Turtle Bread :)

A little while ago, I found the Betty Crocker website.  I now LOVE this website!!  I look there whenever I am in search of a recipe.  It's amazing.
Once I was looking and found the Turtle Bread recipe.  The cute little turtle looked soooo cute!!!  I couldn't wait to try this adorable looking bread.
So I got the recipe and headed to the kitchen!  I was cooking the rest of the dinner as well so I didn't have a whole lot of down time to try and make it perfect.
This is what it is SUPPOSED to look like:

Isn't it cute?
And this is what mine turned out to look like.....

So besides the fact that the head is not  perfectly round and the feet are kinda weird, the bread itself tasted good!
So if you would like this bread recipe, here it is from the Betty Crocker website.

Ingredients

2 1/2	to 3 cups Gold Medal® all-purpose flour
1	package quick active dry yeast
1	tablespoon sugar
1	teaspoon salt
1/2	cup water
1/3	cup milk
1	tablespoon butter or margarine
1	egg
2	raisins

Directions

1.	In large bowl, mix 1 1/2 cups of the flour, the yeast, sugar and salt; set aside.
2.	In 1-quart saucepan, heat water, milk and butter over medium heat, stirring occasionally, to 125°F to 130°F; stir into yeast mixture. Stir in egg. Stir in enough remaining flour to make dough easy to handle. On lightly floured surface, knead dough about 5 minutes or until smooth and springy. Cover and let rest 10 minutes.
3.	Lightly grease cookie sheet with shortening or spray with cooking spray. Shape a 2-inch piece of dough into a ball for turtle’s head. Shape 4 walnut-size pieces of dough into balls for feet. Shape 1 walnut-size piece of dough into tail. Shape remaining dough into ball for turtle body; place on cookie sheet and flatten slightly. Attach head, feet and tail by placing 1 end of each under edge of body to secure. Press raisins into head for eyes. Cover and let rise in warm place 20 minutes.
4.	Heat oven to 400°F. Make 1/4-inch-deep circular cut around top edge of body, then make crisscross cuts in center to look like a turtle's shell. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown.

--Brittany

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Sugar Cookies!

Hello.
I know it has been a LONG time since my first post.  I could sit here and make excuses why such as got busy with school, or haven't had time...but honestly, I have had PLENTY of time.  I just didn't take the time to blog about anything.  And it isn't that I haven't baked stuff cause believe me, I have.  Most of the stuff I would start taking pictures of the beginning stages, lots and lots of pictures...but then I would forget to take pictures of the ending stages, the ones that matter the most.  So that is basically why I haven't posted anything recently.  And since I don't really have any readers, I figured I wasn't disappointing anyone. Lol.

Ok...now on to the reason for my second post.  My aunt has her own blog called Cookie Crazie.  If you haven't looked at it you totally should head on over there. I have been following her blog for some time now.  I am always amazed at how wonderful her cookies are!  Once, my sister and I tried to make some cookies also but they didn't turn out very good....at ALL!  I vowed I would never try again.  But as I continued to look at my aunt's blog, and at other blogs I was re-inspired. So I researched to try and find the best recipe and tutorials and anything else that would help me out on this new adventure that I was heading out on.

There is a website that is called Cookiers-R-Us.  It is a fabulous place to ask questions and get answers and share ideas.  I found a cookie recipe here and asked some questions.  I found my icing recipe at University of Cookie which also helped me out.

So I had my cookie recipe, my icing recipe, now I just had to jump in and start cooking.
I made the cookie dough, rolled it out between two pieces of wax paper, stuck it in the freezer for a little while, crossed my fingers, cut out my shapes, placed them on the pan, stuck them in the oven, and set the timer.  During the ten minutes they were cooking, I kept wanting to peek a look inside the oven to see how they were turning out.  The anticipation was rising. And then...BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP...the timer went off!  I took the cookies out and the beautiful golden brown shapes that I had cut looked so delicious and I just wanted to gobble them up right there.  But with the little bit of self control I had I waited.

