Nutella Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

Nutella Peanut Butter Cookies - made cookie dough December 17, 2011 from Everyday Insanity's blog

Really good with nutella swirled in

I got the original recipe for this from another baker's blog (please click on the recipe title to go to Cindy's Everyday Insanity blog for the original recipe).  I loved how they stayed thick and just looked yummy.  Plus I'm a Costco shopper myself and have those big jars of peanut butter and nutella that I "have" to use up.  No better time than the holidays when I have a lot of baked gifts to give and enough reliable standbys that I could afford to take a chance on a little recipe experimentation.

The unbaked cookie dough balls - freeze first before baking

The baked version of the cookies

I did modify it slightly though so I am listing my changes below as well as spelling out the instructions a bit more for any newer bakers.  Plus I added directions of what I usually do when I make cookie dough: make into dough balls and freeze for baking later.  It also appears from the original recipe that you're supposed to mix the nutella thoroughly into the batter to give it a uniform appearance.  I took it a different direction and instead just dropped dollops of it throughout the batter and was careful not to mix it too much.  Instead, I left it as swirls, like the almond butter and nutella swirl cookies.  Not surprisingly, my version came out looking different than Cindy's.  But I hope just as good.  These were definitely reminiscent of the almond butter and nutella swirl cookies.  They didn't spread much and stayed thick.  Underbaking them slightly gives a very moist, dense texture that partners well with the nutella swirls mixed in.  They are more fragile that way though so you want to make sure these cool and firm up a bit before moving them.  They also wouldn't survive being mailed so it's best to enjoy them in person or giving them away on plates or some kind of flat surface.  I stacked a few on each plate for my giveaways, surrounded by the Almond Joy Brownie Bombshells and that seemed to work.

1 cup flour

1 cup oatmeal

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup peanut butter (I used smooth)
1/2 cup golden brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

2/3 cup Nutella

1. Mix flour, oatmeal, baking soda, baking powder and salt together and set aside.
2. Beat butter in the bowl of a mixer until soft; add peanut butter and beat to combine until lump free.  Add both sugars and beat until combined, 2-3 minutes.
3. Add egg and vanilla, mix another minute. 
4. With mixer on low, gradually add dry ingredients till just combined. 
5. Stir in Nutella by hand but do not mix in completely - you want swirls of it through the cookie dough.
6. Portion into cookie dough balls and place in the freezer to firm up for 30-60 minutes.  Once they're firm, either place dough balls in freezer storage bags to bake later or else bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Homemade Almond Joy Brownie Bombshells

Homemade Almond Joys - made December 17, 2011, adapted from 2 different recipes

Ever since I made the homemade Twix brownie bars, I've been wanting to make a homemade Almond Joy brownie version as well.  Almond Joys are another favorite candy from childhood because they're milk chocolate, coconut and almonds.  I don't like Mounds as well because they're dark chocolate but I love Almond Joys.  Nowadays I don't really eat them except as a topping to a brownie but I thought it would be fun to make these.  They turned out a bit bigger than I expect so I decided to name them Almond Joy Brownie Bombshells.

I basically just put two recipes together to make these.  Coincidentally, they both had Florida in their titles so that seemed to cry out to put them together.  I made the coconut filling from the Florida Chocolate-Dipped Coconut Patties recipe below, except I left out the milk chocolate coating and used milk chocolate candy melts instead.

For the brownies, I used Nick Malgieri's recipe from his latest book, Bake, that I had borrowed from the library awhile back.  I didn't beat the batter as much as the recipe directed though as I didn't want really light and airy brownies.  I just needed a good brownie base for the coconut topping to sit on.  Instead of a 9 x 13 pan, I half-filled mini muffin tins for a little round base, centered a whole roasted almond on top of each one and topped with a small scoop of the coconut filling.  I still had a lot of batter leftover even after making 48 mini brownie bases so I poured the rest into a 9 x 9 pan and made them as regular brownies which I then topped with the nutella crunch topping.

