawk (cause it's a rock and it's punk....get it....not funny..okay), someone with gauges and a hohawks, the blimp from the CD cover of Mothership by Led Zeppelin, some Anarchy symbols, Sex Pistols and little moons because I like moons.

But you can do whatever you want, this is just what I did because I like that better then regular gingerbread cookies.

Once you have them cut and ready to be baked, but them on an ungreased cookie sheet and put them in the oven for 10 to 12 minutes. When they are done take them out, let them cool for 5 or so minutes then you can decorate them however you want!

Enjoy xo Izzy

Rainbow Cookehs!

I am so glad I have a break off of school, I can bake more and post more. I also don't have to worry about the auditions anymore because they are over now. So I have more time on my hands. I had to write an essay on human nature! I don't believe in human nature, but I couldn't write a essay about how I didn't believe in human nature, which annoyed me a little bit. But whatever, I got over it.
Oh I'm just gonna warn you that when you are making these cookies, they will stain your hands the colors you use. I totally didn't think about it and my hands were blue, green, purple, red and orange.

Once again I have gotten the recipe from CakeSpy; Sweat Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life by Jessie Oleson.

 1 pound (4 sticks) of unsalted butter, softened.
 2 cups of confectioners' sugar, sifted.
 1/2 teaspoons of salt.
 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
 4 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour.
 Food coloring in many colors :D
 and of course, SPRINKLES :D
 wax paper

*******

Use a larger bowl, because when I made these I started out with a smaller bowl and when I mixed the flour and the butter/sugar everything went everywhere. So just use a large bowl so you won't have a huge mess to clean up.
First thing you should do is preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grab the closest electric mixer you own and beat the butter till it is nice and fluffy. Once that is done switch the speed to slow, and add in the confectioners' sugar and salt. Beat the mix for a few minutes. Then next you put in the vanilla extract.

Slowly add the flour while mixing it in with a wooden spoon, or metal whatever you have at your house. Mix the dough until it can form a ball. When you achieved that divide it into as many parts as you want to have colors. Then put food coloring on the different balls of dough. The colors I used were purple, green-blue, red and orange. This is the part when your hands will get dyed. Also don't be shy on the usage of the food coloring, because the colors will fade while in the oven.

Roll each of the sections into logs, then roll the mini logs of single colors into one big log. Combining all of the colors. It will be very large do not worry. You can roll the log in sprinkles if you want, to make the cookies even more awesome, remember this; You can never ever go wrong with lots of sprinkles. Sprinkles makes everything better. OKAY.

Cut the log in half, so you have two logs. Then roll them out so they are not that thick, I cut mine into four logs (which I regretted because they were too thin) You can either cut the cookies or put them in the fridge and save them for later. 

If you are going to make them now(which I am assuming you are...) still wrap the logs in wax paper and put them in the fridge to chill for about maybe 15 minutes or so. When they are done, take them out and slice them to the size you want. Do not press on them because they will loose their fluffy-ness, trust me they taste better when they aren't squished. 

Put them on the cookie sheet and put them in the oven for 7 to 9 minutes, so they are firm but not brown. Once they are done let them cool down for 5 minutes.

enjoy xo Izzy.

CakeSpy recipe for Home Made Poptarts :D

I got this recipe from a book my mom got me at Barnes and Noble. It is called CakeSpy Presents; Sweet Treats for a sugar-filled life, by Jessie Oleson.

For the ingredients you'll need;

For the pastry:
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour( you could also use rice floor for gluten free pop-tarts)
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cups of cold butter, cut into cubes(can use half shorting)
3 tablespoons of cold of milk (you can either use more if you need to, I ended up using at least 7 tablespoons of milk)

For the filling, you can make whatever you want. I melted chocolate chips, mixed it with 3 tablespoons of milk and 1/4 cup of confectioner’s sugar. This is to make a fudge-like filling, but you can put whatever you want in there (Jam, preserves, peanut butter, chocolate ganache and others).

For the icing;
1 cup of confectioners' sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons of milk or heavy cream (can add more if needed)
tons and tons of wonderful sprinkles! 

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Take a cookie sheet, and cover it with wax paper.

Take a large bowl and mix together the flour and the salt. Next, add the butter and cut it into the mixture, like you would for a pie crust. Then, once the butter and flour is all crumbly, you can add the milk. Gently mix it in. You should be able to make a dough ball with it.

Next comes my favorite part. Place the dough on a floured surface area, then take a roller (:D) and roll out a large-ish rectangle. Cut out small rectangles (about the size of a pop-tart) of the rolled-out-dough. When I did this, I didn't make the rectangles big enough, so I just cut out as many pop-tarts as I could, then I took the scraps and rolled them out again, so I could have more. You make as many as you want as long you have an even number. Once you are done with this, transfer the smaller pop-tart cut outs onto the wax paper. (I didn't have wax paper, so I used something like it, which works fine.)

Make the filling (either the way I did it, or in whatever way your imagination dictates).  Once you have done that, put a teaspoon of the filling in the middle of pop-tart dough. You can rub the filling around the rectangle, so that when you put another rectangle pop-tart thing on it, the filling won't squirt everywhere (less the mess, the better). Do that with all of the pop-tarts. Then, with a fork, crimp the edges, to make it look pretty. This also keeps the filling in the pastry. Finally, poke the top of the pop-tart.

Put the pastries in for 7 to 9 minutes, just enough to get them golden. While you are waiting for them to cook, make the icing.

In a small bowl, mix together the milk (or cream) and the confectioner’s sugar (sift the sugar into the milk). If the icing is a little liquidy, fear not; you can put it in the fridge to cool it down a bit. When the dough is done, let it cool down completely (I didn't do that, and the icing melted a little bit and went everywhere. It was messy).

Once they are cooled down put the icing on the pop-tart and put as many sprinkles on it as you want and enjoy! :D

Beginning

So I've never had a real blog. I've just done tumblr and twitter. But I've been meaning and wanting to do a blog on baking and crafts, two things I love to do. So hopefully by the weekend I will be able to upload my first baking post :D.

I found a recipe to make homemade pop-tarts. They were yummy :D