Peanut Butter Blossoms

Here it is... the 1st Christmas cookie of the season! I've been baking fast and furiously for the past few days. There's only so much time before I have to start distributing these scrumptious treats and I can't distribute what I have yet to bake.

I have been baking Christmas cookies since I was a very little kid with my mom. Back then I didn't really help much other than making a mess. But now I make the cookies and the mess all by myself. I've decided to share the recipes for my Christmas cookies rather than what I've been doing with Project Cupcake. Cookies are pretty self explanatory and I've made most of them before so it's not quite as exciting as embarking on new cupcake adventures.

This recipe for Peanut Butter Blossoms I got from my mom. Where it originated before her I haven't the slightest idea, but here it is and I hope you enjoy it.

Peanut Butter Blossoms

48 Hershey's Kisses

1/2 cup shortening (I used butter)

3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup packed light-brown sugar

1 egg

2 Tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

extra sugar for rolling

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Remove foil from Hershey's Kisses.

2. Beat shortening and peanut butter in large bowl until well blended. Add 1/3 cup sugar and brown sugar; beat until fluffy. Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat well.

3. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into peanut butter mixture.

4. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in sugar and place on ungreased cookie sheet (I always grease my cookie sheets).

5. Bake 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Immediately press a chocolate into the center of each cookie; cookie will crack around the edges. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack and allow to cool completely.

Brown Sugar Pound Cakes

We are now officially into the world of dipped and glazed cupcakes, the second section in Martha's cookbook. Progress people! I will say, we eased into this section because the first recipe, brown sugar pound cakes, was pretty easy. So easy that I only needed 7 ingredients (if you don't count the icing).

Even though this recipe only required 7 ingredients I still read through the whole thing beforehand so I wouldn't encounter any surprises. I hate when that happens! It's extremely frustrating to think that you're almost done and then BAM! You find out that there was something you should have had prepared and didn't. Total killjoy. So, I try to avoid that at all costs. Although, had I not read ahead in this case, I wouldn't have come across and surprises.

Once completed the batter was pretty thick so I couldn't pour-by-Pyrex (tear) but I scooped about 1 1/2 tablespoons into each cupcake liner. I think I came out with about 2 less than the recipe said I would yield so I did pretty well. The recipe said to bake the cupcakes for 25 minutes with a turn halfway through the total baking time, but as we've been over before, my timer doesn't work in 1/2-minute increments so I baked the cupcakes for 12 minutes, rotated them, and baked them for 12 minutes more. It worked just fine. The cupcakes came out pretty flat, but I imagined they would since that's what they looked like in Martha's picture. Plus, when I think of pound cake I don't really think of puffy rounded cake. I think of flat, dense and delicious cake.

Making the cupcakes was very easy, and overall the brown-butter glaze was too, I just had a couple moments of uncertainty while making it. Like the cupcakes, and really all types of icing there wasn't much needed as far as ingredients go. My biggest question right from the beginning was what were the little brown flecks in the picture of the icing? I figured they were vanilla bean, but the recipe called for vanilla extract. I was confused and thought Martha had messed up (like that could ever really happen). I should have known better.

The first step of the process gave me the most concern because I was worried I would burn the butter, or take it off the heat too soon, before it was the proper nut-brown color. I stared at the pan like a crazy person, swirled it and debated back and forth about when it was the right color. When I felt confident that the color was satisfactory I poured the melted butter into a bowl and stirred in the rest of the ingredients. Turns out those little brown dots came from the brown butter. Crazy!

The icing was delicious. Seriously delicious, but I didn't let myself eat a lot of it because all I could think about was that the main ingredient was butter, and it can't be good to consume a lot of butter. Especially when you're shedding for a wedding like me. I wasn't sure how to ice the cupcakes. I didn't want to use so much of the icing that it would run off the sides of the cupcakes too much. Luckily this icing set after it had been on the cupcakes a few minutes so I didn't really have to worry about that. I just used a spoon to spoon some of the icing onto the cupcake and then spread it a little bit with the back of the spoon. Worked like a charm.