bad lighting at night, pic a little blurry

For the bombshells I melted the candy melts and carefully spread it all over each one, coating them as completely as possible except for the bottoms.  It's more difficult to do evenly with these than the Twix version because the coconut was a little sticky and didn't want to stay put on top of the brownie base but it wasn't too hard.  If you don't want them too big, you might use less of the coconut filling on top of each one and mash it a little flat.  Overall I thought these came out pretty well.  They look like gigantic truffles and definitely had the homey look rather than the professionally-dipped look, lol.  But I liked them.  I ran out of the coconut filling and had leftover little brownie bases so I put those in a ziploc freezer bag and stuck them in the freezer.  They can easily be "repurposed" at a future date for a future dessert: drop a couple in a bowl, warm up in the microwave and top with vanilla ice cream.

Left the almond out of the taste test piece because it wouldn't stay put

Florida Chocolate-Dipped Coconut Patties

Source: Spago Chocolate by Mary Bergin and Judy Gethers

1 ¼ cups confectioners’ sugar

2 ounces (½ stick) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1 egg white

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 ¼ cups (5 ounces) coconut, unsweetened or sweetened, packed

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

4 ounces semisweet or milk chocolate, cut into small pieces (if using milk chocolate, add 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil while melting)

1.    Make the coconut filling: In a medium heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, whisk together the confectioners’ sugar, butter, egg white, and salt until very liquid and warm to the touch, about 10 minutes.

2.    Remove from the heat and, with a spoon, stir in the coconut and vanilla until well combined.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours, up to overnight.

3.    When ready to coat the coconut, in a small heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, melt the chocolate.  When almost melted, turn off the heat and let the chocolate continue to melt completely, stirring occasionally.  Keep the bowl over the warm water.

4.    Form the balls: line a small tray with parchment paper.  Using a scant ounce of the coconut mixture, roll into a small ball and place on the parchment-lined tray.  Repeat with the remaining mixture, forming 18 balls.

5.    Arrange 18 paper or foil minicups on the tray.  Gently place one of the balls into the warm melted chocolate and, using two forks, roll the ball in the chocolate until well coated.  Lift (do not pierce) the coated coconut ball with one of the forks, allowing some of the chocolate to drip back into the bowl, and carefully place in one of the prepared cups.  Repeat with the remaining coconut balls and melted chocolate.  Refrigerate until the chocolate has hardened and use as desired.

Florida Brownies

Source: Bake! By Nick Malgieri

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter

8 ounces premium unsweetened chocolate, cut into ¼-inch pieces

5 large eggs, at room temperature

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon salt

3 ¾ cups sugar

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

One 9 x 13-inch baking pan, lined with buttered foil

1.    Set a rack in the middle level of the oven and preheat to 375⁰F. 

2.    Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Let the butter get hot and start to sizzle after it’s melted.  Remove the pan from the heat and add the chocolate all at once.  Gentle shake the pan to submerge all the chocolate in the butter. Set aside.

3.    Combine the eggs, vanilla, and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.  First whisk by hand to mix.  Whisk in the sugar by hand.

4.    Whip on medium-high speed for 10 minutes, until very light.

5.    Whisk the butter and chocolate smooth and scrape into the mixer bowl.  Whip on lowest speed just until smooth, then stop the mixer.

6.    Sift the flour onto a piece of paper, bend the paper and slide the flour into the bowl.  Mix again on lowest speed until the flour is absorbed.

7.    Remove the bowl from the mixer and use a large rubber spatula to give a final mixing to the batter.

8.    Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

9.    Bake the brownies until they are firm, but not dry, and the point of a paring knife inserted in the center of the pan emerges with moist crumbs clinging to it, about 35 minutes.

10.  Cool in a pan on a rack.  Unmold the brownies to a cutting board and remove the pan and paper.  Cover with another board and invert the whole stack.  Remove the top board and wrap the brownies on their board in a double thickness of plastic wrap.  Keep the brownies at cool room temperature overnight before cutting.

