Maple Sandwich Cookies

For the past few Canada Days and a few instances in between, I've taken to making these Maple Sandwich cookies. Last year I had to make two batches in two weeks so that everyone that was asking for some could get some. They're a bit time consuming and require planning ahead, but are definitely worth it! They're from the Complete Canadian Living Baking Book, but here's the basic rundown.

For the dough:

1 cup softened butter

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/4 cup maple sugar 

1 egg

1 tsp maple extract

3-1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

For the Filling:

1/4 cup softened butter

2 cups icing sugar

2 tbsp whipping cream

2 tsp maple extract

You will need the dough to chill for at least an hour, before you roll and cut out and bake. You can make the dough itself up to a day ahead though. Just make sure you have an hour or so the next day to do the rolling and cutting and baking. 

Beat the softened butter with the brown sugar. I use our stand mixer for this, it saves on the elbow grease. Stop when it gets fluffy. Add in the 1/4 cup Maple Syrup - preferable the really good Canadian stuff! I've gotten a can in my Christmas stocking the past few years to ensure I have a stock for these cookies! Also add the egg and the maple extract. This is a bit tricky to find, but look near the vanilla in the grocery store. I've actually only found "Maple Flavouring" but I assume its the same. Beat all of those together. 

Mix together the flour, baking powder and the salt and add to the rest of the ingredients in 2 steps to make it easier. It'll make a nice smooth dough. Split it in two and flatten it if possible - this makes the rolling easier. Wrap it up in ceran wrap and chill for at least an hour - up to a day. 

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line some baking sheets with parchment paper. then start rolling out the dough. The recipe suggests to roll it between wax paper - this sort of helps, but is a bit of a pain, especially as the dough will be tough since it's cold. Don't worry this is the hardest part, just bear with it, and use those muscles!! Roll about 1/8-1/4" thick, and cut with a cookie cutter - maple leaves are very fitting, but they theoretically taste the same even if they are just circles. Keep rolling the scraps until you make as many cookies as you can. You can score the leaves with a knife to emulate the veins (not shown in this batch). Place on the baking sheet and bake spread out in the oven for 10-12 minutes - until golden brown like in the picture above. Transfer to racks to cool. 

At some point either when you're waiting for the dough to chill, or the cookies to bake, you can make the icing. Beat the butter and then add in the icing sugar, cream and maple extract. Beat until its smooth and fluffy. The 1tbsp of whipping cream is a pain, but I haven't tested to see what would be different without it yet. 

Next comes the fun part - making the sandwiches! Spread some of the icing between two cookies - about 1 tsp maybe a bit more. Try and get it spread around so you have a good cookie to icing ratio. The cookie cutter I've used in the past is pretty big. I usually only get about 25 very filling sandwiches, so if you want them to go father you might want to get a smaller cookie cutter. I got one this winter, so I'll try it out for this summer's batch. And I posted this a few weeks early so you'd have plenty of time to make a batch for Canada Day!! 

Pizza Nights!

This recipe makes great pizza dough and is super easy! I've made it both by hand kneading and with our stand mixer, and its worth it either way (albeit faster with the mixer)! The original recipe is from Crazy Plates by Janet & Greta Podleski but we've done some tweaking over the years. It's one of our favourites, and though it requires a little bit of pre-planning it gives a lot of options. The recipes are collected from many of our pizza nights, hence them magically going from only a bit whole wheat to totally and back again!

You'll need:
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (aka 1 package if you roll that way)
1 cup warm water
1 tbsp honey - I just estimate since its too messy to measure
1 tsp salt
2-2.5 cups flour
(minimum 1/2 cup whole wheat, but we've done it
almost all whole wheat - just add some extra water)
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil - again I just estimate to save on dishes!


Start by mixing the honey into the warm water, and then put the yeast in and let it sit for a few minutes to get frothy - like in the handy dandy picture! Then add the salt and olive oil.


Next add 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour and of the regular flour, and start mixing.
Add another cup of flour and keep mixing - that's usually enough for us. But, use some more if it's too sticky. Then knead it until its smooth and elastic-y.


Spray the bowl with some non stick spray and cover it and leave it alone somewhere warm and non-breezy for at least an hour. I try and make the dough in the morning before work, so it's ready for us when we get home.


Later on it should look like this!!


The cool thing about this recipe, is that it can make 2 thinner crust pizzas, or 1 thicker crust pizzas, depending on what you feel like, or how many toppings you have on hand. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Punch the dough down and form your pizzas and put them on sprayed pans. Add your toppings. And bake for 10-15 minutes depending on your oven, rotating them if you have two.

Here are some of the combos we've done recently:

Pasta sauce, cheddar cheese, jalepenos, tomatoes.

Buffalo sauce, bacon, green peppers, jalepenos, cheddar, cilantro 

Pesto sauce, chicken, caramelized onions and feta

Pasta sauce, mushrooms, tomatoes, cheddar salami

Some other things we've tried: Bbq sauce, salsa as sauce, taco meat, chorizo, capers, fresh mozerella and even making our own stuffed crust! Let us know what you try out! 

