Rose Meringue Cookies

Rose meringue cookies are a gorgeous spin off of the traditional meringue cookies - with a little bit of food coloring, a piping bag and tip, you can transform a traditional meringue kiss into a delicate and airy rose. These cookies would make a delightful addition to any tea party, or a light dessert after a heavy meal.

If you haven't had a meringue cookie before, the flavor is similar to a marshmallow. The cookie is dry and airy and becomes sticky and sweet as you chew it. They're best served with tea or coffee. You can bet I'll be making these cookies the next time I have a tea party planned. If you are going to attempt this recipe, make sure you read carefully through all of my tips below and read the recipe a few times. Though the recipe has minimal steps and is fairly easy, meringues can be finicky cookies and you wouldn't want to be disappointed.

Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing - Medical Theme!

Hello fellow bakers!

This is Mehwish, Wardah's sister. I'd like to share a recent successful baking experiment. Last week, I finally had an excuse to bake. I wanted to do something nice for the providers and staff at an ER where I was rotating for PA school. What better way to show appreciation than treats, am I right?

Vanishing Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Meet my mother: self-proclaimed health nut and proclaimed-by-me graduate level nutritionist. She's the one who introduced me to oats. Oats- nutritious, full of fiber, and probably the hardest thing for her to get me to eat. I mean, come on, how can anyone enjoy the slimy breakfast porridge made from oats... Or maybe that's just how it was for me, but let me just say, the breakfast table might have been a war zone for a while.

I decided to try to find a way to actually enjoy eating oats that would please both me and my mother. A recipe on the lid of the box of oats looked tempting enough - oatmeal and raisin cookies. Replace the raisins with chocolate chips and you have a recipe for "healthy" cookies that wholly satisfied me. Warm these cookies for a couple seconds so the chocolate is all melty and the insides of the cookies are all soft and chewy, grab a cup of milk to dunk it in, and you have a fool proof method to get anyone to eat oats. The best part is that my mom enjoyed the cookies too!

Homemade Graham Crackers

Hello everyone!

The second cracker I made for the Daring Baker challenge of this month was graham crackers. After I'd made the Cheez-its, I wanted to try something sweet. The first cracker type that came up when I Google-d sweet crackers were graham crackers and that definitely sparked an interest.

In my house, we always most definitely absolutely must have a box of graham crackers lying around all the time in case my family needs a quick cheesecake fix... which is quite often. When I saw the recipe for the graham crackers, I started wondering if I could make even the crackers for the crust of the cheesecakes from scratch. Wouldn't that be so cool? And the crackers for smores. Oh man, that would be heavenly.

Needless to say, I ended up making the graham crackers and judging by my siblings, parents, and friends reactions, they were a success. All I can say is that as of now, there are no more graham crackers left.

My siblings loved the crackers with honey nut cream cheese and strawberry jam.

Homemade Graham Crackers
(Around 4 dozen crackers)

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into even cubes
1/4 cup honey
sugar and sea salt for sprinkling (optional)

Steps

To a food processor, add all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, dark brown sugar, fine grain sea salt, and cinnamon, pulsing to combine.

Add the butter and honey, processing until the mixture comes together. It will look crumbly at first, but will eventually moisten up and clump together.

Turn the dough out onto a work surface (I used my silpat) and form into a ball. Cut the ball in half then form each half into a log shape. Wrap each log in plastic and chill in the refrigerator for about 1 hour or freezer for about 15-30 minutes. You want the dough to be cold and slightly firm.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and place a rack in the center of the oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silpats.

Take one of the logs from the refrigerator, unwrap and place on a lightly floured work surface.
Using a knife, slice the log into 1/8" thick crackers. Pierce each cracker with a fork  or chopstick several times then sprinkle with sugar and sea salt (if using).

Transfer baking sheets to the refrigerator and chill for 15 minutes before baking. Bake for 13 – 14 minutes or until golden brown. Let the crackers rest on the baking sheet for 1 minute before transferring to a rack to cool completely. Repeat this process with the remaining log of dough.

Enjoy! Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @warif93!

DB July Challenge: Crazy For Crackers

Hello everyone!

Our July 2012 Daring Bakers’ Host was Dana McFarland and she challenged us to make homemade crackers! Dana showed us some techniques for making crackers and encouraged to use our creativity to make each cracker our own by using ingredients we love.

The two crackers I chose to make were graham crackers and Cheez-its! I can assure you that both crackers were loads of fun to make.

You can find the posts on the crackers and their recipes here:

Homemade Cheez-its

Homemade Graham Crackers

So the main rule of this challenge was to make these crackers by using different rolling and shaping methods for each cracker. I decided to go with the traditional hand rolling and non-traditional icebox shaping methods.

Here I rolled out the dough for the Cheez-its using a rolling pin and cut square shapes using a knife.

For the graham crackers, I formed the dough into a log shape and chilled it. Then I cut it into crackers by slicing it thinly. This is the non-traditional icebox method of forming the crackers.

Though both methods worked great for me, I can definitely say that I prefer the icebox method. It was a lot faster and less frustrating (no crackers tearing apart the second I try to lift them onto the tray). However, the crackers of the other method were a lot more clean cut and consistent in shape and thickness. I'm sure they would have been even more so if I had used a cookie cutter.

I have to say that I really enjoyed the Daring Baker challenge of this month. It was super fun and something that people normally don't even think of doing. I mean, who makes their own crackers these days? But the results were pleasing and the process was fun. I know I'll definitely be making those Cheez-its again!

Baking with My Brother

Baking with Abdullah

My brother, Abdullah, is a twelve-year old bundle of fun. It had been a long time since I last spent a day with him, completely free of distractions and scuffles, just to have fun. So, when he proposed making cookies for family and friends, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to have our brother-sister date.

Turtle Fudge Brownies

This was my brothers first time in the kitchen baking so I thought we would tackle something simple, but my mom had other plans for us. She gave us a list of requests from my sisters and her which turned into something like this -- chocolate chip cookies, brownies, white chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, sugar cookies, and spice cake. My brother and I crossed out some stuff from the list but in the end, we still spent more than 5 hours in the kitchen.

White Chocolate Chip Cookies

We made turtle fudge brownies, 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies, 2 dozen white chocolate chip cookies, 1 dozen oatmeal almond cookies, and 2 dozen oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Everything was a great success! After all of our baking was over, Abdullah kept on saying, "Hey, how come you never let me help out in the kitchen before? I never knew I had such a talent for baking!" Hahaha, he is pretty funny. He told me yesterday that when he gets older, he wants to be a pastry chef or a cook. I wonder how long that dream will last for.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

The best thing wasn't that the cookies were made from scratch, or that they turned out great, and most definitely not the mess of a kitchen I had to clean up afterwards, but the fact that we spent some quality time together. And I wouldn't give that up for anything else in the world.

Cookies... yummm.

In the end, we set the treats in trays and wrapped them for friends, family, and awesome neighbors. Of course, we kept half of everything for ourselves!

Gift Trays

Would you like one too next time? ;)

Love,

Wardah