Baked gifts

If I blogged about everything I've baked since Thanksgiving, whether a new recipe or a previously made one, you'd see a flood of daily postings, sometimes multiple times a day, especially on the weekends.  But instead, here are some (not all) of the care packages and baked gifts I've sent out or given away to family and friends so far this holiday season.  As I've posted previously, part of the fun of giving away baked treats is packaging them up to look pretty.  I don't do a lot of fancy-looking desserts as I focus more on taste than decoration but I rely on the packaging to make a nice presentation.  Most of this stuff I got from Michaels and Target.  The labels I ordered online.

I have another marathon baking session coming up this weekend so stay tuned....

Brownies and Lemon Bars

Holiday Caramel Treats and Almond Butter & Nutella Swirl Cookies

Diamond-Edged Melt-in-Your-Mouth Butter Cookies

Buttery Tea Balls, Almond Butter & Nutella Cookies, Alton Brown CCC

Red Velvet cupcakes, Red Velvet Cookies and White Chocolate Toffee Macadamia Cookies

Baking Fail - when the baking gods forsake you

Sometimes even tried-and-true recipes can fail.  Or at least I've proven they can.  I wanted to make Red Velvet Cookies for a friend last weekend because I know how much she likes cream cheese and these had the cream cheese frosting on top.  Plus 'tis the season for red velvet.  I've made these cookies countless times so you'd think they'd come out consistently well each time.  Apparently.....not so.

Everything was fine at first - mix the batter, melt the chocolate, preheat the oven.  When I make this recipe, I let the melted chocolate cool a bit since I didn't want to add it hot to the batter and possibly melt the butter, thereby changing the texture of the recipe.  But it was cold in my kitchen early Saturday morning and I was (again) multi-tasking on other baking projects so it appears I waited a little too long and the melted chocolate cooled a little too much.  As in, when I added it to the batter, instead of being warm enough and free flowing enough to blend seamlessly with the rest of the (probably also cold) batter, parts of it seized up and became little solid chocolate flecks.  Uh-oh.  I couldn't heat up the batter enough to melt the chocolate and I didn't have time to start over with a new batter.  So I decided to plow forward and hope for the best.  Besides having solid flecks of unsweetened chocolate in the batter, it was also more pink than red because the chocolate hadn't added to the batter in enough liquid form to give it more color.  Darn.

uh, those chocolate bits are not intentional chocolate chips - baking fail

One thing I always watch out for with this cookie recipe is to bake it properly.  I followed the directions of having the oven at 375 degrees and I knew I would have to pounce on it at 7-9 minutes to take it out in time for a fudgy texture.  If it bakes even a minute or two too long, it becomes more of a spongy-cakey texture and that's not what I wanted.  Well, I checked it at 8 minutes and to my surprise, the cookies were already puffed up and looked done rather than underdone.  Shoot.  Took them out, slid in another cookie sheet and this time strove to take them out sooner.  I also lowered the oven temp to 350, thinking my oven might be too hot.  If I had hoped the unsweetened chocolate flecks would melt a little into the cookie dough, I was doomed to disappointment.  They remained fleck-ish.

Second cookie sheet came out at exactly 7 minutes.  Looked a little underdone but I wasn't taking any chances.  Put the third cookie sheet in and raised the oven temp back to 375 as 350 seemed a little too low.  By this time, the first cookie sheet actually looked decent and not underdone as the cookies had cooled and settled into fudginess.  Hmm, I think I may have been psyched out byt the baking gods.  Third cookie sheet baked fast again but I think I got them out at the right time.  Now it was time to frost and taste test  them.  Ironically, the first cookie sheet turned out the best, the second was too raw and the third was okay.  I had already frosted all of them so I couldn't put the second sheet back into the oven to bake a little more.  Almost total fail.

I brazened it out anyway, picked out the best ones and prettied them up for my friends' goodie plates that day.  They tasted okay.  They just weren't up to my usual standard.  I had made a couple of other things as well but didn't have enough to not give the cookies so I included them and made excuses to my friends later.  That's not something I normally would do but I was pressed for time and had to just deal with it.  This is the kind of thing I hate when it happens and I hate even more having to admit it and blog about it but at the end of the day, it's just a cookie, it's one baking fail amongst other successes and I have forgiving friends :).  Dust off the flour and move on to the next cookie.

