Holiday Cookies, Fruit Cake, and more cake

How to Make Healthier Holiday Cookies

When the holiday season rolls around people eagerly break out my mixer and rolling pin and pump out tons of cookies. They're not just for us, we send them to friends and relatives as homemade gifts.

But this whole baking extravaganza means that before they hit the post office the bakers have tons of cookies lingering around the house. Since some of us take particular care about family member’s health (and my own), some of us have gotten savvier about making cookies that are better for you. Here are some tricks of the trade for making healthier Christmas cookies:

Tip 1: Cut Back on Butter
Butter is a popular ingredient when it comes to cookies, but we all know by now that it's loaded with saturated fat. There's no need to get rid of it entirely, but it is a good idea to keep it in check. Try substituting canola oil for at least some of the butter in your recipe or try recipes that call for fat replacements which can be anything from fruit purees to reduced-fat dairy products like low-fat milk or buttermilk which despite its name has very little to do with butter, it also has a very strong smell if you’ve never seen or smelled buttermilk.

Tip 2: Use Some Whole-Wheat Flour
I used to think whole-wheat flour made baked goods taste like cardboard, but thankfully this isn't necessarily the case. If a recipe calls for all-purpose flour, you can swap out half of it for white whole-wheat flour. White whole-wheat flour for baking looks and tastes similar to all-purpose, but it's higher in fiber (about 12 grams per cup vs. 3 grams for white flour). Look for it in well-stocked supermarkets next to the other flours or in the baking section of your local natural food store.

Tip 3: Keep Size in Check
There are so many cookies to try around the holidays. If they're big and you want to try them all, you're suddenly consuming tons of extra calories. Try to make the cookies small-no more than 2 or 3 bites' worth. It's a great way to keep calories in check and satisfy your craving for something sweet. Plus if you ship them like, the smaller cookies are less likely to break!

Tip 4: Avoid Artificial Ingredients
I know that it is a time honored tradition to dress the cookies up with frosting every color of the rainbow for the holiday. But its usually a good idea to try to avoid artificial colors in your cookies and decorate them creatively with white frosting, melted chocolate, nuts and jams instead.

Now for some recipes, up next is…

Fruit Cake

Christmas is only a week away!  Whether or not you celebrate it or not you can still make something nice to eat or hang out with friends or family or both.  Now I myself haven’t really eaten much fruitcake, and from what I hear its not exactly the most popular thing to eat as it is a thing to just leave out as a decoration and apparently after the holidays pack it back in a box and take it out next year kind of thing which is kind of weird but I get most of my info on fruitcake from TV shows so I don’t know but I guess if you’re a fan of cakes soaked in brandy or rum then I’m pretty certain you eat fruitcake.

A little background on fruit cake, according to Wikipedia:
The earliest recipe from ancient Rome lists pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, and raisins that were mixed into barley mash. In the Middle Ages, honey, spices, and preserved fruits were added.
Fruitcakes soon proliferated all over Europe. Recipes varied greatly in different countries throughout the ages, depending on the available ingredients as well as (in some instances) church regulations forbidding the use of butter, regarding the observance of fast. Pope Innocent VIII (1432–1492) finally granted the use of butter, in a written permission known as the 'Butter Letter' or Butterbrief in 1490, giving permission to Saxony to use milk and butter in the North German Stollen fruitcakes.
Starting in the 16th century, sugar from the American Colonies (and the discovery that high concentrations of sugar could preserve fruits) created an excess of candied fruit, thus making fruitcakes more affordable and popular.
Fruitcakes vary in the way they are prepared or what they’re called, or even when or how eaten depending on what country they come from.  In the UK, fruitcakes come in many varieties, from extremely light to rich and moist. The traditional Christmas cake is a round fruitcake covered in marzipan and then in white satin or royal icing (a hard white icing made with softly beaten egg whites). They are often further decorated with snow scenes, holly leaves, and berries (real or artificial), or tiny decorative robins or snowmen. In Yorkshire, it is often served accompanied with cheese. One type of cake that originated in Scotland is the Dundee Cake. This is a fruit cake that is decorated with almonds.  Most commonwealth countries use fruitcakes similar to the UK varieties with the exception of the Bahamas where fruitcake is prepared by soaking the fruits and nuts in rum for extended periods of time and then drenching the finished cake in more rum.  It’s called “Black Cake” in Trinidad, and Tobago, and the French apparently just call it “cake”, and in Romania fruit cake is eaten during every major holiday.  In the US typical fruitcakes are rich in fruit and nuts.
Mail-order fruitcakes in America began in 1913. Some well-known American bakers of fruitcake include Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas, and The Claxton Bakery in Claxton, Georgia. Both Collin Street and Claxton are southern companies with access to cheap nuts, for which the expression "nutty as a fruitcake" was derived in 1935. Commercial fruitcakes are often sold from catalogs by charities as a fund raiser.
Most American mass-produced fruitcakes are alcohol-free, but traditional recipes are saturated with liqueurs or brandy and covered in powdered sugar, both of which prevent mold. Brandy- or wine-soaked linens can be used to store the fruitcakes, and some people feel that fruitcakes improve with age.
In the United States, the fruitcake has been a ridiculed dessert. Some blame the beginning of this trend with various TV shows. As I said previously there are quite a few jokes out there like that there really is only one fruitcake in the world, passed from family to family.
Since 1995, Manitou Springs, Colorado, has hosted the Great Fruitcake Toss on the first Saturday of every January. "We encourage the use of recycled fruitcakes," says Leslie Lewis of the Manitou Springs Chamber of Commerce. The all-time Great Fruitcake Toss record is 1,420 feet, set in January 2007 by a group of eight Boeing engineers who built the "Omega 380," a mock artillery piece fueled by compressed air pumped by an exercise bike.
December 27 is National Fruitcake Day and December is National Fruitcake Month (December is considered National Eggnog Month, as well.)

