Cookies...My On-Going Learning Process

So I've recently delved into the world of making pretty cookies - branching out from the Toll House recipe for chocolate chip cookies that was my comfort zone before... See, I'm not a whole bunch of a baker.  I don't have a whole lotta love for "measuring" or "precision" or "patience"... Give me a giant saute pan and a cabinet full of herbs and spices and I'm a MUCH happier camper.  Cooking is more forgiving for a total anti-recipe disaster like myself.

Therefore, deciding to not just try cookies, but to try sugar cookies from scratch and then to deal with the rolling, the cutting, the baking, the cooling, and the mess was a big step for me.  And then for me to step away from my comforting cans of icing and Tulip tubes of icing with which I grew up was downright ballsy.  What the HECK was I doing with bags and tips and 6 bowls of different colored glaze icing? 

And my tendencies towards perfectionism just makes the whole thing that much more absurd.  Ask how practical it is for me, in my hectic life, to devote 6+ hours to a batch of COOKIES.  It's not.  It's totally absurd. 

Regardless, I do it.  Here are some of the results... some obviously better than others:

I made some cute farm cookies for a friend's son's birthday party.  I hadn't yet discovered the concept of white food coloring.  Nor had I figured out how to cool my cut-outs before I bake to keep the edges nice and sharp.  Oh well - bake and learn.

Some adorable little owls I made for fall - inspired by a design on the girl's shirts that day.

Some Jack o'Lanterns for Jack's school Halloween party...

I made these to send to a dear friend of mine, but they got destroyed in the mail.

More Halloween cookies for Jack's party... notice the bright white?  White food coloring.  Brilliant!  I made my purple a little too dark for my tastes... it dried darker than it was in the bowl and I'm still trying to figure out a way around that.

Blooper on the spider's foot... Impatience is not my best quality and it can lead to some oops-ies.

Snowflake cookies for Jack's Christmas party at school.  These are probably my favorites to date.  See how nice and clean the cookies are around the edges?  I'm learning!

Another lesson I learned: simplicity is often the most beautiful design.  These crosses showcase what the season is about without going overboard. 

I don't know why these candy canes look so sloppy... I think I could have used a #2 tip to outline and flooded with a thinner icing than I did.  Oh well - I love the glossiness and the bright colors.  And I love white food coloring.  Have I mentioned that?

Gotta have some Christmas trees in the mix!  Love getting to make them all slightly different!

Silly me tried to stack on top of the red and blue tree before it was dry... ooops.  There's my impatience rearing its ugly head again...

And of course, there are a few just for fun and to look pretty.  And because I wanted to practice straight lines.  Basics, people, basics.  I'm getting there.  Wish I didn't have the big globs of color at the ends of the lines, but let's just pretend I do it on purpose, eh?

So, when I'm not posting or not getting my laundry done or not showering or sitting down, it's probably because I've embarked on a marathon cookie-baking session and am covered from head to toe in flour and powdered sugar and smeared with 4 or 5 colors of gel coloring and can be found hunched over my counter top with my icing bags in hand, ignoring my family and life.  Just so you know!

Finger-Foods: Make Ahead of Time and Freeze!

Because I've got all this disposable time on my hands, it's no object, of course, to prepare a meal for the adults, one for the picky toddler, and one for the babies every single evening.  Right? 

Uh, no. 

Ideally, soon, I can just prepare a meal for 5 and cut up whatever we're having and that's the end of it.  We're close, but not there yet.  And I already find myself having to put way too much thought into food for Jack that I don't really love scouring the kitchen for things that constitute a well-rounded but mashable meal for those with 4 or fewer teeth.  I mean, when I have 3 plates and 2 high chair trays lined up on the counter and I'm plopping different food selections on each, I can imagine I'm just one hair-net short of a cafeteria worker. 

Not my idea of a good time.  So, I pioneered (well, probably not, but I don't think I've seen or heard much about it before) a way of preparing this stuff ahead of time and freezing it just like the purees.

I started out just tossing a bunch of steamed, diced chunks of food into a container and putting it into the freezer.  What resulted was a mass of food that either needed to be reheated as an entire lump (and thus defeating the purpose of the endeavor) or I had to chip off a suitable chunk which resulted in mangling the food and making it much closer to the puree than the girls wanted.