After I had finished icing the cupcakes I performed a taste test and they were scrumptious. I've never made a pound cake of any variety before and these were very good. I ate more than I normally do when I make cupcakes. I had to give them away so I would stop. I'm serious. I took a half dozen to our neighbors. They plowed our driveway after the giant and ridiculous snowstorm that we had. It was the least I could do.

Applesauce-Spice Cupcakes

Finally we have come to a recipe that I've made before. It only took 18 cupcakes to get here (tells you how much I have baked from this cookbook). The first time I made applesauce-spice cupcakes (Martha doesn't have them on her website, she really wants you to buy the cookbook) I didn't include the pecans because as I've mentioned numerous time I'm not a huge fan of nuts. But, as I've also previously mentioned I'm doing my best to follow these recipes to a T in the spirit of my self-assigned project.

There wasn't much prep involved in this recipe, which I knew, and I almost didn't read all the way through it because I had made it before, but I did. And I'm glad I did. Because, I saw that I was supposed to include toasted pecans. Since I hadn't included them the first time I made these cupcakes I forgot that they were supposed to be in the recipe. So, first order of business, toast the pecans. While the pecans were toasting I worked on the rest of the recipe, which was extremely easy. Although I did leave out the butter to get to room temperature, since the weather has started to cool off it was a little hard when I was ready to start the batter. I nuked it in the microwave for 10 seconds and it was good to go (I also remembered to leave the eggs out to get to room temperature, but they were still quite cool as well). Fall is here!

Since the batter was a little thick I didn't employ my pour-by-Pyrex method to fill the cupcake pan. I used a tablespoon instead (I really need to get one of those ice cream scoops that I see the people on Cupcake Wars use) using about 1 1/2 good-size spoonfuls to fill the liners. Not the most perfect method, but almost all the cupcakes turned out to be the same size so I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

Now for the brown sugar cream cheese frosting (no luck on Martha's website for this one either), whew, that's a mouthful. This is the first time I've made a true frosting in awhile. My most recent cupcakes have for the most part been frosted with whipped cream. Very unexciting. I like to get the practice of making different frostings. Yes, I had already made this frosting in the past to go with these cupcakes, but still, it was a nice walk down memory lane. It was a pleasant walk as well since this frosting is very easy to make. I just used a thin icing spatula (I don't even know if that's what they're called, but they look like this) to frost the cupcakes since that's what the cupcakes in the picture from the cookbook looked like they were frosted with. I tried to give the cupcakes a little height so they would make for more interesting pictures. Without using all my frosting for one cupcake I did my best.

As I sometimes do, I took these cupcakes to work with me to share and I received a really nice compliment. It's not uncommon for people to tell me they enjoyed the cupcakes, or they're delicious, things like that, and I of course appreciate everyone's kind words. But, on this particular day I was very flattered. After I had passed out the cupcakes to various coworkers I received an email with the subject line of Thanks. It's pretty rare that anyone emails me to thank me for a cupcake, especially someone I don't really know like this person. In all honesty, I introduced myself and then handed him a cupcake. I digress... within the email he had said that he enjoyed the cupcake. He went on to ask if I'd ever seen Cupcake Wars and that he had recently been a judge on the show that's going to air sometime in January. I am of course familiar with the show, duh, I blog about cupcakes. But he doesn't know that. So anyway, he continued to say that the cupcake I had given him was better than most of the ones he tried on the show. I know, I know, he didn't say it was better than all the cupcakes he tried, but I'll take being better than most. After all, I'm no professional. Part of me wanted to reply and ask him if he could point me in the direction of the Cupcake Wars people, but then I came to my senses and realized I have no business on that show. I would be blown out of the water. So instead, I simply replied thank you for the compliment, that's very nice of you to say, and forwarded the email to my home email address so I'll have it when I'm in the need of a pick-me-up. Dork? You bet.