Snickerdoodles

My husband wanted some cookies so I started browsing through the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion.  So many yummy choices, but a friend inspired me to do Snickerdoodles this time.

When making cookies, your butter and eggs should be at room temperature.  The way I get my butter to come up to temp more quickly is to cut it into many pieces - it doesn't take long then.  I do not put it in the microwave.

So the sugar, fats, and vanilla get creamed first.  Don't just mix it a little...really let it cream together.  This takes a few minutes.

After that the eggs go in - I usually do this one at a time and scrape the bowl a bit.  Then the flour.  Actually, there was a tiny typo in this recipe.  It called for ingredients and then did not say when to add them.  I just put the salt and baking powder in with the flour and mixed it thoroughly there.  That gets added last and you don't want to over mix once the flour is in.

So here's the dough, the cinnamon sugar and a portion scoop.  I don't know why I lived as long as I did without a few portion scoops in different sizes in my life.  They really make things easier.

I scooped a few balls of dough...

swirled them in the sugar (or scooped some on top)...

and placed them on the cookie sheets.

Next, they need to be flattened out a bit with a clean glass.

By the way, do you know that you can buy parchment paper in pre-cut sheets?  I love this stuff.  The stuff on the roll always wants to curl up and it never tears off right anyway.  I use parchment paper and never use non-stick spray or butter or anything - the parchment will prevent stickage.  Don't use waxed paper - that's a different animal and will likely burn a bit in there with your cookies.  Not a very complementary smell.

Into the oven.  At the midpoint of baking, I rotate cookies - top to bottom and front to back.  This gives you more even baking.  I think if you use a the convection part of your convection oven (that is, the fan), this is less of an issue, but I don't have one of those fancy ovens so I have to move my pans around myself.

Lovely cinnamon smells fill the house....

I removed these all from the pan right away to a cooling rack.  Don't leave them on the pan as it is still hot and will continue to 'cook' the cookies.  BTW, the stacked ones were already cooled off from a prior batch.

The recipe said it would yield 7 dozen and it came pretty close - I got 6 dozen.  But I was using a portion scoop of a particular size, so that's fine.  The portion scoop really helps get evenly-sized cookies so the baking occurs nice and even, too.

 Here's my polite little serving.

I won't tell you how many times I refilled the plate, though.

Beer Rocks? No, Bierocks!

Also known as Runsas or Nebraska Beef Buns.  I saw this recipe in the June/July 2012 issue of Cook's Country and had to try it.  I got the ingredients and started in last Saturday - though what I thought might be a late lunch turned into dinner as these take some time to make.

First you make the dough.  It has to rest for about an hour.

Look at how HUGE this got! 

Meanwhile, I cooked up the beef.  Actually, CC has you do the filling part before you do the dough part, but I did it the other way around.

I did two pans for the filling as it called for some cooked cabbage and my husband doesn't care for it.

 His:

Hers:

 My purdy pots simmering side by side...

  So here are the fillings all cooked up and mixed with some Colby/Jack cheese.

  So now I took my dough and divided it into two parts, and then each half into six.

Leaving the other parts covered in cling film, I rolled the dough out to about 5 or 6 inches around.

 

Then I took a half-cup measure and filled it with filling.

They want you to place the filling on the dough, but the light bulb went on for me and this is how I did it.  I put the dough over the cup....

then I flipped it over...

removed the cup...

and pulled the dough together and pinched it shut.  Well, I thought I was pretty clever, I tell you.

Here are the Bierocks.  I put them on parchment paper and folded the corner of the cabbage-free tray for my husband.

Then they get covered in cling film and have to rest/rise again!

 So FINALLY they are ready for their egg wash and baking.

Some of the dough balls rolled out to kinda thin in the middles and broke a bit, so they didn't win a beauty pageant, but they were very yummy.

Here's a pretty one.

 Delicious!

And the left-overs freeze well, I'm told.  A good thing, because six each was a lot for us!  I just wrapped them up tight in foil and put them in marked bags.

I will definitely do these again - probably in advance since they took so much time.