Dog Cookies

 

Here's a recipe for Christmas cookies for dogs. I got it from a newspaper article last year. You can make them year-round, but it's so cute to make them at Christmas time with Christmas cookie cutters. You don't need an electric mixer for these--just a spoon and your hands--so they're easy to do. (You do need a rolling pin and cookie cutters, though, or at least some makeshift substitute.)

I usually use small cookie cutters to yield more cookies. This year Mom asked for some bigger ones, because one of her friends has a really large dog. I reached for the mid-sized Christmas tree, but Mom said, "Don't you want them to eat people?" So I made medium-sized gingerbread men instead.

I was going to mention that our dog doesn't like these cookies, but this year she proved us wrong:

 
 
 

She doesn't really like food, though. She's a terrier mix, and my theory is that she prefers live game, when she can get it. But as for these cookies--all the other dogs in the neighborhood like them, and our dog really does try hard to like them. One of our neighbors actually requested these this year, so it seems they're popular.

These cookies are made with whole wheat flour. DO NOT use any bleached white flour, because dogs' stomachs can't tolerate it. (Most white flour is bleached, unless you buy specially unbleached flour.) If you use bleached white flour, it will probably be on your pastry cloth, so clean it off first, or roll the dough out on something else.

These cookies are healthy for dogs. They have pumpkin, which dogs like (it calms their stomachs), and lots of fiber, and they don't have any sugar or much fat. People can eat these cookies too, if they want to.


Dog Cookies

1 cup canned pumpkin (not pie filling!)
1 cup water
3-4 tablespoons canola or safflower oil
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/2 cups oats
1 dash nutmeg
3 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour (the recipe says cake flour, though I'm not sure why. It also says to substitute another flour if the dog is allergic to wheat.)

Combine pumpkin, water, oil, cinnamon, oats and nutmeg in a big bowl. Add enough flour so that you can't stir the dough any more. Turn out the dough onto a pastry cloth heavily floured with whole wheat flour, and knead the dough (adding the rest of the flour as you go) until the dough is able to be rolled. (If it sticks to a floured rolling pin and a floured pastry cloth, you can't roll it out. Keep adding flour and kneading until it's less sticky.)

Roll dough out to 1/4" thick. Cut out with cookie cutters and put on an ungreased cookie sheet. (If you use parchment paper, you won't have to grease the cookie sheet or wash it sheet afterwards.) They don't really expand, so they can be almost touching each other.

Bake 40 minutes at 375 degrees. You can leave them at room temperature for a few days (in a plastic bag or other container.) For longer than that, put them in the fridge for a few days or, beyond that, in the freezer.

Pepparkakor (Swedish Gingerbread)

These are so much fun, especially with children. I have many fond memories of making pepparkakor. Before I share the recipe, here are some things I've learned over the years to make it work well. Some of this is just common sense and some of it is experience. Maybe it'll save you a bit of time, money, and frustration. But feel free to skip to the recipe if you want.

The dough must be cold for you to roll it out. That means you get out your container-the-dough-was-chilled in, take out a lump, and put the container back in the fridge before you roll out your dough. When you've cut out all the cookies you can cut out, put the scraps back in the fridge. If you try to roll them out again, you'll get a sticky mess. Use a freshly chilled lump instead.

Do not try to make a double batch of this dough unless you have an industrial size mixer. You will get a floury mess (and perhaps a broken mixer). A single batch makes plenty of dough, enough to keep you busy for hours.

Also, do not decorate the cookies with the cookie sheets on the stove (unless you have one of those completely flat stoves with no crevices). The sprinkles will get into the crevices on the stove. When you cook dinner on the stove, the sprinkles will melt and you will have a very colorful mess that is nonetheless very difficult to clean up. Put the cookie sheets on an easily cleaned counter or table so that you can wipe all the sprinkles off when you are done. It took us years to learn this, though I'm not quite sure why.

We never decorate our pepparkakor with icing, although you can do that after you bake the cookies. We decorate the cookies before we bake them using colored sugar (Mom's favorite), sprinkles (my favorite), and mini M & Ms (to which nobody objects). My sister likes to use colored sugar to give all the gingerbread boys blue pants and red shirts, and all the Christmas trees get green sugar with a yellow M & M on top for the star. The gingerbread girls get pink dresses, the stars get yellow, and the holly leaves get green. I'm not quite so methodical. I think sprinkles taste better, anyway.

