Holiday baking and other food prep

[Magic Microbe]

I made sugar cookies, Swedish spice cookies, snickerdoodles, spritz cookies, and grandma cookies

[seattlegirl]

seattlegirl, I'm planning to give the nut recipe a try tomorrow!

Hope you like them!  It's a favorite around here.

[caribougrrl]

Hope you like them!  It's a favorite around here.

they're now on the new year's list, I ran out of time so made olive tapenade instead

[The Turtle Whisperer]

bump

[caribougrrl]

bump because it's that time of year

[cgraz]

So give it up already!

I am thinking I need to revisit my sea salt caramel recipe and make those again. They were damn good, and fairly easy. I just need some minions to cut up my wax paper and help me wrap them - that was the most tedious bit.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Fleur-de-Sel-Caramels-230778

ingredients
1 cup heavy cream
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 teaspoon fleur de sel*
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup water

Special equipment: parchment paper; a deep-fat thermometer

Line bottom and sides of an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper, then lightly oil parchment.
Bring cream, butter, and fleur de sel to a boil in a small saucepan, then remove from heat and set aside.
Boil sugar, corn syrup, and water in a 3- to 4-quart heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Boil, without stirring but gently swirling pan, until mixture is a light golden caramel.
Carefully stir in cream mixture (mixture will bubble up) and simmer, stirring frequently, until caramel registers 248°F on thermometer, 10 to 15 minutes. Pour into baking pan and cool 2 hours. Cut into 1-inch pieces, then wrap each piece in a 4-inch square of wax paper, twisting 2 ends to close.

[caribougrrl]

NEW FOR 2012!  (cgraz, it was silly of me indeed to start a candy thread then immediately bump last year's)

this year I'm making torrone (italian nougat)... did a trial run on the weekend... so, from memory (there are quite a few recipes on the internet, but most are exactly the same, I loosely based mine of the La Cucina Italiana website one)

toast 1-1/2 c almonds in a 350F oven, transferred to a cooling rack

line a square baking pan (8x8) with parchment paper, leaving some overhang

beat 2 egg whites in a very large mixing bowl until stiff peaks formed, added 1/3 c icing sugar and beat until glossy, set aside

in a heavy bottomed saucepan, heat 2 c. granulated sugar and 2/3 c. honey until melted, stirring constantly, continue heating to the hard ball stage stirring occassionally, then stop stirring until it reaches the hard crack stage***

immediately remove from heat, let cool to hard ball temp, stirring constantly

pour in a steady thin stream into egg whites, beating egg whites to incorporate, it increases in volume more than twice (hence the very large bowl) and becomes very stiff as you get toward the end of the sugar

beat in 1/4 tsp vanilla extract & zest of one clementine (I will skip the vanilla next time)

fold almonds into nougat

prep a needing surface with cornstarch, coat your hands in corn starch and scrape nougat onto surface; knead for 1-2 minutes, dusting hands with cornstarch as necessary

press into baking pan, flattening the surface with your dusted hands, let cool for at least an hour before breaking into peices


***almost all the recipes I read said to heat to 315F, which I was skeptical of, but did the first time... what I ended up with was a pan full of burnt syrup... one recipe said 260F, another said 280-300F... 302 is hard-crack stage at sea level, but nougat is not hard candy, but the egg whites change the consistency, so I went for just barely reaching hard crack before I removed it from the heat, consistency-wise for the final product, I think that was a good call

it turned out brilliantly... one thing I will do differently when it's show-time is make on a day that is less humid... there's a wee bit too much moisture in the batch I did, but I think it's a humidity problem rather than a syrup problem

instead of parchment, you can sandwich the nougat between sheets of edible rice paper... I can't get rice paper here though

[Courtney]

I'm going to experiment with some caramel again, because I'm too dumb to learn a lesson.  I saw a recipe on pinterest for sea salt caramels I want to try. 

I may also attempt some GF cookies.  We'll see. 

[Run Amok]

I'm going to experiment with some caramel again, because I'm too dumb to learn a lesson.  I saw a recipe on pinterest for sea salt caramels I want to try. 

I may also attempt some GF cookies.  We'll see. 

Make the ones cgraz links to above. They are pretty much fool proof. The only thing about them is that getting the sugar to temp takes WAY longer than you think it's going to (or at least longer than *I* always seem to think it should). They are also really tasty and I always get lots of requests for the recipe.

[witchypoo]

I may also attempt some GF cookies.  We'll see. 

i wonder if one could make tuiles w/almonds and almond flour.  i suspect one could...

[omega lambda]

What are GF cookies?

So for those of you who have started baking already, how do your store your baked goods until you give them away?  I won't be doling out the goods until just before Christmas, so I have always waited to the last minute to do my cooking/baking and then can only do about half of what I'd really like to do.

