Christmas Cookies - Italian Sesame Seeded

Last year was the first year I found a recipe for a sesame cookie that had the consistency, taste, and aroma of an Italian Brooklyn bakery's cookie. It must have the right weight and aftertaste to be able to dunk in a cup of coffee. Besides a bagel, or a crumb bun, or a pastry, or a chunk of buttered Italian bread, a sesame seeded cookie is one of my favorite Brooklyn breakfast's.

The secret to the success is the anise extract. I opened the bottle and held it under my son's nose and asked him what he smelled. He thought medicine, or cough syrup. Huh? If anything it smells more like black licorice to me. He replied he hated black licorice and it smells "mediciney" to him. One person's delectable odor is another's gross one. Funny thing is after they were baked he couldn't stay away from the cookies. This recipe gets two big thumbs up!

INGREDIENTS

3 cups flour
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup Crisco shortening
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp anise extract
milk
raw sesame seeds

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 375
In a large bowl add eggs, sugar, Crisco, baking powder and anise extract. Mix everything well.
Add the flour and mix well.
Take a piece of dough, roll it to about 1/2" thick and cut it every 2".
Take each piece, wet it in milk and then roll it in the sesame seed.
Place all the cookies on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes.

Christmas Cookies - Robert Weinstein's Night Before the Diet Bars

Today's Christmas Cookie recipe isn't so much a cookie as it is a "bar." This is the first time I baked them and this recipe comes from The New York Cookbook. Honestly, even though they did taste better the next day with this afternoon's spot of tea, I'm not such a fan of them. I feel like something's lacking, however, the boys really liked them, and that's all right with me.

As I was just typing the ingredients I realized I did not use milk chocolate chips, but semi-sweet ones, and I wonder if that was the "thing" lacking. By the way, I have no idea who Robert Weinstein is...

INGREDIENTS

12 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1 cup milk chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 325.
Butter a 9-inch square cake pan
In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time. Add the flour and vanilla. Pour one-third of the mixture into a small bowl and set aside.

Add the melted chocolate to the large bowl and mix well. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
Pour the contents of the small bowl on top of the chocolate layer and top with walnuts and chocolate chips.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 1 hour.

Makes 18 bars.

Christmas Cookies - Venetians

The second Italian cookie recipe I'd like to share is for the ever popular Venetians, or 7-layers, or Rainbow cookies...whichever you want to call them. Up in Brooklyn in the Italian bakeries you can find these delicacies for a pretty steep price per pound. They are so worth it! Locally, here in Roanoke I've tasted three different place's version and although they looked nice they didn't taste too nice, actually not nice, seriously shitty. Yours might not come out looking professional, but if you follow the recipe below I guarantee you they will be better than anything you'll find locally, unless you live in New York City, but that's a given.

I'm not making them today, but hope to within the week...that is if I could find the Solo Almond Pastry filling in a can at the local supermarkets. For some reason the shelves at my local Kroger and Food Lion do not have a single can, and I can only pray that this product did not fall under the Elena Curse...you know about the curse...anything I like here in the south, disappears, leaves, goes out of business, etc. It's important to note that the recipe yesterday called for almond paste. This recipe calls for almond pastry filling. It's a different consistency from the paste and I find it makes a much better tasting and textured cookie. Let me know if you see any in your travels and also if you see any reasonably priced pine nuts. I'm itching to make pignoli cookies.

I'm posting this recipe now, before I make another batch and have a much better picture to show because I don't know if I'm going to find the Solo pastry filling and these take two days total to be ready.  You'll need a space in your fridge for the layers to set overnight under a weighted wooden cutting board or similar so I wanted to make sure you would be ready to undertake them in time for whenever you wanted to serve them. As usual, make sure to use butter, not margarine. Life is too short to substitute margarine for butter...

VENETIANS

Preheat oven to 350.

1 can (8 oz. almond pastry filling)
1 1/2 cup (3 sticks) butter softened
1 cup sugar
4 eggs, separated
1 tsp almond extract
2 cups sifted flour
1/4 tsp salt
10 drops green food color
8 drops red food color
1 jar (12 ounces) apricot preserves
2 1/2 squares semisweet chocolate

DIRECITONS

Coat three 13 x 9 x 2 inch pans with nonstick cooking spray. Line with wax paper, allowing paper to come up at the short ends. Spray paper.

Break up almost pastry filling in a large bowl. Add butter, sugar, egg yolks and almond extract. Beat with electric mixer until light about fluffy, about 5 minutes.

Beat in flour and sat.

Beat egg whites in a different bowl until stiff peaks form. Fold into almond mixture until well blended.

