Frosted Orange Cookies

Hello everyone!

I hope my fellow Canadians had a beautiful Thanksgiving long weekend?!

And, of course, wishing a very happy upcoming thanksgiving to all my readers south of the border!

Oddly enough, our family never celebrated this particular holiday.

It wasn’t until about 4 or 5 years ago that I decided to take on the challenge of making a big dinner, and I continued to do so up until last year when, once again, the holiday came and went virtually unnoticed.

It’s hard for me to admit, but I have lost much of my enthusiasm for cooking and baking.

Shocking, I know.

The lack of interest began shortly after we moved into our new apartment. The tiny kitchen coupled with an oven that yields poor results makes for a rather grumpy home cook!

Despite the less-than-ideal kitchen, I have faced off with my new nemesis (read: The Oven) and tried a few new recipes, and this one is definitely worth sharing!

I have made these cake-like, delicately flavoured cookies a few times and experimented a bit with great results. I added sweetened dried cranberries to the batch shown below, and think they would make a lovely addition to your Christmas cookie tray.  You can even substitute lemons for oranges (yum!)

Adapted from Grandma Brubaker’s Orange Cookies

INGREDIENTS:
– For the cookies
1/2 cup butter, room temp.
1 cup sugar
1 egg, room temp.
1/2 cup buttermilk*
3 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
Pinch of salt
The juice and zest of 1 medium orange
1 cup dried cranberries (optional)

– For the frosting
2 ½ cups icing sugar
1 Tbs. butter, room temp.
1/4 cup orange juice
1 Tbs. orange zest

METHOD:
Preheat oven to 325°F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside. Juice and zest the orange and set aside. In a medium mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in egg and buttermilk. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add alternately with orange juice and zest to the creamed mixture; beat on low just until incorporated. Stir in dried cranberries, if using. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto prepared baking sheets 2-inches apart. Bake 10 minutes or until cookies spring back after pressing the tops lightly. Remove to wire racks to cool completely. In the meantime, prepare the frosting by beating together icing sugar, butter, juice and zest. If the frosting is too thin, add a little more icing sugar, if it’s too thick, add a few drops of milk (or additional orange juice if you have any left). Spread an even layer of frosting over cooled cookies and let set. Yields approx. 3 dozen cookies.

*If you don’t have buttermilk simply add 1/2 tsp. vinegar to 1/2 cup of milk and let stand 5 minutes. Voilà, buttermilk! If you like, you can even forego the process altogether and just use milk, the end results will still yield a great little cookie!

Apricot Orange Scones

How was everyone’s [Canadian] Thanksgiving? We had a lovely meal of turkey, baked veggies in a creamy cheese sauce, stuffing, and apple pie for dessert. Yum!

You’d never know, looking inside my oven now, that the roasting turkey left a mess that looked like a greasy bomb went off in that tiny enclosed space. It must have taken me over 2 hours to clean but I think I did a pretty good job. Personally, I think it looks brand new, check it out!
So, of course, I just had to use my newly cleaned oven today to test a new scone recipe! Did I ever tell you that I LOVE scones?! And hey, what’s not to love? You can whip up a batch with very few ingredients and have a flaky, buttery breakfast treat within minutes. Though, I see no good reason to limit them to just one time of day and I will just as happily indulge in one before bed 😉

I found this recipe at the Land O’ Lakes website and, shockingly enough, I followed the recipe to the letter, though I believe I was about 1/4 cup short on apricots. Regardless, they turned out great and I will definitely make these again!

INGREDIENTS:
1 3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup cold butter, cubed
3/4 cup finely chopped dried apricots
1 Tbs. orange zest
1/4 cup sour cream
1 egg
3 Tbs. orange juice
1 tsp. almond extract
Glaze

METHOD:
Preheat oven to 375°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Whisk together the first five ingredients. Cut butter in with a pastry blender until mixture resembles course meal. Stir in apricots and orange zest. In another bowl, combine remaining ingredients until well blended, then stir into flour / butter mixture. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead 6 to 8 times by folding dough over onto itself. Pat dough into a large disk, about 8 inches in diameter and cut into 8 wedges. Place on prepared baking sheet and bake 20-25 minutes or until edges are golden brown. While the scones bake, prepare glaze by combining 1/2 cup icing sugar, 1 Tbs. butter, 1/8 tsp. almond extract and enough milk to make a thin glaze. Remove baked scones to a wire rack and drizzle each with glaze.

Cranberry Orange Muffins

My grandma is rather fond of a certain fast food chain’s cranberry orange muffin, and so I set out in search of a scratch-made version. This way, she could enjoy them at home without having to worry about artificial colours, flavours, additives, GMOs, and all the other disgusting things they put in food these days 😦

I found a recipe that seemed to fit the bill nicely and decided to give it a go earlier this week. While we both enjoyed them; my grandma figures they could use a lot more orange flavouring. Personally, I had no trouble detecting the sweet citrus taste.

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup milk
1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 cup melted butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
Zest of 1 orange
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 Tbs. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup chopped cranberries (fresh or frozen)

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 350°F (325°F if using black pans.) Grease or line muffin tins with paper cups. In the bowl of your stand mixer add milk, orange juice, butter, eggs, and sour cream. Mix until well blended. In another bowl, combine the orange zest, sugar, flour, baking soda, and salt. Add this slowly to the mixing bowl. Do not over-mix. Gently stir in cranberries. Divide batter evenly between muffin cups and bake 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool slightly on cooling racks before serving.