As for the myths about the shelf life of fruit cake, according to Wikipedia, if a fruitcake contains alcohol, it could remain edible for many years. They listed an example of a fruitcake baked in 1878 that was kept as an heirloom by a family in Tecumseh, Michigan.  In 2003 it was sampled by Jay Leno on the Tonight Show which doesn’t seem very appetizing to me, but okay.

Recipe adapted from Alex Goh 'Easy Stir & Bake Cakes'
Ingredient

• 150gm plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp mixed spices
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 80gm light brown sugar
• 100ml corn oil
• 200gm mixed fruits
• 45ml brandy

Method

1. Soak mixed fruits with brandy, preferably overnight.
2. Sift plain flour, baking powder, baking soda and mixed spices together into a mixing bowl. Make a well in the center.
3. Combine eggs, brown sugar and corn oil and stir till sugar dissolves.
4. Coat the mixed fruits with some of the flour mixture.
5. Pour the eggs mixture into the flour and fold to combine. Stir in mixed fruits at the same time.
6. Pour batter into a lined 8" cake pan and bake in preheated oven at 160 deg cel for 35-40mins until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Stand for 10mins before unmoulding. Cool completely on wire rack. Decorate as desired.

Apple Cardamom Cake

I got this recipe from the blog Sips and Spoonfuls it may be an unconventional sounding match but still comfortable- apples and cardamom. They form a happy family in this cake that was adapted from a Pear and Almond Cake the creator of this recipe had made numerous times. Out with the old and in with the new and everyone who ate a slice agreed. Apples and cardamom are very content with one another, they compliment each other. 

What more could you want from a relationship? Roasted almonds and custard played happy friends with this delicate cake. Try this new combination and you won't be disappointed.

Have you broken a longstanding (food) relationship? Were you happy with the results?

Apple Cardamom Cake:

Ingredients:

2 Fuji apples

3 tbs butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

3/4 cup whipping cream

3/4 cup ground almonds

1/2 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp cardamom powder

1/4 cup roasted almond flakes plus extra for serving

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Centigrade. Grease and flour an 8 inch pan. Core apples and cut thin slices. Place apple slices in water and squeeze half a lemon into the bowl to avoid discoloration.

Using the paddle attachment on your stand mixer and at medium speed, beat the sugar and butter until light and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping the bowl when needed. Reduce the speed to low and add the rest of the ingredients except roasted almonds. Gently stir in the roasted almonds and pour batter into cake pan. Arrange sliced apples in a circular fashion and press gently into the batter. bake for approximately 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out nearly clean.

Let the cake stand for 5- 10 minutes on a rack before turning it out. Serve with a drizzle of custard and sprinkle roasted almonds on top. This recipe will serve 12 people.

