Any Home Bakers Here?

[Alice28]

No problem. So glad @sandesnow posted the recipe. Figured I'd let everyone know when I made them.

 

[N F C]

No problem. So glad @sandesnow posted the recipe. Figured I'd let everyone know when I made them.

Alice28, your cookies look great and nice to have so much help! I bet the kids had a wonderful time.

Well, I made @sandesnow recipe today too. The blackstrap molasses worked fine, the cookies have a really nice flavor.

As for the rest of the story, well, it's a long one and since it's late, I'll share tomorrow. (Let's just say I could have used some of Alice28's helpers today.

 

[Alice28]

Oh man, will wait to hear the story later. Glad to hear your molasses worked fine!

 

[N F C]

My (Mis)Adventures in Gingerbread Cookie Baking

Have to say one more time, the cookie recipe was very good and I would use it again. Instead of the royal icing, I wanted to try a cookie glaze, which is amazing stuff. My cutters are 5" and I got 19 cookies from the recipe. Fine, there are only 2 of us, so 19 is plenty. Things kind of went downhill from there:

Casualty #1: Oops, a gingerbread man lost his head coming off the baking sheet. No biggie, 18 is enough for us.

Casualty #2: Ugh, can't open the canister part of the new decorating kit I just got for the cookies. It's ok, DH got it for me.

Casualty #3: The plunger knob on the decorating handle kept popping off. Fine, toss it aside and just push down with my finger.

Casualty #4: The stick and disc inside the decorating canister came apart so no frosting can be pushed out because now the disc is floating freely inside the tube. Forget it, just use a knife to put the cookie glaze on.

Casualty #5: Glaze is semi-hard and has to be re-worked.

Casualty #6: The knife proved too large to work with. Ok, reduced to decorating with coffee stir sticks. Find out decorating cookies with a little wooden coffee stirrer stinks.

So there you have it! The whole process was time-consuming and frustrating (although DH thought it was all hilarious) but I learned a few things:
1. That's a tasty gingerbread recipe and the sulfated molasses worked well
2. Buy better equipment, that decorating kit is now trash
3. The cookie glaze was good. It dries shiny and kind of semi-hard coating, like what you get on a bakery cookie. Recipe courtesy of KAF: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/simple-cookie-glaze-recipe
4. Maybe round up a few daycare kids to help?

Anyway, here a few of them in all their funky glory, LOL:

My 1st one while the decorating kit was all in 1 piece:



This is what happens when your decorating kit breaks, the knife
is too large and you have to use stir sticks to frost:
(And her head fell off moving to a serving plate this a.m.,
so I ate her for breakfast)


We dubbed this one "New Year's Eve Baby With Binkie":

 

[Alice28]

They turned out adorable! I don't know what your talking about. Although it does sound frustrating. I used a decorating bag (a piping bag) and decorating tips like you use for decorating a cake, those plastic push canisters are junk (as you found out) and it's pretty hard to brake something as simple as a piping bag. But I think yours look better then mine even with all the mishaps. Although I did have a helper "helping" me with everything! Lol.

 

[N F C]

Aw, thanks Alice. The main thing is DH & I had fun and they are tasty. That's great you sharing baking with the kids. I have some wonderful memories of doing that with my 2 boys when they were little. Kids remember things like that.

 

[Alice28]

It was fun. I also make homemade bread and each daycare kid gets to make their own loaf to bring home. That's always a big deal too! Today I'm making a HUGE pot of chicken noodle soup. I boiled the chicken last night and have the water I boiled it in as stock. Added all the veggies and I'm cooking that now. I just finished making the noodles and will add them in a bit. It's super cold and windy, so perfect day for chicken noodle soup!

 

[N F C]

Sounds good! Nothing better than hot soup on a cold day.

 

[Xiao Casa]

I had a similar experience with frosting canisters once. I'm not a very good decorator anyway, but that thing made a mess. I was decorating sugar cookies and was try to pipe a little bell shape onto one of them. It didn't come out great, but I figured, hey, it will taste good, right? So then my older brother walks by, sees the cookie, and asks, "Did you just draw an amoeba on that cookie?"

 

[N F C]

Brothers!