Galaxy Print Cookie Boxes

I hope you enjoy this set of printable boxes- one size makes a box that will hold 2 sandwich cookies (Birthday Cake Oreos shown in photo), the other box will fit 4 cookies. With the Birthday Cake Oreos, which are a tiny bit thicker than regular Oreos, the lids bulge slightly. All the boxes in the photo have cookies in them, so you can tell it's not very visible.

Click the images below for larger versions, print on card stock, cut out, score folds, fold, glue!

Cookie and Milk Chocolate Candies

Aren't those pretty with their strata of cookie crumbs? The Amazing Turnip Girl made them for her grandfather keeping in mind his tastes the entire time. Dad's a chocolate with more chocolate sort of person, so these were perfect. He also prefers milk chocolate to dark chocolate, so these instructions use that. You can absolutely use dark chocolate.

You will need:

• 7-8 ounces of good quality chocolate*
• 8-10 Oreos- crushed
• Coconut oil

You will also need:

• Double boiler or a heat-proof bowl (I use a glass mixing bowl) and a sauce pan
• spoons!
• knife
• silicone candy mold
• cookie sheet
• wax paper

*I've said this before- but good chocolate is one that's only a few ingredients. If you see a bunch of kinds of oils, or see any chemical names other than lecithin- put it down and pick a different chocolate. I don't know how those types of chocolate, or chocolate candy will work in my recipes. We used Godiva because it was on sale and I know my Dad likes Godiva chocolate. 

You can crush the Oreos in a food processor, in a heavy duty zipper type freezer bag or just using a spoon and some muscle in a good mixing bowl. The second 2 methods are fun for kids. 

Put 2 inches of water in the bottom pan of the double boiler or your improvised version of one, and then set the top or bowl on top of it. Cut chocolate bars into small chunks using a sharp knife. Bring water to a simmer over low heat, and add chocolate and 1 tsp. of coconut oil to the top bowl. Melt chocolate. As it starts to melt, stir it to incorporate unmelted pieces and just keep stirring, it melts pretty quickly. Using the coconut oil makes for shiny chocolates without having to temper the chocolate (which is another skill set and a bit more work with more tools) but the chocolate WILL have to be kept chilled because it hasn't been properly tempered and milk chocolate likes to melt.

Get your clean and completely dry mold set on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. This helps keep any accidents off your counter tops! 

Spoon a small amount of chocolate into each mold, and then a small amount of cookie crumbs using separate spoons, after you've done that in the mold cavities, fill each cavity with more chocolate.  

Then you just set it in the freezer or fridge to chill until hardened, and unmold the chocolates. The reason I like silicone molds is that you can pop them out from the bottom by pushing up on the bottom of the mold and they come unmolded beautifully. If you want to, you can put them in candy papers or mini-cupcake papers, and chill until you're ready to serve them or give them as a gift.

The flavor is wonderful, since they used a good chocolate as a base and the cookies add a nice crunch. Her Grandpa will probably love them since they combine 2 of his favorite things. Chocolate candy and chocolate cookies. You can use different cookies in them if you prefer. Ginger, vanilla, even graham crackers.

T

Baked With Love Mandala to color

It's that time of the year. The time for baking lots of cookies! I hope you enjoy this baking themed mandala to color. Click on the images for larger versions, print, color!

Small JPG version:

Large transparent PNG version:

Book Review- The Daily Cookie

The Daily Cookie - 365  Tempting Treats for the Sweetest Year of Your Life by Anna Ginsberg is wonderful collection of cookie recipes that would make a good gift for yourself or a wonderful birthday or holiday present for the baker in your life.

I was enthused about this cookbook with it's full color photos and all the cookie recipes. Many of those recipes are based on traditional favorites, some are old fashioned cookies, some are based on other classic desserts in a cookie form. Then my daughter saw it, and she loves it even more than I do. She's been reading it for pleasure.

Each day has a specific holiday or event listed, and sometimes the cookie recipes are themed for that holiday. November 11th, Veteran's Day features lemon rosemary shortbread because rosemary is for remembrance. Those sidebars frequently have a bit of information about the holiday, and sometimes other events that happened on that day.  That's the reason I think this book makes a great gift. Those little sidebars with an event for each day are charming and interesting.

The cookie recipes are great, they cover a really wide range of tastes, textures and types. Bar cookies, rolled cookies, shaped cookies and drop cookies. If you're stuck in a cookie rut of using the same recipes over and over (for me it's snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies), the variety will inspire you. There are fruity, chocolates, nutty, vanilla, candy, buttery and other flavors.

