Cookie Swap 2013

This year marks the 10th Anniversary of the Cookie Swap.  We have dubbed it the Aluminum Cookie Swap.  Aluminum is the metal given as a gift on one's 10-year wedding anniversary.

Given this special year, we also changed up the rules.  Everyone who was attending was asked to offer up an interesting ingredient as they have in the Iron Chef TV show.  All the ingredients went into a hat and one was chosen for you.  This ingredient, you had to make into a dessert-like item.  The ingredient was to be a secret and we played a guessing game as we tried all the desserts.

My interesting ingredient was BBQ sauce.  Hmmmmmm.....

I chose to make shortbread cookies with a raspberry bbq sauce on them with icing, cut into strips.  First, the shortbread alone was yummy, so I had a good base.  I baked them and the first out of the oven were very cumbly.  So that was the one that I nibbled on to taste test.  Not too bad!

So, at the cookie swap, here is the list of ingredients that were used in the desserts:

Yes, these ingredients were in the food I was about to eat.  Ha, this was the funnest cookie swap yet!  Here are the cookies that we made:

Tomato Soup Cookies

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Wasabi - Black Pearl Cupcakes

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Black Bean Cake

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Tofu Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Guava - Cuban Thumbprint Cookie

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Frangelico Meringues

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Coffee - Khalua Fudge

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Goat Cheese Chocolate Truffles

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Fresh Ginger Cookies

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Avocado Peanut Butter Fudge

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BBQ Shortbreads

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I have to admit that these cookies/desserts were good.  Some a bit off, but very edible.  My favorites were the Black Bean Cake, Fresh Ginger Cookies and the BBQ Shortbreads (of course, my own).  The Fresh Ginger Cookies and the Guava Cuban Cookies were "normal" cookies, so they hardly count, because they did not seem like such a challenge.

The poor woman who got avocado, I felt bad for her.  Her fudge was my least favorite.  It was a spongy fudge that looked like it had a white coating on them.  Ehhh.....

The Khalua Fudge was strong!  They used instant coffee, which I thought was very clever.  I'm not a huge fan of booze in my desserts, I just taste alcohol, not really the flavor of the booze.  I had a bad high school experience with Khalua and truly have not drunk it since. (Nicole...remember the premade Khalua Mudslides at one of your parties??  Yeah, I have never forgotten it...I'm scarred for life!)

The most interesting, in my opinion, where the Wasabi Black Pearl Cupcakes.  They were a very moist chocolate cake with a zing at the end.  I don't eat wasabi when I have sushi, so I'm not super familiar with it, but it did not ruin the cupcake.  They were not hot, just a burst of something once you swallow the bite: Interesting!

This was a much enjoyed cookie swap and was glad everyone was a good sport about it and came up with some good, creative recipes.

Can't wait for what next year's will be!

Coconut Shrimp

I love hot cooked shrimp.  Cold cocktail shrimp, not so much.  Since I started eating gluten-free (GF), lots of batters are on my no-no list.  This means that my shrimp has been either grilled, sauted or baked, but with only some seasoning or marinated in a GF sauce.  That's not a bad thing, but battered shrimp, fried is so good and I was missing it.

Recently, I searched for a Coconut Shrimp recipe that was GF and sort of healthy.  I found one. Googling is a great thing!  I found one that is baked, not fried and I substituted with some GF breading mix and it came out delicious!  I would love to share it with you so here are the details:

This recipe can be found at About.com.  It is under the Thai food category.

Easy Baked Coconut Shrimp

Yields: 18-24 Coconut Shrimps

• 18-24 medium to large shrimp, butterflied (may leave tails on)
• I did not butterfly them and left the tails on; they still came out great
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut (kind used for baking)
• 2-3 eggs

Coating Mix

• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs (dried, refined crumbs, such as Panko)
• Substituted with GF Panko Breadcrumbs.  Can make own by processing GF crackers.
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic salt
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper or dried crushed chili
• 1 tsp sugar
• pinch white pepper
• I used regular black pepper, no difference

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.  Cover a cookie sheet with parchmanet paper or spray with non-stick cooking oil.
2. Stir the Coating Mixers in a bowl and set aside.
3. Get 2 more bowls:  the first of these bowls, beat 2 eggs and in the second bowl, place the shredded coconut.  Keep the ingredients out, you may need to prepare more in the bowls as you go.  
1. I set-up an assembly line of the bowls to make it easier.
4. Grab a shrimp and dip it in the egg mix, then in the Panko breadcrumbs, coating the shrimp.  Then dip the same shrimp in the egg mixture again and then roll in the coconut.  Place on baking sheet.
5. Repeat the dipping for each shrimp.  Your fingers will get caked with the breadcrumbs and coconut, but keep going, putting a light coat on each shrimp.
6. Bake on the middle rack in the oven until they are lightly toasted.  Total time should be about 15 minutes, turning half-way through.
7. Can be served with Thai sweet chili sauce.

In the above pic, are the bowls set-up and the ingredients still out.  I had to keep adding more to each bowl.

I used frozen shrimp and I did not butterfly them.

I coated each shrimp, which was a pain in the butt, but it was so worth it.

