TWD: Buttery Jam Cookies

For your consideration: Buttery Jam Cookies from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 80 featured this week on Tuesdays with Dorie.

Short and sweet today, my dearest sweeties! I have a BOATLOAD of things to do tonight to get ready for the morrow. It's Winter Party for the Little One and I am the Room Mom who needs to help, bring some supplies, teacher gifts and flowers for one of the teacher's half birthday AND some paying work as well, woo hoo! It's a whirlwind I tell you! A whirl wind!

Thank Heavens I made these cookies three weeks ago. I would have been really crazy otherwise ;) (You can see one of the Linzer Sables hanging out in the background.)

These were easy peasy to make - I used peach preserves and while this combo was good and buttery, they didn't taste very peachy. Maybe something stronger like apricot would have been better. Hmm. I might make these again, because they were good and if I do, I'll be trying apricot jam.

Thanks to Heather of Randomosity and the Girl for choosing this recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with it, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making Dorie’s version of Buttery Jam Cookies for yourself, you can find the recipe on our hostess’s blog, or in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

The Bake Sale

Wow. I am so behind in my postings. Here are the recipes I made for our school bake sale back in mid-September. I wanted to make some things that appealed more to the teachers than the kids, because, let’s face it, kids will eat anything. Teachers, not so much.

I went trolling around the internet and my google reader to see what I could find that would be good for a bake sale. Here were my criteria:
1. Easy to make
2. Reasonably inexpensive ingredients
3. Easily packaged
4. Not too messy to eat
5. Something worth .25 to .50 cents
6. Something different than the ubiquitous oatmeal or chocolate chip cookies.

After a lot of searching, I came up with 3 recipes.

Here’s the first:
Butterscotch Coconut Drop Cookies
from Recipezaar

These turned out well, but came out much thinner than I anticipated. The cookie was very chewy and even somewhat “flexible” for lack of a better term.







Number 2: Rocky Road Smores/Brownie Muffins

These came from Anna of Cookie Madness. Very nice and a big seller. I toasted the finished product under the broiler for a few minutes to toast up the marshmallows and melt the chocolate a little bit so everything would stay put.

Third: (ready for a mouthful?)

Jumbo Chipotle Chocolate Brownie Muffins with Praline Topping.

I also found this basic recipe and idea on Recipezaar, but I morphed it into a brownie served in individual jumbo sized muffin cups. I added about 1 tsp. of ground chipotle pepper to the batter. I had read in the comments about doubling the topping. I did this and it was way too much for this serving method.

These didn’t photograph well, but they were so good. Just the right amount of pepper to give a teeny bit of heat and interest.

I was exhausted after cooking all day, and my kitchen looked like it had imploded. I had to leave to run hither thither and yon taking kids to activities, so I put up the perishables and left the rest for later. To my amazement, DH beat me home (this in itself is remarkable in that he was home while the sun was still out) AND he cleaned up the mess! Shocked, amazed and oh so grateful. Thanks honey.

I’m not sure how we did at the sale, but my kids were very happy gorging themselves on sweets. The Big Ones even bought some wee gifties for their teachers. Those are two smart cookies, if I do say so myself.