There's a New Boss in Town

Here I am, back again, as promised. In a fit of insanity, the day after finishing the turtle cookies, I decided that I needed to bake again. One of my Christmas gifts this year was a cookbook called Baking with the Cake Boss written by, of course, TLC's Cake Boss. Another example of bad tv I watch pretty religiously. Despite never having been to Carlo's Bakery, I've heard good things from people who have gone and watching the show is like magic to me because of the artistry that comes out of completely edible materials. I aspire to create one of those crazy looking, beautiful cakes. However, I'm not nearly there. It'll be a while.

This book is a pretty good read actually. It's written with a sense of humor and practicality and a lot of really helpful hints. Including how to tell if your eggs have gone bad! (You put them in a cup of water. If they float, they're bad.) As a result, I was really looking forward to starting through this cookbook. In the introduction, Buddy recommends cooking straight through this cookbook in order because the recipes at the beginning help you develop techniques used in the later recipes. Alright, Buddy. First stop: Butter Cookies.

Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I just made butter cookies very recently and made the fun shapes like Christmas trees and camels etc etc and they were delicious so what can be gained from baking this recipe? Well, you'll see. The recipe is completely different from the Joy of Cooking recipe for butter cookies. First off, some of the ingredients are very specific. For example, Buddy only uses extra-large eggs in his recipes. Hmm. Now, I wasn't about to buy extra-large eggs for one recipe so I consulted a handy dandy conversion table in the back of one of my other new cookbooks and discovered that 4 extra-large eggs=5 large eggs. In the future though, I will have extra-large eggs so as not to make that substitution. I really can't believe I'm going to buy extra-large eggs for use in recipes from only one cookbook. Cake Boss is really gonna cost me some serious money by the end. (No, seriously, he calls for a lot of ingredients and tools that I just don't have.) The second very specific ingredient is for cake flour. I wasn't inclined to substitute this one with all-purpose flour because the recipe specifically said NOT to. Ok, fine. I went out and bought cake flour. I also bought almond paste. I have no idea what almond paste is. I hear it's kind of like marzipan but marzipan is one of the other great mysteries of my life so that's not really a useful reference point.

Ok, enough of all that, let's get to the baking already! First step was (as usual) creaming. But this time, I had to cream butter, sugar, AND almond paste! I had to use 3/4 cup of almond paste. I had bought what I thought was a large tube of almond paste. It was actually rolled up kind of like a stick of butter and was exactly 3/4 cup. Happy! Also, the recipe called for 4 sticks of unsalted butter. There was a stick and slightly less than a stick of unsalted butter in my fridge and I was too lazy to look for any more. So I substituted 1 and 7/8 sticks of unsalted butter and 2 and 1/8 stick of salted butter for the 4 sticks of unsalted. I'm pretty sure that one won't matter. The combining of ingredients went fine. Nothing too exciting to report. But here comes the hard part. Buddy doesn't want me to simply spoon the cookies out of the dough. He wants me to pipe them into fun shapes with a piping bag.

Disaster. We only had a polyurethane piping bag in the house. And butter cookie dough is notoriously greasy. I think you can see where I'm going with this. The recipe suggested piping 2 and a half inch circles of dough but didn't specify the thickness. I measured out my first cookie and decided that 2 and a half inches was too big for one cookie. From there I just eyeballed it. However, piping is hard. The dough was too cold so it was only manageable by the time I got to the end of the bag. It hurt my hands. My hands kept sliding off the bag because, inevitably, my hands got covered in the dough. It was just a disheartening mess. Really, I should have been using a canvas bag with a dough that thick but live and learn, right? Anyway, after much hand cramping and cursing, I finished two trays of circle cookies. And had only used about a third of the dough.

After baking (and deciding that the future cookies should be a bit thicker), I decided to get creative with the later batches. I made some hearts, some straight line cookies, and some Christmas tree cookies. Then I discovered the most awesome shape of all to pipe: Mickey Mouse heads. It's so easy! It's just two small circles and one big circle! And, in my frustrated state, I was excited to not have to maneuver the piping bag much. I just had to point and squeeze until the circle was the right size. So, as a result, most of my cookies are Mickey Mouse and that makes me quite happy. Here they are, to bring a smile to your day:

The taste is interesting. You can definitely tell it's a butter cookie but the almond flavor is much more prevalent. I think I would probably cut the almond paste just a little bit if I ever make these again. They're definitely still yummy though and I departed from my usual tradition of just having one cookie and ate about five. The consensus in my family was that they weren't as good as the green cookie press cookies but they were better than the red and plain colored cookie press cookies. Don't look at me like that. They taste different, I swear! Next time, I'm dyeing the whole batch green. So there.

