Cookies made with cookie press

I ended up just the regular way to cut and make the cookies instead of using the cookie press. It wasn’t as easy as I thought to made fancy looking cookies. So I gave up.

And I meant to decorate or mix in with some raisins and nuts but I totally forgot. Those are for the fundraising bake sale, maybe it's good to make it simply.

But my sons said, those are not so attractive looking for sale purpose, and then I said maybe next time we can have 3 or 6 cookies in a bag and tie a nice ribbon. And again, my sons said, it probably won't help, unless, I make the cookies look fancy itself. Really!?

Another thing for sure that I’ll use the blender to do the mixing job, it's too tiring to use the handheld mixer.

Ingredients

2 cups butter, softened

3/4 cup brown sugar

4 1/2 cups all-purpose wheat flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

Currants or nuts, if desired

Steps

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed, or mix with spoon. Stir in flour, salt and eggs.

Place dough in cookie press. Form desired shapes on unreleased cookie sheet. Decorate with currants.

Bake 5 to 8 minutes or until set but not brown. Immediately remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. To decorate cookies after baking, use a drop of corn syrup to attach decorations to cookies.

cinnamon rolls with walnuts & raisins

I omitted the glaze on purpose, "it's already too sugary and buttery", says the mom.

"No, it's not", says the sons.

I added diced walnuts and raise for the filling, and I hand split the walnuts. my son asked me, why did I just use the food processor, first I didn't even thought about it, secondly then, I didn't want to do the wash after use it and lastly, why don't I give my hands and fingers an exercise of the day.

Dough
1 cup milk
2 envelopes active dry yeast
1 pinch of sugar and salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter
2 large eggs
4 1/4 cups wheat flour

Filling
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoon of cinnamon
1/2 c Diced Walnuts
1/2 c raisins
some butter for spread the dough

How To

Dissolve yeast in warm milk, add sugar and salt and set aside for 10 minutes. 

In the bowl beat butter, sugar, eggs, and flour until light and fluffy.  Beat in the warm milk mixture.

Scrape the dough into a large bowl and cover tightly. Let the dough stand in a warm place until it is doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Cut four 15-inch-long sheets of wax paper. Turn the dough out and divide it into quarters. Working with 1 piece at a time, roll the dough to a 14-by-7-inch rectangle, about 1/4 inch thick. Roll the dough around the rolling pin and unroll it onto a sheet of wax paper. Repeat with the remaining 3 pieces of dough. 

Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, blend well the filling except the butter for spread onto the rolled dough.

Evenly spread 1 sheet of dough with one-fourth of the filling. Tightly roll up the dough, cut the rolls of 1 inch thick. Arrange the cinnamon rolls, cut side up, in concentric circles in the pan, starting from the edge and working into the center. Cover the rolls with plastic wrap and let them rise in a warm place for about 1 hour and 30 minutes, until puffy.

Preheat the oven to 350°F, and bake them for about 25 minutes, until golden and risen.

Strawberry Cheesecake

Like my son always says, mom, I know you changed the ingredients.

And since it's for ourselves only and also for healthy reason and of course, I’m lazy, so, I took out the crust part from this ingredient.

I replaced the orange juice with lemon, because we have lemon tree in our backyard. Besides, oranges are supposed to be eaten fresh, agree? If you do use orange juice, please reduce the amount of sugar, by how much? Dependence upon, how sweet that you like, if it's for me, I’ll not have sugar in it.

One thing I did regret is, not stand strawberry slices around edge of the pan, in addition, I forgot to save some strawberries for the garnishing.

Another thing is I try not to use parchment paper and use the glass baking pan almost every baking.

I do have one more suggestion, using small cupcake bakeware as for the party goodies.

You Need

28 vanilla wafers, finely crushed

1/3 cup butter, melted

4 cups fresh strawberries, divided

2 env. (1/4 oz. each) Unflavored Gelatin

1/2 cup cold water

3 pkg. (8 oz. each) Cream Cheese, softened

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup orange juice (substitute with lemon juice)

1 Tbsp. lemon juice

Make It

Combine first 2 ingredients; press onto bottom of 9-inch spring-form pan. Line side of pan with 4-inch-wide strip of parchment.

Reserve 8 strawberries for garnish; cut remaining berries into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Stand largest strawberry slices around edge of prepared pan; finely chop remaining strawberry slices.

Sprinkle gelatin over cold water in small saucepan; let stand 1 min. Cook on low heat 3 min. or until gelatin is completely dissolved, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; set aside.

Beat cream cheese, sugar, orange juice and lemon juice in medium bowl with mixer until blended. Add chopped berries; mix well. Gradually whisk in gelatin. 

Refrigerate 3 hours or until firm. Remove rim of pan; discard parchment. Cut reserved strawberries in half. 

Honey Almond Oat Snack Bars - 2

This time, it comes out much better than the first time but not quite there yet, most probably is that I’m running out of honey, I didn't get to use the amount of what the recipe instructed.

And I planned to add some flaxseed meal, but I forget, therefore, I had the flaxseed meal in my other bake goods that day, Lemon Blackberry Pound Cake, which I baked one the other day.

The cake turned out quite different form last time, the color, kind of brownish from the flaxseed meal, the texture, must because the flaxseed meal also.

The flaxseed meal, probably should go well with the bar.

Ingredients

4 C quick oats (bake first at 350°F, 8 minutes)

2 C dried fruit 

2 C whole nuts, chopped

15 T honey

10 T coconut oil

_{1 C shredded coconut (i forgot about this one, next time i'll remember it)}

Instructions

Bake quick oats first at 350°F for 8 minutes.