The shrimp, uncooked, ready to go on the backing sheet.  The parchment paper worked like a charm.  No mess to clean-up.  This was an easy recipe, healthier than fried coconut shrimp from your local Chinese or Thai restaurant.

Go ahead and try it and let me know!!

Strawberry Bread

I love trying new recipes, especially the sweet kind!  I tried this new recipe last weekend and it was delicious plain, with butter, with cream cheese and even with ice cream!

The recipe is Strawberry Bread from the Everyday Food magazine, July/August 2004 issue.  

Pic from Martha's website

This recipe can be found at Martha Stewart's website, but I have also included here:

Strawberry Bread

Yields: 1 loaf that serves 8

Calories: 276 per slice

• 5 tbs plus 1 tsp unsalted butter @ room temperature (plus more for greasing the pan)
• 1 pint strawberries, rinsed, hulled & quartered
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (can alternately use gluten free flour blend)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup water (might not be needed, see ** note at end of recipe)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease an 8 x 4 inch loaf pan; set aside.
2. Using a fork, mash the strawberries until they are soft.
3. In a small saucepan, place the mashed strawberries and bring to a boil over med-high heat.  Cook, stirring for 1 min.  Take off heat and set aside.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, baking powder & salt; set aside.
5. In a separate large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, cream together the butter, sugar and eggs until light and fluffy. *
6. Add flour mixture alternately with 1/3 cup water **, beginning and ending with the flour.
7. Fold in the cooked strawberries.
8. Pour/scrape batter into prepared loaf pan, smoothing the top if necessary.
9. Bake until toothpick in center comes out clean, about 45-60 min.  If it needs longer than 45 min, lightly tent aluminum foil over pan to prevent the bread from browning too much.
10. Remove from oven and place pan on a wire rack to cool for 10 min.
11. Run a knife around the edges to loosen, then invert on the rack.  Flip back over and cool completely.

Note *:  I had brought all ingredients to room temperature prior to starting and my creamed butter mix was not light and fluffy but a well blended slurry.

Note**: Since my butter blend was like a slurry and my strawberries contained some liquid too, I only added a scant amount of water.  Once the flour mix was added, it was still quite liquidy and not that batter-like.

Based on the Notes above, I really did not think this bread was going to work out.  I had also used a gluten free flour blend for one and normal flour for my second one and they both had the same liquidy consistency, but after 45 min, they were both done and came out great!

The white pan is the gluten-free version (bread did not rise) and the clear pan is the normal version: perfect.

When I flipped the gluten-free one over, there was a concentrated corner of strawberries, so the corner broke off.  I did not mind, that was my excuse to try it before it was cooled!  Yummy!

I ate this bread with ice cream one night in a brownie sundae fashion and it was so good.  I shared this with another gluten-free pal at work and she loved it too.

Let me know how you like it!  Bon Appetit!

Cookie Swap 2012

Today was the Cookie Swap.  It was actually the 9th Annual Cookie Swap.  I have been involved with them for 9 years, can you believe it?  Anyway, we had a theme this year, which was "Favorite Fairy Tale." 

The fairy tale I chose was Rapunzel.  I chose to bake gluten-free lemon bars, which I called "Rapunzel's Lemon Tresses."  I got the recipe out of a book called The Cake Mix Doctor Bakes Gluten-Free.

This book is filled with tons of cakes, cookies and bars that are made with a gluten-free cake mix.  The bars came out really yummy.  Each year we try to be more creative with how we present our cookies for display and the packaging.  This year, I was thinking of making Rapunzel's Tower as my centerpiece. 

I recruited Vince to help me and he was great at coming up ways to make them easy.  We took mailing tubes and cut them about 4 inches high (these will be for the individual sets that people will take home) and one that was about 10 inches high for the centerpiece. 

Then he drilled a hole towards the top for the window and we covered the tubes with strips of scrapbook paper that was a brick wall and he made little pointed roofs out of construction paper.  His daughter and I then took yellow yarn and braided long lengths to hang out of each window hole, which helped suspend the bag of lemon bars in the tube.  They came out so cute!

Here are the individual sets:

We had such a good variety of cookies and bars.  I will show a few here:

Apple Toffee Crisps (Snow White Twists)

Apple Pie Cookies (Evil Witch/Snow White)

Hazelnut & Gretel Cookies

Cinderella's Pumpkin Streusel Bars

Princess & the Pea Bars (Graham Cracker)

Meringue Clouds (Kisses)

Everyone brought such yummy cookies.  There were also Chocolate Pillows, Honey Lemon Cookies and Pumpkin Cheesecake Coaches.  I could not eat all of them, but they all looked delish.

We also vote on superlatives, and I won for "The Most Magical" which was Best Presentation.  The other categories were: "The Fairest of Them All" (Best Cookie), "The Queen's Jewel's"  (Richest/Most Chocolatey), "The Court Jester" (Nuttiest), and "Over The Moon" (Best with Milk).

We had a good time and I did not come home in a sugar coma.  Hooray for that!  I tried to off set all the sugar with a healthy portion of veggies from the veggie tray and cheese cubes. 

We'll have to think of a fun theme for next year too.  Anyone game for coming to Florida for the 10th Annual Cookie Swap??