Merry Christmas!

Alright, I know I said I was going to take a break for a few days, but I just couldn't resist this one. After this, I promise, it will be a few days until I post again.

This is my gingerbread Christmas tree. Make sure you have some time on your hands before you make this. It takes a little while to put it all together, but it's well worth the time and it's a lot of fun.

Gingerbread Cookies

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup molasses

1 egg yolk (reserve the white for icing)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

STEPS

• In a mixer bowl or a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Then stir in the molasses and egg yolk.
• In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg. Slowly fold it into the butter mixture in three batches. Mix until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least one hour.
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to 1/4-inch thickness. Cut into stars using cookie cutters. You will need different sized cookie cutters. Cut two cookies of each size. Place cookies two inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Try to put similar sized cookies on the sheet so that they bake evenly.
• Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Allow cookies to cool on the sheet for a minute or two before removing to a wire rack. Decorate when completely cool.

Royal Icing

INGREDIENTS

2 egg whites

2 cups icing sugar

1/2 teaspoon almond extract (you can substitute vanilla extract or lemon extract)

STEPS

• Whip egg whites in a clean, dry mixer bowl until foamy. Gradually add the sugar and almond extract. Beat on high until thickened. Icing is ready when it forms stiff peaks. Keep covered if not in use, otherwise it will dry out and harden.

Assembly

• In a separate bowl, add a few drops of yellow food colouring to a spoonful of icing. Use this to cover the smallest star.
• Reserve about 1/4 cup of the icing for use as snow. Keep covered.
• Add green food colouring to the rest of the icing until it has reached the desired shade of green. Cover the remaining cookies with the icing and allow it to dry and harden.
• Once the cookies have been frosted, starting with the largest star, place a dab of icing in the centre and stack the next cookie on top so that the points of the top star are over the spaces of the bottom star. Continue until all green cookies are stacked.
• Using the green icing, place 2 small dabs of icing on top of the top-most cookie to secure the yellow star on top, standing up. (See photo)
• Using the white icing, drizzle icing on the tips of each star, adding a mini M&M candy to the top of the drizzle as an ornament.
• Allow to fully dry before transporting or eating.

Holiday Hiatus

Hi everyone,

This is just a little note to let you all know that we, at Furry Kitchen, will be taking a much needed break over the holidays to rest and regroup.
We will return after Christmas and hope to be able to cook and bake up a storm so that there will be lots of recipes to post here.

We wish you all a very happy and safe holiday season.

Andrea and the furry ones

More Holiday Baking

I finally had a bit of time to do some baking on the weekend, so I decided to make rugelach. It's a Jewish cookie and this version is made from a cream cheese dough and is filled with cinnamon, sugar, chopped walnuts and raisins. Yummy!

INGREDIENTS

2 cups flour

1 cup unsalted butter

1 package (8 oz) cream cheese

1/3 cup sour cream

1/2 cup white sugar

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 cup ground walnuts

1 cup raisins, finely chopped

STEPS

• Cut cold butter and cream cheese into chunks. If you have a food processor, pulse the butter, cream cheese, flour and sour cream until crumbly. If you don't have a food processor, you can use your mixer. Mix the butter and cream cheese together first, then add the flour and sour cream.
• Shape the crumbly mixture into 4 equal disks. Wrap each disk in plastic and chill for at least 2 hours.
• Combine the sugar, cinnamon, walnuts and raisins in a bowl.
• Once the dough has chilled enough, roll each one into a 9-inch round on a well floured surface. Sprinkle with the sugar mixture and cut into 8 wedges. Roll each one up like a crescent, starting with the rounded end. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and chill for 20 minutes before baking.
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and bake for 25 minutes.
• Once the cookies are baked, remove from cookie sheet and allow to cool on a wire rack. Once completely cooled, you can drizzle with icing or leave them plain. I used almond icing which was made with icing sugar, a few drops of almond extract (to taste) and a few drops of water to reach a runny consistency so that I could drizzle it on the cookies, but not so wet that it wouldn't harden.

It's important to keep the dough chilled so that it is easy to work with. If it becomes difficult to work with the dough, put it back into the fridge and allow to chill for longer.

Rugelach on the cookie sheet waiting to be baked.

Rugelach drizzled with almond frosting.