Your Advent ~ Calendar – Day 23

Hello my lovely friends 😍

Behind today’s door I have a delicious surprise waiting for you!

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies 😋 I think Santa will be very happy tonight!

You can find the recipe for these yummy treats here .

A few tips:

– If you use a Standmixer, use the dough hook for the last step (mixing the wet and dry ingredients). Just trust me on this 😉

– The dough gets very sticky after a few minutes out of the fridge. So you have to work fast or hire a few helpers. I didn’t do neither, so I had to scrape dough from my hands with a knife 😅

– I bakes the cookies for about 13 minutes. The texture is more on the crunchy side…but not quite. I hope that makes sense 🙃

– I rolled them in granulated sugar, since I didn’t have powdered sugar…and didn’t want to join the crowds at the grocery store today 😏 But the author mentions that her Mom rolls them in granulated sugar. And what’s good enough for Mom, is good enough for me. 😊

Thank you for stopping by and I hope that you’ll be back for the opening of the last door! 🎄

Your Advent Calendar 🎄 Day 13

Hello my lovely friends 💕

Today’s Door #13….

…holds a delicious secret! 🤩

A recipe from my Cookie ~ Kitchen

Gingerbread Cutouts 

In the spirit of creating new traditions, hubby and I teamed up in the kitchen to bake some Gingerbread cookies. 😊

If you wanna bake along, here’s what you need, and need to do…

1/2 c Sugar
1/2 c Molasses
2 tsp. ground Ginger
1-1/2 tsp. ground Cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground Cloves
1/2 tsp. ground Nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground Pepper
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 c (1 stick) Butter, cut into pieces
1 large Egg, beaten
3-1/2 c all-purpose Flour
Frosting

1. In 3-quart saucepan, heat sugar, molasses, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and pepper to boiling over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Remove saucepan from heat; stir in baking soda (mixture will foam in the pan). Stir in butter until melted. With fork, stir in egg, the flour.

2.  On lightly floured surface, knead dough until thoroughly mixed. Divide dough in half; wrap half of dough and set aside.

3. Preheat oven to 325°F. With floured rolling pin, roll half of dough slightly thinner than 1/4″.

Hubby hard at work 😅

 

4. With floured 3 to 4 inch cookie cuters, cut dough into as many cookies as possible; reserve trimmings.

The fun continues 😉

 

5. Place cookies, 1/2″ apart, on ungreased large cookie sheet. Bake cookies until edges begin to brown, about 12 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool. Repeat with remaining dough and reserved trimmings.

6. When cookies are cool, decorate cookies as desired (we used vanilla frosting, colored with food dye).
Allow frosting to dry completely, about 1 hour. Store in tightly covered container up to 2 weeks.
Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

While ours don’t look very professional 🙈 they are definitely very colorful, and delicious 😁

 

Now go, and strap on that apron. Let me know how it went! 🤩

I wish you a wonderful, fabulous, sparkly Holiday season 💕🎄🎅🏼

 

Recipe ~ Friday – German ‘Nut-Corners’ (Nussecken)

Hello my lovely friends 💕 How nice of you to peek in! And because you’re so sweet, I have an extra special sweet treat for you today! At least hubby thinks it’s extra special! 😊 That’s why I made these german cookies this week. See, last Tuesday was our anniversary, and because he’s a pretty nifty guy he got his favorite cookies. 😍

Speaking of anniversary, I’d like to show you something related to that.

I gotta backtrack…..a few months after we got married my new husband had to deploy to Bosnia. For a whole year- ugh 😑 With the kid in school I had a lot of time on my hands. And what does Tina do when she has time? Be creative, of course 😋 So I got a cross-stitch kit, and made this sampler

It has to be the kitschiest thing in our house 😆 but we love it! And…with this hanging in the hallway there’s no excuse to ever forget the anniversary! 😂

Okay, enough with the memories….let’s get baking 👩🏻‍🍳

You will need (like I mentioned, this is a german recipe, so the measurements might seem a bit unusual) 😊

~ 1 1/2 c Flour

~ a pinch of salt

~ 1/2 cup ground hazelnuts or almonds

~ 1/4 c + 1 Tbsp. Sugar

~ 1 egg

~ 9 Tbsp Butter

Topping: 

~ 3 Tbsp. heavy cream

~ 10 Tbsp. Butter

~ 1 scant cup sugar

~ 3 Tbsp. Honey

~ 9 oz. sliced Almonds or Hazelnuts

Mix the flour, salt, nuts, and sugar together, add the egg. Cut the butter into small chunks. Mix everything with a knife, cutting the butter as you go. Knead until a soft dough forms. Shape it into a ball, and set it in the fridge for about 30 minutes. 
Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper (I prefer non-stick aluminum foil, because with that you can line ‘up-the-edges’….the topping gets a bit runny, and sticky as it cools)

Prepare the topping- Melt the butter, honey, and sugar on medium heat. Add the almonds, bring to a boil – watch it carefully…1 roll then take it off the heat! Stir well, let cool for a few minutes.

Roll out the dough into a rectangle (appr. 12″ x 8″)

Spread the heavy cream on the dough, then the topping.

Bake at 400°  (convection oven) – 425° for 15, 20 minutes until golden brown.

While hot cut into triangles- as you can see in the picture in the cookbook, the original cookie is quite big. We prefer the smaller triangles (plus you get more out of one batch 😝)

The last step I can only tell you about….I gotta run to the store and get some chocolate chips 😆

The corners are dipped into melted chocolate….hmmm, right- don’t wanna miss out on that!
For that you need

~ 2 c semi-sweet chocolate chips

~ 2 Tbsp shortening

In a microwave safe bowl, melt both ingredients; stir until smooth. Dip all 3 corners into the melted chocolate, and set on wax paper until set.

I hope you enjoy this treat! 🤗 Let me know if you did!

See you soon 💕

~ Tina xoxo