So, I went back to (my) basics: food, ice cube tray, freezer.  I found that freezing the food pieces in the trays was okay, but I had to leave them in the trays and again, defrost en masse.  So, I added water to the trays.  Voilà!  I also tried nixing the trays and making little food packets with Glad Press 'n Seal (which is fabulous stuff if you haven't tried it) but that worked better for on-the-go situations and had a little too much waste in terms of packaging for my tastes, but it's not a bad way to go if you don't mind buying the Press 'n Seal.

This is what I did:

Step 1: Prepare your food according to your preferred method.  In this case, sweet potatoes, steamed.

Step 2: Dice your food (if the pieces aren't small enough already) and fill ice-cube trays with the pieces.  In my case, I found that it worked best to cut the sweet potatoes a bit larger for steaming and then cut them down to a smaller size after cooking and cooling as they seemed to hold their shape a little better.

I also prepared peas but cooked them a TINY bit longer than for the puree to make them just a little softer for mashing.

Step 3: After foods have cooled to room temperature, fill the tray with water and put in the freezer.  The water binds the pieces of food together and makes it possible to pop the individual servings out of the tray and into a plastic baggie for storage and easy thawing. 

For this alternate method of storing, I just made piles of diced food on a sheet of Press 'n Seal with the sticky side of the plastic facing up.

Then I simply put another (slightly larger) sheet over the top and sealed the seams, creating little food packs.  I later cut them into strips and put them in the freezer and was able to take out a strip of 2 or 3 pockets and toss it in a bag for lunch on the go.

See?  A frozen pea cube.  Perfect!  I found that each girlie would consume one cube worth of peas and between 1 1/2 and  2 cubes of sweet potatoes at a time.  I just took out whatever  I was going to feed them for dinner at lunch-time and put it in a bowl on the counter to thaw, then drained off the excess water and served - no reheating necessary so as to preserve as many nutrients as possible! 

My happy customer.

Mmm - Goldfish, tofu and sweet potatoes for lunch.  Addie loves to eat.

Nearing the end of a meal... playing with the food is always a good sign that she's full.

Jordan's happy fat kid face.

I tried this for sweet potatoes, peas, beans, cooked pears, peaches, apples, blueberries, and butternut squash.  I don't recommend cooked blueberries as a finger food - it was a royal mess.  Instead I just bought fresh blueberries and cut them into quarters.  It was way better.  If you do cook the fruit, don't cook it for as long as you would for purees - about 15 minutes in a 350 or 375 oven will be enough to soften the fruit and start to break down the sugars without making them too soft for inexperienced fingers to pluck off a tray, likewise with the squash.  

I hope this helps you save a little of your valuable time and sanity - like with the pureed baby foods, it certainly saves money instead of buying the jarred Gerber Graduates type "meals" and cuts down on your prep time significantly on a day-to-day basis.  Just remember to keep all of your surfaces clean and germ-free during the entire process.  

Have fun!

Baby-food: Moving to Finger Foods

NOTE: This is only what has worked for US after we've made sure the girls are ready.  You should evaluate what's right for your child or children and always be mindful of potential allergy and choking hazards associated with introducing new foods.

Okay all that nonsense aside, introducing finger foods is one of my favorite things in the world... I'm an eater.  I love watching them taste new stuff and experience new sensations and I love that they get to fit in with us while we eat.  (And, in the spirit of honesty, I love that a handful of Cherrios can now buy me a few minutes of sanity here and there throughout the day.)  Jack is also a big fan of getting to share the things HE eats with his little sisters and they delight in partaking in family meals and snack time.  Basically, it rocks.

Now, we've been at this for awhile.  We started with Gerber Puffs, which I love as a first finger food because they dissolve in contact with saliva so I can be a little less paranoid about choking.  Shortly after I can watch them tackle puffs with dexterity, I start branching out a little.

The next couple of foods are similar to the purees, but instead of pureeing, I cut them into little pieces, often adding wheat germ or crushed cereal to give stuff a little extra traction.  Here's what falls under this next "phase" for us: sweet potatoes, cooked pears, cooked peaches, cooked apples, bananas, avocados, steamed peas and steamed beans.

