Saturday, February 14, 2009

Happy Valentine's Day!

First, let me start off by apologizing to anyone who may have watched Important Things at my suggestion. It wasn't horrible, but definitely wasn't as good as I had hoped...just kinda weird. I'll probably keep watching for awhile to see if the show finds a groove, because I know how funny he can be.

I was busy in the kitchen this week - I sent a belated birthday gift to my dad consisting of Homemade Samoas Bars, which I found on Baking Bites and knew I had to make since my dad loves coconut...and "Spreads", which I saw on Pioneer Woman and thought would make a nice, easy addition to the package. Obviously the bars were a little more time consuming than the spreads, but they were both incredibly tasty. Then I had a night of baking and a night of frosting sugar cookies. Once a month we have a Friday game night with Shaun's family and it gives me a great excuse to make a full batch of treats. Plus he had a work potluck on the 13th, so I doubled the recipe to make plenty for everyone. They were a success - the tray came back empty both times! Maybe not the most professional-looking cookies in the world, but they tasted good.


The recipe, funnily enough, came from a Minnie Mouse Valentine book we had when we were kids. I think in the story she was baking cookies for Mickey, and at the end they had this recipe. We tried it and it became the household favorite (and I apparently have the original plastic cookie cutter that came with it, as shown by my few undecorated "Be My Valentine" cookies).

Sugar Cookies

1 cup butter
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt

Cream the butter and sugar. Then beat in the egg and vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and salt, then mix with the butter/egg/sugar mixture. Chill the dough for 3 hours. Preheat oven to 350.
On a flour-covered surface, roll out the dough to 1/8 inch thickness and cut into shapes with cookie cutters. Bake cookies on a greased cookie sheet for about 8 minutes.

The number of cookies obviously depends on the size of the cookie cutters you use, but if they're all average size, I would estimate 3-4 dozen. In my opinion, they taste the best with a thin layer of buttercream.

For the frosting, I started with 1/4 cup butter and gradually dumped in powdered sugar - I would estimate around 2 cups - enough that when that's all mixed it's still crumbly and powdery. Then I just added milk about a tablespoon at a time until it was at a consistency I liked, and mixed in 1 tsp vanilla (and of course food coloring as desired).

So, back to Valentine's Day - Shaun and I aren't big on the holiday, but we got each other cards and ended up going out to breakfast since we had to get up early to drop his car off for maintenance. We're not usually morning people on weekends, but it was kind of a nice break from routine. We're just having a low-key day, watching a couple movies - even having leftovers for dinner. For dessert we're at least going to attempt our first fondue, a recipe I saw on Shauna's blog. And of course, we'll be watching SNL hosted by Alec Baldwin...that's sure to have some amusing moments! Enjoy the evening, however you do (or don't) celebrate!

1 comment:

Jessica said...

I love the story about your Minnie Mouse cookie cutter. When I was little my mom had a toast press thing that had Mickey Mouse on it. We would press the bread with it before toasting it for toast and when we ate it it had an imprint. How goofy!