Buy your sprinkles off-season if you can. After the holidays, you can find holiday-themed sprinkles at a steep discount. (After Halloween, I got some chocolate sprinkles, leaves, and orange sugar for 75% off.) You can often find multi-sectioned containers of sprinkles (at reasonable prices) at Ross, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods, in the food aisle. Do not bother getting nonpareils (the little round balls, either white or multi-colored). They don't stick to the cookies. We've tried many times. (But you can press them into the centers of these cookies instead of nuts, and they'll stay there. It's the only use I've found for them yet.)

You will not get all the sugar and sprinkles on the cookies, no matter how hard you try, and some of your sprinkles will roll off. You can, however, reuse sprinkles. Bake your cookies on parchment paper, and after you've taken the cookies off, lift the parchment paper and guide the sprinkles left behind into a small bowl. Now you have multi-colored sugar-sprinkles mix that can be used just like regular sugar or sprinkles. I like putting it on stars and snowflakes, because it's cheery. To make it easier to use your sugar-sprinkles mix, put it into an empty sprinkles container and shake it on from there.

(Note: Parchment paper is a fantastic invention. It's paper that you can put on your cookie sheets instead of greasing them. You can use it over and over again, until it starts looking brown or yellowish around the edges, and you never have to wash your cookie sheets, because the cookies never touch the sheets. You can also lay out your cookies on parchment paper while the cookie sheet is in the oven baking more cookies, but I wouldn't decorate them until they're actually on the cookie sheet, because the sprinkles may fall off as you transfer it.)

I prefer using small cookie cutters. The cookies are very thin, and the smaller the cookies are, the less likely they are to break when you store or transport them. Mom sometimes quarrels with me on this--she still likes using the big cookie cutters sometimes--but she can't deny that the big ones break more easily. So the small cookie cutters are much better.

Get your cookie cutters off-season, too. Last year we found some lovely ones at Michaels a few days after Christmas. I think we got 20 small ones for $2. Joann's also has baking supplies. If you do small cookies, you will want to invest in some cookie cooling sheets that have a cross-hatch pattern (not just lines straight across), so that the cookies don't fall through and break. Michaels and Joann's often have 40% off coupons in their circular.

Since you roll out the dough very thin, some of the unbaked cookies will not transfer well to the cookie sheet. This is inevitable, although it's more likely if the dough is getting warm. Make sure your pastry cloth or work surface is well floured (along with your rolling pin and hands), and dip cookie cutters in flour before cutting out cookies. You can use a small metal spatula to help transfer cookies, but some of the shapes just don't do well--I remember having particular trouble with the dalarna horse and the reindeer, since their legs are so thin. If a cookie fails, put it in a lump to the side and return it to the fridge the next time you get the container out.


Pepparkakor (Swedish Gingerbread)

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine
2 eggs
1/2 cup molasses

3 1/2 cups sifted flour (or spooned LOOSELY into measuring cups and leveled with a flat knife. Do not shake measuring cups as you spoon flour in, because this packs it in tighter.)
2 teaspoons soda
1 1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt

In mixer, mix together sugar, shortening, butter, eggs, and molasses. Sift together dry ingredients (or--sorry, Grandma, but I never use a sifter--combine them in a separate bowl using a whisk) and stir into sugar mixture. Cover and chill several hours or overnight.

Heat oven to 375 degrees. On lightly floured board or pastry cloth, roll out a small amount of dough about 1/8 inch thick. (Keep remaining dough refrigerated.) Cut with floured cookie cutters. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Decorate with colored sugar and sprinkles if desired. Bake 6-8 minutes. Caution--they burn easily. (After they cool, you can decorate them with icing if you haven't already decorated them.)

Super-Easy Crockpot Roast

This recipe isn't new by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm posting it here because I've been enjoying it lately and because I have a couple of helpful tips. I may have broken my no-convenience-foods rule and my meat-is-only-for-special-occasions guideline (read here to find out why), but I'm still trying to make it as healthy, as un-processed, and as cheap as I can.

Since I was craving red meat, I decided to get a cut of beef and stew the you-know-what out of it in the crockpot. I wanted to get a good value for my money, so I did some reading about the leanest cuts of beef. Apparently the round cuts (top round, eye of round, bottom round) and the rump roast are the leanest cuts of beef, with about 20% to 25% fat. Top round is most tender and bottom round is least tender (not sure how rump roast compares), but when you're stewing it in the crockpot, that doesn't matter so much. For $7, I found a 2-pound roast that looked about the right size to feed me for a week. Last week, it was an eye of round roast; this week, it was a rump roast. (Sounds elegant, doesn't it?)

The next step is to pour onion soup mix over it, except for the fact that onion soup mix has MSG. So do the cheap beef bouillon cubes. I don't think I react badly to MSG, but I'd still rather stay away from it if I can. So I decided to assemble my own.

