Linzer Cookies and other tales

3.5 cups of butter later, I remembered why I only bake once a year. Luckily, I was determined and stubborn enough that I finished the cookies even though I was totally fed up with the process half way into the first batch. Pictures? Not so many. I was often too covered in flour and butter.

My proudest accomplishment of this round of baking was Strawberry Linzer cookies.  2 hours = 14 painstakingly made cookies. Based on this recipe. They really are good, and they really do take a while. And to get those shapes, the dough really does have to be *exactly* the right temperature or you get to start all over. Also? Please only try to do this if you have a normally sized kitchen.

I also made Ginger Spice Cookies – like gingerbread but more spice. I picked this recipe because it had the most spice of any recipe I found.  Ginger juice that I made from real ginger, molasses, brown sugar, cinnamon, allspice and ground black pepper. YES. I may have added more spice than the recipe called for. I love my food to be flavorful! These are done (I made them into candy canes and tiny angels, stars, gingerbread men and trees) but need a bit of decoration still.

I also made these cookies from Epicurious. Except mine are Milk Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies. The original recipe wanted bittersweet and white chocolates. I thought it would be too much. I think I was right. I added extra cranberries too.  These are actually my favorite of the three cookies I made. Tasty, with a slight crunch and a soft middle, with plenty of tart and sweet flavor. YUM.

Let me tell you, though, that I don’t bake most of the time because:

1) Cookies make me feel guilty.  First I put in the butter. Then the sugar. Then the white flour. And I think … that’s it? I’m eating pure Bad For Me? I CANNOT DO THIS. And then I do. Because mmmm, cookies are tasty. I happen to really disagree with Kate Moss, who said recently, to my everlasting irritation and disgust, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Quite too bad and sad for her! There’s a lot more to life than being skinny. I’ll eat her cookies too.

2) Baking pastries takes FOREVER. Preparation, refrigeration, cookie cutters, baking, cooling, decorating. Just be done already! Cooking is really way easier. Much more instant gratification. Much less exercise of my limited quantities of patience. Maybe it was just that I chose really difficult recipes?

3) I have to measure things. I am not the type of person who either follows directions or measures stuff. I “go with what feels right,” but this is not an acceptable way to do things when baking. Some people follow directions, follow patterns, follow instructions, follow rules, follow guidelines. I am definitely NOT one of those people.

And also. Let’s remember the Cardinal Rule of Cookie Baking Chez Miriam.

If you show up at my house and I offer you freshly-baked cookies, I have not magically turned into Super Housewife. Let’s just realize that this was one of those times my hyperness and OCD got the better of me. It’s Solstice-Chanukkah-Christmas. I’m allowed to be slightly crazy about something, right?

Flowers for my Mom

This past weekend Jeff and I made a trip to Houston to visit our respective mothers. Since I work on Mother’s Day, we were a week late, but the love is still there, right?

So for this past Mother’s Day I decided to make my mother a gift of one of her favorite things, violets. I wouldn’t have thought of it except one of my favorite crochet designers – June Gilbank – provided a lovely pattern for a cute little pot of violets just in time to make them for the day.  It didn’t take too long to make it, it was fun, and it turned out so, so well!  June is one of my favorite designers because her patterns are deceptively simple, but just exactly right.

As you maybe can see from the picture, my mother loves violets, and as long as I can remember has grown lovely examples on her kitchen windowsill. So the idea was to make her a special, permanently flowering version of them.  I took June’s pattern and altered it just a wee bit, and it became not just a pot of violets, but a basket for jewelry.

I made sure to use fuzzy green yarn (Jiffy yarn in Avocado) for the leaves, because I always loved the soft velvet of violet leaves. Apart from that, the main difference from the pattern was that I split it in half to make a basket.  The original design is all one piece and stuffed with fiberfill.  In order to change it, I judiciously applied plastic cross stitch canvas, some matching stash fabric and a bit of fiberfill.

