Nestling Down

 

 If you want to get me in the mood to bake or cook, you first have to get me to slip into my nestling down mood. What's nestling down? You ladies may remember that urge to do some serious nesting when you were pregnant. You know what I'm talking about--the urge that had you washing the baby's nursery and the clothes twice a week because you found something that screamed "UNSANITARY FOR THE BABY!" at you. The kind that had you cooking up a twenty casseroles each weekend for when the baby came so your husband/Significant Other didn't starve to death--even though you KNEW he was going to hit the fast food drive-thru's. 

You men might remember  either being the most popular man or the most cursed man at work when your Wife/Significant Other was nesting due to pregnancy. It was because she loaded you down with all kinds of goodies at least twice a week to take to work because the sight of them made her gain 60-gazillion pounds! You also might recall coming home and finding her forgetting she already made dinner and she was cooking up something new. Or she was in the middle of disinfecting the kitchen because it wasn't sanitary enough for baby things? 

Well nestling down is similar to those feelings but this occurs when your children are all grown up and have moved out of the house...and you get that odd but familiar feeling to cook homemade comfort cold-weather food and bake upteen dozens of cookies. Just in case the power goes out. Just in case you have to feed lots of stranded travelers. Just in case...you feel like eating homemade goodies and cookies during a winter storm! 

So my nestling down included trying out another cookie recipe. I found the original recipe over at the Joy of Baking website and made some modifications to it that turned out to be really good! These cookies have a crunchy outer shell with a soft and moist center.

Here you go! Wheat Pecan Shortbread Cookies
1 Cup Butter
1/2 cup Demerara sugar 
1/4 cup brown sugar
 1 Egg
1 Cup Toasted Pecan pieces 
2 Cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
2 tsp Vanilla extract
pinch of kosher salt

Beat sugars and butter until creamy. Add the egg--again minus the shell! Beat until creamy. Add the toasted pecans and vanilla and beat until well mixed. Add the flour and the salt. Mix well. Mixture will be chunky and crumbly, but should stick together when compressed into a ball. Divide dough in half and wrap each half in waxed paper. Chill for at least 30 minutes to an hour until the dough is firm.

Preheat your oven at 350 Degrees. Line cookies sheets with parchment paper. Remove dough from refrigerator and unroll from waxed paper. Form dough into 1 inch balls and place on cookie sheet.  Flatten each ball slightly. Bake at 350 Degrees for 10-15 minutes. Rule of thumb: the smaller the cookie, the less time they need to bake. These cookies do not spread. 
 

Cookies!

 

 Most you of you might remember my cookie-recipe quest. I want to make different cookies for Easter/Spring celebrations and send out cookie baskets. I want bright, happy, Spring-type cookies, like lemon, orange, and lime. Those are completely different from the requests I'm getting--eggnog, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter, and pumpkin cookies. My son threw in his request for blueberry cookies. *blinks* Apparently, he's eaten a couple recently and adores them. 

I always thought of eggnog and pumpkin cookies more for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, while chocolate chip, peanut butter, and oatmeal raisin as ordinary all-year round cookies. May be I'm old-fashioned? May be I'm totally out of sync with the times? 

Anyway, I decided to save myself a lot of grief, I needed to try these recipes before making them for the cookie baskets. I figured, knowing my luck, that if they weren't that great, I'd rather know now than when I'm trying to get a bunch of different cookies made come Easter/Spring time. This gives me plenty of time to decide whether a recipe is a keeper or not and whether or not to include it in the baskets. I figured I'd save myself some grief later, right?

So here's my first trial batch: Lemon Butter Cookies

A Special Note: These cookies need to age a couple of days for the lemon to come bursting out. This makes it perfect for sending cookies through the mail!

Lemon Butter Cookies

Early Prep: Grate the peel of 5 lemons and save the zest. Juice two lemons. You will need 2 1/2 -3  TBSP of lemon zest and 1/4 cup of lemon juice.  

Add 1/2- 1 TBSP of lemon zest to 1/2 cup of white sugar and mix well. Set aside. 

3 cups of unenriched/unbleached flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
dash of kosher salt
Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and set aside. 

1 cup white sugar
3/4 cups butter, at room temperature
1 large egg 

Cream together sugar and butter until light and fluffy with electric beaters/mixer. I used the wire whip on the Kitchen-Aid, and beat at medium speed until it was mixed. Then I increased the speed for about a minute, which made the butter and sugar mix light and very fluffy. 

Add the egg--minus the shell. :D Always wanted to say that! And mix into the butter-sugar mix until thoroughly mixed and still fluffy. Add lemon juice and 2 TBSP of lemon zest into the mix. Beat until thoroughly mixed.  

Add dry ingredients and mix well. Mixture will be crumbly.  Divide dough in half, place each half on a sheet of waxed paper. Shape in to logs about 2-3 inches in diameter. Wrap well in waxed paper and refrigerate for at least an hour. After dough is completely chilled, unwrap and slice it into 1/4-1/2 inch slices. Place slices on ungreased cookie sheets. Dough will spread--so leave plenty of room between slices. Crowding will not work with this recipe. 

Sprinkle lemon sugar on cookie slices. Bake at 375 degrees for about 10-12 minutes. The edges should be golden brown. Cool for about 2 minutes before removing from the cookie sheets to a wire rack. Let the cookies age for a couple of days before serving in an airtight container.  

Yesterday, I realized that I was going to have to re-evaluate my life just a bit more. It seems like I'm constantly "re-evaluating my life just a bit" these days. It seems getting up before sunrise is not going to happen the mornings after I teach at night. I can't do it. As much as I love getting up that early, watching the sun rise out of the night's darkness to light up my world, I'm going to have to reserve that habit for the other days. 

Yesterday, I was so exhausted and couldn't seem to get my mind and my body energized to work on housework. I figured I'd better get a head start on next year's holiday gifts, but that didn't happen either.  Instead, I read a few chapters of the novel my husband got me for Christmas. It's a sci-fi fantasy by Patrick Rothfuss called "The Name of the Wind." I've been reading it chapter by chapter instead of in one or two sittings as usual. It's very good and I'm glad I'm taking my time through this book. Yesterday was a good day to read. 

Then I decided I needed to do something else for me. So I looked through my beads and settled on one or two sets that I've had and began.

 

 This is going to be one of my favorites, I can tell already. If Terri had more of these, I'd snatch them up and make one of those long necklaces to go with it. 

 I've had these beads for a long time. It was time they quit sitting in the case, looking pretty. It was time they did what they were created to do--become a part of a jewelry ensemble.  

The other thing I did yesterday was scope out cookie recipes. I decided I wanted to send out Easter/Spring cookies this year. You know what that means---I have to test them out before I bake them up. I'm looking at lemon cookies, lime cookies, and orange cookies. I found a great recipe for making thin mint cookies--not that I could eat them, of course, but I can make them for the choco-holics in my life. :D 

I also have been bombarded with requests for more of my German Chocolate cakes that I baked for a few lucky recipients over the holidays. I'm rather surprised since all I did was follow the recipe on the box of German Chocolate. So I'm looking for a good German Chocolate cookie recipe that doesn't involve a boxed cake mix. If you have one, I'd be grateful!