The Gift Project and Cookies!

I love to make gifts for the people in my life; whether it is a bit of baking, a knit or crochet project or a series of photographs, the gifts under my Christmas tree featured many a homemade one. Earlier in December as I frantically set about to crochet a scarf for my father-in-law, finish Mr.’s wrist warmers and bake a box of muffins for Bubs’ daycare I began to lament the lack of homemade gifts through the year. Christmas is not just about gifts to loved ones. Just ask the little girl who unexpectedly received her very own desk and easel on Christmas, a day when her daddy was working and she would be spending the day mostly wither her mommy, all because I listed it on Freecycle, tired of tripping over it. I played just a small part in that little girl’s Christmas but the feeling I had was an inspiration.

What if I made a gift for someone in my life, a loved one or a neighbour, Miss N’s very kind and cautious crossing guard and spontaneously gave it to them?

As a food blogger it wouldn’t be enough to just make the gift but to also write about it, a push to develop a new recipe. I’ve been excitedly thinking – read: obsessing over, the first person to receive the gift. It needn’t be big; in fact some of the smallest gestures can mean the most. It is at this point I want to invite every one who reads this blog to join me in this endeavor.

Each month I will post a theme and you will have two weeks to develop your recipe (if you are not a cook, don’t stop reading!) and write up a post on your own blog. Send an email to thegiftprojectblog@gmail.com (It’s different than the regular blog address to cut down on confusion) I will post a link up of all you inspiring people. I aim to post the theme at the beginning of the month, ideally the 3 or 4 and them two weeks later the link up, so the 19 or 20. If you are on Twitter, (you should follow me!) and I will be using the hashtag “thegiftproject” and you will always be able to find information there. Thank you for helping me do this, it really does mean so much to me

After various conversations with some friends, mostly the lovely Liz Lemon (no, not that one, she’s better) and Karen from Notes from the cookie jar that I felt this month’s theme should be “comfort”. Karen suggested something healthy would no doubt be ideal since we’re just getting out of that tummy-expanding season. So, my friends do as you see fit to bring a bit of comfort to someone in your life.

Theme: Comfort

Post up: January 19 (you have until this date)

Link up post: January 20 (I’m not mean, I can always add you if you are a few days late.)

A note: If you do not have a blog but do have a flickr account, feel free to take part send any of your photos over to The Gift Project group. Also, if you are not a food blogger, don’t fret. I will also reserve a special section for not foodie gifts It would not be fair of me not to since the point of this project is kindness and inclusiveness.

Since you have taken the time to read all of this, I shall reward you with cookies! I made these cookies for our big Christmas Eve get-together. These are my mother-in-law’s favourite cookies from when Mr. and I baked for the market, along with a number of lovely Haligonians. These poppyseed pinwheel cookies are based on the Eastern European cookies Lebkuchen and despite my notorious sweet tooth, I love them.

The recipe is a serious adaptation of Black and White Linz Dough from my dad’s 1965 copy of The Czechoslovak Cookbook. It is sturdy cookie dough that holds up to all of the chilling, rolling, chilling and cutting of the pinwheel cookies. The poppy seed mixture is totally my own concoction. Do not be surprised at how wet it is, surprisingly it creates a slight glaze on the cookies. I meant to do that, really I did. Also, these delicious specimens of baked goodness feature very little sugar because of the spice so with moderate tweaking a bet you can make this sugar-free friendly.

Enjoy.

Linz Dough

2 ¼ cups flour

1 tsp cinnamon

½ cup sugar

¾ cup butter

1-2 egg yolks

1 tsp vanilla

1-2 egg whites

1. Whisk flour with cinnamon.

2. In a separate bowl, cream sugar and butter until fluffy, add vanilla

3. Add one egg yolk. Slowly start adding the flour mixed with cinnamon, ¼ cup at a time.

4 .As it becomes dry alternate between the egg white, yolk and flour. This is to be fairly firm dough.

Chill in refrigerator while you prepare the poppy seed mixture.

Poppy seed Mixture

2 cups poppy seeds

zest of two oranges

one egg yolk

1/3 cup white sugar

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp orange juice

Mix together until smooth in a bowl.

The Cookies

1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to a ½ inch thickness. Carefully transfer to a flat sheet of saran wrap. Be careful, I found my firm but sticky.

2. Spread the poppy seed mix across the surface. For a tidy look, leave a space of about a centimeter around the edge.

3. Using the plastic as an aid (but don’t roll into the cookies) roll into one long tube. Pinch the ends.

4. Chill for one hour. Cut into centimeter thick rings. Despite lacking baking soda these babies rise.

5. Bake in a preheated oven at 350° for 12 minutes.

Orange Shortbread Cookies

A month and a bit ago I inherited a lot of cookbooks from my father. I knew that he liked to cook and I think everyone who knew him knew that he loved food but I didn't realize that he had amassed a pile of cookbooks. Flipping through the Laura Secord Canadian Cookbook I found my dad's name and the date in his precise cursive on the title page, 1973, I think this particular cookbook is my favourite. Through his travels, his storytelling and his search for the new, Dad kept testaments to his past hidden on the bookshelf. What we know of ourselves and how we reveal it is in the titles on our bookshelves and standing in my father's quiet bedroom, this nearly 40 year old volume of recipes in my hands, these thoughts swirled in my mind. The cookbook, with its wide array of traditional recipes that border on the quintessentially wacky (Pink Snow Bars - which I want to make purely out of a sense of homage) are my father. The other cookbooks are too, but he held on to this one for 37 years, through all the changes, the moves within the city and out of the country, when he was no longer a teacher and once again a student, all of it; this little cookbook sat on the shelf.

