Happy New Year 2010!

Wish all my friends here happy new year 2010!

Christmas Cake

Hope that everybody has a wonderful Christmas weekend so far. I made this Christmas cake for family. White chocolate cake with cranberry filling (cook down cranberry with brown sugar, clove and cinnamon). Frosting is white chocolate vanilla frosting.

Also made some cute bears as cake tops with marzipan. They are the size of a ketchup bottle cap as you can see in the picture!
By the way, this cake is a 4-layer cake with 3-layer of cranberry fillings. It was a success for sure!

2009 Christmas Cookie Tray

There you go! All 12 cookies plus one bonus German Kebkuchen bars! Merry Christmas!

12 Days of Christmas Cookies 12 - Coconut Marmalade Crescents

It is Christmas eve and we have heavy rain after snow this morning and it will all turn into ice tonight. Would be terrible to drive tomorrow! Here we save the best cookie for last: coconut marmalade crescents. This is a cream cheese based cookie. Dough contains cream cheese, rum flavoring and coconut flakes. Once the cookies have been baked, they are frosted with glaze made of orange juice, apricot preserve and powder sugar. Yummy! Happy holidays, everyone!

12 Days of Christmas Cookies 11 - Peppermint Snow Cookies

It snows several inches here last night but fortunately nothing too dense. But it is going to turn to rain this afternoon and it might be all ice tomorrow. Yikes! To reflect the beauty of snow and ice, here I present the peppermint snow cookies! It is based on snowball cookies (Mexican wedding cookies) but without powder sugar. Both cookie dough and red color icing have peppermint extract. And the cookies are sprinkled with crushed peppermint candies. It gives a sense of cold in this cold weather!

12 Days of Christmas Cookies 10 - Caramel Dove Chocolate Bars

Snow and ice are coming tonight so I'd better get all baking done! Here is one for all the chocolate addicts!The cookie base is a shortbread dough. A layer of toasted chopped pecans is added. Then, it is covered by a layer of caramel topping. Sprinkle a layer of semi-sweet chocolate chip then it goes to oven. At the same time, I then melt Dove silky smooth dark chocolate on a double boiler. Once the cookie is done baking and cool several minutes, pour the melted chocolate on the top of it and smooth the surface. Refrigerate overnight and cut into bars the second day. Super strong chocolate will any chocolate lover swoon!

12 Days of Christmas Cookies 9 - Double Vanilla Delights

It starts to snow again and another round of blizzard is on the way from west coast to here! Hope that the weather will not cause the problem for everybody who travels during Christmas. Here is another new cookie I made this year, "Double Vanilla Delights". Good vanilla beans are the main ingredient in this cookie. The vanilla bean is mixed with chopped pecans in the melt-in-your-mouth feeling dough. I made the frosting by cooking the half and half cream with whole vanilla bean then mix with powder sugar. If you love vanilla taste, this will be a heavenly cookie to you!

12 Days of Christmas Cookies 8 - High Tea Lemon Cookies

Happy Monday before Christmas! This is one of the most delicate cookies I have ever made. It is covered by a layer of delicious lemon frosting. The cookie is just melt right in your mouth. The secret of this cookie is the big amount of cornstarch in the ingredients. Its bite size just makes this cookie even more delicate. This cookie is mainly for afternoon tea party but I think it works just well for Santa with a glass of milk!

12 Days of Christmas Cookies 7 - Dried Fruit Cookies

Definitely not the nasty kind that is hard enough to be used as weapon! This one has figs, chopped pecans, candied cherries, and raisins all soaked in sherry for flavor. This is another cookie that gluten-free tastes better than flour version!

12 Days of Christmas Cookies 6 - Golly Polly's Doodles

Holiday is coming and I am running behind the schedule of these 12 cookies! Here is another new one I tried to make gluten free this year, Golly Polly's doodles. It is an interesting cookie but also takes quite some works to make/ The outside layer is chocolate dough mixed with some peanut butter. The inside filling is peanut dough. Then, you wrap the chocolate dough around the peanut butter ball to form the cookie and coat the final ball with a layer of sugar. It smells just wonderfully when it is baked. If you like peanut butter, this is the one you will enjoy!

12 Days of Christmas Cookies 5 - White Chocolate Raspberry Cookies

Worked whole night last night and have not slept for almost 25 hours no but got to get everything done before the end of year for work. Here is the white chocolate and raspberry cookies. The simple sugar cookie dough mixed in with melted white chocolate to increase the flavor. After baking, put raspberry jam on the top and decorate with splashed melted white chocolate.

This gluten free version of the cookie is much better than the flour version since it is more chewy than hard. I package this kind of cookies with the chocolate thumbprint from yesterday and make beautiful holiday gift for my co-workers. Isn't it a quite nice looking Christmas snacks? :)

12 Days of Christmas Cookies 4 - Chocolate Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies

Here comes a new fancy new recipe I tried first time. It is a cream cheese unsweetened chocolate base sugar thumbprint cookie with raspberry jam on top. It takes quite some works to make the dough, roll into small balls, dip in the sugar, thumb push a hole in the middle, put on the jam, and bake. But the result is great! It is soft and chewy inside and light crisp outside and the taste of chocolate and raspberry jam match wonderfully!

12 Days of Christmas Cookies 3 - Raspberry Chocolate Cookie Bar

It is a bright sunny day today but that can be deceiving! It is actually freezing cold. The average temperature now is only 5'F (-15'C)! Bundle up or stay indoor! LOL. Continue the holiday cookies baking marathon. This is another back to basic cookie recipe (man, I watch too much "Barefoot Contessa"). It has a shortbread base mixed with chopped pecans. We then add a layer of semi-sweet chocolate followed by a layer of raspberry jam, then, another layer of shortbread/pecan/oatmeal topping! Can you say yummy! :) By the way, I made this one gluten free too!

12 Days of Christmas Cookies 2 - Million Dollar Cookies

The weather outside frightful, and we have lots of cookies to bake for. Quite Christmas scenes already. It is so cold that all snow on the ground freeze to rock hard ice. Here is 2nd day of Christmas cookies, Million dollar cookies. It is a delicious traditional sugar cookie with additional chopped pecans and sprinkled with sugar. Flour version is a little bit crispy and gluten free version is a little bit chewy inside. Both are great with a glass of milk!

12 Days of Christmas Cookies 1 - Cherry Date Snowball Cookies

Cookies time 2009! 12 Days of Christmas cookies number 1- Cherry Date Skillet Cookies! Complete gluten-free made of rice crisp! With dates, cherry, coconut and vanilla, sweet and tasty!

1 Degree Outside and -21Degrees Windchill!

After the big snow storm yesterday, now it comes the bitterly cold. It is only 1'F (-17'C) outside and the windchill is -21'F (-30'C)! Why do I have to go to work today? Sigh, guess I have to stop whining since this is just the beginning of the long 6-month winter.