Making Sugar Cookies

As usual, I went on a holiday cookie binge this past December. I made peanut butter blossoms. I branched out into a couple of bar cookies - m&m bars. And, of course, I made sugar cookies. After years of trying out different recipes, I think I've found the one I like. It's based off of Alton Brown's Sugar Cookie recipe.

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tablespoon milk - (go a little shy on this (you'll see why at the in a bit)
• Powdered sugar, for rolling out dough
• 1/2-1 teaspoon of vanilla (this is my addition to the recipe

It's your typical cookie recipe: sift together the dry ingredients, cream sugar and butter, mix wet ingredients, gradually add dry ingredients into the wet ones. Put the dough into 2 equal disks and refrigerate. (I do this overnight, but you should do this at least for a couple of hours.)

Roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thick and use your cookie cutters. Bake at 375 for 7-10 mins (depending on size and thickness).

Then you decorate!

I used a royal icing:

• 3 T of Meringue Powder
• 4 cups of confestioners' sugar
• warm water - at least 6 T, but really have more on hand

Mix the dry ingredients and then gradually add the warm water. Stir it in completely, stopping to check consistency as  you go along.   Once you get it to the consistency you want, divide the icing and add color gels to get different colored icing.

As you can see, I went a little overboard on colors and decorations this year.

I found that if it was smooth enough, you could do this lovely design that reminded my of venitian paper. Basically, you choose a a color as the base of the cookie, put another color frosting as stripes on top, and then, with a toothpick go back and forth. The icing has to be runny or it won't work well. The cookie gloves are a really good example. 

In the past,  I have invited friends over to help decorate. With the move, I wasn't really able to do that, but next year I hope to. It's more fun that way and decorating 2 dozen cookies can be taxing after awhile. Still, I want to get better. That means actually piping borders and using tips to decorate rather than a butter knife.

We'll see how spring sugar cookies come out.

Doughnut Plant Conclusion

After running around Seoul - figuratively, not literally - I did not find a Doughnut Plant. I found  alot of other U.S. chains from Burger King to Jamba Juice. But alas, no Doughnut Plant.

Looking for NYC in Seoul

After one 13.5 hour flight and then another 3 hour flight, I made it to Seoul. And what am I trying to do? Locate the Doughnut Plant in Seoul. It's made it's way to Asia and, as my aunt was saying, it's Hillary Clinton's favorite doughnut! (That was the ad campaign used here apparently.) I did learn there is one at the airport, so I can grab some as I leave, but I think it would be a nice way to start my first day in Seoul.

Pizza and Pumpkins...The Best Way to Recover!

After running the Baltimore Half Marathon with MLR (formerly MLJ), I went back down to Virginia and stayed overnight. This was the first time I'd been to ML and P's house, which is really cute. They've been doing work on the house, and it's paying off in my opinion. When I seen nice kitchen's like theirs and backyards, I always wish I owned my own place.

Anyway, since ML and I had run, P made dinner. Pizza! The best type of food for after a race. And he made all of it, including the whole wheat dough!

He made a pepperoni pizza and then a supreme.


He may not have tossed the dough in the air, but it made for a great base for some tasty pizzas. I get hungry just thinking about it: Pizza and good red wine!

I was a horrible dinner guest, though, I had to do work. I kept checking my emails and updating stories. I felt very bad. But I tried to make up for it by going for ice cream, or I should say this great frozen custard place near their house. Frozen Dairy appears to have been around (at different locations) for over 60 years. It was great!

Unfortunately, I couldn't stay up too late. The race and then the extra three miles kind of zapped me. I fell asleep on the ride back from Baltimore (but me in car usually means I'll fall asleep). I was out by 10:30 p.m.

P had garden in the backyard. Aside from tomatoes and peppers, he grew pumpkins. They were really cute!

Anyway, I don't think it was the inspiration for breakfast, but it makes a good segway. After a great night's sleep, albeit plagued by dreams (or nightmares, really) of work, we had pumpkin pancakes for breakfast! And ML even made a pumpkin shaped pancake -- granted by accident, but it went with the theme.

Despite having to work, it was a great weekend with running, great food and even better company.