Sometimes, admittedly, that's a lot of work to deal with.  So, if you stay tuned for another post in the next couple of days, I'll show you the method I've come up with for preparing these foods ahead of time and freezing - like with the purees - individual portions to ease meal times.

I also cheat occasionally buy buying canned pear halves or peach slices (always making sure to buy fruit "in 100% juice" instead of any kind of syrup).  I see no shame in that. 

When those foods prove to work out well - and it's just a matter of making sure the girls can mash them well and are enjoying the textures since we're already introduced those foods as purees - I move into the next "phase".  I cube whole-wheat bread, offer whole-grain Ritz crackers, and Cherrios and Kix and the like.  This is also when I add what has become Addie's favorite food: tofu. 

Oh that girl loves her some tofu.

I buy the firm tofu and cube it up and Addie adores it.

Now they eat cheese (soft cheese or shredded cheese) and the occasional french-fry, and I feel good offering Fig Newtons and Nutrigrain bars (cut up) and sometimes well-cooked pasta.

They devour food with intensity and enthusiasm.  I love it. 

The other night I made beef stew with carrots, celery, onions, beans, peas, corn and barley.  I strained the broth and took out the beef cubes and put a pile of the veggies on their trays and they contentedly ate every last morsel.  And asked for more.  So I gave them more. 

They're nearly 10 months old.  I'm not too worried anymore about food allergies and I've even heard that the AAP has changed their recommendations recently to indicate that delaying the introduction of allergy-inducing foods doesn't seem to keep children from developing allergies.  (Note: I am not speaking FOR the American Academy of Pediatrics, and again, please discuss any questions with your pediatrician before making decisions for your family.)  That being said, I usually give the girls a little bit of what we're eating and a some of the things they're used to. 

And you know what?  They eat everything.  Well, except for spinach.  Addie touched spinach and had a panic attack so I took it away.  Now she won't even look at it.  So they eat NEARLY everything. 

Cool. 

The Cake.

Three layers frosted (I cheated with canned frosting!)... I had to freeze it between layers to make it nice and sturdy and make it easier to trim.

Smoothed icing... well, smoothish.

 

The "pegs"... it was  a whole sheet cake.  I have lots of leftovers to make cake balls!

The "pegs" attached and iced... again, smoothish.

 

The mess... My counter-tops are tiled so I have to use the table to roll anything out.  Very annoying.

Bad photo, but my skin is STILL blue... It looks like I eviscerated a Smurf with my bare hands.

TA-DA! I don't know if you're supposed to, but I brushed it with a mixture of corn syrup and water to give it a sheen like plastic would have.

With candles...

Big Jack was excited!

Apparently Jordan wanted chocolate cake... Sorry, Doll.

Addie wanted MORE cake.

Jack's sweet friends Kaia and Jarron playing with the decorative Legos.

Jack opening presents while the adults enjoyed the cake.

Happy Birthday, Little Man!  Love you!

(Here's last year's cake:)

 

 THIS one was all from scratch, including the buttercream icing.  Well, the two cars in the back were store-bought pound cakes, so that's a lie.  But it was mostly from scratch.  And yes, the tracks are chocolate icing.  I'm all about details.

  

 

My happy 2-year old.

(And this was his first birthday cake*:) 

*I was not very good at fondant then.  I am still not, but I'm a little better.

 

 The piping left something to be desired, but it was my first foray into cake decorating.

  

 It was white-cake from scratch with a raspberry filling.  It was SO YUMMY!

 

Cutie-pie!

I Am Wanna-Be Baker...

... I will have a full, be-photo'ed post of my baking extravaganza, but for now, I'll leave you with this:

Conventional (baking) wisdom states that in order for fondant to appear perfectly smooth, it must be placed over a cake with perfectly smooth icing.

People, unless it is heavily laden with the utmost bitterness and sarcasm, the word "perfect" and any of its silly derivatives like "perfection" or "perfectly" is entirely absent from my vocabulary.

So we're shooting here for approximately smooth fondant over essentially smoothish icing.

Work with me, here.