Almond Christmas Ball Cookies

I am taking a detour from chocolate bar-based cookies although we had a great run together.  I plan on making more of the Toblerone, Rolo, and possibly Skor cookies this week to take for Christmas.  For my family's Christmas, I have been put in charge of making sugar cookies which are probably my favourite for many reasons.  We always got to help out a lot with making the sugar cookies.  We used to take turns stirring in the flour, cutting the cookies out and, of course, decorating.  I will be making those in a couple of days as it's a major project.

Tonight, I decided to go for something simpler and a bit different.  One of my favourite Christmas cookies is Almond Christmas Ball Cookies.  This is a recipe I got from my Mom.  I imagine it can be found elsewhere but I love the way my Mom makes them with a whole candied cherry and not quite as much cookie dough.  These were really easy to make (with a mixer that is!).  While making them, I tuned into XM radio's Holly channel and heard a couple of my favourite Christmas tunes including Bryan Adam's Christmastime and Bruce Springsteen's Santa Claus is Coming to Town.  Christmas Cookie making is always more fun with the right tunes!

Here's my Mom's Almond Ball cookie recipe:

ALMOND CHRISTMAS BALLS 

1 cup butter
1/4 cup icing sugar for cookie dough & 1/2 cup icing sugar for coating slightly cooled cookies
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 cup ground almonds (2 oz.)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
18 candied cherries (red and green ones of course)

1. Cream butter with 1/4 cup icing sugar until fluffy. 
2. Add everything else except the cherries and mix well with your hands (I let Mixer Martha mix it). 
3. Take a heaping teaspoon of dough, start forming it into a ball, push in half a cherry and roll again in your hands to make a perfect ball. 
4. Bake on greased baking sheet in slow oven of 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 35 minutes. (25-30 minutes worked for me but it probably depends on the oven.)
5. While still hot, roll the balls in confectioners sugar (icing sugar). 
   

Notes from Mom: I always use a whole cherry. I found cutting them made a mess of the ball. I also skimped on the dough. I took enough to cover the cherry and that was all. I also remember that I watched them closely as I do not think they took that long to bake. I usually got more than 18 Christmas balls out of a batch. 

Notes from Trudy: This is the first recipe where I actually made the amount of cookies it said it would make.  Altogether, I made 39 cookies using my Mom's instruction of just coating the cherry with the cookie dough.  Also, my Mom was right about the time in that 35 minutes is likely too long.  I set the timer for 30 minutes and that was the perfect amount of time.  In fact, the second batch was almost a bit too dark so I set the last batch for 25 minutes.  Lastly, I would recommend waiting a good 10-15 minutes before rolling them in icing sugar.

Candied Cherries. I actually used red and green ones.

The cookie dough after Martha took care of business.

All rolled up and ready to bake.

Yummy Almond Christmas Balls ready to eat!

It's midnight and I just had a midnight cookie snack and it was super yummy.  I love these because they are a bit different and they are a good bite-sized cookie for holiday events.  Hope you enjoy!

Other cookies recipes I've blogged about:

Skor Shortbread Cookies
Rolo Cookies
Toblerone Shortbread Cookies
Ginger Sparkler Cookies

The Perfect Autumn Treat - Apple Bars

When I was younger, we had an apple tree in our backyard.  Early on it its life as a tree, I don't think it grew many apples but eventually it started producing a ton and we had more apples than we knew what to do with.  I remember my Mom making anything and everything with apples.  Among these were apple pie, apple crisp, apple muffins, and, my personal favourite, apple bars!  I know I used to help make the apple bars but this was my first attempt at making them myself.  It was a very sharp learning curve.  It didn't take me long to realize that I never make pastries.  I usually cook and bake healthy foods with the exception of my Christmas cookie baking sprees.

There were a few clues early on that it was going to be a challenge.  First, we don't own a rolling pin.  I know, I know.  You are wondering how this is possible.  So was I when I looked through our cupboard full of kitchen-related wedding gifts and still couldn't find one.  Off to Zellers I went and  bought a fancy rolling pin.  It promised not to stick to my dough and I figured I could use all the help I could get.  

Here is the recipe in case you'd like to skip the rest of the narrative about my apple bar making experience and get to the good stuff!

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APPLE BARS 

Recipe from the kitchen of Fern Keil (aka Mom)

Sift into a bowl:  

2 1/2 cups flour 

1 teaspoon salt  

Add: 

1 cup shortening 

Mix together with a pastry cutter or cut into mixture with knives until it resembles coarse oatmeal. 

Combine:  1 egg yolk slightly beaten with enough milk to equal 2/3 a cup of liquid. (save egg white for later!)

Slowly add the egg/milk mixture to flour/shortening mixture.  Mix until moistened.  Divide the dough in half and roll out one part to cover a 10” by 15” cookie sheet. 

Over the pastry, spread 1 cup crushed corn flakes, and enough sliced apples until it is fully covering the pastry. (With our home grown apples, I core the apples but do not peel them.)  Trudy's recommendation: Add two layers of apples to cover the pastry.  I wish I would have added more than I did.  You will see how many I added in the photo below.  Add about 2x's that much. 