Caramel Brownies

Caramel Brownies - made December 10, 2011

This is just a modified version of Rosie's Award-Winning Brownies.  I had melted caramel leftover from the Holiday Caramel Treats and rather than letting it go to waste, I made Rosie's brownies, spread 1/3 to almost 1/2 of the batter on the bottom, spread the caramel layer evenly over it and covered it completely with the remaining batter.  Voila, caramel brownies.

When I bake with caramel, I try to have it be inside the brownie and covered completely.  Any caramel that bubbles out tends to get a bit too hard/chewy once it cools again.  Whereas if you have it inside, it's still soft-chewy and helps keep your brownie moist.  You can use any brownie recipe with the caramel but I recommend brownies that use more dark chocolate or unsweetened chocolate.  The caramel provides enough of the sweetness and will help complement a dark chocolate brownie.  If you use in milk chocolate brownies, it might be a little too sweet.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Red Velvet Cupcakes - made December 9, 2011 from the King Arthur Flour holiday preview 2011 catalog

It's the season of red velvet.  I've been hankering for a new red-velvet-something recipe and this one fit the bill.  I got it from the King Arthur Flour holiday preview catalog as I'm on their mailing list and I like trying out their recipes.  The downside of using one of their catalog recipes, however, is it almost always calls for an ingredient found only or mostly on their website - it is a product catalog for a reason.  However, usually the more specialized ingredients are optional so I typically do without it or substitute something else.  In this case, I used red food coloring for the "red velvet flavor" and skipped the cake enhancer.

I had the taste test cupcake while it was still warm from the oven and unfrosted.  Almost needless to say, it was delicious.  The texture was soft and it was moist.  You almost can't not like a warm cupcake. The true taste test, however, is when the cupcake is at room temperature.  It was still good but a bit more dense since I probably underbaked it slightly in my abhorrence of dry, overbaked cupcakes.  I still haven't mastered the art of a perfect cupcake.  I like the texture of Sprinkles cupcakes (their red velvet is one of my favorites, along with their banana, pumpkin, orange......actually, I think I like all their flavors except the chocolate one) but mine don't come out as light in texture, no matter which recipe I try.  I don't think it's necessarily the recipe but my timing on when I take the cupcakes out of the oven.  Haven't conquered that trick yet.

I made these for some friends I met yesterday and instead of using the standard cupcake liners, I made them in the mini panettone molds that I ordered from (of course) amazon.  I love using these molds.  They're stiff enough that you can pour the batter in and bake them on a baking sheet, no muffin tin needed.  Plus they're just cuter than cute.  The only downside is if you fill them enough to bake cupcakes to the top, they'll be bigger than a regular cupcake.  Oh, did I say that was a downside?

½ cup (4 ounces) unsalted butter
¼ cup (1 ¾ ounces) vegetable oil
1 ¾ cups (12 ¼ ounces) granulated sugar, superfine preferred
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons red velvet flavor (I used red food coloring)
1 tablespoon cake enhancer, optional
2 large eggs
3 cups (12 ounces) cake flour, sifted
¼ cup (¾ ounce) Dutch process cocoa
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (8 ounces) buttermilk

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place cupcake papers into two 12-cup muffin pans or lightly grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans (to make a layer cake).
2. Mix the butter, oil, sugar, salt, color, flavor, and cake enhancer, beating until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well and scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl after each addition.
3. Sift together the flour, cocoa, and baking soda. Alternately add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk to the creamed mixture, one third at a time, beating well after each addition.
4. Spoon the batter into the prepared pans, and bake the cupcakes for about 18-21 minutes, or the cake for 26-28 minutes, until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove the cupcakes from the oven, cool on a rack for 5-10 minutes, then turn out of the pans to cool on the rack.

