So, yesterday, I started out to bake Christmas cookies. My first cookie-baking venture in Niger. The baking was delayed until today as I discovered that I needed buy sugar and flour before I could start.
I thought I would share one of the recipes and experience! :
Soft Cookies
1/2 c. butter
1 c. sugar
2 beaten eggs
1/2 c. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
3 c. flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
Pre-Prepartion:
- freeze flour and sugar overnight to kill bugs
- after min. 24 hours - sift sugar and flour to remove dead bugs
- pick feathers off eggs
- wash eggs
- float eggs as quality control (those which float are possibly rotten)
- throw out 1 of 9 eggs despite quality-control-float-test
- make milk out of milk powder
- raid precious stash of baking ingredients from Canada: vanilla and baking powder needed
Preparation:
cream butter
gradually mix in sugar & cream
add milk and vanilla - beat
in separate bowl: mix flour and baking powder
slowly add flour mixture to butter mixture and stir
roll to 1/4" thickness
cut with cookie cutter
attempt to pull sticky glob off cutting board
inspect dough
add more flour : altitude and humidity level difference from Calgary obviously affecting dough consistency
roll dough attempt two
additional flour added to rolling step for rolling ease
cut and place on cookie sheet
bake 7 min. at 350
read stove manual (again) to determine that Gas 4 = 338 and Gas 5 = 374. Set stove to Gas 4.5
put first pan of cookies in oven
continue rolling and cutting
turn on fan - getting too hot and sweaty in kitchen with oven on (current outside temperature: +35)
discover gas oven temperature is also different . . . . bake cookies twice the recommended time!
cool cookies - the fan helps with that too!
Finishing Touch:
Icing:
cream
(hmm . . . options of availability in stores: powdered milk, whipping cream. well, it is Christmas after all - so use the whipping cream!)
icing sugar
food colouring - green with red sprinkles and red with green sprinkles
Thanks for the Christmas baking sprinkles Dorrie!!
Preparation:
mix three ingredients
spread icing on cooled cookies
watch icing melt and drip off cookies
quickly add sprinkles and put pan in fridge to help icing set
Final Step:
As company is not coming until the 26th (Friday) . . . put cookies in freezer so they do not grow moldy on counter between now and then.
Start all over with second type of cookie - butter buds with jam centres. Add 1 extra cup of flour for dough consistency (recipe cites a possible addition of 1/2 cup extra flour).
Call mom at 7am to discuss what is wrong with the cookies - why they do not hold shape?
Add extra 2+ cups of flour to this recipe.
Determine after 2+ extra cups of flour that they are close enough, they don't need to hold shape do they?? A little spread out is fine.
Contemplate whether making chocolate shortbread tomorrow night is worth the effort.
Contemplate making meat buns for Friday as well, and decide that the effort of figuring out how much yeast to add to the dough for a good rise at this altitude is not worth the mental effort this week . . . sweet & sour meatballs in the crockpot it is!
No comments:
Post a Comment