The Funky Kitchen

I seem to have developed a rather large collection of cookie cutters. Cookie cutters are a collection that kind of works for me, I think, being all cooking and baking interested and all.

Some of my favorites are the hippos (big one and wee baby one), the dinosaur, and the elephants.

So I made sugar cookies, orange cardamom sugar cookies to be precise, because sugar cookies are just perfect for some cookie cutter fun. In the name of science, I decided to see just how expansive my cookie cutter collection has become. I made a whole batch of cookies and got to use each cookie cutter once! It started getting to the point where I was running out of cookie dough, so I had to cut a couple of cookies out of other cookies (concentric hearts, little chick cut out of a big bird).

I’m starting to worry that this collection is too big…

but there so many cute ones out there!

Orange Cardamom Cookies

(adapted from Gourmet December 2007)

2 1/2 Cups flour

2 Tbsp orange zest

2 tsp ground cardamom

1 tsp salt

1 Cup butter

1/4 Cup sugar

1 egg

2 Tbsp whipping cream

1 tsp vanilla

Directions

• In a large bowl, combine the flour, orange zest, cardamom and salt.
• In a second, smaller bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until they are fluffy. Next, incorporate the egg, whipping cream, and vanilla.
• In batches, add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and mix until the dough forms.
• Cover your dough in cling film and refrigerate for an hour.
• Next, roll the cookie dough out 1/8″ thick, and cut out shapes with cookie cutters, reserving scraps and rerolling to make more cookies.
• Put the cookies onto baking sheets, and bake in  350° oven until the edges are golden brown (~9-12 minutes).
• Optional: after the cookies have cooled, decorate them with Maple Brown Sugar Icing (recipe to follow).

What I really liked about these cookies was that there is really not that much sugar in them (until you cover them with icing), but you get a really nice flavor from the orange zest and cardamom. I’ll definitely be making these again.

Maple Brown Sugar Icing

(from Dandelion’s recipe on Group Recipes)

2 1/2 Cups icing sugar

1/2 Cup brown sugar

1/2 Cup butter

1/8 tsp salt

1/2 Cup maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla

Directions

• Beat sugars, butter and salt together until fluffy. This is easiest using a machine mixer.
• Continue beating, and drizzle in slowly both the maple syrup and vanilla.
• Ice whatever your heart desires!

This icing is so tasty! The color isn’t awesome, but I think it would take some color by way of food coloring really well if you were decorating something like a cupcake.

Mr says: These cookies have a super good combo of subtle flavors. There isn’t one that really jumps out at you, but everything works really well in combination.

This time last year: Deeply Chocolate Ice Cream

Mr seems to get a little bit uncomfortable when much ado is made about him.

This is hard for me, because he is one of my favorite people to make much ado over. Especially at times of year like this (his birthday was on Thursday), I grapple with my urges to try and lasso the moon for him, overdo the festivities, make every favorite thing he has ever mentioned.

He says: “There’s no need to make a fuss.” 

It doesn’t feel like making a fuss, I just want to be able to give him everything, want moments to be perfect, want to demonstrate how special he is to me. We kind of tend to be the overly sweet duo who makes everybody else sick; we’re very much hand holders and “I love you” sayers, so I know that he knows I think he’s special. But still, at times like these I am driven to show him extra hard.

So after the third or fourth asking, “What would you like? What would make it extra special for you?” I got a response that wasn’t “Dana, you’re making enough for the party” or “What do you feel like making?” He decided on cream puffs.

Happy birthday Mr, I love you. Sorry for making a fuss, but I’m probably going to keep the habit.

Cream Puffs

(Adapted from Celtic Kim’s recipe on All Recipes)

1 Cup water

1/2 Cup butter

1/4 tsp salt

1 Cup flour

4 eggs

1 Cup whipping cream

2 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 Tbsp Chambord or Cointreau

Directions

• Preheat your oven to 425°.
• In a saucepan set over high heat, melt the butter into the water and bring it all to a roiling boil.
• Remove the saucepan from the heat, and stir in the flour and salt until smooth.
• Stir the eggs in one at a time. Do not add the next egg until the first one is completely incorporated.
• Your pâte à choux should not be stiff, it should slump off of the back of your spoon.
• Pipe the pastry in dollops of about a tablespoon onto your baking sheet. Pull up as you pipe to encourage the cream puffs to expand upward, not outward, during baking.
• Wet the tip of your finger with water, and flatten the pointed tips left by the piping bag, so that they do not burn.
• Bake until the puffs have expanded and are a burnished gold (~25 minutes).
• While the puffs are baking, whip the cream. As it begins to stiffen, slowly add the sugar, vanilla, and Chambord or Cointreau.
• Allow the puffs to cool, then poke holes in the bottom of each and fill with the whipped cream filling, using either a piping bag, or an icing injector.