Yield: 24 cupcakes or two 9” round layers

White Chocolate Toffee Macadamia Cookies

White Chocolate Toffee Doodles - made December 8, 2011 from Something Swanky's blog

I'm a follower of Something Swanky's blog and like Dorothy's Crazy for Crust blog, Ashton of Something Swanky always has some killer desserts and recipes on her blog.  I liked this one, both for the flavors and because it just looked yummy.  Judging by the recipe, it also seemed like a safe bet to try out for the holidays and have it turn out.  When I do try a new recipe during the holidays, I like the safety net of knowing it turned out well for another baker and that they recommend it.  Bonus that it was easy to mix up when I had 15 minutes and could sit in the freezer until I needed to bake it for a social event.

The only thing I changed from the original recipe (click on the blog title for the recipe) is I added macadamia nuts in addition to the white chocolate chunks and toffee bits and I baked at a convection oven setting of 350 degrees instead of the 375 degrees in Ashton's recipe.  This turned out pretty well.  But do not overbake these.  I would only bake until the middles look just barely raw.  I baked the first batch at 375 degrees and they baked up faster than I thought.  I didn't burn them but I definitely baked them instead of underbaking them.  They were fine but not as moist as I like my cookies.  I had better results with the second cookie sheet when I baked them at 350 degrees and took them out when the edges were brown and the middles were just past not-doughy-looking.  They were great then.  The edges were crisp but the middle was soft and chewy.  I think I would've been better off without the macadamia nuts so that the flavor wouldn't compete with the toffee.  But the cinnamon in the dough was a nice flavor enhancer and I enjoyed these.  Thanks, Ashton, for a great recipe.

Diner-Style Powdered Buttermilk Doughnuts

Doughnut Holes - made December 3, 2011 from Diner Desserts by Tish Boyle

This is the other new recipe I tried for last Saturday's little dessert get together with my high school friends. The main thing I changed from the recipe is I made them all as doughnut holes and didn't cut them out as doughnuts.  Because they were only one of several treats I was serving at my dessert gathering, I didn't want any one dessert to be too big.  Doughnut holes were less of a commitment than doughnuts and left my guests free to sample everything else.  Although, as you can tell from the pictures, these look like really misshapen doughnut holes, lol.  I used a small round cookie cutter for them but they came out more like little biscuits that fried to their own interesting shape.  But they still tasted good.  They're more like cake doughnuts since they're not yeasted or, as one of my friends' kids put it, "they taste like churros".  As expected, they were best when warm but even after they had cooled, they were still crisp on the outside.  Their texture is a bit heavy so it's best to make them small.  If I make them again, I would make them half the size of these.

3 ½ cups cake flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons salt

¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

¾ cup granulated sugar

¾ cup buttermilk

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 large egg, at room temperature

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Vegetable oil for frying

1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted

1.    In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  Add the sugar and stir the dry ingredients with a whisk until combined.

2.   In a medium bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, melted butter, egg, and vanilla until blended.  Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour the buttermilk mixture into it.  Using a rubber spatula, stir until the mixture forms a soft, moist dough.  Dust a work surface with flour.  Scrape the dough onto the work surface and lightly sprinkle the top of the dough with flour.  Gather the dough into a ball and knead it gently 5 or 6 times, or until smooth.  Roll or pat the dough into a round roughly 10 inches in diameter and ½ inch thick.  Transfer the round to a baking sheet, cover it with plastic wrap, and place it in the freezer for 15 minutes or until firm.

3.   Using a 3-inch doughnut cutter (or a 3-inch round biscuit cutter and a ¾-inch cutter or pastry tip for the hole), cut out 7 doughnuts and holes from the dough.  Gather the scraps together, reroll ½ inch thick, and cut out 3 more doughnuts and as many holes as possible.  Place the doughnuts and holes on a baking sheet or 2 plates, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate while heating the oil for frying.

4.   Pour the oil into a deep-fat fryer or large straight-sided saucepan to a depth of 2 to 3 inches.  Heat the oil to 370⁰F.  Line a baking sheet with paper towels.

5.   Fry the doughnuts and holes in small batches, turning once for 2 to 3 minutes, or until golden brown.  Using a slotted spoon, transfer to the paper towels to drain, then place on a wire rack to cool completely.