Onion soup mix is mainly made up of three things:

1) Beef bouillon, in some form. There's a store near here that sells beef-free beef bouillon powder that smells just like beef bouillon--and they sell 4 oz of it for under $1.50. I poured 1 teaspoon (equivalent of one bouillon cube) on the roast, poured 1/4 cup water over it, and then poured another generous teaspoon over the top of the roast.

2) Dried chopped onion flakes. The brand name 5th Season sells a good-sized jar of dried chopped onion flakes for 50 cents. You can find it at dollar stores or at some grocery stores (including Wal-Mart) on the bottom shelf below the expensive spices. I poured two tablespoons of those (at least) on top of the roast. (Since all these ingredients are dirt cheap, you can use as much as you want--you don't have to be limited by the size of the onion soup packet.)

3) Onion powder. This is cheapest when you buy it in bulk at a natural foods store, where you spoon some into a plastic bag and it costs a certain amount per pound. I got a 4 oz bag at the same place where I got the beef bouillon (for a similarly cheap price), and I poured 1 tablespoon of this on the roast.

4) If you want to add any celery salt or pepper, you can add some of that too. The beef bouillon will probably have a lot of salt, but if you want to add more table salt, sprinkle that on top.

To summarize: put unfrozen roast in crockpot, pour over aforementioned seasonings, and cook for a good long while. I like to do it 2 hours at HIGH and 4 hours at LOW. (This is because I can't seem to manage to get it in the crockpot early enough for it to cook for 8 hours on LOW.) It's done when it falls apart at the touch of a fork. Don't expect to slice it. It'll be too tender.

Now, a true Southerner would make gravy out of the drippings, but I haven't gotten that far yet. I asked my landlady how to dispose of the water-grease-mess that was left in the crockpot, and she replied: "You know what I like to do... I go out behind the house, off to the side a little way, and pour it out there for the critters. After all, they have to eat, too." I got quite a good laugh out of that, especially given that I was raised in suburbia (with homeowner's associations that forbid all kinds of random things), but she had a good point, and I took her advice. I hope the critters got a good meal out of it.

Failed Toffee Candy

 

So far I've made five batches of toffee (actually six, since one of them was a double batch), and three of them have turned out. The first one that failed was (I think) because I didn't cook it long enough. As for the other one, which was the double batch, my guess is that the butter wasn't good quality--not that it was rancid, but that it had too much water in it, or something like that. Or maybe I just didn't cook it long enough. For the first batch that failed, I just ate the chocolate off the top and threw away the rest. But I really didn't want to do that with the double batch, since it had an entire pound of butter (and a pound of sugar) in it.

By the way, if you're wondering what happens when toffee fails, it doesn't turn the color of toffee, and it looks and tastes like you melted butter , stirred sugar into it, and let it cool. And then there's a layer of melted chocolate on top. (Toffee does take time to set, so make sure you've let it cool overnight before you call it "failed.")

So I scraped the chocolate off the top and put the butter-sugar mixture back into the pan. I put it back over medium heat and cooked it awhile. I drained off quite a lot of liquid (the reason why I think the butter had too much water) , and then I saw some dark-brown color that looked like it was burning, and I decided it probably wouldn't turn into toffee, so I gave up on it. I took it off the heat, left the pot on the stove, and ate dinner. (end of a long day--can you tell?)

The next day I noticed it had hardened in the pot. Now it looked like maple sugar candy, except without the maple--but it had that texture. Sort of like toffee-flavored maple sugar candy. Anyway, I took a knife and chipped it out of the pot. Now it looked a bit like brown sugar but tasted a whole lot better.

Since it still had the toffee taste, I decided to make it into something else. I melted some dark chocolate, mixed in the crumbled failed toffee mixture, and added some sliced toasted almonds. I poured some into the toffee pan and dropped the rest by spoonfuls onto parchment paper. I cooled it in the fridge and cut it into squares. It's delicious. I can't stop eating it.

I'm going to make some more toffee today. Of course, I do want it to turn out, but if it doesn't, I can always make some more of this...

Esther Green's White Cookies to Frost

In our house, these cookies have become known as Esther Greens, but the full name is Esther Green's White Cookies to Frost. Every year I ask Mom who Esther Green was, and every year I seem to forget. Today I asked Mom again and learned (again) that two of Esther Green's daughters married two of my grandpa's brothers. I suppose that means she was Mom's great-aunt-in-law. Mom never met Esther Green, but we know her through these cookies. So her memory lives on.