These are so cute when they come out of the oven! I’m really happy Mr had the idea to request these while I was pestering him for ideas. He’s a smart one, that Mr. We’re big fans of dipping in our house and a big platter of cream puffs at his birthday party, with a bowl of chocolate sauce for dipping, was lovely.

Mr says: the cream puffs turned out amazing. The raspberry whipping cream (the Chambord version) is decadent.

This time last year: Woodgrain Cake

One day, not too long ago, I got to spend the morning and afternoon with my Baba, making pounchki. She hadn’t made them in a number of years, but when I asked if we could make some, she was only too happy to oblige.

Food can ingrain some very detailed memories, and pounchki do that for me. They are like little fried doughnut holes, filled with a poppy seed filling. Pounchki are also known as paczki or pampushky. They are so good, and even better if you dust them with a little bit of icing sugar.

My Baba didn’t have a written recipe and my mum knows how to make them, but not the proportions of what you make them with. Now, after paying some studious attention, weighing and measuring as we went, we have a recipe.  As we kneaded, rolled and pinched the morning away I got to hear about my Great Baba, her mother-in-law whom I never had the chance to meet. From what I’m told, she is the reason we only make pounchki in the winter.

I’m really happy with the way they turned out, and also that I’ve got a recipe so that we won’t be out of luck when my Baba decides she isn’t going to make them anymore. The following recipe is for a lot of pounchki, because my Baba does not make things in small batches. Feel free to halve or quarter the recipe.

Pounchki

5 Cup warm water

2 Tbsp yeast

8 eggs

1 Cup vegetable oil

1 Cup + 1 Tbsp sugar

2 Tbsp vanilla

1 Tbsp salt

13 Cups of flour

• In a bowl, bloom the yeast with 1 Cup of the water and 1 Tbsp of the sugar. Allow to sit while you assemble the other ingredients.
• Beat 8 eggs together in a big bowl.
• Stir in the oil, remaining sugar, vanilla, salt and bloomed yeast.
• Mix in the flour until the dough will not take it in anymore, and then tip out of the bowl and knead, knead, knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. Baba says: “You want a nice, soft dough.”
• Cover the dough with a damp tea towel and let it rise twice, punching down between rises, while you prepare the filling.

2 pounds of poppy seeds, ground with a coffee grinder (This way you can control how well ground they are, and they will be less likely to be rancid)

1 Cup sugar

1 Cup honey

2 Cups milk

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp vanilla

2 tsp lemon juice

• Combine all of the ingredients.
• Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring often to ensure it does not burn.
• Remove from heat and let cool. Spreading the filling on a sheet pan to increase its surface area will help it cool more quickly.

• Roll our your dough, in portions, to about 1/4″ thick, and then cut it, with a knife into small squares, ~1 1/2″.
• Spoon about 1 1/2-2 tsp of filling onto a dough square. Pinch the corners of the dough together across the filling, and then pinch the seams closed, sealing the filling inside the dough.

• Roll the pounchki in your hand a little bit to help it become more spherical.
• Repeat the above three steps until you run out of filling.
• Deep fry the pounchki in batches in a pot of oil that is hot but not smoking, until puffed and golden brown. They do grow a fair amount during frying.

• Set fried pounchki on paper towels to drain away extra oil.

Serve as is, or dusted with icing sugar if you’re feeling fancy. If you have extra dough left after all of the filling is used, make doughnuts!

Pounchki are so good. These bring me straight back to being probably six or seven, in my mum’s kitchen, biting into my first one before even getting to the table.

Mr’s Babcia makes something very similar, but instead of poppy seed filling each golden bun of goodness contains a prune. Mr was not a fan of the pounchki I brought home, but in this case, Mr is crazy! He liked the doughnuts though.

This time last year: Spaghetti with Spicy Italian Sausage, Roasted Acorn Squash and Labneh