Merry Christmas!

Well, it’s been awhile.  The holidays have been busy and I’ve had a lot going on!  I’ve started sewing again and so I made a t-shirt quilt and a baby blanket for my best friends baby!

My t-shirt quilt!

Braylon's baby blanket.

Isn't he the cutest?! And his fave color is yellow 🙂

So, finally, I jumped back onto the baking wagon and made something pretty generic for the season: Sugar cookies!  But the difference is that mine are not your typical, bland holiday sugar cookies.  You know the one’s that kind of have no taste and only look pretty?  These are BOTH!

I cannot believe they came out so delicious.  There’s about four left in a batch of around 48 cookies and I am planning on eating the rest tonight.  I have never made sugar cookies before (my Mom was the chocolate chip cookie kind of Mom) so this was my first of many, many more attempts!  I also bought a bucket of 101 cookie cutters from Jo-Ann Fabrics and so now I am stocked for every occasion that could possibly come my way!

Sugar Cookies

1 1/2 cups butter, softened

2 cups granulated sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

5 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

In a large bowl, mix butter and sugar until smooth.  Beat in eggs and vanilla.  Stir in flour, baking powder and salt.  Cover and chill dough for at least one hour.  

Pre-heat oven to 400F.  Roll out dough onto floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.  Cut into shapes and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.  

Cookie cutters!

Bake six to eight minutes and let cool completely.  

Ready to be frosted.

 

Sugar Cookie Frosting

(Note: This is not the smooth, hard drying, shiny ICING.  This is frosting, so it’s thicker, sweeter and the cookies should not be stacked on top of each other after frosting!)

4 cups confectioners sugar

1/2 cup shortening

5 tbsp. milk

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Food coloring

In a large bowl, mix confectioners sugar, shortening, milk and vanilla with an electric mixer until smooth and stiff.  Color with food coloring.

Christmas colors!

Amazing! Truly the best sugar cookie and frosting recipe EVER.

I also bought Christmas sprinkles from Jo-Ann Fabrics as well and adorned the cookies with those.  The big confetti sprinkles were the best!

Wilton Christmas sprinkles! Wilton is the best brand for baking essentials.

This recipe was a huge hit and very easy.  It makes A LOT of cookies, so have fun decorating and giving some away!  I plan on making really cute Valentine’s Day cookies since that’s the next holiday coming up!  Hope everyone tries this recipe, I promise that you wont be disappointed!

The Holidays Are Upon Us

I did it!  I finally made cheesecake!  After about four weeks of my co-worker bothering me about it, I made it and I made it successfully, people!  But there are many, many things I learned in the process.  One, being that you need to make cheesecake in a springform pan.  Not in a pie pan.  See: Exhibit A.

Exhibit A

This isn’t even the worst of it.  Yes, everything might look mostly normal in this photo, but this is the calm before the storm.  The cake rose, hitting the above oven grate and spilling onto the bottom of the oven.  I had to pull it out, pieces of cheesecake falling into the oven in the process.  My husband told me after he got home that cheesecakes are not meant to be made in a pie pan (cake…pie…fine I should have realized that before).  How is he always right?!

So this past weekend I went to Bed Bath and Beyond and got a set of three Oneida springform baking pans.  The three pack was only $15.00!  Great deal opposed to the Calphalon set of one that was $20.00.  I’m a sucker for deals and saving money, so long as the product is still up to par.

Anyway.  I decided to make an Oreo Cheesecake!  Reason being is because the Holiday Oreo’s just came on the shelves and I figured this would be a very cool venture.

Holiday Oreo Cheesecake

1 pkg. Oreo cookies

1/3 cup butter, melted

3 pkgs. 8 oz. cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

4 eggs

1 cup sour cream

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Pre-heat oven to 325F.  

Finely crush about 15-20 cookies and coarsely chop about ten cookies.  

Chopped Holiday Oreo's.

Mix the finely crushed cookies (I used my Kitchen Aid Immersion Blender for this.  It worked wonders!) and melted butter in a bowl.  Press onto the bottom of a 9in. springform pan.  

The Holiday Oreo crust! So fun, right?!

In an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and sugar on medium speed until creamy.  Add eggs, one at a time, and beat only until just incorporated (if you beat too much it will make the cheesecake crack.  It’s ok, it will still taste the same, but the presentation wont be as nice).  

Add sour cream and vanilla extract and fold in the chopped cookies.  Spread mixture onto prepared crust.  

Delish!

Bake for 55 to 60 minutes or until set.  If it’s really wobbly, then it’s not ready.  If it’s only slightly wobbly (one ripple), then it’s ready.  The rest will set as it cools.  

Turn off heat and leave to cool completely in the oven.  Refrigerate overnight before eating.  

I put the cookie sheet underneath the pan because the butter that was in the Oreo crust was dripping from the pan and burning the bottom of my oven. Oops.

Final product. As you can see, mine cracked a little bit on the top

Slice of Holiday Oreo Cheesecake

So it turned out pretty well!  There is A LOT of Oreo’s in there, so if you’re into plain old cheesecake and don’t like stuff super sweet, then this isn’t for you.  But for me, this is perfection!  I think it looks really cool with the Holiday Oreo’s and puts a cool twist onto something generic.  Like I said before…there was a lot learned here, but it was extremely helpful.  Plus, this has to be a pretty hilarious blog post.

People don’t just bake something and it comes out perfect.  This is the real deal of how it all goes down!  It takes time!  It takes practice and tweaking recipes until it comes out how you want it.  Everyone’s recipe’s are slightly different, and things like your oven and what you use to mix and bake in make a big difference from one recipe to another.  I’ve had a complete blast baking all of these different things, but for now, I need to go grab a slice of this cheesecake and think about what I’ll make for next week!