Totoro Cookies: Best Neighbors Ever

Having totoros as your neighbors really would be amazing. A napping spot, friends to help your wilting plants grow (I would really need help here), and a cat bus to borrow when you're in a jam. Like, do any of you have neighbors who would be so generous?

Just so we're clear on my Japanese animation creds here, I've never watched any of the Miyazaki films in Japanese, or even in Japanese with English subtitles. Nope, I'm super American and have only watched these with their English dubs. I don't exactly have anything to compare to, but every English dubbed one I've seen has been great. Except maybe Ponyo. But that was mainly the general obnoxiousness of the voices of small children with minimal adorable/fanciful creatures in between. Though, the movie did result in this amazing gifset:

Anyways, I'm a sucker for movies with strong family/sibling relationships. Especially when the movies are geared towards children because I'm secretly also still 5, though probably a little busier. But only a little, because its kind of lame to try to one-up a 5 year old with the "Oh I'm so0o0o0o0 busy thing." But if Frozen was the smash-hit disney movie of the decade because of its strong female sibling relationship, My Neighbor Totoro is like the oscar, life-time achievement for sisterly relationships. Maybe it's because I'm an older sister and relate the forced responsibilities and frustrations and love, but its probably more the simplicity of the story that makes the sisters in Totoro shine. There's all these little snippet scenes of just absolutely ordinary interactions- making weird bellowing noises, greedily running out in front of one another, laughing at stupid things that really aren't that funny or make sense, small fussy arguments, things that do nothing to pull a plot forward persay, but do everything to pull you into this little world of adorable troll neighbors.

People who hate animated films, or rather, find them boring, always tell me that they just can't get into the stories because everything is so unreal- like animated singing, dancing, animals or ~magic~ just throws them off. But to me, its the opposite. Movies with real people and real settings feel unrealistic because the way the characters and stories move in all that reality is so fake and cheesy compared to what happens in real world. Like, if The Notebook were set in an animated world, with maybe some magic, or spirity Home Depots helping Ryan Gosling build that house, I probably would have enjoyed the movie at least 100% more. Animated films, aside from just being beautifully drawn/designed, establish from the very beginning that yo, this is not the real world, so don't think about all the geo-socio-economic-political problems that make everything so unrealistic. Just suspend reality, and take in this new world where wizards have star-fire powered moving houses, and things like true love can happen between a girl and a river spirit. Ok, these things definitely sound a little insane without context, but if anyone reading this ever wants to movie marathon introduction to Miyazaki films, I will be there, artisan popcorn in hand, and maybe these cookies if you give me a 2 day heads up.

These cookies were made for a friend's birthday. I was originally planning on just getting the Totoro cutters because they were cute on Etsy, but being vain and greedy, I decided I wanted to use them first to make cookies to send along with the cookie cutters. These were some seriously complicated cutters. The level of details that were in these cutters was probably the only reason why these cookies look even reasonably consistent from one to the next. I used a black food pen for the small totoros (white ones), as evidences by some really interesting eyeball design choices....

My kitchen continues to have an abundance of lavender and rosewater (surprise there), so I added some lavender to my normal sugar cookie recipe, and rosewater to the royal icing. I think I may have added too much rose water or corn syrup to the royal icing because the icing was incredibly sticky. I added some more powdered sugar, and gave the cookies an extra day to dry, which ultimately fixed the problem, but I'll have to pay better attention to my ratios in the future and not get lazy about measurements.

Totoro cookie cutters from CookieCutters4U on Etsy (they started my dream side career of 3D printing cookie cutters of the strangest, non-commerciable type). The dough needs to be legit 1/4'' thick, or thicker for the center details to become pressed onto the cookies.

Same basic sugar cookie recipe from The Kitchn, but modified with 2 tsp of lavender blended with the sugar, and about 1/2 tsp of rose water.

Royal Icing from Bake at 350, with the addition of 1/2 tsp of rose water. I only needed 1/2 the batch of frosting for the number of cookies seen the the first image, with lots leftover.

Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies: The Post-Holiday Sales

I think I love the day after holidays more so than actually holidays. Ok, so 100% NOT the case for Christmas. And, I do like coming up with absurd witty costumes (I was The Fault in Our Stars last year. I wrote faults on stars-get it?) for Halloween. But Easter and Valentine's Day? Meh. Easter is a significantly larger deal on the East Coast than it is on the West Coast I've noticed. Anyways, the best thing about these two said holidays is that Walgreens goes all out on the excess of holiday decor and holiday themed sugar. And the day after said holidays are over, everything goes on sale for like 50-75% off.