Usually these are the last cookies we make. Mom doesn't like to make them earlier because they're so fragile. In the early part of December, the cookies we make go in cookie tins to be shipped, so it's not practical to make Esther Greens early--there are other cookies we have to make first. Sometimes they don't even get made until after Christmas! But they're one of my favorite cookies, so I decided to make them earlier this year because I can. I mixed up the dough while at a friend's house baking, and I baked them in my landlady's oven. (Thank you!!)

This recipe is charming because it's so sparse. It's typed on a 3" x 5" index card, and the word "chill" is misspelled as "shill." I suppose whoever typed it didn't want to throw out the card and start over. Even now that I have it typed up correctly on a computer, I still can't help thinking "make in roll, shill, and slice."

The recipe assumes quite a lot of cooking knowledge, so I'll do my best to spell out the things that everyone knew years ago when the recipe was first typed up. I haven't made much frosting, so a few years ago I got Mom to give me approximate quantities for the frosting recipe. It didn't help, at least not this year, but I'll definitely know how to do it in the future. (Which means there's a story coming. Mom laughed so hard when I told her. Keep reading.)

The frosting recipe doesn't give you much to go on. It only says:
Grate in orange rind, add orange juice, 10x sugar, and a lump of butter. Frost.

I also have a note written on there that says "add sugar until thick enough."

So I decided to do some logical thinking. Since it says orange rind and juice, it probably meant one orange, right? That means for my double batch of cookies, I'd need two oranges. So I got the zest from two oranges (using a handheld not-sharp-enough cheese grater, because I didn't want to wash a full size grater and cutting board after doing dishes all day) and juiced the oranges using my hands (because I don't have any sort of juicer). I decided that a lump of butter was probably 2 T., because if you get much bigger than that, it's not a lump anymore. I put zest, juice, and butter in my pan over low heat. Then I started adding confectioners' sugar until it was thick enough

By the time I had added a pound of confectioners' sugar, I started to think that I had probably used too much orange juice, but I kept adding sugar because it didn't seem thick enough. In all, I used a pound and a half of confectioners' sugar, which was all I had. Then I started frosting the cookies, and I realized I had made the frosting too thick. For it to be spreadable at all, I had to keep it hot, and since it was hot, it was burning my fingers and I kept yelping and running my fingers under cold water. Finally it occurred to me that I could add some more liquid and make it thinner. Since I didn't want to cut open another orange, I got some milk and stirred about 1 T. milk into the frosting. Then I could turn down the heat and frost the cookies without yelping.

When I finished frosting, I still had quite a lot of frosting left, so I took my landlady a sample of Esther Greens, and she really liked them, so I begged her to take the rest of the frosting off my hands. Then I asked to borrow some powdered sugar.

Anyway, without further ado, here are...

Esther Green's White Cookies to Frost

Cream:
1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. oleo (margarine)

Add:
1/2 c. 10x sugar (confectioners' sugar)
1 t. vanilla
2 c. flour
1/4 c. pecans, chopped (there are a zillion ways to chop nuts, but since I don't have a nut-chopper, I like to chop nuts by putting them in a plastic bag and whacking them with a meat mallet)

Make in roll, chill, and slice. Bake at 400 degrees for 6-8 minutes.

Expanded directions:
Cream together butter and margarine. You may want to soften them first (a minute or two at power level 1 on the microwave will soften butter quickly). Add confectioners' sugar and vanilla and beat at high speed until light and fluffy. (I always have trouble imagining that a mix of butter, margarine, and sugar could ever be "light," but that's what the recipes usually say. I try to imagine it being fluffy like clouds.) Using a lower speed on the mixer, beat in flour a cup at a time until well mixed. Add pecans and beat until just mixed. On wax paper or plastic wrap, form dough into a rectangular log about 2-3 inches wide and an inch high. Chill. Slice cookies, put on a cookie sheet, and bake at 400 degrees for 6-8 minutes, until almost browned or lightly browned, depending on how you like them. I think the lightly browned ones will be less fragile. Cool cookies completely before frosting.

Frosting:
Get the zest from a medium-sized orange (i.e., wash it and then grate the peel using the small holes on the grater, but only the orange part of the peel--you don't want the white stuff, because that's bitter). Juice half the orange and put the juice and zest in a small pot over low heat. Add 2 T. butter. Start with 2-3 T. of powdered sugar and add powdered sugar GRADUALLY until thick enough. It will also thicken as you cook it. You still want it to be pretty thin but not watery. Frost cookies and let cool. The frosting will harden on the cookies.

Italian Chews

This recipe comes from a lady named Jenny who lived down the street from my mom when my mom was little. Jenny had no children of her own, but all the kids in the neighborhood loved her. She had a thick Italian accent and a really big heart. When we make this recipe, my mom recalls Jenny and how kind she was to all the neighborhood kids.

