Small Gingerbread House from Scratch

Yeah, it's made from scratch. No big deal.

Actually, let's be real. It's a huge deal and it took me forever. But it was perfect as a Christmas gift and I absolutely loved making it. 

Ingredients

• 2.5 cups all purpose flour (plus 1/2 Cup for dusting)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, allspice, and nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 Stick butter, softened
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla
• 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1 Tablespoon of water (may or may not be necessary) 

My Method

1. Preheat oven to 350*
2. In a large bowl, combine the soft butter and brown sugar and beat for a couple minutes until the mixture is fluffy
3. Add the egg, vanilla, and molasses and mix well. 
4. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, spices, and salt until evenly distributed. Slowly add the dry mix into the wet. (I used my hands! It was sticky, but I think that's the only way to get everything mixed in well)
5. Toss the dough out onto a floured surface and work it a little, dusting it with flour as needed to prevent sticking. If the dough is to wet, add a little flour. If the dough is too dry, add a little water. Work it only as long as it needs to stick together.
6. Place the dough in parchment paper or plastic wrap (well floured) and put it in the fridge for at least an hour or until it's firm enough to be easily rolled. 
7. Place the chilled dough on a well floured surface and roll it out to 1/8-1/4 inch thickness. Make sure all of your dough is the same width.
8. Pick a template online (make sure it's pretty small!) and use it to cut out the pieces of the gingerbread walls, roof, etc. 
9. With the scraps (you can re-roll dough as many times as you need to), I cut out shapes (little gingerbread men, Christmas trees, etc) with mini cookie cutters to use for decoration later. 
10. Bake at 350* about 12 minutes or until edges are darker brown. 

Royal Icing

• 1 Cup Confectioners Sugar
• 1 teaspoon meringue powder
• 1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 1-2 Tablespoons water (do NOT pour in all at once)

1. Place half the cup of confectioners sugar in a medium to large bowl and mix in meringue powder. 
2. Add the vanilla and 1/2 tablespoon water
3. Mix until combined, then add a little more confectioners sugar and a little more water. Keep alternately adding until all of the confectioners sugar is used and the mixture is about the consistency of toothpaste. It needs to hold its shape when you push it with a spoon. 
4. Put the icing in a piping bag with a medium sized tip opening (nothing too small!)

Assembly

1. Make sure everything is COMPLETELY COOLED. This is very very important! Your royal icing will slip and melt if you use hot pieces of gingerbread.
2. Start with the front of your house. Take a piece of very sturdy cardboard and put a line of royal icing down the length of the front piece and paste it onto the board. 
3. Make sure as you are placing the side walls and back, you are putting icing down on the board before you place to prevent slipping!
4. Put one of the side walls on by piping royal icing along the length of the side of the house and pasting it to the front wall. Repeat with other wall. 
5. Put the back of the  house on by piping icing along the two sides.
6. Hold the walls in place (I just watched mine, I didn't need to touch them) for about a minute so icing has a chance to set just a little. 
7. LEAVE the house! give the icing time to set!
8. After an hour, pipe icing along the tip walls and paste the roof on. Wait another hour, then decorate!

*Feel free to use any kind of support system when drying your house.

Choose your favorite candies and frostings, and get creative! Have fun decorating!

Quick and Easy Red Velvet Cookies and Cake

Let's be honest. We've all made boxed cookies and cake before. When you're in a rush, those ready made mixes are perfect. I wanted to see if I could modify a box mix to quickly make a batch of cookies and cake for my team. 

The Cookies

• 1 Box Red Velvet Cake Mix
• 1 Stick Butter (room temperature or softer-not all the way melted!)
• 1 Egg
• 1/4 Cup Milk
• White Chocolate Chips (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 365*
2. Add together all of the ingredients (so so easy) and use an ice cream scoop to make rounds of cookies that are perfectly even on a well greased cookie sheet! 
3. Bake about 11 minutes or until set and a little brown on the bottom. 
4. You can use all of the dough to make cookies, or do what I did and do half cookies and half cake! For the cake, keep the dough and move on to the instructions below. 