6.   When the doughnuts and holes are completely cool, place the confectioners’ sugar in a medium bowl.  Generously dredge the doughnuts and holes in the sugar, shaking off the excess.  Serve the same day.

Holiday Caramel Treats

Holiday Caramel Treats - made December 4, 2011 from Prize Winning Cookies from Current customers (book #178)

I had my holiday dessert party with my high school friends yesterday and it was a lot of fun.  It was great to catch up with everyone and you know you're very fortunate when, after everyone has left, you realize what nice friends you have.  This is what the holidays are about, not the stress of preparing for them :).

To help alleviate that stress, I went with some reliable stand-by recipes.  I had prepared enough cookie doughs in advance that I could (and did) change my mind as to what to serve.  My friend Lisa likes lemon bars so I made those, using my old standby recipe since I had already made my new favorite, the Three-Layer Lemon Bars, last week:

I also made the peanut butter kiss cookies that always seem to be a holiday favorite

As well as a year-round favorite, Alton Brown's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Since I had enough of the tried and true cookies to serve, I also decided to try a new recipe.  A few of my friends were bringing their kids so I included this cookie as something fun for the dessert table for them.  I felt safe taking a calculated risk on this new recipe because the base recipe is very similar to Mexican Wedding Cakes but without the nuts in the dough and you cover it with caramel instead of powdered sugar.  I can live with that.  Plus it's the kind of recipe I need to try for parties rather than care packages since anything covered in caramel usually don't package well or ship well. 

After the cookies are baked, you stick a toothpick in the center, let them cool then dip them in caramel and roll them in nuts.  I switched it up a bit in case anyone didn't like nuts and did a few in red and green sprinkles for the kids.  Make sure your caramel is thin enough to be dipped in but not so thin that they don't coat the cookie.  Keep the caramel warm and after you coat the whole cookie, let the excess caramel drip off before rolling it in nuts (or sprinkles).  I did have a little difficulty with the nuts clumping a little because of the caramel.  Make sure to grind the nuts fine.  I ground them on the "coarse" setting in my nut grinder so the pieces were a little bit big which I didn't mind from a taste standpoint but they might've looked prettier had they been more finely chopped.  In general though, I liked how these turned out.  The cookies themselves were like a little vanilla butter cookie and were the perfect foil for the sweetness of the caramel and the crunch of the toasted almonds.

Cookies

¾ cup butter, softened

½ cup powdered sugar

1 large egg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

½ teaspoon liquid maple flavor or almond extract

Dash of salt

2 cups all-purpose flour

48 round wooden toothpicks

Coating

36 caramels, unwrapped

¼ cup milk

1 cup finely chopped peanuts, walnuts or almonds

1.   Heat oven to 350⁰F.  Have baking sheets ready.

2.   To make cookies, beat butter and powdered sugar in a large bowl with electric mixer until fluffy.  Beat in egg, vanilla, maple flavor and salt.  On low speed, gradually beat in flour.  Form dough into forty-eight balls, about 1 inch in diameter.  Place 1 ½” apart on baking sheets.  Bake 12 to 14 minutes until balls are set, but not browned (tops may crack slightly).  Insert a toothpick into center of each.  Cool on wire racks.

3.   To make coating, melt caramels in milk, stirring often.  Keep warm over a pan of hot, not boiling water.  Dip each cookie into the caramel mixture, coating completely and drawing bottom of cookie across edge of pan to remove excess caramel.  Dip bottom of each in chopped nuts.  Place on sheet of wax paper to set.  Store loosely covered; best served within 24 hours.

Makes 48

Hosting dessert parties and managing your time

Three-Layer Lemon Bars

Last year I had blogged about some tips when hosting a dessert party.  I usually host a big-to-me dessert party only every other year and last year was it so this was my off year.  However, I do generally have a few guests over throughout the season to catch up with friends or host family.  Last Saturday was my first gathering of the season where I hosted a dozen family members for an impromptu post-Thanksgiving get together.  They came around lunchtime and, as you know, I don't cook, but thankfully my mom brought arroz caldo (a Filipino rice porridge) and my cousin Christine brought a pizza.  I made the desserts: lemon bars with lemons from my mom's lemon tree, buttery tea balls because my mom likes anything with pecans and I had ceramic mitten dishes to serve the "snowballs" in, and red velvet cookies because they're my niece Shyla's favorite and a chocolate item my nephew Jason will eat (he doesn't like chocolate.  Someday I'm going to tell him red velvet is chocolate.  But not yet.)