Critical Reception: 
Besides thinking that the pecan turtles were cute, people really thought they were yummy. In a head to head comparison with the white chocolate macadamia cookies, the turtles won as far as taste went. That said, I don't really think I'd make them again. Too annoying to make, even if they are cute.

A Disney Moment: Lady and the Tramp
And here we are folks, at the winner for this group of five: Lady and the Tramp. I'll be honest, this was a surprise for me. I remembered liking the movie as a kid but it never garnered the same enthusiasm as Alice or Peter. Plus, I'm not wild about the "He's a Tramp" song. But wow, here's a movie that just got it right.

The animation is beautiful. I really thought it was an animation leap from Peter Pan to Lady and the Tramp. Now, I'm not a dog person (at all) but when I saw Lady as a little puppy and their heartwarming attempts to discipline her into staying in her bed, I just melted. I know exactly what kind of dog I want now. An animated puppy. My sudden love of animated puppies aside, the movie is well paced, the characterization of all the dogs we encounter is charming, and we get to see a really delightful romance develop. For a "kid's movie", there's a lot of adult themes as far as the relationship goes, particularly when Lady hears about all the other dogs that Tramp has been with.

The horror elements were back in the film as well, particularly with the rat in the baby's bedroom. The tension really builds well to that scene. And how about when the one dog in the pound goes to take "the long walk"? Aaaaah! That was pretty messed up. But of course, it all comes back to Bella Notte. That scene affected me more than I thought it would (because it's so famous and I knew it was coming) but it still had charm and romance and it made me smile. The whole movie from start to finish was engaging to me and it really took the cake as the best movie in this group. In fact, it may even be a close tie with Dumbo. It even ended with many adorable little cartoon puppies! So cute! 1/5!

A Pressing Christmas Tradition

Happy holidays everyone! I'm absurdly in the Christmas spirit and part of being in the Christmas spirit is making some traditional Christmas cookies like a good Italian should. In my family, we do Christmas cookies lite. By that, I mean that we don't make 18 different types of cookies. However, we do make one type of cookie in three different colors! So that's almost the same thing. The Christmas cookie we make is the spritz (or butter) cookie from the Joy of Cooking. This is one of the few times I'll support using a Joy of Cooking recipe for baking.

For those of you unfamiliar with spritz cookies, they're like a sugar cookie, but you use a cookie press to make fun shapes like trees or ornaments. A little background on the cookie press: years and years ago, my mom had a classic old metal cookie press. Then it broke or disappeared or something. Regardless of the reason, we didn't have a cookie press anymore. So, in order to bring back the tradition, we had to obtain a new cookie press. The problem is, all of these new-fangled cookie presses are plastic and awful. We have two including the Cookie Pro Ultra II Cookie Gun. Sounds impressive but actually was not and led to an angry phone call with the manufacturer last year. The truly epic cookie press battle took place last year but it culminated in us obtaining our current cookie press, affectionately known as "The Dead Lady Cookie Press". That's right, we bought it at an estate sale, where we found it in a pile of crap in the old dead woman's basement. It was almost creepy but we were too excited to have found an old metal screw top cookie press to care. So that's the story behind our cookie press and that's what we use now. (This was a necessary diversion because the cookie press is the most crucial part of making spritz cookies.)

On to the baking! Spritz cookies are actually extremely easy. Cream some butter and sugar, add some egg yolks and vanilla, then add some flour and salt. That's it for ingredients. Then we modify slightly and break the dough into thirds before chilling and dye one third green and one third red (although the red usually comes out more pink than red but I do the best I can). There's nothing exciting to report about any of this except that it's a little annoying because you have to wash everything after using each of the dyes. Then I chucked the dough in the fridge to chill for a few hours.

