Monday, December 22, 2008

Cookie baking tools & reviews

So last night I made my all time favorite christmas cookie, the peppermint meringue. I love these cookies. So does my sister. And my mom. So I figured I would bring them to both my family's christmases, and whatever was leftover to Mark's family. I figured that instead of making two separate batches, I would make one batch.
DO NOT EVER DO THIS! (I will qualify this -if you have a stand mixer and two ovens, it might be okay.)
The recipe says it makes 16. I could easily say that I get 32 out of each recipe. I had to use every baking sheet I own, and that includes the baking sheet for the toaster oven. However, they did come out totally perfect and awesome...so maybe I shouldn't complain. (Although we'll see about my salmonella cookies that I cooked halfway last night and need to do the rest of this morning...)
I also put together dough for christmas cookie cutter cookies from my trusty cookbook. This is a great cookbook because they give you the reasons why their recipe is best, like that regular granulated sugar makes holes that are too big in the butter, and that you shouldn't use the creaming method for cookie cutter cookies because then there is too much flour at the end. The only problem with starting with the flour is you are basically using the pie crust method, and that is just really something you need one of these babies for. (I keep telling myself that my thrice annual need to make pie crust does not justify my taking up cabinet space with a food processor. Then I tell myself that the deep fryer takes up way more and would get used even less.
I also had to make superfine sugar, which was done in my trusty mini-chopper (I told you, its a great gift idea!) and wound up looking like an episode of Will it Blend when I opened the lid, with a cloud of sugar dust coming out. (P.S. I totally need a blendtec to make meringues, because chopping up peppermint with a hammer is no longer cutting it.)

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