The Cake

• The remaining mix from above 
• 1 (additional) egg
• 1/2 Cup Milk- 1 Cup Milk
• 1 teaspoon veggie oil

1. Reduce oven temperature to 350*
2. Add the additional egg and make sure it's well incorporated. Add half a cup of the milk, and then the veggie oil. Depending on the amount of batter you have left, you can add remaining milk until it becomes cake batter consistency (a little thicker than pancake batter) 
3. Put into whatever pan you like (I used my mini snowman baking pan above-so cute!)

After your cookies and your cakes cool, use royal icing to decorate and it will harden beautifully! 

Holiday Chocolate Peppermint Fudge Cake

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

I wanted to bake (what a surprise) a holiday treat using some pipework, so I decided to use some of the chocolate fudge I made to make a pretty delicious, peppermint under-toned cake

The Cake

• 1 Cup Melted Fudge (I used peppermint fudge that I made a couple days before; pick your favorite on Google or a personal recipe! Be sure it's nice and sweet so it adds to the cake perfectly!)
• 1/4 Cup Veggie Oil
• 1/2 Cup Room Temperature Butter
• 1.5 Cups Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla
• 1 Teaspoon Baking powder (heaping teaspoon!)
• 1/2 Teaspoon baking soda
• 2 Cups Sifted All Purpose Flour
• 1/2 to 1 Cup Milk (you'll see why there's a range)

1. Preheat oven to 350*
2. Melt the fudge (I would use a double boiler technique) and set it aside.
3. Combine the veggie oil, butter, and sugar and beat until fluffy in a large bowl. Add the eggs and beat again, add vanilla.
4. In a medium bowl, combine baking soda, baking powder, and flour. Whisk until well distributed. 
5. Slowly mix in the dry mix. When it's too thick to blend, add milk a little at a time and keep alternating until you are done with the dry mix. You might have some milk left over-it's okay! The consistency of your fudge might require more or less. The batter shouldn't be too thick, but should be thicker than pancake batter. 
6. Bake in your choice of pans, about 20 minutes. Start checking your cakes at 15 until toothpick inserted comes out clean! Your choice of pans will change the baking times. I used two 9x9 inch square pans. 

For the frosting, you can use a simple butter-cream and just cover the cake. If you like to use your fancy piping bag like I do, pick a frosting that isn't going to be too runny and will hold the shapes you like. Since the cake is peppermint. I reccomend a simple chocolate or vanilla frosting. 

Have fun with it!

Nutty Spiced Christmas Tree Cookies

So today my mom asked me to make some cookies for her work. I already did the classic gingerbread men last week, so I wanted to make something classy and complex. I completely made this up as I went, so it's going to need a little tweaking to perfect, but I'm very very happy with how they turned out!

The Cookies:

• Pre-Heat oven to 325 Degrees
• 1 Cup White Sugar
• 1 Stick Butter, at room temperature
• 1 Egg
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla
• 2 Cups All Purpose Flour
• 1/2 Teaspoon baking powder
• 1 Pinch Each Nutmeg, Cloves, Ginger, Allspice
• 1/2 Teaspoon Cinnamon
• 1 Cup Chopped Nuts (I used chopped almonds and pecans)

1. Beat Sugar, Butter, and Egg along with Vanilla until fluffy
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together Dry ingredients until distributed evenly
3. Slowly combine wet and dry ingredients (I used my hands!) until a sticky dough forms. 
4. It's super messy, so I plopped the dough ball onto a piece of wax paper, put another piece of wax paper over it, and rolled it a bit before putting it in the refrigerator to chill. 
5. After it has chilled for about an hour, roll out the dough (with waxed paper still on top!) and cut into whatever shapes you want. I used Christmas trees, as you can see above. 
6. Bake at 325* until edges are beginning to brown and the top is turning gold. It took these trees about 15 minutes, but they were pretty big so be sure to start checking on yours once eight to ten minutes is up!
7. Remove and chill completely before frosting. 

