Monthly Archives: December 2009

Sugar and Spice Drops

Posted on by bruleeblog

Unlike last year, when I went on a Christmas baking frenzy, I’m only doing a handful of things this year. I’ve already made a batch of crack (a.k.a sugar coated pecans), and I’m planning on making at least one batch of those cranberry-apricot chocolate chews that I keep talking about.

I am making one new kind of cookie this year though. After making those chews last year, I got really interested in the book that it came from, King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking. It got great reviews so I took a risk and bought a copy online, which is rather unusual for me because  I generally prefer to flip through a hard copy of a cookbook before making a purchase.

I love gingerbread cookies, but sometimes you want something that’s a little more simple to make and is lighter in flavour. And so, when I saw this Sugar and Spice Drops recipe I knew I had to try it out. They have a light gingerbread-style flavour – just enough to give you some spice but not enough to overwhelm. They are more crispy and the flavour is lighter than the ginger cookies I made last year.

Sugar and Spice Drops
Sugar and Spice Drops
Adapted from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains by King Arthur Flour
Makes approximately 4 1/2 dozen cookies.

Ingredients
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 cup fancy molasses
1 large egg
2 cups traditional whole wheat flour

Directions
Cream together the butter, sugar, baking soda, salt and spices in a bowl until smooth. Beat in the molasses, and then the egg, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl. Add the flour and beat until all the ingredients are incorporated. Cover the bowl and refrigerate the dough for about 30 minutes. (The original recipe said it could also be refrigerated overnight, but when I did that for a second batch of cookies I found that the dough dried out a bit and was harder to work with, so I personally wouldn’t recommend leaving it for that long.)

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease 2 baking sheets or line them with parchment paper. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and use a teaspoon to scoop out a piece. Lightly roll it in your hands to make a small ball, and drop it onto the prepared baking sheets.

Bake the cookies until they’ve flattened out and started to brown slightly, about 10-12 minutes depending on your oven. Be careful of overcooking them as you could potentially burn the bottom of the cookies without realizing it. Remove them from the oven and transfer to a cooling rack. Don’t worry if the cookies seem a bit soft or uncooked inside – they’ll finish cooking off as they cool down.

Once cool, the cookies will be crispy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside.

Molasses confusion

Posted on by bruleeblog

Whenever I buy molasses I forget to look up this stuff beforehand, and I usually stand there in the grocery aisle with a puzzled and panicked look on my face for a good five minutes before I pick up a package at random and hope for the best.

So that you too do not have to go through this, here is a little cheat sheet about the different kinds of molasses that you can buy. I know there are some other types  that you can pick up, or that these may be labelled under slightly different names, but these are the main types that I usually find in the grocery store.

Fancy molasses – used for baking, cooking, or straight up as a syrup

Blackstrap molasses – can be used for some baking or cooking, tastes bitter, is often used for health reasons (I know someone who takes spoonfuls of the stuff as an iron supplement as it is easier to absorb than other supplements.)

Lite molasses – lighter in colour and flavour than fancy molasses, contains less sugar than fancy molasses

Cooking molasses (also known as dark) – a mix of fancy and blackstrap, good for sauces and cookies

Garlic in oil

Posted on by bruleeblog

Have you ever had garlic-infused oil? It has so much more flavour than the regular stuff. It’s easy to make too.

Some recipes call for heating the oil and garlic together and straining it afterward. I’m inherently lazy though, so instead I mince a bunch of garlic, stick it into a clean jar, and add olive oil or canola oil until the garlic is just covered with oil, and seal the jar. Then, I pop it into the refrigerator and pull it out when needed for cooking anything from a stir fry to the beginnings of a soup. Over time, the oil will absorb the garlic flavour – not as much as if I had heated the oil first, but it’s enough for me. Olive oil may harden in the refrigerator, but it will liquify easily once scooped out and warmed out.

There is one important disclaimer however. Making your own garlic-infused oil has a risk of botulism. If the jar isn’t completely clean, or if you leave the oil and garlic out at room temperature, bacteria will grow and you WILL get sick. Health Canada recommends that you use up the oil and garlic within a week, the FDA says 10-14 days. Make sure the jar is kept refrigerated.