The recipe I used was actually called "Lemon Biscuits" and was a lovely basic recipe for lemon shortbread but since I had neither lemons or a love for following a recipe I made mine with orange. I know I have orange extract somewhere but whenever it is needed it always disappears so I had to rely on orange juice and if you plan on making these, I'd ensure you have orange extract. The zest and juice do add a lovely flavour but it's not enough to explode orange, it's more of a persistent and gentle murmur. I had originally intended these cookies for Christmas but I have been promising Miss N the chance to decorate some cookies and we have all the icings and sprinkles but not the time. It took her about three seconds of turning her big (and gorgeous) brown eyes on her Daddy and they broke into the tin of cookies. It was completely worth it. Not only that, but the bold splashes of colour across cookies was an even more perfect homage to my father.

Enjoy.

The Recipe

Adapted from "Lemon Biscuits", Laura Secord Canadian Cookbook.

Preheat oven to 375º.

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

pinch of salt

3/4 cup butter or shortening, room temperature

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

zest and juice of one orange, medium sized

2 eggs, room temperature

1. Sift together the dry ingredients.

2. In a separate bowl cream the butter or shortening. Slowly add the sugar and mix until fluffy. At this point add the zest and juice of the orange.

3. Add the eggs and mix well.

4. Ad the flour and blend together until it is a stiff dough.

5. Roll out on a lightly floured surface and cut into squares or use cookie cutters. This is the time to break out the Christmas tree cutters!

6. Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. The directions call to lightly grease the cookie sheet, I lined mine with silicone baking sheets which keeps the bottoms significantly lighter than parchment paper.

If you are so inclined you can ice these babies with some fantastic icings. I'm looking forward to working with some royal icing; this time I used packaged icing scribbles which were great for small details but still had a bit of a weird flavour from the colouring.

Clementine Cranberry Cookies

It's that time of year when we are surrounded by sweets, people and if you are anything like me, you have flour handprints on your bum. A few weeks ago I attended a cookie exchange and Tammi was gracious to invite all of us social media types into her home. I was terribly nervous, anxious even to waltz into a stranger's home, laden with cookies and just myself. I am extraordinarily introverted and while I wanted to just stay home and not put my baking on the line and expose myself to people (gasp!) but when there's 80 cookies lined up on the dining room table, you don't mess around and you pack them up and go. An aside, Tammi and the ladies at the cookie exchange were all very sweet and I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few who felt the same as me, after all, we're social media types, right?

When faced with an impending cookie exchange, a good bet is a slightly sweet, tangy cookie with a rich white chocolate drizzle. I had tossed around a number of ideas, lemon poppyseed, orange poppyseed; basically anything with poppyseed because they were stuck in my mind. In typical "me" fashion I bought the bag of poppyseeds and the pack is still in the pantry waiting for their intended project, whenever I figure out what that may be. The dough for my cookies was just a basic chocolate chip cookie dough because it can carry the variety of flavours I wanted to add without taking over, not only that but it's great because you can play with the texture based on whether or not you use butter or shortening.

The Recipe

Adapted from the chocolate chip cookie recipe from Joy of Baking.

1 1/2 cups butter

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

zest and juice of 4 clementines

2 1/4 cup flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon (optional)

1 1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/4 cup dry white wine

1. In a medium bowl cover the cranberries with the wine. Allow these to soak while you collect the ingredients and preheat the oven to 350º. Allow to sit for a minimum of 30 minutes.

2. In a separate bowl cream butter or shortening and add the sugars. Beat until fluffy (at that really tempting point when you kind of want to stick your finger in and try but remember it's straight butter and fat). Add the eggs at this point and the zest of the clementines. The specks of orange are beautiful but not entirely enough for flavour, hence adding the juice at this point.

3. In a separate bowl sift the dry ingredients.

4. Combine the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture of butter and sugars. When it is fully mixed, add the cranberries and mix until cranberries are evenly distributed. I found the mix a bit dry so I ended up using the wine too.

5. Drop onto a lined baking sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes, until a light golden colour and crisp edges.

The Glaze

4 squares white chocolate

1 1/2 - 2 cups icing sugar*

cream

1. In a double-boiler melt the chocolate. Take extra care, white chocolate is quick to seize. Carefully add a dribble of cream.

2. Remove the double boiler from heat (but keep the bowl on the pot) and add the icing sugar 1/4 cup at a time. Mix quickly so there are no lumps to desired consistency. Mine dripped off the tines of a fork but was not overly liquidy, it kept its shape on the cookies.

3. Drizzle over the fully cooled cookies. Cool for about 2 hours.

*I think it was this much sugar, I was adding it slowly and lost count at one point.