The other thing that makes this cookbook a stand out single theme cookbook is the various indices in the back of the book which list the cookie recipes by batch size, pan size, cookie type and even how easy they are to make. There is also a more traditional index by recipe name and flavor ingredients. The instructions are written in American style volume measurements, the end of the cookbook does has an equivalency table for people using metric which also includes Fahrenheit t to Celsius conversions and lists British gas marks.

This book does consider brownies to be a type of cookie and there are several brownie recipes for the people who love chocolate.

My daughter is simply charmed by this book, it's not just the cookie recipes, it's also the events and layout. I like the fact it has so many great cookie recipes that can quickly become family favorites, and that the recipes and instructions are well-written and easy to understand and follow.

Published by Andrews McMeel Publishing.
I received a complimentary copy of this book to review, I received no other compensation, and my review is my honest opinion of the book. You can read more about my review policy here.

Book Review- The Cookiepedia

The Cookiepedia : Mixing, Baking, and Reinventing the Classics by Stacy Adimando is absolutely a must have cookie book.

The author sets out to create and recreate classic cookies, and has 50 recipes total and probably has your favorite. My favorite are Snickerdoodles and they are in the section with spicy cookies.

It begins with an introduction to the pans and the tools you'll need with a quick overview about what they are used for, then into "Cookie Speak" which defines common baking terms you'll see in cookie recipes. The next part of the introduction is about decorating cookies and various techniques and ideas for that.

Then the recipe chapters. Each chapter starts with a double spread of the cookies in that chapter, photographed and shown in true scale, and looking so good you wish you could pick them off the page. The chapters themselves are arranged by cookie flavor profile. Some of the cookies also have their own full page color pages so you can see nice ways to present them.

The recipes themselves start with a description of the cookie and an adorable illustrated oven with the pre-heat temperature and the number of cookies it makes. They also frequently have sidebar tips, as well as a suggestions after the recipe for ways to modify it, and lined note sections so you can add your own notes.

Buttery starts with frosted animal cookies, and has some very traditional cookie recipes in it, it also has frosted maple pecan cookies. Maple, butter, pecans, I'm drooling a bit.

Chocolatey has recipes for standbys like chocolate chip, but also has a cream filled sandwich cookie recipe which uses butter instead of grease for the cream filling and makes a cookie that will make you swear off the blue bagged cookies forever.

Fancy Cookies are the cookies you impress adult friends with your mad baking skills. Buttery alfajores sandwich dulce de leche, French macarons with a classic almond filling are a lot of people's favorite cookies are two of my favorites from this chapter.

Fruity is fruit filled or flavored cookies. My favorite kind of store bought cookie are fig bars and there is a recipe for those, also for pretty Linzer cookies, thumb prints and homey classics like oatmeal raisin (another personal favorite!)

Spicy is my favorite chapter, with molasses spice, gingersnaps and my favorite, snickerdoodles. It also has a recipe for a cracker like savory "cookie" seasoned with salt and pepper that would be excellent on a cold day with tomato soup.

Finishing up, we have Nutty and Seed, which is cookies with nuts or seeds. Classic peanut butter cookies with their familiar fork pressed hatch marks, almond biscotti and pistachio butter cookies are my favorites in this chapter. The pine nut studded pignoli cookies are just lovely to look at and simple to make as well.

The photographs and illustrations in this book are very well done, and give it a contemporary crafty look and feel that make it a nice gift book as well as one for your personal library.

I do have one minor quibble with the binding, it's spiral bound, then cased in a regular binding. It opens flat, but if you aren't careful to close the pages before the outside binding you can bow the pages that were opened. It's a very minor quibble for a great collection of recipes.

Published by Quirk Books, you can get this book from Amazon.com using the affiliate link below.


Amazon.com affiliate links don't affect your cost, and provide extra income to me personally, which helps support my book addiction.

My reviews are always my personal and honest opinion. You can read more about my review policy here.

 If you click the cookies tag in labels, you'll find lots of printable cookie boxes!

Gingerbread Baked With Love labels

Baked With Love labels. The one above can be used in your word processing software, and it's the same size as a standard business card. The one below is ready to print and cut out and you can sign your name to it. Click on the images for larger versions.

 The cupcake themed baked with love labels from a while back.

Would you like to see this gingerbread man on a cookie box?

