One of my first Christmas seasons as part of the Gunther family, I was introduced to a very sweet tradition. They have a long time neighbor, Barbara, that bakes up a bunch of DELICIOUS gingerbread men. They are adorable, and simple, and everyone gets one. Got that? ONE cookie, each year. I’m pretty sure the first year Tim somewhat reluctantly (and I don’t blame him at all) shared his cookie with me. Now, I usually get my own and let me tell you what, I’ve looked forward to that cookie every year since the first.

A couple of years ago, dear Barbara shared her cookie recipe with us, and now I’m sharing my version with you. I have to say, Barbara makes her cookies in little gingerbread men shapes, with multiple colors of icing, lots of details, and they’re just adorable. Something you’ll come to learn about me, is that, while I do love for the food I make to look good, I don’t usually have the patience and attention to detail required to really decorate sweets well. So, these are my simpler version, with a much more forgiving decor. I actually made some snowmen, along with the trees and candy canes, but I had such trouble decorating them, that they will not be making an internet debut anytime soon. Now for the cookies…

Gingerbread Cookies

2 3/4 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
3 teaspoons Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Kosher Salt
1 teaspoon Ground Ginger
1 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon Ground Cloves
1 Egg
2/3 cup Molasses
2.5 oz Brown Sugar (about 1/3 cup, packed)
1/2 cup (1 stick) Melted Butter (I always use salted)

1. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, ginger, cinnamon, & cloves, in a medium bowl. Set aside.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl, combine Molasses, Brown Sugar, and Melted Butter. Mix on medium for about 30 seconds to a minute. You just want it to be thoroughly combined.

3. Add the egg and mix just until thoroughly combined.

4. Add the dry ingredients, about 1/3 at a time, mixing between additions.

5. Cover the dough, and stick in the fridge to cool for about an hour.

6. While the dough is chilling, line your cookie sheets with parchment paper, and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

7. Roll out the dough, to about 1/3 of an inch thick, depending on how thick you like your cookies. You can roll them out using a little flour to keep it from sticking everywhere, but I like to roll it out between 2 sheets of parchment paper. Then I don’t have to worry about adding too much extra flour to the cookies.

8. Cut with cookie cutters, and transfer to parchment lined cookie sheets.

9. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until set. These are one of those cookies that’s a little trickier to know when it’s done. They don’t brown until they’re over-baked. You can lightly touch the top of the cookie, and make sure it’s solid, and not doughy any longer.

10. Allow to cool completely, then decorate to your heart’s desire. Here’s the frosting recipe I used, except I only used vanilla extract (1 teaspoon), instead of the almond extract. I put my frosting into a disposable piping bag like these ones, with a tip in the bottom like this one.

11. Let the cookies sit for several hours before attempting to stack them. This is a softer frosting, and while it does setup some, it’s never super hard. I prefer the taste of a buttercream like this on my cookies, but it doesn’t make for the easiest cookies to stack or send in the mail. I think it’s worth it.

How about making some yummy gingerbread cookies for a Christmas party this year? You’ll be the hit of the party.

love and butter,
amy

A little over a month ago, I came across the website for a food blogger cookie swap and I thought to myself, bake a few dozen cookies to send to other food bloggers and get a few dozen cookies in the mail from other food bloggers? Yes, yes I think I can get on board with that. So, I signed up, got a list of bloggers to send cookies to, and started on my mission of a good cookie to mail. I wanted something Christmasy, something yummy, and something that would ship well. I didn’t want cookies showing up broken into pieces.

My first plan was to make some gingerbread cookies, iced with buttercream frosting. I actually made them (and will blog about them soon, promise!) and they were delicious. The only problem? The icing didn’t set up as much as I wanted it to, for shipping across the country. I didn’t want to use a royal icing, because I prefer the flavor of a buttercream. So, I had to come up with another cookie.

I thought back to a cookie I had made several months ago, these cardamom cookies. They were yummy, but I wanted to tweak them a little bit. I made them with whole wheat pastry flour, bumped up the cardamom (which I made sure was freshly ground), and skipped the lemon peel & sprinkling of sugar. When I made the first test batch, they were yummy, but the dough was so sticky and hard to roll out and get onto the trays. That was even after chilling the dough for a long time.

Second time around, instead of rolling out the dough, I scooped it with my favorite cookie scoop and flattened it with the bottom of a mason jar. Much less mess, which is always good, and the cookies tasted just as good. They have a good, strong cardamom flavor, which I love. You could always cut back on the cardamom if it isn’t your favorite.

Cardamom Cookies

2 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1 cup Granulated Sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons Freshly Ground Cardamom (Freshly ground makes a HUGE difference. If you can’t make it happen, I would at least double the amount you use.)
1/4 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
1/2 cup Ground Almonds (I used almond meal)
1 cup (2 sticks) of Butter (I always use salted)
2 Eggs (room temperature)
4 teaspoons Milk (I used whole milk)

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

2. If you’re using whole cardamom, grind it up in a coffee or spice grinder. I use my magic bullet.

3. Whisk together flour, sugar, cardamom, cinnamon, and ground almonds.

4. Cut butter into small cubes, add to the dry ingredients, and cut in with a pastry cutter or with your fingers. I usually choose to use my fingers and work the butter in that way. Just squish it between your fingers until it’s almost completely incorporated into the dry ingredients. It’s a little messy, but that’s half the fun of baking, isn’t it? I guess that’s only true if someone else is doing the clean up.

