By Fine Print Staff
DIY brought to you this month by Leah Herman and Rae Martin. It’s never too late for some festive food you’ve made yourself. Happy Holidays from the Fine Print.
Stella’s Christmas Cut Out Cookies
Around Christmas time, my family always makes these cookies that my grandmother made when my mother was growing up. My mother was the one who originally transcribed this delicious cutout recipe, and now I’m sharing it with all of you. This makes a ton of warm, soft cookies whose buttery bases can be eaten either plain or topped with rich, creamy almond icing. They always go over extremely well at any holiday event. Enjoy.
Ingredients:
2 cups butter (1lb)
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
8 oz sour cream (1 cup)
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
6+ cups flour
2 tsp vanilla extract
Cream together butter and sugar. Add other ingredients. Add enough flour so that dough is not too sticky (about as sticky as Play-Doh is good). Don’t overwork dough. Roll out ½ inch thick on floured surface. Cut out cookies. Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit on ungreased cookie sheet until bottoms are lightly browned, but top is still white. Be careful not to overbake. Overbaking will make them crispy instead of soft. Bake time is 15-20 minutes.
Almond Buttercream Frosting
1 16-oz. package powdered sugar
½ cup butter, softened
3 tablespoons whole milk
2 teaspoons almond extract
food coloring (optional)
The original cookie recipe calls for anise extract, which you can use instead of almond extract if you prefer a licorice taste. Beat sugar, butter, milk, and almond extract with electric mixer at low speed until smooth. Add additional milk if frosting is too thick. Beat until frosting is spreadable, then add food coloring if desired. Spread on cookies after they have cooled for 10 minutes, then wait for it to dry before serving.
Tips and Tricks for Delightfully Devilish Eggs
Deviled eggs seem simple to the untrained observer of holiday feast making. A quickly prepared side that goes with just about everything. But when deviled eggs have been your holiday assignment for five meals in a row you begin to perfect a technique, bringing peeling an egg to an art form. After seven or eight meals you start to get a little creative.
A Basic Deviled Egg Recipe
6 eggs
1/4 cup mayo
2 1/2 teaspoons mustard
2 tablespoons chopped pickles
Paprika for garnish.
Now, before you run off and boil those eggs, let me let you in on a little secret: you should never boil an egg. Boiled eggs leave you with rubbery whites and green yolks. Instead, hard cook your eggs. Place the eggs in a pan where they all can rest on the bottom of the pan — no stacking! Fill with water to about an inch above your eggs. Place on high heat. When water begins to boil, remove pan from heat and slap a lid on it. Wait 12 minutes and there done. Now you should stick the pan under the spigot and run cool water until your eggs have cooled.
One of the most infuriating challenges I’ve faced in making the perfect deviled eggs is peeling the perfect egg. The shell likes to stick to the white and pull out little craters which can leave you with pockmarked eggs. The best solution I’ve found is to peel them immediately after cooking them. run them under cool water then gently drop them onto a four-sheet thick stack of paper towels and roll the egg, pushing gently to give you a system of cracks to work from. Then peel the egg under a gentle flow from the tap. The water will help separate the shell from the white.
Next cut the eggs in half and plunk the yolks into a mixing bowl. Add your other ingredients and mix. The result should be creamy. Then refill your eggs and sprinkle a little paprika for color. You can easily get a little fancy by putting the filling into a Ziplock baggie and cuting off a corner so you can squeeze it out into spirals or whatnot into the whites.
There are a lot of little variations to be made with this recipe. Adding Dijon mustard instead of yellow will give it a little more oomph. Some people like a little white vinegar. My dad really likes green olives. But be careful because these additions and changes require you to tinker with other parts of the recipe. For example, olives are salty so you’ll have to tone back the mayo. It’s all about trial and error, try and taste. Always start with less than you think of an ingredient. You can always add more, but you cant subtract.
Deviled eggs can go far beyond mayo and mustard, though. Try spinach and bacon. Or, my personal favorite, curried deviled eggs: yogurt, curry powder, dry mustard and chutney. Take your favorite dish and turn it into a deviled egg. If you’re in need of some easy appetizers and you love deviled eggs, I suggest getting your hands on Debbie Moose’s Deviled Eggs: 50 Recipes from Simple to Sassy.