These cookies are also incredibly good. My mom sends cookie tins every year to some of our relatives, and most of the tins have an assortment of six or seven kinds of cookies, but a couple of relatives want Italian Chews only, and my mom is happy to oblige. So we make lots and lots of Italian Chews.

Italian Chews

3/4 c. soft butter
2 T. granulated sugar
1 2/3 c. flour

3 eggs, separated
2 1/4 c. light brown sugar (or 1 pound of brown sugar--if you use a 1 pound box, you don't have to measure)
1 c. finely chopped walnuts
3/4 c. flaked coconut
Confectioners' sugar for dusting

Crust: Cream butter; add granulated sugar, beat until light. Add flour and mix well. Pat into 13x9x2" pan; bake at 350° for 15 minutes.

In a clean bowl, beat egg whites until they form stiff peaks. (If the bowl isn't clean, or if there's even a tiny bit of yolk in the egg whites, they won't get stiff. Stiff peaks means that when you lift the beaters out of the egg whites, it makes a peak, and the top of the peak doesn't fold over at all.) Set egg whites aside in a separate bowl. Beat egg yolks; gradually beat in brown sugar. Add nuts and coconut and mix; then gently fold in egg whites, using a spatula. (If you don't fold gently, the egg whites will lose the air that you beat into them.) Spread on baked mixture. Bake 25-30 minutes. Cut in 54 squares and dust with confectioners' sugar.


How to do a "double batch": Mix up one single batch of crust. Pat into a 13 x 9 pan. Mix up another single batch of crust. Pat into another 13 x 9 pan. Bake at the same time. Note that if one pan is darker than the other, it will bake faster. Wash mixer bowl. Beat one set of egg whites. Set aside. Beat the other set of egg whites. Set aside in another bowl. Mix one batch-worth of the filling, fold in egg whites, and spread on crust. Bake. Mix the second batch of filling, fold in egg whites, spread on second crust, and bake.

Cookies? I don't want any cookies!

Well, I did it. I broke my "no processed foods" rule. And my "meat-is-only-for-special-occasions" guideline. I've been having a lot of low-level nausea lately, and I haven't been wanting to cook for myself at all, not even to chop celery. So I gave in and bought some frozen prepared veggies, a premade rice side dish, and a cut of beef. The beef will go in the crockpot with onion soup mix, and the others will be cooked in the microwave. I suppose it's better than soybeans and bread for dinner, or maybe banana with peanut butter and a piece of bread.

Seriously, I've been having some of the weirdest meals lately. I just don't have much appetite, and I don't have the energy to cook things that I really don't want to eat anyway. Sometimes I do crave "real food," but not enough to do the work to make it show up in front of me. :-) So that's why I haven't been posting "real food" recipes lately. There's no recipe for soybeans and bread. You zap the soybeans and butter the bread--not much cooking there. If I'm feeling adventurous I might even make up a batch of biscuits, and if they're Bisquick biscuits I'll make sure to burn them a bit so they taste better. In any event, I'm trying to hit all the food groups, even if my meals have been a little odd.

I was pretty pathetic yesterday at the grocery store trying to figure out what I'd eat for the week. I didn't want food at all, but I was taking it on faith that I would probably want it at some point in the future. My thought process (and some talking under my breath) went something like this:
(look at something) Ick. (and something else) Ick. (and something that sounds really terrible) ick.ick.ICK! okay Rose, calm down, you don't have to get that... (repeat over and over)
I suppose someday I'll have a child saying that to me.

But I have been baking cookies. I'm not sure how I have energy for that. I think it's just habit: Christmastime means baking cookies. The one consolation is that I don't have to eat them. Yes, I mean that. I've baked double batches of three kinds of cookies so far, and I doubt I've eaten more than ten cookies. The toffee I've been making appeals to me, so I've eaten more of that than of the cookies. I think it tastes good because of the dark chocolate, because that settles my stomach. (Whole grains do, too: whole wheat bread, whole wheat biscuits, raw oats...)

In two weeks, I have a doctor appointment with a top-notch doctor, and we'll try to figure out this nausea thing. Until then, it's Tums for dessert, and in that sense I'm getting plenty of dessert. ;-) And I don't mind, honestly. I'm grateful for what I do get to enjoy, and I have a blessedly short memory for side effects. I know this isn't the first Christmas season I've had nausea, but I can't specifically remember any of the others. Isn't that wonderful? The Lord is so kind.

And, of course, the most fun part about cookies is giving them away.