Cranberry Chocolate Tart

Back at Thanksgiving, I promised a follow up post wherein we detailed the awesome Cranberry Chocolate Tart recipe we found. It takes a bit of pre-planning, but was so light and had just the right amount of sweetness, that it's totally worth the effort. Even after our Thanksgiving meal, everyone managed at least a piece! The original recipe is from Bon Appetit Magazine, but we found it on Epicurious.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cranberry-Chocolate-Tart-240427

Here's what you need, and some step by step photos so you can make your own! It seems a bit complicated, but all the individual parts only take a few minutes, you just have to alot for all the chilling time.
There are three components to this dessert: The Crust, The Cranberry, The Filling.

Crust:
1 1/4 cups chocolate wafer cookie crumbs
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
5 to 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

     
Preheat the oven to 350. Then pulverize your chocolate graham crackers in the food processor or with a bag and a hammer, or however you so choose to make them crumby. Mix the sugar and salt in with the crumbs. Melt the butter and then pour in of the crumbs and mix it all up until its like that great sand castle sand texture. Then get your trusty springform cake pan, line it with parchment paper if you want to make your life easier, and then pack in the crumb mixture at the bottom. Try and get it flatish on top if you can. A spoon helps with this. Then throw it (gently) into the middle of the oven and bake it for about 15 minutes. You can do this the day before or the day you're making the rest, but make sure it's not still hot when you put the filling on or it will melt!

Cranberry Topping:
1/2 cup cranberry juice, divided
1 teaspoon unflavored gelatin
1 12-ounce bag fresh or frozen cranberries
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon grated peeled fresh ginger
Pinch of salt
4 tablespoons finely chopped crystallized ginger

Put the gelatin in 1/4 cup of your cranberry juice. 

Let it sit there until it gets jellyish. (not jellyfish)
     

Then in a pot, put the rest of the cranberry juice, the cranberries, the sugar, lemon juice, grated ginger and salt and boil it up! 

    

Make sure you stir it so that the sugar will dissolve into the liquid. Then let it simmer for about 5 or so minutes, until the cranberries are soft and plump. 

Strain the berries from the juice and add the gelatin to the juice. Stir away until the gelatin mixture dissolves. Then you can put the cranberries back in. Oh and add the chopped up candied ginger, it makes a huge difference! 

Then let it chill until it gets jello-y at least 8 hours, but you can do it up to 2 days ahead if you're feeling extra on the ball. 

Mascarpone Filling:
1 8-ounce container mascarpone cheese

• 1/2 cup icing sugar
• 1/2 cup chilled whipping cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Thin strips of crystallized ginger (optional garnish)
• 
  

  

Mix the marscarpone, icing sugar, whipping cream and vanilla with a mixer of some sort. Just get it thick enough to spread - apparently you can over mix it. You can make this part a day ahead too if you want. 

The Assembly:

Now you have your 3 parts, plus some extra candied ginger.
Guess what comes next?!


Layer them up! Crust, then filling, then cranberries on top! Sprinkle with the ginger if you want it extra gingery. The make sure to put it back in the fridge for a few hours so that it's easy to serve and looks awesomely impressive after dinner.


Remove it from the spring for pan and cut it up into tasty slices!


Enjoy!

Meatloaf: A Choose your own Cooking Adventure

Back in January, we received our latest issue of Fine Cooking Magazine, and on the cover was a great picture (as always) of a tasty looking meatloaf. Jerome snapped it up and read the article which was for a choose your own ingredient meatloaf recipe which gave suggestions for various combinations of meats, spices, vegetables, and a general structure for making great meatloaf. This seemed fun, so we got cooking that weekend as we had some guests coming for dinner. We opted for a southwest style meatloaf with a chipotle glaze. A variation on this recipe they had given as a suggestion

 Jerome wearing one of the chefs hats we got for Christmas to make sure I knew he was head chef and I was just the sous chef. 

 For our meat selection we chose beef. The Sirloin steak we got was on sale and actually cheaper than buying ground beef, who knew! 

 We began with the meat. And just to add to the fun, we decided to try out the meat grinding attachment for our KitchenAid Stand Mixer which we had yet to try. 

 We ground the beef once and then added chorizo to it and ground it a second time. 

 The vegetables cut and waiting to be added: onion, green pepper, jalepenos. 

 We also got a digital scale for Christmas and used it to ensure we had exactly 4 ounces of bread. 

 The vegetables then got cooked and the milk soaked bread was added.

 Then the meat, and cheese were combined while trying to keep as much air into the mixture as possible. 

 The suggestions for forming the loaf said that you should actually try and pack it as loosely as possible so that it stays light and fluffy which made it turn out really nicely. The chipotle glaze was then applied. 

The final loaf when cooked. Delicious!

It was so good, that the next day we tried it again, but with meatballs and using a different set of spices and veggies.