Spritz

 

Cookies.  Cookies aren't always just cookies.  Sometimes they are time machines.  These spritz cookies have been a Christmas family tradition ever since I can remember.  They are also one of my favorites.  The first bite of spritz I take every Christmas season takes me back to my childhood; my tiny hand full of Christmas tree cookies, sitting down to watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  It really does.  Every time.

 

Maybe the nostalgia is why it's one of my favorites, but I don't think so.  These cookies are light, buttery, simply sweet with a hint of almost extract.  Oh, the almond extract!  I love it.  Plus, I get to put sprinkles on them, and who can resist sprinkles?

 

I started making these cookies myself probably when I was about sixteen. Some of my first pictures with Valerie are of us making these cookies.  I used a cookie press with a twist top to extract the cookies. A couple years later I got a cookie press with a trigger mechanism that uniformly extracted the cookies with a single click. My cookie production increased dramatically with that tool in my arsenal. 

 

Over the years, we have branched out and started making spritz cookies for other seasons and holidays.  This year, we made them for Easter, and the results were very pretty.

 

 

It's nice because a single batch makes so many cookies.  What I have started to do is make a batch of dough and then split it up between the kids to let them pick which color to make them and which shape of the cookie press to use for their cookies.  Ahh, even more memories made with spritz.  More destinations for our sweet, buttery little time machine.

 

Spritz

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups butter

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg

3/4 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

5 or 6 drops of food coloring

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Beat butter and sugar until combined. Add sugar and baking powder. Beat in egg, almond extract, vanilla extract.  Add the flour and food coloring and mix until thoroughly integrated.

Place the dough into a cookie press and extract cookies into an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake for 8 minutes and cool on a wire rack.

Baked Eggs

 

 

 

Ah, Easter.  Time to hard cook some eggs.  As we all know, and have probably done hundreds of times, you could just boil your eggs for dying or eating.  However, if you want to do more than one dozen at a time, baking is the way to go.  Yes, I said bake those eggs!

First, make sure the oven racks are positioned in the center of the oven,  Then, arrange the eggs on a metal cooling rack and place them in a cool oven.  Set the oven to 325 degrees F and bake for 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes, move the eggs directly from the oven into a bowl of ice water.

If you are peeling the eggs and not dying then, make sure to peel them as soon as they are cool enough to handle.  You can then return them to the ice bath to chill thoroughly.

A fun little tidbit I recently learned regarding the peeling of eggs is that the age of an egg does make a difference. Freshly laid eggs are more likely to stick to the shell, while older eggs release from the shell more freely.  Here in the U.S., eggs can sit for up to 30 days before being packaged, and the sell-by date can be another 30 days after that.  Say what?  This means that the eggs you're getting at the supermarket are old enough that no further aging at home should be necessary to get a nice clean shell release. If you are buying farm fresh eggs or you keep a few hens around, then you may want to let your eggs sit for a couple of weeks before hard cooking them. 

I learned this the hard way as deviled eggs had become bane of my existence.  I always ended up abandoning that idea and just making egg salad after I mangled the eggs.  On the bright side, I know that my eggs were really freash.  But now I know age is important, and my eggs will be mangled no more! 

Eggfest 2011

It's that time of year again!  The time has come to strip down the kids and color some eggs!  An event that used to be held on the kitchen floor has been moved to the dining room table.  Ari, Emilie, and Piper are a year older and a year wiser, and they colored those eggs like a well oiled machine.  They colored those eggs with such precision and efficiency, they may be able to keep their shirts on next year.  Although, with Thomas in the mix, who knows what will happen.  The kids had a blast and we ended up with some beautiful eggs.

BEFORE

AFTER

(I love the way Ari's hand looks in this picture)

Easter!