Next up I have a rice pudding recipe called Risalamande which is a Danish form of rice pudding which is eaten during Christmas, it was created in the last part of the 19th century. It is made out of rice pudding mixed with whipped cream, vanilla, and chopped almonds; and is usually served cold with a cherry sauce

Ris A L'Amande
3 2/3 c milk is brought to a boil
1 cup of white rice and 1/2 cup of fine sugar is added.
Cook until the rice is tender. Then Cool.
Add:
2/3 cup of chopped sliced almonds
1/2 cup of cream sherry
1 tsp vanilla
Whip then stir in gently
1 1/3 cup of whipping cream
Top with cherry sauce and serve

Last thing for today is
Peppermint Crunch Merry Whoopie Pies, Gluten Free
I got this from the food blog, the gluten free canteen

Resist trying to flatten the scoops once you place them on the parchment lined baking sheet. Leaving them alone will result in smooth tops without cracks and they will spread just enough. And remember – only 5 scoops to a sheet or you will have one large cookie. You’ll get 5-6 Whoopie Pies from the batch. The Yorks might cause some peppermint pattie leaking while baking – don’t worry about that either. You can trim them when they come out of the oven or even later once they cool. It is easy to snip with a scissors (really) to trim the extra candy spread. Serve at room temperature. And don’t skimp on the peppermint crunch on the edges – it is almost the best part. Enjoy!

Ingredients

§  Whoopie Cookie

§  1 box Betty Crocker Devil’s Food Gluten Free Cake Mix

§  1 heaping tablespoon unsweetened cocoa

§  1/4 teaspoon baking soda (if using buttermilk)

§  6 tablespoon unsalted butter, just room temperature

§  5 oz. buttermilk (or regular milk and skip the baking soda)

§  2 large eggs

§  1 teaspoon brewed coffee

§  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

§  1 teaspoon pure peppermint extract

§  15-20 small York Peppermint Patties cut into small pieces

§  Filling

§  2 containers Betty Crocker fluffy white frosting (gluten-free)

§  3 oz. (about 3/4 cup) confectioner’s sugar, sifted

§  1 teaspoon vanilla

§  1 teaspoon peppermint extract

§  Peppermint Crunch

§  8-10 candy canes smashed (gently) to make peppermint crunch (or buy peppermint crunch)

Instructions

Whoopie Cookie

1.       Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line 3 baking pans with parchment. Set aside.

2.      In one large bowl (using a stand mixer or a hand-held mixer) place all the cookie ingredients except the cut up Yorks. Mix on low until incorporated and then beat on medium to high-speed for about two minutes. Using a silicone spatula, scrape sides and bottom to incorporate all the dry stuff. Fold in the dicedYorks with the spatula just until mixed in. Using an ice cream scoop place five mounds on each baking sheet (the last one might only hold 2-3). Keep the batter as best you can in a round shape. Rap the pan on the counter to remove air bubbles and to flatten them slightly. Resist using anything to flatten the scoops. Bake 2 sheets at a time for about 10 minutes and rotate. Bake about 5 minutes more or until a toothpick comes out clean. The tops may crack a little bit and the Yorks may start to slide out the sides. Don’t worry about it. When it cools you will be able to snip those loose ends with a scissor or sharp paring knife. Cool completely before filling and trim the edges where needed.

Filling

1.       Place both containers of frosting in a large mixing bowl and add the sifted sugar, flavorings. Mix together and then whip on high until very fluffy and almost doubled in size, about 3 minutes.

Peppermint Crunch

1.       Place 8-10 unwrapped candy canes in a zip lock bag (double it if you like because it might break). Using a rolling pin or something heavy, gently squash the candy canes and roll over them to turn them into shards. You can use a mesh sifter to remove the finer powder and keep the crunch larger, but I used both eventually – the finer stuff and the larger shards. Set aside in a small bowl.

Assembly

1.       When the cookies are cool trim the edges as needed. Using another ice cream scoop, drop a generous mound of frosting in the center of one cookie on the flat side. Top with another cookie of the same size and press lightly to get the filling to almost spread to the edges. Holding the filled whoopie pie over the crunch bowl, sprinkle the edges of the frosting with peppermint crunch to your heart’s delight. Place on a platter or serving plate.

2.      Best eaten the same day but will keep rather well for another day or so