Divid mixture into 3 equal portions. Add green food coloring to one, red to another, leave last yellow. Sparely spread each potion into prepared pans.

Bake in oven 350 for about 15:00 or until edges are golden brown. Immediately remove the cakes from the pans using the waxed paper overhand.

Heat preserves in a small saucepan, strain through sieve. Place green cake layer on a jelly roll pan (or cookie sheet). Spread half of warm preserves over layer to edges. Slide yellow layer on top, spread with remaining apricot preserves. Slide pink layer, on top of yellow layer.

Cover with plastic wrap, weigh down with large wooden cutting board. Place in refrigerator overnight.

Melt chocolate in double boiler over water. (I do it in the microwave and it comes out fine, at 20 second intervals stir.) Trim edges off cake. Spread melted chocolate to edges of cake. Let dry about ten minutes until chocolate is hardened. Cut into 1 inch squares.

You know which ones they are

Christmas Cookies - Italian Jelly Filled Butter Cookies

I love baking. I love baking cakes. I love baking loaves. I love baking cookies the best. Baking is different than cooking, which I also love, but whereby cooking usually means sticking precisely to a recipe, I do a lot of baking not only by recipe, but by eye, feelings, textures, smells, hunches, etc.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it goes horribly wrong, but usually baking affords more opportunities to rectify a mistake.

Take for instance this recipe I found on a Facebook Italians from Bensonhurst site...It's entitled, "Ultimate Italian Jelly Filled Finger Sandwich Butter Cookies." The poster promised these are the real thing that you would find in an Italian Brooklyn bakery, say like one on 18th Avenue. There wasn't any photo so I don't know what their results looked like, but when I first took mine out of the oven I was really disappointed. It was probably my fault as the recipe calls for using a pastry bag with a star tip. I didn't have one so planned to use my mother's old cookie press that has pastry tips and sausage nozzles. I use it to fill canneloni. When I took it out of the box I realized the attachment for the pastry tips were missing, so I did what any good Italian baker would do...improvise...and I used the sausage nozzle instead. What a mess!

The texture of the dough made it challenging to put it into the cookie press tube to the bottom. By the seventh time of putting the dough into the press my tennis elbow arm was rebelling and I just gave up by plopping spoonful's of dough onto a baking sheet and sprinkled some colored sugars on them. You won't be seeing any photos of that!

Anyway, when I first saw the little fingers coming out of the oven I was disappointed because they weren't identical and a little thinner than I hoped. I didn't even taste them. I was annoyed that it took me so long to make them and they looked nothing like I had imagined. After dinner my daughter and I sat at the table and began to rectify the "mistakes." First we found pairs that were almost the same size. On one of the cookies we spread raspberry unseeded preserves then pressed the other cookie on top. We did all of them life that. Then we took Baker's dark chocolate and melted it in the microwave. I'd brush the chocolate on the cookie, hand it to her and she would sprinkle the sprinkles on it and then place them sideways on a cookie sheet with parchment paper on it so they wouldn't stick when hardened.

When we tried them I was much happier. Even though they didn't look "professional" they tasted great and according to my daughter way better than bakery ones! Now that is a compliment! I would recommend using a pastry bag or if not, using a plastic ziploc baggie with a star nozzle cut through the bottom. Why didn't I think of that before???? Also, I'm sorry I didn't do half with apricot preserves to mix it up. Naturally, you can use any type of sprinkles, coconut flakes, nuts, or even just powdered sugar as the finishing touch. Two more points...use butter, not margarine and the almond paste is a must. Below is the recipe...Enjoy!

Italia Jelly Filled Finger Sandwich Butter Cookies

Ingredients:

3 1/4 cup flour
7 oz butter room temperature
7 oz shortening
1 cup + 2 tbs confectioners sugar
4 egg whites
3 oz almond paste
salt pinch
1 tsp almont extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
Choice of jelly filling, chocolate for dipping and sprinkles for finish.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350

In a large mixer bowl, cream lightly the butter, shortening and sugar until fluffy and pale, about 3 minutes. Add the egg whites, almond paste, almond and vanilla extracts and mix until combined At low speed add the combined dry ingredients and mix until just blended.

Place into a pastry bag fitted with a star tip, pipe onto a parchment lined cookie sheet, cutting 2 inch fingers and spacing two inches apart.

Bake for 10 - 14 minutes just until the bottoms and edges begin to turn golden brown. Remove from pans by sliding the whole piece of parchment onto a large wire rack and cool completely.