Grandma's Recipes- Lemon Bars

I haven't done a post from Grandma's recipe box in a while. As I've mentioned before, Grandma had a sweet tooth, so her recipes run heavily towards simple desserts. This is another lemon recipe so I used the recipe sheet posted here.
The original recipe card.

Grandma's text:

Lemon Bars

makes 15-18 bars

Holly Bradley

Mix together:

1 c. Butter or Oleo

1/2 c. Pwd. sugar

2 C sifted flour

salt

Combine.

4 Eggs beaten, 2 c. sugar, 4 Tbsp flour, 1 tsp Bk pwd, 6 Tbsp. lemon juice plus grated rind.

Put first ingredients in 9x13 pan, greased. Bake 15-20 min. at 350°- Do not brown

Pour combined ingredients and bake 20-25 min. at 350°. Sift pwd. sugar over while still warm. Cut in bars. let cool.

More modern text for people who didn't learn to cook from a recipe box.

Lemon Bars

makes 15-18 bars - Recipe from Holly Bradley's recipe box

Ingredients:

1 cup butter

1/2 cup powdered sugar

2 cups sifted flour

1/4 tsp. salt

4 eggs beaten

2 cups sugar

4 Tbsp. flour

1 tsp. baking powder

6 Tbsp lemon juice

grated rind of one lemon

Grease a 9x13 inch pan and preheat oven to 350°.

Mix first 4 ingredients, and pat into pan. Bake for 15 minutes, checking occasionally to make sure it doesn't brown.

Mix remaining ingredients while the crust is baking, and pour over crust when it comes out of the oven. Put it back in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Sift powdered sugar over the top while it's still warm. Cut into bars and let cool.

The first part of the recipe makes a nice cookie type crust, and the second part makes something like a lemon curd. Not exactly a lemon curd because the lemon juice and baking powder combine to create a bit of lightness. and it doesn't have butter in it, but a very similar flavor. It's another easy to adapt and play with recipe. I like adding nuts in the crust and a bit of vanilla in lemon mix. Other ideas are to mix cocoa powder into the crust, and substituting the lemon juice with half orange juice and the lemon zest for orange zest. Chocolate orange flavors are always good.

This recipe WILL work with Splenda or other sugar substitutes. 

Click on the image for the full sized version of the recipe sheet.

Tea and Crumpets review and a printable recipe sheet

Tea and Crumpets is a new book by Margaret M. Johnson . It's a collection of recipes from famous tea salons, hotels and restaurants all over Europe
It's a gorgeous book for adults who want to impress at tea parties with friends.I love the ritual of tea and snacks in the mid-afternoon with friends and family. The introduction is a little about the history of tea, both as a tradition and the origin of tea and how it spread world wide. There is more tea trivia interspersed through the book.
Then you get into the recipes. It's a mouth watering collection of sweet and savory things to serve with tea. From the very traditional cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches which are livened and colored with a bit of arugula to a savory and rich wild mushroom that's flavored with truffle oil, the sandwiches and savories offer a nice selection. Made less petite, many of the recipes would be good packed for a lunch as well.
The next chapter is more of what you expect with tea. Crumpets, scones and fruit quick bread recipes as well as instructions for traditional toppings like clotted cream and strawberry preserves. The Irish recipe for fruitcake looks especially wonderful. I think my daughter will enjoy making the chocolate scones because she thinks chocolate improves everything.
The next recipe chapter is the largest. Tea time sweets. Shortbread, cakes, mousses and other sorts of sweet treats that are certain to impress guests.
The last recipe chapter is the French Art of Tea for when you want something very special and very beautiful. The Creme Caramel Saint-Petersburg is a custard with caramel that anyone who loves flan or creme brulee will appreciate, and I absolutely recommend the chocolate-hazelnut pots de creme.
Most of the ingredients are simple to get at a well stocked super-market. The few things that are harder to find, a good specialty shop should carry.
Margaret Johnson also has some Irish cookbooks and I think I should get them too. I loved this one and I've been interested in learning more European cooking.
You can find this book at the publisher's site, Chronicle Books or from Amazon: Tea and Crumpets (affiliate link)

I was talking to a friend who uses a 3 ring binder and page protectors for her recipes instead of using recipe cards. I'm a recipe card user so pages for recipes never occurred to me. These are the first ones I've ever done and I hope you like them! Click on the images for the full size 100 ppi versions.

Honey Shortbread with printable recipe card

Down to crunch time for holiday gifts. Hopefully this helps!

