Gingerbread

For our food art class, our project for the past few weeks was making a gingerbread structure/building. It was to be part of our school Winter Village that will be displayed at the Hyatt Hotel for a month! Personally I don't really like making gingerbread, I could never tell when my dough is soft and workable!

Finished Product

The recipe:

Ingredients:  

• 250 mL Shortening
• 25o mL sugar
• 2 eggs
• 300 mL molasses
• 15 mL vinegar
• 1370 mL flour
• 5 mL baking soda
• 5 mL salt
• 5 mL ground ginger
• 5 mL ground cinnamon
• 5 mL fround cloves

Method:

1. Cream shortening well.
2. Gradually add sugar and cream well again.
3. Beat in eggs, molasses and vinegar.
4. Stir together 250 mL of the flour along with baking soda, salt and spices.                                        
5. Gradually blend the first cup of flour and spices into the creamed mixture and mix well.
6. Add another 250 mL of the flour gradually, blending well.                                     You may find that at this point the dough is stiff enough and the reaming flour may make the dough too dry and crumbly. Your dough should feel soft and workable but not sticky. If you think it had gotten too dry and crumbly then re-crumble into a bowl and sprinkle with a little water and work until it comes together and is workable.
7. Gather the dough into a ball then flatten it into a dish and wrap it tightly with plastic wrap and put in the fridge if you are baking on a different day.
8. Roll out the dough to 3mm thickness  (check with a ruler)                                                          *It may be easier to shape large, cut-out pieces of gingerbread directly on the baking sheet or onto parchment paper, so that the dough doesn't distort as you transfer if from the work surface.
9. Cut into shapes.
10. Place 2.5 cm apart from each other on parchment lined cookie sheets or jelly roll pans.
11. Bake at 375°F or 190°C for 5-6 minutes or until firm and lightly browned.                       *Like any cookie, gingerbread is not crisp or firm when it first comes out of the oven: this means it may be difficult to tell whether it is cookies, particularly as cooking times vary from oven to oven. Generally, the dough will have risen slightly and will be just colouring around the edges. Do not under cook.
12. Cool slightly on the sheet for about 5 minutes, in which time it will start to crisp, and then remove to racks to cool completely.                                                *If the gingerbread still feels very soft, return it to the oven for a few minutes.
13. Very often the gingerbread will distort slightly during baking. If you wish or feel the need to trim it to reshape (especially for the houses pieces to fit properly), be sure to do it while the dough is still warm. If you allow it to cool and then try to trim it, it could break.

To store:

Large, flat pieces of gingerbread must be cooled and stored on a flat surface or they will become distorted. Use a box or try to store and in a ziplock bag. 

Product:

In the Village

Village

Village

Spider Web Cookies

This is pretty late...should have posted this before Halloween but I keep forgetting >.<

Oh well! Better late then never!

Finished Product

The recipe (cookies):

Ingredients: 

• 375 mL flour
• 200 mL cocoa powder
• 2 mL salt
• 185 mL margarine
• 300 mL icing sugar
• 1 egg
• 3 mL vanilla

Method: 

1.  In a large bowl, sift together flour, cocoa, salt. Set the mixture aside.
2. Use an electric mixer to cream the margarine and icing sugar until fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.
3. Add the flour mixture; mix on low speed until thoroughly combined.
4. Divide the dough in half; wrap in plastic wrap.
5. Chill the dough for 10 minutes in the freezer.
6. Heat oven to 350°F or 180°C
7. Roll the dough out between two pieces of wax paper until about 5 mm thick.
8. Cut out a tracer for the web shape from scale paper.
9. Cut out each cookie.
10. Place cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes (personally I couldn't really tell if it's ready or not because you can't tell by the colour)
    
11. Cool completely on wire racks.  

The recipe (Royal Icing):

Ingredients:

•  250 grams sugar
•  2 mL cream of tartar
• 15 mL whip powder
•  50 mL water 
• black food colouring/ 30 mL chocolate chips/ black icing paste

Method:

1. Whip together the ingredients in a medium bowl
2. To make the cobweb design, begin by icing the cookie with white royal icing. 
3. To 50 mL of the icing add 30 mL of melted chocolate chips or black food colouring or use black icing paste. 
4. Pipe out a spiral of black icing starting from the center to the edges of the cookies  
5. Draw a bamboo skewer or use the tips of a sharp knife and drag it from the center to each point of the cookie, then from the inner curves back to the center.

Product:

The spiderweb tracers we cutted out

Cutting out the web

Before we bake

Before we put it in the oven

Finished baking!

icing

Finished!

Some of them looks a little weird >.<

Rainbow Cookies!

So for our third lab we made rainbow cookies!! The cookies for this recipes was not only easy to make but delicious also!

Finished Product

The recipe:

Ingredients: 

• 250 ml of margarine
• 250 ml of sugar
• 2 eggs
• 5 ml of vanilla extract
• 625 ml of flour
• 5 ml baking soda
• 10 ml of cream of tartar
• 2 ml salt
• Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red food coloring

Method:

1. In a large bowl, cream together margarine and sugar. 
2. Add one egg at a time. Beat until well incorporated. Add the vanilla
3.  Sift together dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
4. Slowly stir the flour mixture into the creamed mixture.
5. Divide the dough into 5 unequal amounts.

   

   Dividing the dough

   
   

6. Mix in 2-3 drops of food colouring to each amount. (blue in smallest dough, red in the biggest etc.)
7. Start by rolling the smallest ball into a snake (blue). Then roll out the next colour into a rectangle and cover the snake with the rectangle until all the dough is used up.

   

   Rolling the dough

   
   

8. Put in the freezer for 10 minutes or until the dough hardens (you could put it in the refrigerator overnight too).

   

   How it should look

   
   

9. Slice the cookies and then cut them in half and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Shape them if you want.

   

   How the cookies looked when we sliced them

   
   

   

   The cookies cut in half. We shaped them a little with our hands

   
   

   
   

10.   Bake in a 350°F or 180°C for 8-10 minutes
11. Let it sit on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes and then move them to a cooling rack to cool completely.

 Our Product:

Side view

Our first slice - looks weird

Before they go in the oven

Close up on them before we baked them

In the oven, they're going to flatten out

Done! We made a whole army of them :D

Close up.

They don't all have to be perfect.

 

What they look like when you break them in half.