Chewie Gingerbreadwookiees

Happy Holidays! I can't believe almost another year has passed. As usual, this holiday season, I made my favorite thick and chewy gingerbread cookie recipe. Each year, I try to do a different design, having made Gingy-bread Men (from Shrek) and Gingerbread Gentlemen cookies in the past, I wanted to continue this tradition this year.

I had just seen Star Wars: Episode VIII last week. And having made Chewie Wookiee Cookies (Chewbacca CCCs), Han Solo cups, and Yoda Match Truffles, I thought, why not more Star Wars? I thought about possibly making Ewoks, Jawas, or Banthas, but in the end decided to stick with Wookiees :). Perhaps next time for the other creatures!

I don't have wookiee shaped cookie cutters, so I drew my own stencil on paper and used that to guide my knife when cutting out shapes. Since I wanted to make these cookies holiday themed, I decked out Chewie's bandolier with holiday sprinkles instead of cartridges. But if you want to make this for any day of the year or you don't have holiday sprinkles, you can always draw in the cartridges with white chocolate like I did for one of the cookies in the photos. Enjoy, and may the force be with you :P!

Homemade Marshmallows

I'm back (finally)! So, my third year of medical school has ended up a lot busier than I planned, and I haven't gotten much baking done. But I think I've got my time management down and I'm going to try to work baking and blogging back into my regular schedule. Plus, over winter break, I did some holiday baking, so I have some of that to share as well.

Today I have my go-to recipe for homemade marshmallows. I'm quite surprised that I've never shared it here before. For the most part, I try to share recipes that use minimal equipment, but this recipe requires a stand mixer due to safety (sorry), so maybe that's the reason. Anyway, if you've never made homemade marshmallows, I definitely recommend it. They turn out soft and fluffy and they just taste better than store-bought marshmallows. I have another recipe for flavored marshmallows that I'll share in a few weeks, but this recipe makes wonderful vanilla marshmallows, the perfect addition for s'mores and hot cocoa.

Usually, when I make these for everyday eating, I'll just cut them up into squares, but for my holiday baking this year, I wanted something more festive. So I decided to make them look like snowmen. I halved the recipe so they'd be thinner and easier to cut into circles. Then I gave them faces with royal icing leftover from decorating gingerbread cookies. I also added a touch of cinnamon to the powdered sugar/cornstarch mixture used to powder the outside of the marshmallows to make them extra festive. No matter squares or snowmen, they're still equally delicious.

Candy Cane Cookies

My last official holiday cookie post. Actually, it's also my last post of the year! I can't believe 2011 is almost over. Happy New Year's Eve!

Every year I always want to put something minty in my cookie boxes. Peppermint just seems to be a must during the holiday season what with seeing candy canes all over the place. I was tempted to remake last year's mint chocolate chip truffles, but decided at the last minute to try something new this year. I searched for candy cane cookie recipe and found these cute cookies. They're super festive and just minty enough, a wonderful addition to a set of holiday cookies.

Gingerbread Gentlemen

My second holiday post for this year: Gingerbread Gentlemen.

Every year at Christmas, ever since I started baking 4 years ago, I've been making my go-to Thick and Chewy Gingerbread Cookie recipe to share with friends and family. To keep things interesting, last year I started playing around with the appearance of my gingerbread men and made Gingy-bread Men (a la Shrek). This year, to mix things up, I stuck to royal icing and made Gingerbread Gentlemen.

They're one part Victorian men's fashion, one part Mr. Moneybags, and one part Mr. Peanut, which combines so many things I like: the 19th century*, board games, pop culture cartoons, fancy schmancy accessories (bow ties, top hats, monocles, and walking sticks**), and of course, mustached cookies. Win? You bet :P. They seemed to be many of my friends' favorite cookie out of all my holiday cookies.

*more specifically: art, literature, and history
**too bad there wasn't room for pocket squares and braces/suspenders

Santa Sugar Cookies

Hope all of you had a wonderful holiday break! Last week was nonstop cookie baking. To one-up last year, I had two rounds of cookies this year: one featuring oldies, but goodies (most of which are already on this blog) and another which centered around newer recipes.

Before I started baking this year's holiday cookies, I looked back at all of my past holiday cookie recipes and was surprised to see that there was nothing centered around Santa Claus. Thus, I decided that some sort of Santa cookie was a must this year. I didn't want something too complicated, so I stuck with a circular cookie cutter and my go-to sugar cookie recipe. When I think of Santa, I see his signature hat, rosy cheeks and a red nose (because it'd be freezing riding around in a sleigh all night), a big beard, and an all-around jolly face. So today I have a how-to guide for making Santa sugar cookies.

Penguin Icebox Cookies

That's right, penguins! I loved reading all your guesses and reasoning last post. Now I've got hippos, monkeys, elephants, and Totoro on the brain for future projects :). But, for today, let's talk about penguins.

For some reason, when I think "cartoon penguins," I picture cute little blue penguins, not black ones. But now that I've pondered over this, I realize that this may be the influence of too much Sanrio in my childhood, if there is such a thing :P. There used to be a penguin character named Tuxedo Sam, a little guy with a red bow tie and a spiffy sailor hat, and he was indeed pastel blue. But because I wanted to use my ube powder (purple yam powder), I decided to make these penguin cookies purple. And that is why these penguins are purple.