Sandwich 2 finger cookies with choice of jelly in between. Dip one end (we did both) in melter chocolate and cover with sprinkles. Or just leave plain with a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

Christmas in Manhattan 2010 Revisited

In honor of the Rockefeller Center tree being lit last night, and since I'm not there, I'm pulling out an old post from 2010 called Christmas in Manhattan which has a couple of pretty cool shots...enjoy! Can't believe it's been four years already...

P.S. I think the girl looks way better in dark hair than as a blonde!!!

*****Christmas in Manhattan****

There's no city that does Christmas better than New York City so this year we decided to head up before Christmas instead of after. If you're not in the Christmas spirit when you arrive, after spending even just one day in Manhattan, you probably will be. On this trip my daughter got to see neighborhoods of Manhattan she hasn't before (more on that in another post another day). I actually found a parking space in Soho after only fifteen minutes...quite a feat I assure you! We started walking through Little Italy on our way to Chinatown (more on that later too).





After lunch we headed up to Macy's. It was a zoo.



Too many people in midtown caused us to head uptown where we encountered beautiful lit trees and even more people.



Like every other "tourist" in the world we simply had to go to Rockefeller Center. This time my daughter was able to see the tree in the dark. It was quite spectacular.











As I wrote in yesterday's post, as we were standing there music filled the air. We all turned to see where it was coming from...



and were treated to a 3D light show on Saks Fifth Avenue's wall, entitled "The Snowflake and the Bubble"...if you haven't watched it you should.



Afterwards we went into St. Patrick's Cathedral which was as beautiful as always. Unfortunately there were so many people I couldn't get near the gift shop.



After St. Pat's we headed to Sephora where the girl stocked up on more cosmetics. As we were shopping I heard someone call my name. When I turned to see who it was I was surprised to see it was someone I knew from Roanoke! How wild is that??? In a city of millions I run into someone from little ole Roanoke. I was surprised she recognized me as I was sporting a new haircut which my cousin said was a "little Chinese boy's haircut." Funny thing is that a cool Chinese boy cut it for me! From there we headed back home to Brooklyn, where the next day we experienced Christmas in Dyker Heights. If Manhattan couldn't put one in a Christmas mood, Brooklyn certainly could! Pics to come tomorrow....

Strouffler Eve

If it's Christmas Eve Eve, it must be strouffler time! Even though I am totally
backed up due to the major plumbing catastrophe, if I didn't make stroufflers Christmas would be ruined! No, not really. Anyway, here's the recipe for anyone that wants it:



6 eggs
4 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
3 tbs Crisco

Mix flour, baking powder and sugar. Add Crisco. Make a well in the middle and put eggs into it. Mix together until smooth. Make long snakes, cut into pieces, then roll by hand into balls. Make them small -- they expand!

Fry them in tall pot in Crisco. Place cooked balls on a brown paper bag.

In a large pot heat a jar of honey with a 1/4 cup sugar. Stir until thin. Throw balls into them, mix with wooden spoon to cover all of the balls. Then plate and sprinkle with nonpareils.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

Max Was My Santa Dog

As I stated in my last post, this is the first year we will be celebrating Christmas without Max, my Welsh Corgi. In his memory I'd like to revisit and share a blog post from 2010. Notice how he treated the Christmas tree vs. our new addition...

My Santa Dog

One of the happiest members of this household to see the return of the Christmas tree is my dog Max.



He watches carefully, wagging the nub as we hang the lights and ornaments, and waits patiently while we vacuum up all the pine needles. That's the one time he doesn't attack the vacuum cleaner! Although Santa does bring him a new toy each year he doesn't wait for the 25th to find his present. As soon as we're done vacuuming Max fetches his "babies" and places them under the tree.



From now until we take the tree down you can find Max lying under it, baby by his side, treat in mouth, watching himself in the mirror. Max is my little Santa Dog. And yes, I actually did name him after the Grinch's dog. Max is so smart that when presents are placed under the tree he puts his babies on top of them and he has never, ever eaten the cookies we leave out for Santa.



What a good boy, and cute too! Now if only I could get him to stop smoking those stogies he'd be the perfect pet...

The Power of a Pet

Too many Christmas carols and the memories they bring have affected my shopping habits. It seems I can't go into a store without stopping midstream. As soon as I hear Nat King Cole sing "The Christmas Song," I think of my mother cutting crosses in chestnuts and placing them in the oven. My heart swells as I notice the sweater, perfume, or a million other things at my fingertips that would have been the perfect gift for her, if she was still alive.

When the first strains of "I'll Be Home for Christmas" rings out of another store's PA system, I find myself in front of a VHS-DVD recorder that my father would have been amazed by, and think of the countless hours we could have spent transferring his enormous collection of tapes.