Last year I made Calvados Applesauce and Lemon Curd and gave those away.  This year I want to make salted caramels, some with Calvados maybe (I bought some apple flavored ones in France that were fabulous), cookies and for family only some Panettone.  But 'bou, I like your idea of Torrone as well!

[Magic Microbe]

What are GF cookies?

So for those of you who have started baking already, how do your store your baked goods until you give them away?  I won't be doling out the goods until just before Christmas, so I have always waited to the last minute to do my cooking/baking and then can only do about half of what I'd really like to do.

Last year I made Calvados Applesauce and Lemon Curd and gave those away.  This year I want to make salted caramels, some with Calvados maybe (I bought some apple flavored ones in France that were fabulous), cookies and for family only some Panettone.  But 'bou, I like your idea of Torrone as well!

I normally just keep my cookies in tightly sealed containers layered with wax paper but you could freeze them. I personally have never noticed them getting stale. I don't make candy so I don't know about that.

[caribougrrl]

What are GF cookies?

So for those of you who have started baking already, how do your store your baked goods until you give them away?  I won't be doling out the goods until just before Christmas, so I have always waited to the last minute to do my cooking/baking and then can only do about half of what I'd really like to do.

Last year I made Calvados Applesauce and Lemon Curd and gave those away.  This year I want to make salted caramels, some with Calvados maybe (I bought some apple flavored ones in France that were fabulous), cookies and for family only some Panettone.  But 'bou, I like your idea of Torrone as well!

most candies will store at room temp for a long time (I usually wrap in parchment or waxed paper and store in a cookie tin)

for cookies, many of them freeze well... or the dough freezes well... we freeze shortbread dough in rolls then thaw, slice and bake when needed, for example... other cookies like the filled date ones I sometimes do freeze really well fully cooked, thaw and serve

[merigayle]

GF cookies = gluten free

[omega lambda]

GF cookies = gluten free

Thanks!  All I could think of was Girl Friend and that made absolutely no sense!

And thanks for the storing tips as well.  Making then freezing the dough seems like a good idea; I could make up the doughs as time permits, then thaw and bake when I'm ready.  Perhaps an all-purpose basic dough would be good, then I could add things to it for different types of cookies?  I dunno.  I've got some research to do!

[Run Amok]

For whoever was looking for/thinking about GF cookies:

These are yummy and have no white sugar or flour in them. I think baking powder can sometimes have gluten in it (??) but you probably already have that covered so otherwise they are GF http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/nikkis-healthy-cookies-recipe.html They don't taste GF or vegan or weird in any way. DD calls them banana bread cookies. They aren't exactly low fat. They are COOKIES afterall. 

[Courtney]

YUM!!  That sounds great!  I'll have to try them   Thank you! 

[marjolaine]

Bou, i haven't made my French nougat because I'm waiting for my rice paper to arrive in the mail. My other recipe calls for cocoa butter. I'll make both with and without to see which is better. I'm adding dried cherries in both. I can't wait!

This is sans beurre de cocoa:
http://www.thekitchn.com/taste-of-provence-nougat-de-mo-122326

Here's the recipe for the one with cocoa butter. It's in French though. You can use google translate if you have difficulty understanding:

http://www.lacuisinedebernard.com/2011/03/le-nougat-de-montelimar.html

[caribougrrl]

cheers, mags!

[marjolaine]

Bou, i haven't made my French nougat because I'm waiting for my rice paper to arrive in the mail. My other recipe calls for cocoa butter. I'll make both with and without to see which is better. I'm adding dried cherries in both. I can't wait!

This is sans beurre de cocoa:
http://www.thekitchn.com/taste-of-provence-nougat-de-mo-122326

Here's the recipe for the one with cocoa butter. It's in French though. You can use google translate if you have difficulty understanding:

http://www.lacuisinedebernard.com/2011/03/le-nougat-de-montelimar.html

I made this today, and I have 2nd degree burns on one of my hands to prove it!

Caribou, if you ever decide to make this nougat, use Chef Bernard's recipe for a couple of reasons. The one from kitchn doesn't have the cocoa butter needed to give nougat that chocolate scent. The other thing is that Chef B heated the honey and sugar with glucose in separate sauce pots. I wondered about this, now I know why. If you heat the honey and sugar together you won't be able to get the mixture to a high enough temperature because the mixture foams up so I had to stir the mixture to let the foam  dissipate so my thermometer could detect the syrup's temp. I might have cooked my honey and sugar too long because of the false temp that the foam caused. Roasting the nuts in 180 deg C/356 deg F is about right versus roasting them in 400 deg F.

I'll post pics of the bars tomorrow. I'm letting them sit to cool at the moment. Tomorrow, guimave des fraises, et chocolat.