The first step was to cut out circles of plastic canvas to stiffen the flower top “lid” and the bottom of the pot.  Then I sewed a rectangle of the canvas into a circle shape to stiffen the pot sides.  I also sewed the circle for the pot bottom to the sides. I used plastic canvas because (1) I could sew it and (2) plastic doesn’t disintegrate over time like cardboard does and (3) it’s waterproof.

Next I got a large circle of coordinating fabric from my stash and stuffed it into the little basket made from plastic canvas.  I stitched the fabric to the canvas with yarn around the top, and then I tacked the fabric to the bottom of the pot with four tiny stitches, also using yarn.  That leaves you with a basket lined with fabric.  Then I trimmed some of the major excess off the outside, still leaving a considerable amount so it’s fabric-lined inside and out.  Here’s the lining basket after sewing (and a lovely picture of the Men’s Health magazine I was using as a table).

The final step was to stuff the fabric basket into the yarn basket and smooth the fabric down, and tack them together with matching yarn. Voila!  fabric lining inside and out. Creating a lovely, structured, lined basket capable of holding the most lovely of jewelry, if I do say so myself.

I did something similar to structure the “flower lid” by adding a circle of plastic canvas to the bottom of the lid. I also obviously added the brown lid bottom to suggest the dirt the flowers are growing in.  In the original there is no need for this bottom.  Apart from the canvas, the lid is mostly stuffed with fiberfill.  The crocheted bottom structured with plastic canvas is the lovely structural finishing touch that makes the lid match the bottom in shape and style. I don’t want to say more beyond that, because I don’t want to give away June’s clever pattern.

I also added a “lip” to the top and bottom of the crocheted pieces in white by adding two rows – I crocheted around twice in both the back loop and front loop of the last row of the top and bottom.  The point of the lip is to create a way to fit the basket together in a neat way. (sorry for the fuzzy picture below)  I did this before attaching the fabric.  You can see the bottom of the lid including the “dirt” bottom and lip in the picture of the two halves also.

So that was my Mother’s Day gift to my mom!  She loves jewelry and violets and purple, what better way to tell her her crafty daughter loves her than to make something out of the things she loves?

Traditions Holiday Swap 2007

I can’t show you what my swap partner, Vickie, sent to me yet, but I thought I’d show you what I sent to her. I went a little nuts (gee, how unusual for me!) and made a booklet and things. It’s fun getting to know someone this way. Vickie lives in California, and is married with a year-old daughter names Lani (so cute!).

So here’s my package:

I sent a tradition from my husband and I, our favorite holiday music: Vincent Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas CD. Vickie sent me Harry Connick, Jr., which is awesome, and made me want to watch Will & Grace. Also a couple of books that are timeless Christmas tales for children, from my own childhood: The Night Before Christmas and the Twelve Days of Christmas.

I sent two tree ornaments I made myself – a crocheted snowflake and an embroidered felt tree. These were both much fun to make!

The little brown wooden square is an Edelweiss cookie press for Springerle cookies. Springerle are traditional German cookies dating back to the 14th century (I’m from the “Hasenclever” family maternally – can you get more German?). I’ll give more information about these later. I gave Vickie my family’s recipe for them.

Finally, I made a booklet with recipes and information for her:

Front and back covers there. The front is a holiday card cut in half with a piece of paper adhered to the back. Same for the back. Tied with ribbon, because I don’t know how else to bind a book at the moment.

A greeting on page 2, then on page 4 a rundown of a traditional holiday dinner – one I made in 2006, in fact. The portabello bisque listed there has a long story.

Pages 5-8. That’s my tree from 2006, then three pages to explain and give the springerle recipe. With pictures!

Pages 9-12. There’s some info about my maternal “hometown” and on the right my maternal grandmother’s Chocolate Crinkle cookie recipe.

Pages 13-16. Finally, my paternal grandmother’s sage noodle recipe. Very good recipe. haven’t heard of too many families with a holiday noodle recipe.

So that’s all there is. It was a fun project to undertake. I’ve decided I need to learn more binding methods, make a few more little books like that. I don’t know what for, but I can certainly build them anyway!