Cinnamon Sugar Bagels

After my recent trial with donuts I felt it was necessary to try another, healthier, breakfast item.  This time I tried bagels (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/homemade-bagels/detail.aspx) and they turned out great!! There wasn't anything about the process or basic recipe that I needed to change.

I used a small round cookie cutter to cut the centers out- a few comments on the page noted that the holes were likely to close when you used the recipe method since the original hole was so small.  It seemed to work just fine. 

I was sort of confused by the boiling part of this process (you boil the bagels, and then bake them).  The directions said to put them into boiling water and remove them when they floated. My floated as soon as they were in the pot, so I gave them a minute on each side before removing them.

I ended up dipping the tops in cinnamon sugar, which was not part of the recipe.  They were delicious, but next time I will be adding the cinnamon sugar after they are baked so it doesn't turn to syrup and then crust during the baking process.

Apple Dumplings

For our wedding we received the "Wedding Edition" of the "Big Red Cook Book", which we are slowly working our way through.  I recently tried the recipe for apple dumplings.  While I've generally been impressed by the other recipes I've tried from the book, this once seemed to require an extraordinary amount of tweaking to make it work, although in the end it was delicious all the same. 

My first issue was with the wrapping dough recipe. It was very simple to make, but made about 1/3 of what it was supposed to (maybe 2 or 3 dumplings, not 6-8).  The directions said to roll the dough very thin and cut it into 4inch by 7inch pieces. I was able to cut two, re-roll the dough and get a third.  I ended up making a second batch and cutting additional pieces. 

The second problem I ran into was with the apple size.  The directions called for 1/6th of a medium apple, peeled and cored (the picture showed the slice that you get when you used an apple corer/slicer).  Either my medium apples were far too large, I mis-measured the dough, or the recipe was wrong, but it was nearly impossible to fit an apple slice comfortably in one dough square. I tried with a few and then ended up cubing the apples and using whatever would fit.

The recipe included a sugar and spice filling and a sweet syrup to use, and I also included walnuts in the dumplings.  They turned out great when baked the recommended time.  The finished product was very much like a mini-apple pie and they were great served with whipped cream.  I will definitely be making these again, but hopefully with fewer issues now that I worked some things out.

Sugar cookies with two-tone icing

 Chris and I volunteer for Big Brothers Big Sisters and a few weekends ago we decided to make sugar cookies as one of our activities.  This was the same recipe that I used when I made champagne iced sugar cookies (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/the-best-rolled-sugar-cookies/detail.aspx) and this time we used Wilton's basic butter cream.

I learned two things while helping my "little sister" make these cookies: 1) Not all kids find making cookies as exciting as I remembered 2) I really like the effect of two toned icing and it's much easier to do than I expected.

Number one aside (we won't be doing any more baking together), the cookies turned out great.  Putting two colors of icing in one bag was messy, but in the end pretty simple.  I was surprised by how little mixing happened, despite the fact that I have hot hands when I decorate and the icing was pretty thin. 

The easiest way for me to make the flower designs was to start in the center of the cookie and overlay the "petals" in one continues motion.  I also tried a few other variations that used the same motion with smaller circles to fill space. 

Overall theses were very easy and as far as time spent decorating goes, one of the quicker ways I've come up with to make nice looking treats.