Middle of the Week Wanderings- Cookies edition

I just realized I have been doing a lousy job of updating how the Great Keatley Baking Challenge is going. I'd love to say it's due to my Meniere's (partly true) as well as not baking as much due to Lent (again, partly true), but most of all it's because I'm a bit lazy and it's so much each to just post photos on Instagram and Facebook. 

We really have been doing some baking over the last month. David had asked for homemade cookies for his birthday in February. I did post about this a bit last month.
I figured I should share a few of the recipes we used! I used a recipe from Like Mother, Like Daughter for Leila's candied ginger and chocolate chip cookies. I even made my own candied ginger for the recipe which was easy and delicious. I also made our simple GF peanut butter cookies which only has 4 ingredients and tastes really peanut buttery. I've been trying to use some more of the recipes from the CIA's baking and pastry book, so the third cooky I made was a chocolate biscotti. It took a bit of time compared to the other two, but ended up to be a very good biscotti. Here's that recipe for you to try.

Chocolate Biscotti with Royal Icing Drizzle
Biscotti:
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 2/3 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a mixing bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, sugar and baking powder. In a separate bowl whisk together the eggs, yolks and vanilla extract. Add wet mix to dry and stir until the dough comes together, about 2 minutes. Add chocolate chips and mix until just incorporated. Roll the dough into 3 logs each about 10 by 2 inches. Place a piece of parchment onto a baking sheet and place logs on sheet. Place in oven and bake 20 minutes until light golden brown and remove. Allow to cool 5 minutes and cut logs on a slight diagonal into pieces 1/2-inch thick. Lower heat to 300. Return cut biscotti to baking sheet, just a little bit apart from each other, and place in oven. Bake 20 minutes until crisp and dry. Remove from oven, place on cooling racks and 

drizzle with fondant; cool before serving.

Royal Icing Drizzle:
2 tablespoon dried egg whites
1 cup powdered sugar
2-3 tablespoons water
To make royal icing, mix all ingredients in small bowl until blended. Add a bit more water until achieving the right consistency to drizzle.

The cookies were such a success on Fat Tuesday that we ended up making a few others to send off to David. Brian was a big help that day as we baked another batch of peanut butter cookies, this time using Grandma Pitalo's recipe as well as a gluten free cream cheese bar. Since I had a new sous chef, I let Brian at it making a new specialty "coconut macaroons". They were amazingly delicious and fairly easy for him to make. He was even able to work on his egg separating skills! Here's the recipe for the macaroons:

Brian’s Coconut Cherry Macaroons

1 cup sweetened shredded coconut

1/3 cup coconut flakes

1/3 cup sugar

2 tablespoons flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 egg whites

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

12 maraschino cherries, drained

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

In a mixing bowl, combine all ingredients except for cherries and mix well. Using a 1/4 cup measuring scoop, drop mounds onto parchment or Silpat lined baking sheets. Bake 15 minutes. Remove from oven and place cherry onto top of each cooky. Return to oven and bake for 5-7 minutes more or until just starting to brown on edges. Cool on wire rack. 

Makes 12 cookies

We ended up sending a large priority mail box full of cookies and lots of birthday love plus a couple of surprises. It was a very happy sounding second son when the phone rang on the day the package arrived. The fun part was that he shared the cookies not only with his sister but with a number of other students at school. What a joy it is to get to use a few of my baking skills (and Brian's) to make our college kids birthdays a bit more memorable. If you haven't baked any cookies in a while, now is a great time to bake and share. It might even be considered a small work of mercy!