Boris Karloff calls forth my cousin John Paul and the roast beast dinners we shared on Christmas Eve at Grandma's as children. The Grinch doll winks at me in the Hallmark store, and I flee before I break down.

I sit on a bench in the bustling mall, alone, surrounded by people.

I think the puppies will make me feel better so I head there, but stop myself when I see the picture of a Welsh Corgi hanging on the wall. Max. This is the first Christmas without Max. "O Holy Night" has nothing to do with him, but it sends me over the edge and out the doors.

I arrive home, empty-handed, once again. Bella keeps her distance as I cradle the tin that holds Max's ashes. Once the tears begin, Bella jumps on the bed and wipes them away with her tongue. Her snaggle tooth sticks me in my lip, and her love snaps me out of my grief. That's the power of a pet. If you don't have one, please consider visiting your local shelter and take one home. Give yourself a Christmas gift...a pet, the best gift ever.

Merry NYC Christmas

Just a couple of shots to wish you all a Merry NYC Christmas...

Strouffler Time

It's that time of the year to bring out the Strouffler recipe...got everything except the brown paper bags...heading out again!



6 eggs
4 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
3 tbs Crisco

Mix flour, baking powder and sugar. Add Crisco. Make a well in the middle and put eggs into it. Mix together until smooth. Make long snakes, cut into pieces, then roll by hand into balls. Make them small -- they expand!

Fry them in tall pot in Crisco. Place cooked balls on a brown paper bag.

In a large pot heat a jar of honey with a 1/4 cup sugar. Stir until thin. Throw balls into them, mix with wooden spoon to cover all of the balls. Then plate and sprinkle with nonpareils.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

Birth Announcement

Remember last year when we found our four deer in rather compromising positions?





Well, it was a fruitful union...



Say hi to Baby Doe and Baby Buck...



The family grows...

Bright Friday

For some, the day after Thanksgiving is a day to spend in stores, shopping, shopping, shopping. Not this family. We don't refer to today as Black Friday, we refer to it as Bright Friday. For tonight, the dark, gloomy hilltop will be awash in bright lights. Motorists will be able to see what lies ahead around the turn and up the hill. The walkers will have their dangerous path lit. And the critters, well, now I'll be able to see what exactly has emerged from the rustling in the woods.

My husband lucked out. It's supposed to be in the 60's today and tomorrow. Usually his task is a three-day affair. With the possibility of a cold rain looming on Sunday I am urging him to take advantage of today and tomorrow. Every year we add a little something, and this year there will be a birth announcement. I'll wait until I can post a pic to elaborate.

While he's working on the outside, I'll be working inside. I already started yesterday with the cleaning and making the Goodwill box. After everything is dusted and polished I can begin the transformation. My son brought up the wooden Advent calendar yesterday. It's heavy, awkward, and needs to be put together. He is the master of the two screws. That is his contribution to Christmas decorating. Still, he says, "I feel like I just took this apart."

The girl always helps with the inside. But this year she might vary from the routine. She is helping, but it's by editing together a NYC Christmas Pic video over Sinatra's "New York, New York." "I wish I had video, and not just photos," she says. They're our photos, and hopefully she will feel creative and produce a piece in time for the "NYC...Live in Roanoke" event.

In my travels, I'll probably find gifts that I had bought last year and hid so well that I forgot to hand them out. I'll find the Memory Box and read through cards and notes of Christmas past by loved ones who are no longer with us. I will tear up and hold some of them to my heart, and just when I think I can't take it any more, I'll spy a letter from Santa Claus written in 1986 to my first baby, Alex. I'll read it aloud to him, as I stroke the golden Welsh Corgi ornament that sits in the special place on my tree, the front top.

Behind that letter, lies another one from Santa Claus to the replacement baby, Max.



Written when he was just a pup it's a funny letter telling him not to herd the boy, chew boots, or eat his own poo. Ten years later, he still does two out of those three things. My boots are safe.

This year, thanks to a mega clearance at Sears last year, I will be replacing my regular indoor lights with lcd's. I will give them a shot, but if they don't give me the warm, cozy, golden light that says Christmas, I'm taking them down.

Got a lot to do, so I'll catchya later.

White Christmas Night in Roanoke

Finally I have a camera that allows me to take decent night time shots. I am loving my Samsung!

Christmas night in Roanoke, VA...

White Christmas in Roanoke

The snow is falling in Roanoke, and my dream of a White Christmas came true. The Yule Log is playing in the background, the smells of sausage and braciole simmering in the pot of gravy fills the air, cookie crumbles dot the table. Tattered wrappings and ribbons cover the floor. Max loves his new baby. Yes, Santa brought me a new camera. I am so thankful for my family.

Peace and joy from our family to yours...