French Fridays With Dorie

 

Yes, another blogging/baking & cooking group! 

I LOVE DORIE GREENSPAN.  She has helped me learn more about baking in the past year than I thought possible.  I adore her recipes.  There are few that I have not just LOVED.  When I heard that she had a new book coming out I could not wait to get it.  I was VERY excited to find out that it was being released early.  Then, I was even MORE excited to find out that my amazing friend, Laurie, was going to be heading up a new blogging group to cook their way through the new book, Around My French Table.

The first month’s recipes were chosen by Dorie herself.  This weeks recipe is the “Goureges”….a yummy, light, and delicious cheesey puffs of air.  They are simple to make, quick to make, and didn’t last long!  Aiden wasn’t sure about them….but Jakob inhaled one after another!

Look at these….don’t you just want to jump through the screen and eat one?

I put the Goureges “batter” into a pastry bag and used a large star tip to “pipe” them onto the silpat!  Can you tell???

Now….go to the new website and see all the amazing people that are participating in this new group….last I heard there were about 500 people signed up!!

 

12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies

 

This year I decided to participate in….

Friends have put together the group, and since I am always looking for new and fantastic Christmas cookies to try and add to my array of goodies, it was a no brainer to join them.

I was SO looking forward to having a really good first cookie for this event.  I had it picked out over a week ago.  But being the procrastinator that I am I waited until this afternoon to bake them.  I know, I know….you would think that I had learned my lesson by now, but apparently not.

I found this recipe in this years “Better Home and Gardens Christmas Cookies” magazine. They were suppose to be Soft Maple Sugar Cookies, with a maple glaze.  I had looked at the recipe, and thought I could just swap out the 1/2 cup of shortening, for another 1/2 cup of butter.  Maybe that was be problem I made.  But the dough was SO soft that there was no way I could roll it into balls….and even after chilling the dough for two hours it was still too soft to do so.  I used my cookie scoop to drop nice formed globes onto my cookie sheet and hoped for the best.  NOPE.  Did NOT turn out.  Too soft, falling apart.  I didn’t even bake all the dough.  Made me sad.  I had high hopes for some yummy maple cookies.  Fall and Christmas rolled into one cookie.

Look at how sad these look….

I promise to not wait til the last minute to make next weeks cookies so that I have something spectacular to see!

Sorry!!