When Economy Shakes, Families Bake

Don’t let the tough economy keep your family from talking and laughing together – get up, get creative and get baking cookies!

Baking cookies with the whole family is a fun and low-cost activity, and you likely have most of the ingredients already on hand. Want to enjoy some delicious family time? Consider the following cookie baking activities that will stir up some good-spirited competition, making everyone a winner.

• Get the whole family involved – even the teens and the toddlers. Teaching your kids the fun and art of baking will stay with them for a lifetime.
• Baking cookies isn’t just about measuring the ingredients or tending the oven. Make cookie baking a game that all family members can enjoy. Check out the following activities: Test Your Cookie IQ; Family Fortunes; and Cookie Exchange, Anytime.
• According to a recent national Land O’Lakes survey of 1,000 people, classic chocolate chip is without a doubt America’s favorite cookie, with oatmeal raisin and peanut butter cookies nearly tied for second place. Try baking (and eating!) this delicious Chewy Jumbo Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe the next time you want to treat your family to “America’s favorite cookie” and fun time in the kitchen.
• One of the top barriers that keep people from baking at home is the hassle of cleaning up afterwards. To make cleaning more palatable, let the winner of the cookie baking game have the first chance to select a clean-up activity (which most likely will be the easiest one). Another idea is to challenge the family to a timed competition to see who can finish clean-up tasks the most quickly. The winner gets bragging rights!

What Eli Zabar Learned From the Frugal Housewife

When life gives you leftover doughnuts, make jelly doughnut pudding.

Feed Me – What Eli Zabar Learned From the Frugal Housewife – NYTimes.com.

HowTo Make Your Cookies Sing: Butter

The most common mistakes made by home bakers, professionals say, have to do with the care and handling of one ingredient: butter. Creaming butter correctly, keeping butter doughs cold, and starting with fresh, good-tasting butter are vital details that professionals take for granted, and home bakers often miss.

Butter is basically an emulsion of water in fat, with some dairy solids that help hold them together. But food scientists, chefs and dairy professionals stress butter’s unique and sensitive nature the way helicopter parents dote on a gifted child.

Personally, this is one reason why I’m not a baker.  A casserole is MUCH more forgiving than a cookie, cake, or loaf of bread.

I realize there are people out there who obsess over yeast, flour, and butter.  I am not one of them.

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On the Side: Man, you still cut a fine figure

It is unclear whether he’ll last through another season, beat up as he is, suffering multiple fractures that never heal, only deepen and spread.

One crack slants above the right eye, a superior orbital fissure they call it in the jargon.

Another digs deep across where the collarbone should be.

Both arms are compromised, scuffed and chipped.

Yes, I’m talking about the gingerbread man cutter you have in your drawer.

On the Side: Man, you still cut a fine figure | Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/25/2008.

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

Because I like the name …

Dating from the 1920s, creamy filling mounded between two big puffy cookies became a phenomenon. This version has big taste yet smaller size.

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