Mix 1 cup of sugar with 1 teaspoon cinnamon and sprinkle over the apples.  Roll out the second part of pastry to cover the top of the pan with the cookie sheet.  Beat the 1 egg white.  Brush the egg white on top of the pastry.    

Bake at 350F for 45 minutes.  While the baking is warm, mix 1 cup icing sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 tablespoon water and lightly ice the top of the apple bars. 

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Back to my story...

First, I made the dough which was easy and uneventful aside from the fact that we don't have a pastry cutter. Luckily, the recipe said I could use knives so I hacked away at my dough mixture with some knives.  It was kind of therapeutic and it turned out beautifully.  I made a double batch by the way.  Since this only happens... well it never happened until now....I thought I should double it up and share some on Thanksgiving weekend if they turned out.  I put the dough in the fridge and let it cool for a couple of hours.  I didn't have much choice since both kids woke up just as I was finishing.

Next (several hours later), I got the apples ready.  I don't particularly like coring, peeling and slicing apples.  I know my Mom said she leaves the peels on the homegrown apples but I prefer to peel the store bought ones.  If you are wondering when I find the time to do these things, Connor was in bed and Aleena watched me curiously until she fell asleep while desperately sucking her thumb...poor baby girl is teething.  Back to the apples...I sprinkled a bit of lemon juice on them to keep them from going brown and got to work on the pastry.

Since I haven't actually rolled out pastry since helping my Mom bake when I was in high school, it was interesting.  Let's just say that I am not sure how people roll pastry into rectangles because it sure didn't want to roll that way for me.  I kind of cheated by tucking, trimming and patching.  Not sure if this is a typical pastry making technique but it worked for me.  At that point, I spread the corn flakes and apples over the pastry and asked Jeremy to take some photos of this momentous occasion.  My blogging and his love for photography will likely mean lots of photos of rather mundane things.  I have to give him credit though..he made sugar sprinkling look almost magical!

Apples ready to be topped up with some sugar

My fancy new rolling pin in the background

Such a Martha Stewart moment

Half done adding the sugar/cinnamon mixture

Action shot!

That's a lot of sugar!

The end result!  This was after I put the icing on top.

A midnight snack.  Yes, it was midnight when these yummy treats were finally ready.

A Sweet "Tooth" Sunday

Here's another recipe post.  The title is in reference to the discovery of my baby girl's first tooth poking through today.  I found it quite exciting since Connor didn't have any teeth until he was almost a year old.  

Back to the topic of recipes... I am going to try making Sundays my recipe day since I usually have more time to cook/bake on weekends and it'll keep me motivated to try new recipes.  I am posting two versions of the recipe.  The first is the original passed on to me by my university professor.  She shared this cake with us at our class last week.   Yep, my professor brings us cake.  She's awesome.  The recipe she sent is full proof and, if you make it,  you will have yourself a wonderfully delicious banana cake.

I loved the cake and asked if I could have the recipe.  She agreed and sent it to me via e-mail.  As per usual when I request a recipe, I discovered that it was laden with sugar and fat...probably what made it so delicious!  I decided to make my own banana cake but with a few changes.   I also added a couple other ingredients that I am used to including in banana bread recipes in hopes that it might add some taste and make up for the lack of sugar and fat.

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Meredith’s Banana Cake 

2 and ¼ cups flour 

1 and 2/3 cups sugar 

1 and ¼ tsp baking powder 

1 and ¼ tsp baking soda 

1 tsp salt 

2/3 cup buttermilk 

2/3 cup salad oil 

3 eggs 

1 and ¼ cups mashed bananas 

Measure everything into a large mixing bowl and stir the ingredients together. 

Beat on high speed for three minutes, scraping the bowl occasionally, and put into a greased and floured bundt pan.  

Bake at 350 degrees about 50 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. 

Cool in the pan ten minutes, then loosen the edges with a knife and unmold.  

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Meredith’s Banana Cake (Trudy's Revisions)

1 cup all purpose flour 
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup oat bran

1/2 cup sugar 

1 ¼ tsp baking powder 

1 ¼ tsp baking soda 

1 tsp salt 

1  tsp ground cinnamon 

3/4 cup buttermilk  * I used 1 tbsp of vinegar with 1 % milk and let it sit for about 5 minutes

1/2 cup oil 

3 eggs 

1 1/2 cups applesauce 

1  tsp vanilla 

1 ¼ cups mashed bananas (3 medium)

Optional: You may choose to add some walnuts, chocolate chips, raisins or even pecans.

Measure everything into a large mixing bowl and stir the ingredients together. 

Beat on high speed for three minutes, scraping the bowl occasionally, and put into a greased and floured bundt pan.  

Bake at 350 degrees about 50-55 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. 

Cool in the pan ten minutes, then loosen the edges with a knife and unmold.  

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I taste tested my banana cake once it cooled a bit and it actually tastes pretty good.  It's not quite as light and fluffy as the original though.  I used 4 medium bananas and 3 bananas would have been enough and probably lightened it up a bit.  I also recommended that the baking time be lengthened to about 50-55 minutes for my recipe.  If I made it again, I would like to try adding some walnuts or a few mini chocolate chips.