'Tis the Season to Be Festive!

Every year at this time, my family (as I sure yours as well) has many different types of traditions. The many traditions that my family has have evolved throughout the years, but this year our traditions are somewhat different. Usually, my mom will make a delicious foods like toffee, eggnog, and gingerbread; while my sister gets busy making batches of party mix (honestly, I don't know how it became a Christmas tradition, but now it is) since we tend to go through one a night. I'll be making baked goods, and my Dad generally supervises the tree, as well as helping us make sugar cookies.

Like I said, our traditions are a bit different this year. My parents started a giant kitchen re-build back in July...and well, we still don't have an oven, or a stove. I came home for Winter Break from school and it took me two days to figure out where the food was now being kept. So, this put a bit of a damper on our holiday cooking. But, we didn't let it stop us!

This Thanksgiving, we went to visit my sister's instead of having the whole dinner at our house (since you know, we didn't have an oven or a stove). Now, my sister hasn't been able to participate in holiday cookie making for awhile now since she is a responsible adult and has a job. Therefore, we decided to do the cookie making at her house during Thanksgiving this year.

Sugar cookies has always been my dad's thing to do with us, and we go all out. Sometimes we'll make the dough from scratch, but since my sister isn't known for her baking skills (we used to say that she could burn water), we bought pre-made sugar cookie dough.

We start out with the cookie dough, and it's best to have it at room temperature, so make sure to take it out of the refrigerator 1-2 hours before you plan to roll out the dough. Take about a quarter to half of the dough, and roll it out onto a floured board. The flour prevents the dough from sticking to the board and later, to the cookie sheets. Roll out the dough until it is about a quarter of an inch thick. Next, use cookie cutters to cut out desired shapes. Again, my sister isn't Susie Homemaker, so she didn't have any cookie cutter, so we used milk glasses and shot glasses, and our own artistic prowess (of which we have none).

Or you can make fun stuff like my dad did

Then, we took the cookie cutouts, and placed them onto a cookie sheet. Next, you can either leave the cookies plain to be iced later, or put on sprinkles now for simple sprinkle cookies. Bake the cookies according to the directions on the packaging, generally at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for about 10 minutes. I have found that you only need to cook them for about 7-8 minutes if you make them thinner like we have. 

Continue rolling out the dough onto the board until you have no dough left. Set aside the cookies onto cooling racks while you make icing.

Icing is actually pretty darn easy to make, so I'll give you the recipe here:
1 box powdered sugar
1/4 - 1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine the powdered sugar and the vanilla in a bowl, and add the milk one tablespoon at a time (I used a shot glass, and seemed to work well enough). Fully combine the tablespoon of milk each time before you add more. It is very easy to overdo the milk, as not much is needed to make the frosting. Once you reach a desired consistency, you can separate the frosting into separate containers so that you can dye them colors.



Once you have the frosting, go crazy with frosting your cookies and sprinkles!

Happy holidays to you and yours!

Pumpkin Cheesecake & Cheesecake-lets

Now, I have never been the biggest fan of cheesecake. I will eat it when the time comes (like when we go to the Cheesecake Factory; then I will eat all $7 worth of that giant piece of cheesecake they give you that probably has about 50,000 calories in it), but I have never actually made it for myself. So, the opportunity presented itself  in the form of my friend Jessica's 22nd birthday (yes, the same Jessica who helped me save a piece of the hamburger cake).

Jessica had mentioned in passing that she loved cheesecake, so all I had to do was figure out which kind she liked the best. I gave her roommates the stealthy task of discovering, and a few days later I got a text message simply saying "pumpkin". Well then, she'll get pumpkin cheesecake!

It is the perfect time of year for it because I could get everything I needed pretty cheap because it was right after Thanksgiving. Without further ado, here is Pumpkin Cheesecake:

Disclaimer - cheesecake recipe adapted from Paula Dean's cheesecake recipe at the Food Network.

Your cheesecake is made up of two parts: the crust, and the actual cake.

Directions: Preheat oven to 350 Degrees Faranheit. Grease 9-in round pan* and set aside.
*You are suppose to use a spring-form pan, but alas, I did not have one. Therefore, I used a regular cake pan and it worked fine.

Crushed graham cracker

Crust:

Ingredients
1-3/4 cups crushed graham crackers
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 stick (1/2 cup) melted butter



Directions

Crush graham crackers in plastic bag (I found that about one sleeve of graham crackers is about the right amount crushed). Add the graham crackers, brown sugar, and cinnamon together and stir. Add melted butter  and stir together. Press into greased pan and set aside.

Cake:
Ingredients
3-8 oz packages of cream cheese, room temperature*
1-15 oz can of pumpkin pureee

Me trying to get my cream cheese at room temp.

3 eggs plus one egg yolk
1/4 cup sour cream
1-1/2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

Beat the cream cheese until there are no lumps in the bowl. Next, add the pumpkin puree, eggs and egg yolk, sugar, the sour cream, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves (you can be liberal with the spices, the directions aren't exact). After thoroughly mixed in, add in flour and vanilla (again, you can "eye ball" it). Mix well.
Pour the cake batter into the prepared crust, and make sure that it is even in the pan. The batter will be pretty liquid-y at this point. Place the pan in the oven at 350 degrees F for one hour.

Remove the cake from the oven -- it is done when you can wiggle the pan and the batter doesn't jiggle. Or, if you press the top of the cake and it doesn't spring back.

Let the cake cool down (about 20-30 minutes) and then place covered in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours.

Et voila!

 
* Now, when I put my cream cheese in the mixer, I thought it was room temperature. And it definitely wasn't! I mixed and mixed thinking that it was pretty smooth, and then when I added in all the rest of the ingredients I ended up getting a lot of lumps. That is why I ended up using the whisk for my Kitchen Aid -- to try and get some of the lumps out.

As you can see in the picture, I ended up with more than just one cake! I think the spring-form pans are a bit taller, so I poured in about 3/4 of the batter to the 9-in round pan and it was full. So, I quickly put together some more crust (I cut everything in half) and then made what I like to call "Pumpkin Cheesecake-lets", or tiny pumpkin cheesecakes in muffin tins. I ended up cooking those for about 40 minutes in the same oven as the cheesecake.

In the future, I would probably bake the crust some before putting the cake. It was a good crust, but it ended up being more soft than I thought it would be, and I like a harder crust.

And as for the spices, I tend to just "eyeball" everything that small. So, every time I make it the flavors may be a little bit different, which I am perfectly ok with. I operate with the firm belief that some of these ingredients are suggestions, so I will change them as I please.

And Jessica loved her cake!