Valentine's Day Cookies

This year we made some Valentine's Day cookies.


Peppermint sugar cookies
1-1/3 cups butter
1-1/2 cups sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt (if unsalted butter)
2 eggs
¼ tsp. peppermint extract
4 cups flour
½ cup crushed peppermint candy canes
Cream butter, baking powder, and salt. Add eggs and peppermint extract. Mix in flour and peppermint candy. Chill dough until easy to handle. Roll dough out and cut out shapes. Bake at 375° for 8-10 minutes. Cool on cookie sheet for a few minutes so the candy has time to solidify again. Frost with Sugar Cookie Icing.

Sugar Cookie Icing
1 cup powdered sugar
4 tsp. milk
1 Tb. light corn syrup
¼ tsp. vanilla, almond, or other flavoring extract
Food coloring
Mix all ingredients until smooth. Brush or drizzle on cookies. This makes enough icing to cover a little more than one cookie sheet full of cookies. If the icing gets too thick, you can thin it with more milk or corn syrup. The icing hardens completely in 1-2 hours.

They were a big hit and looked good as well. I used peppermint flavoring in the icing.

Oatmeal-Buttermilk Muffins

Mix and let sit for 15 minutes:
2 cups oats
1-3/4 cups buttermilk
¾ cup milk

Mix and add to oats and milk:
2 eggs
½ cup oil

Sift together:
2 cups flour (can use ½ cup whole wheat)
2/3 cup brown or white sugar
1-3/4 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. soda
½ tsp. salt

Stir the liquids into the dry mixture. Bake for 15-18 minutes at 375°. Makes about 24 muffins. You can add 1 cup of blueberries or other fruit, if you wish.

Creme fraiche

This is an adult version of sour cream that tastes good on berries or other fruit.

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup creme fraiche, Greek or regular whole-milk yogurt, or sour cream with live cultures

Pour the cream in a glass jar and add the yogurt or cream. Let sit on the counter, with the lid slightly off, for 4-24 hours until thickened. Refrigerate, tightly covered. You can whip it, like whipped cream, if you want before using it.

Mushrooms

I was happy to see that the mushroom growers had reformulated the common white mushroom sold in supermarkets so that, according to the label, they are "now with 100% Vitamin D."

Really.

The label did say that.

Cool Whip Substitute #2

Here is yet another substitute for Cool Whip, or a way to stabilize cream.

Stabilized Whipped Cream
1 cup whipping cream
¼ cup powdered sugar
Use powdered sugar, not granulated sugar, when sweetening the cream. The cornstarch in the powdered sugar absorbs some of the liquid, so the cream holds its shape for at least 24 hours.

I used this as a topping on a cream pie and it didn't go runny or soggy after a whole day. I don't know exactly how long it will last, but the pie didn't stay around for longer than that.

Cool Whip Substitute

I know that Cool Whip (or the generic equivalent) is actually a substitute for whipped cream. Our family doesn't eat Cool Whip, at least not when we are in charge of making the food. However, some recipes require Cool Whip since it maintains its shape and probably never really melts. To get around that stumbling block, you can use stabilized whipped cream. (It tastes better than Cool Whip anyway).

Stabilized Whipped Cream
1 packet unflavored gelatin (about 3 tsp.)
2 Tb. cold water
¼ cup boiling water
2 cups whipping cream
¼-1/2 cup sugar
½ tsp. vanilla
Pour the cold water over the gelatin and let it soften. Then pour the boiling water over and mix until it dissolves completely. Let it cool, but don’t let it set. Whip cream until mostly thick. Add sugar and vanilla. Beat in the gelatin and finish whipping the cream. Cool the cream in the fridge for about half an hour before using it, though it will keep for a few days. The water proportions to gelatin seem to be about 2 Tb. for each teaspoon of gelatin.

How to make a star-shaped cake

To make a star-shaped cake without using a star-shaped cake pan, you need two round cake pans. Mine were both 9-in. pans, but it would probably work better if one was an 8-inch pan and the other was 9-inches.
Cut a pentagon shape on one of the circles (the smaller one, if you have a smaller one). Use a ruler to make all the sides the same length.
Cut six pie shapes from the other round cake. I used a protractor to get them all the same size.
Trim off the rounded edge on the pie shapes and then put them together along the flat sides of the pentagon shape. This photo still has the rounded edges on the pie shapes since I was actually doing a differently shaped cake. The frosting will hide all the seams quite nicely.
This was the cake I was trying to make--Ft. McHenry of Star-Spangled Banner fame--before it got frosted. As you can see, this is a variation of a star-shaped cake.