I realize this whole discussion/excitement I have for cheap candy is not really something I should be proud of. I probably sound incredible stingy, and probably have a slightly higher risk of dietary problems because of the vast quantities of sugar that tend to hang out in my apartment. But see, this is why I desperately need to live somewhere warm so that when the cold winter days come, I can still run around outdoors like the free running gazelle I was trained to be.

 

Fortunately, I'm not actually a gazelle, because things like chocolate oatmeal cookies are probably not a part of their diets. As its been rehashed multiple times, oatmeal cookies with traditional raisins are one of the most offensive types of cookies out there. I mean, raisins in general are offensive in desserts. Oatmeal cookies themselves are great. Granted, they can sometimes taste a little dusty, but adding a healthy dose of cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice to these cookies, and replacing raisins with chocolate made for a happily textured cookie. My America's Test Kitchen cookbook for small kitchens sues granola rather than oatmeal for their cookies, so I might try that in the future.

Thank you Valentine's Day for the dark chocolate M&Ms. I look forward to yellow, green, and blues come post-Easter. Recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction.

Holiday Cookies: Seasonal Seasonings and an Apology

Contrary to my incredibly passive personality that some may consider weak-sauce, I can be incredibly judgmental about things. Like how sometimes food blogs will just go MIA for months on end, and then randomly return. Or just disappear and never come back. I do a lot of judging of online food people it seems (see food photo ramblings in earlier posts). And yet, it seems the more I judge, the more I end up doing the exact same thing. So clearly I need to cut the world of internet people some slack here (someone write up a Pride and Prejudice- Food Blogger Edition or something).

Anyways, while I haven't been posting recently due to a variety of excuses I can make, I have been baking and cooking regularly. I made things for thanksgiving, I failed spectacularly on some meringues, and even made a pot of soup large enough feed a small country's army. But for now, lets just focus on the holiday season that is coming up.



Even though I don't follow or believe the religious affiliations of Christmas, and nowadays not much of the whole gift giving consumerism thing, I still find holiday music and holiday decorations to be fantastic. Not so much nativity scenes, but I'm all about the lights, wreaths, and big fancy trees in all the buildings. It just makes everything so cheery regardless of what you may or may not believe. Then again, I've grown up in the US where Christmas traditions has become deeply embedded in just the general majority culture without much thought of exactly where they came from or why we do these things. I mean, the way we count years is also based off the birth of a guy? And presents come from a clearly unhealthy man?


Obviously being a food blog, I am mainly about the cookies, not the historical accuracy or cultural implications of the holidays. Ok, so that was totally grammatically incorrect, because I'm literally a person. Not a food blog. All of that is rather fascinating, and something I could/should google if I really wanted to delve into it.



Anyways, words. Look at these gingerbread and sugar cookies. Side note: molasses tastes terrible on its own even though gingerbread is delicious. I think I'll try making a gingerbread house at some point in the future--one of the classic holiday baking projects I have yet to complete.



Gingerbread recipe from food.com.
Sugar Cookie recipe from the kitchn.
Royal Icing from Bake at 350 (I used the one batch and was able to decorate with plenty of colors with no problems).

Pumpkin Sugar Cookies: Timely Halloween Post

The stars have aligned. Not only was I on top of the whole seasonal baking thing, but Halloween has fortuitously fallen on the day of my blog entry. So firstly, Happy Halloween and here have a foodie related-themed-tumblr photo.

ANYWAYS. While this post really should stop after that wonderful advice from Ina Garten, we'll continue on with cookies while not store-bought, also not summoned directly from the gates of cookie-doom. Unless you count my tiny little apartment kitchen as a doomsday scenario.

It's a little tragic (yet totally understandable) why as one gets older trick-o-treating no longer becomes a thing you participate in. Or rather, the role should transition from trick-o-treater to treat-giver. But there's that thing called college dorm living that seems to take a sharp turn into the lands of night club Halloween, which is significantly less sweet or cute. But I suppose has it's own charms. Mainly when it comes to punny costumes. Like 50 shades of gray. Or black mail. Or a fork in the road. Half of these were taken from my sister's current struggle to find 4 different Halloween costumes to be honest.



Since I don't exactly live in suburbia (yet), or an apartment full of small families, decorating Halloween-themed cookie is probably the closest I'll get to doing something juvenile for Halloween. The ~awesome~ thing about these cookies is that they aren't just normal sugar cookies with a sprinkle of vanilla and a dash of lemon zest. Rather, in the name of Fall spirit, they're ~pumpkin~ flavored.

And not just pumpkin spiced flavored, but pumpkin spiced AND pumpkin butter flavored. So yes, there is some real pumpkins in there. Pretty meta for those pumpkin decorated cookies. I actually didn't like the few pumpkin flavored sugar cookie recipes I found online, so I ended up modifying the same sugar cookie recipe I used for the Doctor Who cookies for these. Luckily, the cookies worked out really well, and I'm probably way more proud of these cookies than I really should be.

