Gingerbread Ducks

As our sweet baby boy arrived one week before Christmas (on my birthday no less!) there were a few holiday activities that I didn't get around to doing with Lottie. Making gingerbread men was one of them.

After days of telling her "tomorrow we are going to make cookies" and forgetting that I don't have molasses, or need baking soda, I finally got everything together to make these stinking cookies. (Actually, they don't stink, they smell pretty good).

The recipe I used is basically a glorified sugar cookie, with added ginger, cinnamon & cloves. Next time I would add more of somethings, perhaps fresh ginger to make them have more bite in the front, instead of just a mild bite in the back.  I used whole wheat flour cause that's what I have and they still turned out moist. Well, half of them did.

Classic Gingerbread Cookies
Dry Ingredients
3 cups all purpose flour (I used whole grain wheat)
2 tsp ground ginger
1tsp baking soda
1tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cloves

Wet Ingredients
2/3 cup butter softened (Now that I see this measurement I think I only put one stick in?)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 egg

• Preheat oven 375
• In separate bowl mix dry ingredients. 
• In large mixing bowl beat butter 30 seconds. 
• Add brown sugar & molasses; beat until combined. 
• Add egg, beat until combined
• Add flour mixture, beat until just combined
• divide dough in half, cover and Chill for 3 hours.
• Roll dough on well floured surface
• cut into shapes
• bake @ 375 for 5-6 minutes (Do not put the cookies in then sit down to nurse an infant)
• cool and place on wire rack
• Decorate

We mixed the batter in the morning then waited 3 whole hours for the dough to chill. This was the hardest part. Lottie asked me over and over "We make cookies mama?","We decorate cookies?","We make cookies? Now?", "We use sprinkles mama?"

Perhaps I talked up the decorating part too much, but while we waited we made and colored icing. I thought I was pretty ingenious with this part. 1. I didn't want to spend the money on multiple colors of icing from the store. 2. Even though this icing is PURE. SUGAR. its not loaded with a bunch of chemical crap that I can't pronounce. 3. I wanted to give Lottie some fun, arty, mixing colors, fine motor skills, extra mommy time :)

For the powdered sugar icing: 2 cups powder sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, 2-3 Tablespoons milk. 
I used too much milk. Next time I would stick to just 2 Tablespoons.

I put 2-3 spoonfuls of icing in snack bags. 

3 drops of food coloring. Lottie picked out each color and I convinced her that we would do one color per bag. I know, I know, it would have been way more educational if I let her mix every bag into a lovely shade of "preschool grey" but mama wanted pretty cookies.

After smacking the bag a couple of times and the food coloring going nowhere I showed Lottie how to "tickle" the bag. Then she got the hang of dispersing the color, giggling as she squished.

"teekle teekle teekle hehehe"

 This is what the icing looked like when Lottie declared it done and ran off to play. Mama added a few more drops of food coloring and squished some more. 

This is our end product. Pretty. 

(I used a combination of neon and primary food colors, originally bought to make play dough - I cant wait.)

Then in the late late afternoon, we rolled, and cut.

Then baked.

Oh finally the glory! To Decorate!!

Cut the tip of the corner of the snack bag very small (did I mention, very small tip) and squeeze. Any larger then a smidgen will be to much. I also think thicker icing would make less of a icing puddle. 

See above picture.

Then roll and cut some more.

  Then burn.  Bummer!!

Maybe it was a good thing, because it was 8:30pm and my almost 3 year old had already had a fair share of mini M&M's and royal icing (which is basically straight up powdered sugar). Decorating another 16 cookies would have been the end of us for sure.

Eat and share!

I am pretty proud of those ducks & men. Of course, Lottie's creations are so super cute too.

Happy Decorating!

Sunshine Soup

I loose all motivation late November thru mid January. It's gross outside and I could wear my PJs all day. S.A.D., also known as the winter blues, hits me with just a few days of dreary weather. Luckily I live in Florida, so they are few, with at least one day of 60 degree sunny weather between. I don't have ANY idea how I would handle living up north in the winter (or any other time, really). I guess I would eat a lot of Sunshine Soup...

For the past few months I have spent my days with Beans lounging in her play tepee, reading books and pretending that we know how to play guitar (to my credit, I have been watching a few 'how to play guitar' VHS tapes).

Yet somehow I've recently found motivation and decided to get back to this blog thing. Instead of sticking to a theme, and worrying about cohesive content, I have decided to write about whatever I want. So here goes, happy reading...

And eating! Yes, I'm adding recipes too. Kasey and Mom, this is for you. I like to cook, because I like to eat, and I try my darnedest to eat healthy whole foods (mostly so I don't feel guilty when I do hit Chick Fila or go crazy on chocolate muffins!). I'll start sharing my favorites and new concoctions gone right.

Writing recipes will be difficult for me since I don't follow them well, not even in baking. I usually look at more than one recipe for the same dish, pick what I like about each, and cross my fingers. I can tell you what I used and how I cooked it, but I can't guarantee yours will turn out the same as mine, or mine will ever taste the same two times in a row. But hey, that's my love of cooking: it's all experimentation, yummy, yummy experimentation!

Sunshine Soup

My inspiration for Sunshine Soup comes from Twig and Toadstool, it's a super sweet story. I also looked at a couple recipes online and in my new Farm Fresh Seasonal Produce Cookbook.

You'll need --

• 1 big Butternut squash (or 2 small)
• 1 sweet potato
• 32 oz chicken or veggie stock (and some more)
• 1 can coconut milk (not lite, you want the cream)
• Olive oil
• 2 cloves Garlic
• 1 nugget of fresh Ginger
• 1 Bay leaf
• Cinnamon
• Nutmeg
• Rosemary
• Salt
• Pepper
• Maple syrup

Directions:

Cut and de-seed squash
Roast squash and potato around an hour

Go do something else while it cools

Dice garlic small
Get a big pot and heat a swirl of olive oil
Put in garlic and grate ginger into the pot
Stir and let cook around 2 minutes
Add stock
Peel squash and sweet potato and put it in the pot  

(I used a big gravy spoon to scoop the flesh out)
Let it heat up a bit

Use an immersion blender and blend till smooth-ish
(you could put it all in a food processor in batches then back into the pot for a smoother consistency, 

and a bigger mess)
Let it heat up some more and watch out for labyrinth swamp type bubbles (I put a lid on it)
Add seasonings and bay leaf to your liking. My grandma measures spices by covering the top of the sauce or soup once or twice. I measure the same way.

Add coconut milk. Mmmm coconut fat is Sooooo good for you. 

Add a swirl of maple syrup and blend again if you like (I personally enjoy the chunks.)
Let it sit on low until you are ready for dinner.
Yumm, yumm eat your bowl of Sunshine Soup! 

I served mine with a salad of greens, blue cheese, pecans, pears and big ol' croutons.

Next time, I'll try carrots and apples instead of sweet potato. Doesn't that sound good?

Happy Eating...