I made this shortbread using a locally produced honey from Chugiak Heights Alaskan Honey. It's a wonderful wildflower honey with lots of flavor. You can either buy good local honey or gourmet honey and tie on the recipe cards or you could bake a few batches of shortbread and package it prettily with the recipe cards. I love shortbread and I'm working on an e-book of different recipes for it. This is one of my favorite variations. I used a combination of honey and white sugar, the honey adds a subtle warm flavor to the shortbread.

I used a white whole wheat unbleached flour for mine because it's one of the flours my family likes best.

Honey Shortbread
makes 8 wedges
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
2 Tablespoons honey
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 cup flour
Preheat oven to 300° F or 150°C
Cream butter, honey and sugar together.
Add half of flour, then add in the rest in increments until
dough is crumbly. Knead in the rest of the flour making
a soft workable dough. Pat into an 8 inch round cake pan.
Decorate edges with a fork and pierce with fork.
Score the wedges with a sharp knife. Bake for 20 minutes.
Turn off oven and let rest in hot oven for 10 minutes.
Take it out and cut wedges while still warm.
To decorate the shortbread with a fork, go around the edges with the flat of it to make pretty little score lines all around, then pierce the shortbread with the tines of the fork. Cut into 8 pieces.

For the recipe card, click on the image for the full sized version and print at 300 dpi or I have put it in a layout of 3 cards on one page in a PDF file you can download HERE

Happy Holidays!

Camouflage Cookie Boxes

Camouflage cookie boxes in 3 colors. I was originally planning on doing them in the old style camo, but decided to see if I could do a digital camo effect, then I just colored it 3 ways. I hope you like them.
The finished box size is 3x3x.75 inches printed at 100 dpi. When I showed my husband the snowflake box and said it was the right size to give someone one cookie, he said "That's not very generous. One cookie?" and I said "When I make cookies, how many are you willing to give away?" and he said "None." So I said one is a lot more generous than none.
This one I made just a little deeper. I think it will fit 2 cookies if they are fairly flat.
Just don't ask me for cookies. Except maybe shortbread. I'm still baking a lot of that working out recipes.
Click on the images for the full sized versions.

 

A flat box

This is just me playing around with a new template and some techniques but I was happy enough with the results I decided to post my test model.
The finished size is 3x3x.5 inches, which I think makes it's just the right size for one cookie, or a necklace or pair of earrings. As usual, click on the image for the full sized version and print at 100 dpi.

I hope you like it!

Maple Sugar Shortbread

Fresh homemade shortbread is so easy and so much better than store bought there just is no comparison. Fresh homemade shortbread done with maple sugar instead of white or brown is just amazing. It is more expensive though than store bought or using brown sugar.
Maple sugar shortbread-
2 cups of flour (weighs about 9 ozs) at 1.00 a lb- 57¢
.5 cup maple sugar (weighs about 3 oz)- $3.38
1 cup of butter- assuming 4.00 a lb= $2.00

So an 8 inch round pan of shortbread with maple sugar costs about 5.95 to bake.
Brown sugar would be about 40¢ for a packed half cup, and white sugar would be even less. So it costs half as much to make a batch that way.

But the maple sugar tastes so good.

Maple Sugar Shortbread-
Preheat oven to 375° F
1 cup soft butter (butter, really. Don't use margarine for this)
1/2 cup maple sugar
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (well, I'm sure other types will do, but that's what I have on hand this week)
Cream together butter and sugar. Mix in 1 3/4 cup flour, stir in the last half cup a little at a time to make a soft dough. Pat dough into an ungreased 8 inch cake pan. Prick it with a fork, and score it into 8 pieces with a knife (like cutting up a pizza). Put it in the oven for 10 minutes, turn the oven down to 300 and bake for another 20 minutes. Check to see if it's all browned and lovely. While it's still warm, cut along the scores to separate but *don't* take it out of the pan yet. It will crumble. Let it cool as long as anyone will put up with before serving.

It's pretty flexible though. My great grandfather used a similar recipe omitting the sugar, and adding in a cup of cheddar cheese, some red and black pepper and powdered onion and garlic to make savory crackers. You can use this recipe with any kind of wheat flour, or even a mix of wheat and oat flour, you can use brown, white or maple sugar. I don't recommend date. It gets weird in a lot of types of baking. You can make a snickerdoodle like shortbread by mixing in some vanilla or vanilla caviar (the seeds inside a pod, slice pod, scrape inside. Toss empty pod into a container of sugar for coffee and baking)and sprinkling the top lightly with cinnamon.

But I just made plain old shortbread. With maple sugar. Yum yum.