Here's where things got interesting. Cookie presses come with discs with cutout shapes that you use to create the various shaped cookies. However, the cutouts don't necessarily give you a good indication of what the cookie shape will be. My mom and I identified the tree, the camel (yes, camel.), the IUD/penis shape depending on who you're asking, the butterfly, the spiral, and the blob. So those were the ones we made. There was also a dog/reindeer but we didn't feel like cleaning another one. We started out with the green dough to make the trees because the trees are my favorite. My mom and I were supposed to have another baking minion at this point but he was busy trying to break into his aunt's house with a crowbar. You just can't make this stuff up.

Even with our superior cookie press, pressing the cookies isn't easy. It takes some significant arm strength and the dough has to be just the right temperature. Too cold and you can't press it through the cookie press and too warm and it's a soft mess. Also, if the dough's too cold, the cookies don't stick to the tray and you can't detach the cookies from the press. We stubbornly tried pressing the cookies when they were too cold. These cookies are therefore infused with love and cursing, like all good Christmas cookies.

Eventually we managed to press all of the green dough into trees (though we did have to creatively rebuild a couple). At this point, our baking minion returned to help press some red cookies. The first attempted shape was the spiral shape but that one notoriously doesn't stick to the pan well so we only made a couple of those. I also forgot to take the red dough out of the fridge in a timely manner so the dough was once again too cold. Baking minion tried to warm the dough in the cookie press by wrapping his warm hands around the metal, which seemed like far too a logical solution to me. Finally, we got into a rhythm with the butterfly cookies which turned out to be ornaments(?) as long as they were large enough. Into the oven for about 10 minutes.

All we had left then was the plain dough colored dough. The reason we don't dye this dough is because these are the cookies we add red and green sprinkles to. We started out with the camels but they were hard to make so we only made two camels. Don't worry though, there is a picture of them. It still boggles my mind that a camel shape even exists. For the rest of the cookies we used the IUD/penis shape. However, when pressed through that shape, lo and behold, the cookie was a heart! So we made many heart shaped cookies with red and green sprinkles. Oh, I should also mention that once there is too little dough to go through the cookie press, we made circular cookies with thumbprints in the middle and filled them with sprinkles. I don't particularly care for the sprinkle cookies but I love love love these spritz cookies. Especially the green ones. Because somehow they taste better. Don't argue with me, they're better! Anyway, the cookies are tiny shapes of buttery goodness and they just melt your heart with Christmas joy. Here are some pictures and sorry for the poor quality of the second one (but that's the only way you're getting to see the camels):

Critical Reception:
The truffles are a hit. I've been told that I could make them and sell them for 20 bucks a box and make an awesome profit. I think the favorite type so far has been the cookie encrusted truffle but I haven't asked enough people yet. Plus it's hard to eat more than a few in a day. That said, the truffles are succeeding in bringing Christmas joy and I would definitely make them again with some better white chocolate. And dear readers, you should try it yourself! It's a pretty easy recipe despite the minor roadblocks you read about in my last post. Be brave and get your hands covered in chocolate!

A Disney Moment: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
So, I spoke too soon. We're not quite at the full length feature films yet. Similar to Fun and Fancy Free, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is two stories in one movie. First we have Mr. Toad. I don't recall ever having seen Mr. Toad before so my only knowledge of Mr. Toad comes from Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland. And that ride can only be described as a hot mess so it doesn't give much insight into the plot. And even after watching it, I'm still not sure what the plot was because it wasn't that memorable. Mr. Toad steals a car because he wants to drive it and goes to jail and then breaks out and somehow ends up with a plane. I just didn't really care. It was entertaining enough while I was watching but it just didn't stick with me.

The second half was the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The first thing my sister and I noticed was "Ooh! Narrated and performed by Bing Crosby!" We love Bing Crosby and especially his gorgeous singing voice that can just relax you in the best way possible. Unfortunately for us, it worked too well. By about halfway through the introduction of Ichabod (via a slightly lengthy song), I was dead asleep. About five minutes later, my sister was asleep. We both woke up when the movie was pretty much over. Feeling extremely confused, we decided to go to bed and give it another shot the next day.

The next morning we watched Ichabod again. Ichabod as a character is kind of annoying. But that aside, it was really pretty good until the very end. The end has an ambiguity that I didn't care for. I suppose that's Washington Irving's fault but it still annoyed me. Overall, it was better than most (if not all) of the dark times Disney films, but due to the clump of 5 films that Ichabod and Mr. Toad belongs to, it only ranks a 5/5.