P.S. Two pictures above, you can see the last animal in this icebox cookie series. Not as difficult to guess as the penguins were, I think :P.

Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti

Finally, I'm on my last holiday related baking post. Just in time, since winter break is ending for me and school starts again tomorrow. Luckily this recipe isn't one of those "makes sense only during Christmas" recipes. These cranberry pistachio biscotti can definitely be enjoyed any day of the year.

I think of biscotti as the perfect afternoon pick-me-up. These cookies have the right amount of sweetness and crunch to tide one over until dinner, plus they're great with a cup of coffee or tea. Whenever I get the chance to make biscotti, I typically make almond biscotti. But, I thought that for the holidays, I would try something new, so instead, I made these cranberry pistachio biscotti. They're tasty, and I love how the green of the pistachios and the red of the cranberries look.

Mint Chocolate Chip Truffles

This Christmas, I wanted to make some truffles for my holiday cookie boxes. I've always thought that chocolate truffles make great gifts. They're easy to put together, yet they have an air of decadence and luxury. Plus, they taste delicious.

I wanted to make a truffle that couldn't easily be found in stores. So, I did an internet search and found a recipe for mint chocolate chip truffles. I'm a big fan of mint chocolate chip; it's been one of my favorite ice cream flavors ever since I was a little girl. I'm glad I tried out this recipe because these truffles turned out great: delightfully minty with bites of chocolate in each truffle, and visually appealing, with the pale green contrasting with the brown of the chocolate.

Carbón Dulce (Sweet Coal)

I always thought that getting coal for Christmas wasn't THAT bad of a punishment for naughty kids. Sure it's not as fun as toys, but at least it has some use, plus it's better than nothing. If it were up to me, I'd give bad kids things like dried up markers, creepy Jack-in-the-boxes, crumbly rocks... Well, good thing I'm not Santa, haha.

To embrace my stance on coal not being a bad present, this year all my friends and family got coal for Christmas... candy coal that is :). Last year I bookmarked a post for it because I thought it looked so cool. Carbón dulce (sweet coal) is a Spanish candy that's often made during the holiday season. It tastes sort of like rock candy, sweet and crunchy, with a pleasant almond flavor from some added almond extract. And it does indeed look very much like coal. Pretty awesome!

Red Velvet Shortbread Fireplaces

Hope you all had a great New Years! I can't believe it's 2011 already. To continue with my holiday cookie posts, today I have a recipe for Red Velvet Shortbread Fireplaces.

Since people make and decorate gingerbread houses all the time, I thought it'd be interesting to switch it up a little and just decorate a certain part of the house: the fireplace. I mean in real life many people really do decorate their fireplaces for the holidays, whether it's with stockings, holly, wreaths, or holiday lights. I decided to keep it simple with just a string of lights and a small fire :).

Gingy-bread Men

Yes, that's right: "Gingy"-bread Men. Anyone here like Shrek? Well, my favorite Shrek character happens to be Gingy! So I thought that this year, instead of the minimal gingerbread men decoration that I usually do, I would decorate my cookies to look like Gingy.

I used my favorite thick and chewy gingerbread cookie recipe and opted to decorate the cookies with a traditional royal icing. What makes Gingy so "Gingy-like" are: white squiggles, white leg stitches (after he's tortured, of course), white dot eyes, a red mouth, and lavender eyebrows. Oh, and of course his purple gum drop buttons. My favorite part of these cookies are definitely the candy buttons.

Christmas Domo

Hope you're all having/had a wonderful holiday break! Today I have a quick post to start off my holiday cookie blogging. It's a twist on my Domo TKOs... a tutorial for Christmas Domos :). But, the main point of this post is to give you all a preview of all the cookies I made for Christmas, which I'll be blogging about in the next few posts.

Here is the cartoonized version of my Christmas cookie list. An actual picture of all the cookies is posted at the bottom of this post.

While I was making these Domo cookies, I realized that by adding different hats, they can be used for all sorts of occasions (sort of like Kirby in Super Smash Bros after sucking up different characters). Change the red hat to green and you have Elf Domo. Change the white cotton on top to a pom pom and add polka dots and you have Birthday Domo. A blue hat with stars makes Wizard Domo. Add the year and you have New Years Domo. Think of all the possibilities :D!

Frosty the Snowman

Happy New Year!!! My last Christmas post, I'm finally caught up. I saved this post for last because even though Christmas is over, as long as it's still snowing (or... still winter if it doesn't snow where you live), you can still make these snowmen macaroons without question.

These would make a fun winter afternoon DIY project, an indoor snowman building contest or something of the sort, an alternative to making gingerbread houses. You could set out plates of the baked coconut macaroon heads and bodies, different candies for decorating, and melted chocolate for kids to construct their own edible snowmen.

A Tale of Two Macarons (Part II)

Today, I continue posting about my holiday macarons. What makes these macarons festive is not their flavor, but their appearance. These are my usual pistachio macarons, spruced up to look like Christmas wreaths, which were perfect for my holiday cookie box.

Yup, these macarons are basically normal pistachio macarons with holes in the middle and bows piped on. Interesting how these two small changes can turn a typical round macaron into a holiday macaron.