"Snowballs" aka Buttery Tea Balls in mitten dishes

I'm hosting another gathering with a few friends from high school tomorrow.  I had missed my has-it-really-been-25-years high school reunion last month because I was at my cousin's wedding in Winnipeg.  So I thought it would be fun to catch up with a few old friends.  The family gathering last weekend spurred me to finish my decorating and my house is now reasonably clean (mostly) so it's fit for company.  But there's still the matter of what to serve.

Red Velvet Cookies

The issue when you work full time and have other things going on during the holiday season is there usually isn't enough time to get everything done that you want to do, including party prep.  Which is why I stock up my baking pantry ahead of time, make up cookie doughs for the freezer and salvage any baking failures when necessary.  One key component of advance prep is selecting the right menu.  First, when deciding what to serve, play to your strengths.  My cousin Chris is a trained chef and he put on a 7-course meal for his family at Thanksgiving.  I'm sure it was superb.  But you won't catch me hosting a full-course dinner anytime soon (or ever) simply because my cooking skills are subpar and I don't enjoy cooking like I do baking.  So it's always going to be a dessert party for me.  I know my limits, lol.

Second, parties are not typically the time or place to take risks on new recipes unless you're absolutely sure they'll turn out, it's something similar to what you've done before and you have a backup plan if it fails.  In other words, now is the time to be risk averse with the menu.  I might try a new cookie recipe if it's one cookie out of several kinds that I'm serving but I'm not likely to take on a towering croquembouche as my dessert centerpiece.  Seriously.

Third, time management is essential.  Last year I blogged about how I like to have a variety of flavors that will be crowd pleasers and/or past favorites of my guests.  But I also take into account which ones I can make ahead of time and balance those with the items that have to be done the day of the party or at the last minute.  I work full time, I sometimes have social engagements after work, and errands always need to be run to the bank, the gas station, the library, the grocery store, the post office, etc, all in the same 24 hours in a day when it isn't the holiday season.

For this weekend's dessert party, my menu was driven by both what I thought my guests might like and what I could reasonably accomplish in the time I had.  I already had peanut butter brownies in the freezer that I had baked earlier in anticipation of needing it this week.  Then every night this week that I didn't have dinner plans after work, I made cookie dough.  One night, I made cookie dough for peanut butter kiss cookies, the next night I made cookie dough for holiday caramel treats (recipe to follow), a third night I made cookie dough for Almond Butter and Nutella Swirl Cookies.  Each of these cookie doughs took a grand total of 10-15 minutes (if that) to put together, portion into individual cookie dough balls and store in ziploc bags in my freezer, ready to be baked off at a moment's notice.  The point being I could make it when I had 10-15 minutes to spare this week, not when I have to make it in a rushed timeframe right before the party.

Which frees me up to focus on the more last-minute baking the night before and the day of the party.  Since I'm a stickler for freshness, the only thing I'm actually going to bake the night before are lemon bars.  They'll be fresh enough the day after they're made and they're actually a bit better the next day because they've had time to set.  On the morning of the party, I'm going to bake some of the cookie doughs I had already made but that will only take baking and clean up time.  Which leaves me free to tackle a whole new recipe without being too frazzled.  I chose a doughnut recipe because I don't often have people over and that's the ideal time to try something like doughnuts because they're best when they're fresh out of the fryer and can be mass consumed by people besides yourself.  I'm certainly not going to eat a whole batch of doughnuts by myself!  Plus I consider the risk of failure to be minimal - it's hard to go wrong with something deep-fried, rolled in cinnamon sugar and served warm.  Doughnut recipe to follow.....as soon as I actually make it.