Bonus points if anyone can spot the nerdy/fandom-related cookies amongst the midst of normal Halloween cookies and anatomically inaccurate skeletons.

 

Sugar Cookies via The Kitchn with the following modifications:

-substitute almond and lemon zest for 2 teaspoons of pumpkin spice.

-add about 1 tablespoon of pumpkin butter to softened cream cheese.

Royal Icing via Bake at 350.

Biscoff Stuffed Chocolate Cookies: Jetlag Cookies

Despite my ridiculously easy schedule that I have given myself for maintaining this blog, I forgot to take pictures of the most recent thing I have made that may deserve a post. So I'm stuck in a conundrum to either post a short and nonsubstantial post about chocolate cookies that lack any particularly good photos, or post a long winded introspection revolving around my bad luck with galettes and the cherry/green tea flavor combo. Currently I am chillaxing at an airport in front of a women who I witnessed consume several small bottles of Wild Turkey, and am now mildly worried about her. On a side note, there's the usual jetlag and trying to keep myself from falling asleep too early.

So instead of writing about a failure in baking, I'll keep this short with two questionable pictures of something I think all of us want/need when we're just a little bit tired and just want to take things a little easy. Mainly- soft baked cookies. Especially those that are warm, rich and with just a little bit ginger and cinnamon thanks to biscoff spread stuffed and melty in the center. No one wants a hard crunchy cookie when they seek a comfort food cookie. Well, at least I don't. Hard, crunchy cookies are for festive moments and tea. Or maybe I'm just getting cookie textures mixed up with actual emotions. Go figure.



Recipe adapted from Sally's Baking Addiction. The only different was rather than caramel candies in the center, I used biscoff spread. Chilling the biscoff in the fridge made it much easier to work with. You can easily substitute biscoff for peanut butter if you're into the whole dark chocolate peanut butter combo. And face it, who isn't?
Side note: the women across from me is now either taking odd pictures of the general airport, or more likely, selfies.

Doctor Who Cookies: No Jammie Dodgers Required

Ah yes. Fall. The peak of summer humidity has finally come to an end. The sleepy, lazy days of August are shaking off to the start of the new school year. But oh wait. For the first time in forever (since like I was 3 years old), I don't have school this fall or rather, year. And yes, you were supposed to read "for the first time in forever" with the melody of said song from Frozen. So, rather than celebrate the non-existent return of school, lets celebrate something more exciting-the return of Doctor Who to TVs all across ponds in the world!

Yes its been a rather long hiatus since December, with hardly any episodes last year-aside from the 50th anniversary special and Matt Smith's farewell. Doctor Who is a strange show. Or rather, my continued dedication to it is a bit strange. David Tennant will always be my favorite doctor (all the angst!). Matt Smith, and the show over the past few years under Moffat? Eh, lets just say it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of meaningful storytelling, and positive representations of women. Honestly, the combined terribleness that was Matt Smith's Christmas goodbye, the 50th anniversary, and plain shoddy writing last year made me embarrassed to say that I watched Doctor Who.

Since the premier last weekend, I've gained a small glimmer of hope that this season, Doctor Who will return to some of its roots in meaningful, angst-filled, morally challenging stories that aren't solved with buttons or quick resets. Peter Capaldi has taken on the role now as the Doctor, and word has it that he's been resisting some of Moffat's less than savory story directions, such as any flirty boyfriend-girlfriend interactions with his companion, the young, oh-so-horribly characterized Clara. Seriously, I think I learned more about her personality in this first episode than in all of last season. Maybe its a commentary on just how bad Doctor Who had gotten, but this new episode has breathed new life into my enthusiasm for Doctor Who (haha ged it? no you probably don't).

I realize that this "food" blog post, that probably should be detailing more about the process of making sugar cookies and decorating them using awesome food color dyes and food markers has been completely hijacked by a rambling story about how I lost my faith in Doctor Who and am slowly hoping it will return. But like the long storied history of Doctor Who, sometimes episodes just don't make sense and you have to roll with it. So for non-Doctor Who fans, bear with me, as I promise there will likely be a ~holiday~ sugar cookie post at some point in the distant future.

Some quick comments about sugar cookies. The recipe I used tasted great, but I found that it helped to freeze the cookie dough for a quick 3-4 minutes after cutting out shapes to facilitate their movement to a baking sheet.

Sugar cookie recipe from The Kitchn. Royal icing and pro-decorating tips from Bake at 350. Doctor Who cookie cutters from We the Sciencey.