5. Whisk together the eggs & milk, until they’re completely combined.

6. Add the milk & eggs to the rest of the cookie dough, and mix until thoroughly combined.

7. Scoop the cookie dough out onto your prepared cookie sheets.

8. Flatten with a small mason jar.

9. Bake for 6-8 minutes, until just barely golden along the edges.

I don’t know about you, but I love giving away cookies at Christmas time. Maybe it won’t be these cookies, but bake something up to give away this year. If you’re looking for a good gingerbread cookie recipe, come back soon. I’ll be posting my favorite in the next week!

love and butter,
amy

I know what you’re thinking…”another pumpkin recipe? c’mon already.” Well, yes. No excuses, except I love this pumpkin bread. I’d rather not tell you how much of it I’ve eaten in the last 3 days. If that’s not what you’re thinking, it might be something like, “eeewww, whole wheat?” And that’s where you would be wrong, very wrong.

Have you heard of Whole Wheat Pastry Flour? If not, this might just rock your world right now. Whole wheat pastry flour is a 100% whole grain flour, that’s made of a soft white wheat. It has a protein content of 9% which lands it in the middle of cake flour and regular all purpose flour. All that means is that it’s a whole grain flour, that you can use in place of regular all-purpose flour, without hardly noticing a difference. I’ve started to use it as a replacement for all purpose flour in our house. I am sure that there are instances where you couldn’t sub it with exact results like the original recipe, but I’ve been really happy with what I’ve tried so far. I love when I can incorporate whole grains without feeling like I’m making a sacrifice of flavor or texture.

Now, back to this pumpkin bread. I originally got this recipe from my friend Courtney that I used to work with, back when I used to work at a large format printer company, of all places. I have loved that recipe and made that recipe time and time again. It’s always a winner, it freezes well(if for some strange reason you don’t just eat it all at once), and it comes together quickly. The other day, I realized I hadn’t made a batch, this fall, and knew that MUST be remedied at once.

When I pulled up the recipe, to see if I had all the ingredients it required, I was struck by how much granulated sugar it had, and that it called for vegetable oil. I’ve been trying to cut back on how much refined sugar we eat in our house, especially in something like this that I would gladly eat for breakfast, which means I would have to let Liam have some with breakfast too. In order to feel a little bit better about having this bread for breakfast, instead of the 3 cups of white granulated sugar, I cut it back to 1 cup of granulated sugar, and 1 1/2 cups of real maple syrup. That also meant cutting back on the water in the recipe, as well as upping the amount of baking soda in the recipe. A little googling is how I found suggestions on how much to adjust everything. Vegetable & Canola oil are things we’ve cut out of our kitchen, the best that we can, because of how refined, processed, and genetically modified they are. An easy swap for the vegetable oil was butter, because of course. When I’m making decisions about food in our house, I’m generally not focusing as much on calorie content but more on the “realness” of it. So, butter is going to win over vegetable oils, shortening, margarine, etc. And of course, I swapped out the all purpose flour in this recipe for my new bff whole wheat pastry flour.

Pumpkin Bread

makes 2 standard size loaves

3 1/2 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
2 3/4 teaspoons Baking Soda
1 1/2 teaspoons Kosher Salt
1 tablespoon Pumpkin Pie Spice
1 cup Butter, at room temperature (I always use salted)
1 cup Granulated Sugar
1 1/2 cups Maple Syrup (the REAL stuff)
4 Eggs1/3 cup Water
1 15oz. can of Pumpkin Puree (NOT PUMPKIN PIE FILLING)

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

2. Butter and flour 2 standard loaf pans.

3. In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and pumpkin pie spice. Whisk together(that’s my version of sifting) and set aside.

4. In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl with an electric mixer, cream together butter and granulated sugar for about a minute or 2 on medium speed.

5. Add the maple syrup, mix, on low, until thoroughly combined.

6. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing, on low, until combined, between each addition.

7. Add the water, mix, on low, until combined.

8. Turn off the mixer, add about a third of the flour mixture, combine on low. Add the rest of the flour in 2 more additions, in the same way.  Do not overmix. You just want to get it combined.

9. Last, but absolutely not least, add your pumpkin puree, and combine with a spatula.

10. Divide evenly, into the 2 loaf pans, they should be about 3/4 full.

11. Bake for about an hour, until a toothpick comes out mostly clean, with a few moist crumbs. I usually start checking mine around 50 minutes in.

12. Once you pull it out of the oven, allow to cool completely before cutting into it. I usually let mine cool in the pans.

13. If you want to freeze it, once it is completely cooled, wrap it well in a layer of plastic wrap, and then a couple layers of foil before stashing it away.

This recipe was a fun experiment, especially since it was a success! I’m always hesitant to make big changes in baking, because I know it is such a science, and I’m still learning about how it all connects and works together, but I have to say, I’m quite proud of this one. I love this bread just as much as the original recipe, and I feel a little less guilty when I eat it for breakfast.

love and butter,
amy