The Royal Icing

• 2 Cups Confectioner's sugar
• 1 teaspoon meringue powder
• 1 tablespoon Maple Syrup (natural is much better than artificial!)
• 1/2 Cup Water (you will NOT use all of this!)

1. Put 1 1/2 Cups of the Powdered sugar and the meringue powder in a medium bowl. Add the Tablespoon of Maple Syrup.
2. This is where it gets tricky-maple syrups of different brands have different consistencies. You'll have to figure out how much extra water and powdered sugar to add to get the right mix. I would start with one teaspoon of water added along with 1/4 Cup Powdered sugar. The end result should be something like the consistency of toothpaste, maybe a little looser. It needs to be stiff enough not to run all over the cookie and to hold a drizzle shape, but it isn't going to be as thick and stiff as regular cake icing.
3. Smear 1/2 Each cookie with the icing, and press down chopped nuts onto the frosting. 
4. On the other half of the cookie, you can use a decorating bag with a small tip (I actually just used a small zip-lock bag with tiny tip of one corner cut off) to drizzle some icing or put any design you want.
5. I finished my cookies off with a sprinkle of cinnamon for extra spice, but this is optional! 

Enjoy!

Sinless Angel Food Cake

My mom and I haven't had a chance to bake together recently, which is surprising considering how much time both of us spend in the kitchen! She tries to be good about her goodie intake though, so we decided to make an angel food cake that minimized guilty feelings! It was super easy, and doesn't taste like you cut corners to save calories at all!

The Cake

• 7 Egg Whites
• 1/2 Cup White Sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar (for stabilizing egg whites)
• 1 cups sifted flour 
• 1  teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 Cup White Chocolate Chips

1. Preheat oven to 325*
2. Beat egg whites until foamy and white for at least three to four minutes before you add the cream of tartar, vanilla extract, and begin slowly adding the sugar as the egg whites stiffen. The egg whites will hold still peaks when they are done being beaten. It should take 5-7 minutes. 
3. Sift the flour into the egg whites very carefully along with the cinnamon and the baking powder. You don't want to deflate the cake! 
4. Right before you put it into the oven, fold in the white chocolate chips, again, carefully. 
5. Angel Cakes are traditionally served in bundt pans, but I used a circular pan because I made such a small batch and it came out perfect!

Note: I melted some chocolate chips with a little heavy cream and drizzled it over the top of the cake to hold the sprinkles on. Nice and festive!

Gingerbread Men

Merry Christmas!

I decided to make a small batch of Gingerbread men. I made some mini-cutout gingerbread cookies last week, but I haven't gotten the chance to decorate traditional gingerbread boys. They came out pretty nice, I must say. I experimented with the recipe to reduce the amount of time it needed to chill, and finished off the cookies with royal icing!

Dough:

• 1/2 Cup Light Brown Sugar (I also added a couple tablespoons of Splenda Baking Blend-I like em sweet!)
• 1/4 Cup Molasses
• 1/2 Stick Butter
• 2 Teaspoons Vanilla
• 1 2/3 Cups Flour (All purpose or half whole wheat)
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1 Pinch Each of Nutmeg, Cloves, and Allspice
• 1/2 Teaspoon Ginger
• 1 Teaspoon Cinnamon

Preheat Oven to 325*

1. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan on the stove with the Sugar, Molasses, and Vanilla also in the mixture. After the butter is completely melted, allow the mixture to cool for ten minutes.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together all of the dry ingredients
3. Beat an egg in a small bowl, then slowly add it, along with the wet mix, into the dough. 
4. Mix the dough until well incorporated, then coat the outsides with flour and place it in plastic wrap in the refrigerator until no longer warm (shouldn't take long-honestly, I got bored and cheated and put it in the freezer and it was ready in about twenty minutes!) 
5. After the dough has chilled, roll out and cut into shapes on a floured surface. Put on a greased cookie sheet or parchment paper covered cookie sheet into the oven. 
6. The cookies will bake at a different rate based on their shape. I prefer my gingerbread cookies a little soft, so I wait until the edges are just turning brown and the middle is still soft. It takes about 10-12 minutes. 

