Maple Cookies

Happy Fathers' Day, everyone!

You know what I love about making cookies as gifts for people? I get to taste test them.

My dad loves a good maple bar, so when I ran across a maple cookie recipe on Pinterest, I thought they might make a good gift for him.

Maple Cookies

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter (softened)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups flour
2 Tbsp sugar

Equipment
oven, mixer, baking sheet, cooling rack

Instructions
In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar. Add the egg, syrup, and vanilla; mix until combined. Add soda, salt, and flour; mix until combined. Refrigerate for about an hour. Preheat oven to 350 F. Put sugar in a small bowl. Shape dough into 1" balls and flatten slightly; dip one side in sugar and set on greased baking sheets (sugar-side up). Bake 8-10 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

Yields
2 dozen cookies

Total time
90 minutes (a few minutes to mix everything, 1 hour to refrigerate, a few minutes to roll into balls, 10 minutes each for two batches to bake)

Cleanup rating 2/5
As long as you can manage to not get syrup everywhere while you're measuring, this is only as messy as a basic sugar cookie (simple enough to get the batter off the bowl and beaters, throw your measuring implements in the dishwasher, you're done).

Difficulty rating 3/10
The hardest part is creaming the butter and sugar, which is so easy.

Flavor rating 6/10
They're pretty good. They don't have a strong flavor (which I prefer, personally) but they're nice. I used light brown sugar, so that probably makes a difference.

Adjustability: low
I don't know what I could do to change this recipe. Maybe some kind of frosting to make it sweeter, or throw some walnuts in there?

Make it with...
Nothing, they're cookies. If I were a coffee drinker, I might think they go well with coffee... I'm not sure.

Sweet Palmiers

Palmiers have lots of names in French: palm trees (palmiers), French hearts (coeurs de France), elephant ears, shoe-soles... but they're usually just palmiers. And if you use frozen puff pastry, they're stupidly easy to make. We had a last-minute "oh no, one of our best employees is moving and his last day is tomorrow" situation at work, so we wrangled up some people to bring cookies and ice cream and chips and dip and drinks so we could give him a proper send-off. I made these.

Palmiers (cinnamon-sugar)

Ingredients

frozen puff pastry

sugar

cinnamon

1 egg white per 2 sheets of puff pastry

Equipment

oven, parchment paper, baking sheet, basting brush

Instructions

Thaw your puff pastry according to package directions. (Mine said 40 minutes.) Preheat oven to 400 F. Unfold the puff pastry and brush with egg white. Sprinkle liberally with cinnamon and sugar. Roll the right and left sides toward the center (to make the curly shape you see in the photo). Turn the log over, brush with egg white, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Turn it back over, brush with egg white, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Use a sharp knife and slice the log into ~1/4-inch slices, trying your best to keep the curly shape. Lay the slices on a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet (give them enough space to expand a little bit). Sprinkle each liberally with more sugar. (I never said these were good for you.) Bake for 12-15 minutes. Cool on a cooling rack.

Yields

I used three sheets of puff pastry and got about 36 palmiers out of them, so I'll go with about a dozen palmiers per sheet of puff pastry.

Total time

I baked mine in rounds, so I did three separate bakings... took me about 90 minutes (40 minutes to thaw the pastry, a little prep time, plus 45 minutes baking time, with three rounds of 15 minutes each). If you did just one sheet, it would be about an hour (40 minutes thaw time, 5 minutes prep time, 15 minutes bake time).

Cleanup rating 1/5

So easy. If you can manage not to get sugar and cinnamon everywhere (which is easy-ish, because it's not powdered sugar, and I used Vietnamese cinnamon which is more expensive and therefore I'm more careful with it) you just have to clean the sticky sugary egg white mess off a cutting board (or, if you're smart, throw away a piece of parchment paper).

Difficulty rating 3/10

It's not very hard, but you do have to be careful with timing (I made too many without adjusting timing, so by the time I got to my third sheet of pastry, it was getting sticky because it had been thawing for too long) and without a great knife, it's hard to slice the log nicely. I managed to keep the shape okay, but good tools are necessary to be a good cook (or baker in this case).

Flavor rating 5/10

I was a little underwhelmed. I think Birk was too. But a lot of people at work praised them (and sought me out to do so) so that's probably a good sign.

After thawing the pastry, brushing with egg white,
and sprinkling with cinnamon & sugar.

After rolling it into a curly log.

After slicing. (This was the third batch. Notice the little tails on some
of the slices? That's because it had been thawing a little too long,
and it kept sticking to the knife. It's not a big deal, you can just
stick the tails to the side when you lay them on the baking sheet,
but still... that's not the goal.)

A palmier in my palm. Ha.

Sausage and Veggie Bake

I got this recipe via Pinterest from here. It looked delicious, and since I had today off work, I thought it would be a nice cold-weather, stay-at-home-all-afternoon kind of dinner to make. I was so right.

I promise I'll get better at photographing the food I post here...

I made a few slight adjustments to the original recipe for personal taste, so instead of retyping her recipe, I'll tell you what I did.

Ingredients:
1/2 pound baby carrots
1 pound potatoes (I used white potatoes)
1/2 a large onion
1/2 a red bell pepper
4 sausages (I used beer brats)
1/2 cup chicken broth
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp (ish) shallot-pepper seasoning
salt to taste
4 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

Equipment:
Oven
Pyrex baking dish (or roasting pan if you have one... I don't)
aluminum foil
pan (for sausages)

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 450F. Wash, peel, and cube your potatoes (about 1.5 - 2 inch cubes). Cut your onion half into wedges. Slice your bell pepper half into strips. Put all of these in the Pyrex dish or roasting pan. In a bowl, combine the broth, oil, Italian seasoning, and garlic. Mix it together and pour over the veggies in the pan. Sprinkle with salt and shallot-pepper seasoning. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 45 minutes. Brown sausages in a pan (they don't have to cook all the way through). After 45 minutes, the veggies should be fork-tender. (If they aren't, cook them until they are.) Cut the sausages into quarters and add them to the pan. Add the balsamic vinegar evenly across the top. Return to the oven uncovered for 15 minutes. Using a spoon, distribute juices and turn over sausages/veggies. Bake another 5-10 minutes. Enjoy!

Yields: 4 servings

Total time: about 1.5 hours

Cleanup rating: 2/5
The balsamic vinegar makes quite a mess in the Pyrex dish, but other than rinsing out your measuring implements and your sausage pan, this is the only thing you really need to clean.

Difficulty rating: 3/10
There are four skills required: cut vegetables into even-sized pieces, measure things properly, brown sausages, and pay attention to a timer. The only things that would get in the way of me making this would be not having the time (if I'm cooking when I get home from work, I want it done in 30 minutes or less, not 90) or not having the ingredients. Or having eaten it three times that week already...

Flavor rating: 10/10
I think I made a great choice getting the beer brats... they went extremely well with the veggies and the balsamic vinegar and everything. YUM. Of course I had seconds. And the best part is, there are leftovers for tomorrow!

I'll leave you with a few work in progress photos:

Browning the brats

Before putting the veggies in the first time.