We got the Easter festivities started this year by coloring some eggs on Friday. We spread some newspaper on the floor, filled some cups with dye, and let the kids have at it! It was pretty much chaos, and we attempted to control it to no avail. The kids hands were shades of colors I didn't know existed, but it was all the name of fun and creativity, so it was well worth it.

It was over in no time and we ended up with some beautiful eggs.

We arose Easter morning and I baked a delicious little lamala (thanks again Eva and Daniel) and the kids dug into their Easter baskets.
We then headed over to my mom & Marty's house and the kids hunted for their colored eggs. Emilie did really well considering Ari showed no mercy.

You don't want to mess with the boy when he's huntin' eggs!

It was a gorgeous day and I've got a lot of egg salad to eat! Here's a look at my favorite egg this year...

The thrill of the hunt (really)

Oh what fun it is to search for little colored eggs hiding is the grass. We went to a few Easter egg hunts this year and I have to say the one we had at our house was the best! Just Ari, Lilli, and Piper running around our yard looking for the eggs with all the adults rooting them on. No winners, no losers, no special "prize" eggs. It didn't last long, but it was fun the kids' eyes light up when one of them spotted an egg.

We used plastic eggs filled with candy, Reese's Pieces as a matter of fact. Yum! We also used the real eggs that we colored in the kitchen a couple days before. The first time Ari found a real egg he picked it up, looked at it for a minute, and threw it back on the ground because he knew it didn't have candy in it. Kids these days! So the kids got to keep their candy and I got to make some "egg"cellent egg salad (get it?) out the the hard cooked eggs. Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun. Alas, the egg salad is now gone, but still so much candy remains.

Here's a look at my favorite egg the kids colored this year. The picture does not do it justice, but, it's pretty neat nonetheless.

I'm done with the Easter posts now, I promise.

Easter Birthday

I share my birthday with Easter this year. This is only the second time in my lifetime that Easter has fallen on April 12. It seemed odd to me that in 29 years Easter has fallen on my birthday only twice; so I did some research as to what other years Easter has been celebrated on April 12.

The first time I shared my birthday with Easter was in 1998. Prior to that, the last time Easter fell on April 12 was in 1936. After this year, the next time Easter will be on my birthday is in the year 2020; after that, 2093. What a strange series of years; 1936, 1998, 2009, 2020, 2093. With no apparent rhyme or reason as to the date Easter falls, I was intrigued to find out how the date of Easter is determined.

I did some research and found that in Western Christianity, Easter is always celebrated on the Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon. Oh, okay...what's the Paschal Full Moon? The Paschal Full Moon is the first moon whose 14th day (the ecclesiastic "full moon") is on or after March 21 (the ecclesiastic "vernal equinox").

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So there it was, I had my answer. I found it peculiar that the timing of this Christian holiday was based on a full moon, but that's another post. At least I had my answer, and I know I won't be sharing my birthday with Easter again until I am 40. Now that's something to look forward to.

Bunny Guts

Easter, 2007, Ari had just finished rummaging through his Easter basket and held a white plastic bunny in his hands.

"Is it?" He said to me, wondering what the object was.

"It's a bunny," I told him as I pulled away the clear plastic that encompassed the toy, "let's see what's inside."

I slowly pulled the bunny apart to reveal a bright orange blob of Play-Doh and I said, "Ewww, bunny guts."

Ari laughed and I showed him some of the things he could do with Play-Doh. I was the first time he had seen anything like it and he really enjoyed playing with it.

The next day, he said to me, "Daddy, I want to play with bunny guts." I didn't know what he was talking about, and then it hit me...Play-Doh. I laughed and got the bunny out so he could play with it some more.

Loving the fact that he called Play-Doh "bunny guts", we decided not to correct him. Besides, we didn't care what it's called. It was fun to see the reaction of family and friends when they hear Ari talk about playing with bunny guts. They are all used to it now, and some of them also refer to it as bunny guts, too.

He knows now that it is also called Play-Doh, but he still refers to it as bunny guts, and so do we, and hopefully always will.