Lavender Lemon Sugar Cookies: Soap or Space?

I'm very good at impulse buys when it comes to strange, vague-ly fancy food related items. You gotta hand it to etsy for making it so easy to buy the most adorable, hipster, cutesy, nerdy things. I could easily bookmark half the webpage and just cry about all the things I couldn't buy. But this is the first time I've bought any food-item from etsy, but for dried lavender it was necessary. Amazon sells 1/2 lbs - 1lbs bags of dried lavender, which no one could possibly finish in their lifetime unless they were running a bakery or restaurant. And I don't live in France where I can just frolick through fields of lavender all day.

 I initially bought the dried lavender to make lavender ice cream (eventually, when I get my ice cream maker back). Lavender flavored things sound seriously pretentious and may initially give the impression that people have gone made and enjoy the taste of soap. I first had lavender while in Ojai during a high school summer science program where I spent many mildly sleep deprived nights with some of the smartest people programming and trying to learn astronomy. So to me, lavender isn't so much about fancy soap than it is about the weird silly things we did alongside all the astronomy and science, like lavender festivals, getting a stress test from the Church of Scientology, and creating a 3-level headphone split. You get the idea- summer nostalgia and all that jazz.



If you're feeling a bit of trepidation about investing in a full-on lavender recipe, these lavender lemon sugar cookies are a good way to dip your toes in. The lemon comes off as the main flavor in these cookies, while the lavender come in as key supporting characters that make these cookies, well, better than lemon sugar cookies. 

I ultimately copied the recipe for Lemon Sugar Cookies from Two Peas and Their Pod, but made some modifications to incorporate the lavender. I'll reproduce the recipe below, but I still don't have a fancy recipe widget since 90% of my posts I just follow the recipes from other people. 

Dried lavender purchased from LLFarm on etsy. 1 oz. is the smallest quantity I have found online for a reasonable price, and this will still likely last you for several rounds of lavender baking/cooking. Williams Sonoma or one of those fancy food stores also sells a 1/2 oz amount, but its priced much higher than what I saw on etsy.

Lavender Lemon Sugar Cookies
Lemon Sugar Cookies from Two Peas and Their Pod. Reproduced below with * indicating modifications.
Ingredients:
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cup sugar
1 TBSP dried lavender buds*
1 cup butter

1 egg
1 lemon- zest*
2 TBSP lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup walnuts*
1/2 cup sugar for rolling
1/2 tsp-1 tsp dried lavender buds for rolling*

Steps:
1-Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
2-Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Mix and set aside.
3-In a food processor and blend together sugar and lavender until lavender is chopped up. You can add in all the sugar or just some of it depending on how large your food processor is.*
4-In a clean bowl or mixer, beat together butter, lavender, and sugar until smooth and creamy.
5-Add lemon zest, lemon juice, vanilla and egg and mix till combined. Slowly add dry ingredients and mix till just combined.
7-Set aside dough. Chop up walnuts in food processor or by hand until you have fine pieces. Add to dough, leaving aside 1-2 TBSP if you want to use walnuts in your rolling mixture.*
8-Using a food processor, blend together sugar, lavender, and walnuts to create rolling mixture.*
9-Roll dough into ~1 tsp-1 TBSP balls (your preference for size) and roll into sugar-lavender-walnut mixture before placing on baking sheets, about 1-1/2 inches apart.
10-Bake for 8-10 minutes until slightly brown and edges are set. Remove, let rest on sheets for 2 mins before transferring to cooling rack.

Browned Butter Snickerdoodles: Flat or Puffy?

So its the middle of January. 2014. And I am STILL posting about Thanksgiving 2013. Woohoo!

But don't worry, this is the last Thanksgiving 2013 baking post I will have.

Snickerdoodles are usually a hit in my household due to their pillowly puffiness. I remember making browned butter snickerdoodles back in 2012 that turned out really great, though mildly burnt on top. So it was a little disappointing when these came out so flat. Some quick googling seems to suggest that snickerdoodles are more often flat rather than puffy. But wikipedia doesn't suggest any information about the texture of a traditional snickerdoodle.

Regardless, I think these may have been so flat because there was too much butter, or the butter was too soft. maybe I didn't let it cool enough before incorporating after I browned it? They did taste slightly on the buttery side. I'm pretty sure I let the dough chill for a sufficient amount of time, but I suppose I'll experiment the next time I make snickerdoodles, of whatever variety.

Being the type of person who hates wasting food and would rather risk losing friends by forcing them to consume baked goods than toss things out, these cookies ended up in quite a few desserts. Ice cream sandwiches, speculoos ice cream toppings, ect.

Recipe from Ambitious Kitchen. Ambitious indeed.