In a large bowl, stir together all the other ingredients, until all the ingredients are well coated. 

Line a Pyrex Rectangular 15 x 10 bakeware with parchment paper. Press (with damp hands) the mixture evenly into the bottom of the pan.

Bake at 325°F for 28-30 minutes.

Cool for 1-2 hours then cut them into bars.

Honey Almond Oat Snack Bars - 1

I tried this, but it came out a bit too soft.

Ingredients

2½ cups quick oats

½ cup dried fruit 

1 cup whole nuts, chopped

⅔ cup honey

⅔ cup butter

Instructions
In a large bowl, stir together oats, dried fruit and chopped nuts, and then stir together honey and butter, until all the ingredients are well coated. 

Line a Pyrex Rectangular 15 x 10 bakeware with parchment paper. Press (with damp hands) the mixture evenly into the bottom of the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until set, about 4 hours. Once set, remove from fridge, lift parchment paper out of pan and cut into 16 bars.

Simple Chocolate Cake Without Butter

Curious about how simple is this chocolate cake? There’s no butter or eggs or milk not even a mixer is needed.

And wonder why I baked this cake? It’s for the school fundraising. I was informed the day before about bringing some home bake goods for fundraising, and found that we didn't have butter and milk at home, for that those are the basic baking ingredients.

I was panic at the moment when my son told me this fundraising, first, was the lack of ingredients, secondly, it's the late night before, therefore, you probably can image how was my reaction at him.

But good thing is, we have internet and computer and Google search, that's how I found this simply cake recipe.

Question about when did I get time to bake this cake, remember, it was late night already, after I searched for this recipe, I set my alarm o'clock for 5:00 am. Yes, 5 o'clock in the morning, the cake had to be done before 7:00 am.

Well done, says the cake. 

From this I can confirm to you that simple equal to relax and easy, but not necessarily delicious. Savory unnecessarily equal to healthy.

However, this tastes fine to me, after the bake sale, all gone.

Ingredients:

3 cups wheat flour

1 3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 teaspoon baking soda

2 cup cool water

6 Tablespoons grape seed oil

2 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease or lining with parchment a 9 x 13" Rectangular Cake Pan.

Sift dry ingredients into a bowl and set aside.

Add all liquid ingredients into the bowl & gently stir until there are no lumps.

Pour into pan and bake for 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Lemon Blackberry Pound Cake

Yum, yum my tummy! And I’d call it half pound cake, for again, I only use half the butter and sugar.

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, melted

1/2 cup sugar

4 large eggs

Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon

3 cups wheat flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 cup milk

2 cup fresh or frozen (don’t thaw them) blackberries, raspberries or blueberries

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, stir together all the dry ingredients nicely and then add in other ingredients one each time, continue stirring until all blend well. Gently fold in the blackberries.

Pour the batter into a Pyrex Rectangular 15 x 10 bakeware. Bake for 30-40 minutes, until golden and springy to the touch. Cool in the pan on a wire rack.

Note that you also can add a little more blackberries on the top of the batter, for this makes the cake look nicer.

cake? pudding?

Not so success cake, pudding, that is.

I meant to make a cake in the first place, not success, tastes more like pudding, or maybe it's meant to be tastes like it, anyway, it's good. 

Here are the ingredients and how:

1 1/2 c coconut flour, 1 c brown sugar, 9 eggs (separate yolks from whites), 2 c 2% milk, 2 c half & half.

Preheat oven to 325°F.

Separate the eggs and beat the egg yolks with the sugar, flour and then milk, half & half until light and fluffy.

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. This step is crucial; a step of successful or not. You have to beat the whites until it just turn into stiff peaks, too little or too much then it won't right.

Add the egg whites to the cake batter and gently fold them in. 

Pour batter into glass baking dish and bake for 40 to 70 minutes or until the top is lightly golden.

Sprinkle some cocoa powder while it still warm.

Happy cheesy Independence Day

Cheesecake with blueberries and cherries = cheesy American Flag.

Ingredients

15 graham crackers, crushed

2 tablespoons butter, melted

4 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese

1 1/4 cups white sugar

3/4 cup milk

4 eggs

1 cup sour cream

1/4 cup wheat flour

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 °F. Grease a 9 inch pan.

In a medium bowl, mix graham cracker crumbs with melted butter. Press onto bottom of pan. (In this case, I done this right in the baking pan.)

In a large bowl, mix cream cheese with sugar until smooth. Blend in milk, and then mix in the eggs, mix them well. Mix in sour cream and flour until smooth. Pour filling into prepared crust.

Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour. Turn the oven off, and let cake cool in oven with the door closed for 5 to 6 hours; this prevents cracking. Chill in refrigerator until serving.

How to Make Chocolate Mug Cake

Have a 14 oz mug ready, add ¼ c of all purpose flour, 2 T sugar, ¼ T baking power, 2 T coco powder, and stir to mix the dry ingredient well.

Then add 5 T milk, 2 T vegetable oil, stir until batter smooth.

Bake at 350º F for 30 minute, then top with whip cream and dip in.

栗ようかん (Kuri-yō kan)

1 1/2 C water
4g agar agar
14.1 oz red beans paste
pinch of salt
7 oz chestnut in heavy syrup

Not quite success on this receipt, therefore no picture to show, besides my kids don't like red beans whatsoever, no need to experiment more.

bake sale

Those are for tomorrow's school bake sale, I use the ready to bake dough.
I have no choice, first I don't have time and energy to make my own from scratch also it's for bake sale therefore use store make is always safe, i mean for taste.
However, I do encourage you to make your own as possible, you get to control the ingredients, more healthy for sure.