I made the icing and colored it.  I didn't know exactly what I was doing but I still wasn't going to give up.  I couldn't get BLACK icing...just a light grey.  But that was good enough for this time!  I tried to ice the cookies and, oh my, it is not as easy as it looks at all!  Fortunately, I believe I had pretty basic shapes and designs.  So I just iced away.

Would you like to see the pictures of my first sugar cookies (I don't count the very first attempt cause my sister was the one that made them more than me ;) I was there for support. lol) ??  Ok I will show you.

But please don't laugh.  This was my FIRST attempt.  Ok...here they are!

Ok so her is a duckie...it's kinda cute...right?

Here are some stars....They are kinda sloppy.   :/

These are my favorites out of the bunch....even though they still are not very good. Lol.

And lastly, we have some smiley faces.  They are kinda whacky shaped...lol.

So yeah, that was my first attempt at decorating suger cookies.  They tasted good to me too!  My mom and sister enjoyed them also!!!  So I say, even though it wasn't perfection, it was still a success!  ^_^

--Brittany

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My First Post!

This is my first post! How exciting!!
Anyways, for my FIRST post, I have made Homemade Oreos.  That's right, homemade.
I have been exploring other people's baking blogs and I saw that several had made their own homemade oreos.  They looked delicious and I couldn't resist trying them myself.  Since I am a very amateur baker, I figured this would be a nice simple first attempt.
I found the recipe at Sugar Cooking.
Being a beginner, I have not yet acquired everything I need, so I had to make adjustments.  I did not have all-purpose flour or baking powder.  And the baking soda I had, I have had for a while and I am scared to use it.  So I just substituted it with Self Rising flour and left out the baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

So once I gathered all my ingredients, I started mixing them all together

Now it was time to roll the dough into balls and bake them.  I used one of those cookie scooper things.  They remind me of ice cream scoops except they are made just for cookies.  It helps get all your cookies about the same size and they are then in ball form already so I didn't have to get my hands too dirty.

While they were baking I started to get all the ingredients for the icing together. The cookies cook for such a short time that I didn't start making the icing yet.  So now it was time to take the cookies out of the oven and let them cool.

While I let the cookies cool, I started making the icing.

Once the cookies were cool I put on the icing and found a match for each cookie.  Now I had myself some homemade oreos.  ^_^

Before I could even get finished with putting icing on all of the cookies, my sister was in the kitchen asking if she could have one.  I took one to my mom and she ate it and said "I don't think you can have just one!!"
So needless to say, I think they turned out good.  My icing tasted very vanilla-ny, so I don't know if that was something I did or what.  I will just go a little lighter next time.

Here is the recipe Copied and Pasted DIRECTLY from Sugar Cooking.  All the notes are from there.  None of it is mine.

Recipe: Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Ingredients:
For the chocolate wafers:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa*
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar**
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) room-temperature, unsalted butter
• 1 large egg

For the filling:

• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) room-temperature, unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup vegetable shortening
• 2 cups sifted confectioners sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Set two racks in the middle of the oven. Preheat to 375°F.
2. In a food processor, or bowl of an electric mixer, thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar. While pulsing, or on low speed, add the butter, and then the egg. Continue processing or mixing until dough comes together in a mass.
3. Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet approximately two inches apart. With moistened hands, slightly flatten the dough. Bake for 9 minutes, rotating once for even baking. Set baking sheets on a rack to cool.
4. To make the cream, place butter and shortening in a mixing bowl, and at low speed, gradually beat in the sugar and vanilla. Turn the mixer on high and beat for 2 to 3 minutes until filling is light and fluffy.
5. To assemble the cookies, in a pastry bag with a 1/2 inch, round tip, pipe teaspoon-size blobs of cream into the center of one cookie. Place another cookie, equal in size to the first, on top of the cream. Lightly press, to work the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookie. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with cream. Dunk generously in a large glass of milk.

*I used Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate. It's a mix of natural and dutch process cocoas. I really like how it came out because it made the cookies dark just like real oreos. I also read A LOT of the comments on Smitten Kitchen's original post and it seems that the general consensus is that regular unsweetened cocoa powder will work just fine.
** I went right in the middle and used 1 1/4 cups and this was the perfect sweetness for me. 

Thanks for reading!  More posts are coming soon!!! 

--Brittany

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