Frosting (Royal Icing)

3 ounces pasteurized egg whites

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 cups confectioners' sugar

1. Beat egg whites and vanilla and beat frothy
2. Add confectioners' sugar gradually and mix on low speed
3. Turn mixer up to high and beat until it forms stiff, glossy peaks (5 to 7 minutes)

Note: If you choose to add food coloring, it might make the frosting runny. You will have to add more sugar if it is liquid food coloring. I prefer gel food colorings as they don't affect the consistency of frosting.

Healthy Whole Wheat, No Oil, No butter Almond Apple Bars!

Yuck. Let's just start by saying I hate colds.

Fortunately, running almost always makes me feel better. I had a pretty solid run this morning besides the fact I was sniffling the whole time. Of course, as soon as I got back I turned the Christmas tunes up and did some festive baking!

Maybe these aren't "Christmas" treats exactly, but we had so many cookies and too much cake. I really wanted to experiment with something a little healthier that I could have for breakfast this week and I also wanted some fall flavors. Thus, my modified almond-apple bars were born.

Preheat Oven to 350 Degrees and Get out whatever pans you want to use. Grease them. I used two square baking pans that were about 8" by 8".

Dry Mix:

• 1 Cup All-Purpose Flour
• 1 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
• 1/2 Cup Sugar (or Splenda Baking Blend)
• 1/4 tsp (just a pinch) each Nutmeg, Cloves, and Allspice
• 1 Tsp Cinnamon
• 1 Tsp Baking Powder
• 1/2 Tsp Baking Soda

Whisk all of your dry ingredients together until evenly distributed. Then, in a separate bowl, start your wet mix: 

Wet Mix:

• 2 Eggs
• 1 Tablespoon Vanilla Extract
• 1 Cup Milk
• 1/2 Cup Greek Yogurt (I often use this for moisture instead of oils or butter! Sometimes it messes with the mix, but this time the bars were still nice and fluffy and it worked perfectly)

1. Beat eggs, add Vanilla, then mix in the milk and Greek Yogurt. 
2. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet mix. 
3. The consistency should be cake batter-like. If yours isn't, add more milk and/or flour as needed. Add this mix to your baking pans. 

Now, for the crunchy, nutty apple topping.

Topping: 

• Two small apples, peeled and chopped roughly
• 1/2 Cup Pecans (omit if you don't like or substitute another nut) chopped roughly
• 3/4 Cup Almonds, chopped roughly. 
• 1/2 Cup Maple Syrup 

1. Toast the nuts and the apples (gets rid of moisture in apples) in the oven for about ten minutes. 
2. After they're done, put them in a pot on a stove and, on low heat, coat them in maple syrup. 
3. Stir frequently. As soon as the maple syrup starts bubbling, take them off the heat and (carefully-they're hot!) spread them on parchment paper. 
4. The apples and nuts will harden with the maple glaze on them and then you can sprinkle them on the top of your batter in the pans. 

Oven times will vary based on the cooking vessel used. Keep checking on them and as soon as the bars "spring" back when pushed down or a toothpick inserted comes out clean they're done. 

Cut in any way you like! 

If you asked me what my number one problem with running is, it wouldn't be sore muscles or aching feet or even getting up before the sun rises to fit it into my day. 

Nope, it would be that it makes me hungry. I mean REALLY hungry. All the time. 

So, I decided to record my foodie adventures in a blog where everyone, not just runners, could see me experiment with doing what I love; making delicious creations that satisfy every craving but make me feel great too. Keep checking back as I continue adding recipes that I decided to to try or thought up myself! It's going to take while to get things going because I will never post without first trying out the recipe, but because I bake obsessively it shouldn't be long until I've got a good amount of yummy treats added!