kayeon eats: Chocolate Roll Out Cookies + Gingerbread Cookies

So I’ve been working on this blog post for the last few days, off and on because honestly… it’s been a little bit hectic around here. I was involved in the AIAS (American Institute of Architecture Students) for the past 2 years, and this year was the final show (a 5 day architecture conference in Toronto) that I flew all the way from Vancouver to attend. Ryerson University hosted over 950 architecture students from all over North America and the World! (Even from Sharjah, UAE!) This was the largest attended forum after Boston in 2006 and this is also our 1oth anniversary of Ryerson hosting forum as well! NBD*! The past two years I went to Forum, I brought cookies that I had made to share them with the group and I wanted to thank all the committee members at Ryerson by baking a little treat for them for busting their asses to organize this event. I’m sure this has been a stressful but definitely rewarding experience for you all! What I’m most proud of, is how the vision of Action|Reaction became a reality in Denver when we won the bid to host forum and it carried on to manifest itself as the theme for the lectures and the candidates even incorporated into their electoral speeches! Awesome stuff. It was great meeting so many awesome people and being able to experience it on home turf. I’m going to miss all of you! Wow what an amazing experience…

These cookies have been through a lot. I made them in a frenzy the morning before my family Christmas Dinner and the oven was literally on longer than 6 hours. (Oops the hydro bill is going to be big this month!) So after baking all of these cookies I didn't have time to decorate them, so therefore… I brought them all the way with me to Toronto and I hosted a cookie decorating shindig so that I wouldn’t have to decorate all of them by myself. (As I’m staying at a friend’s place… I made sure not to get any icing on the table (*disclaimer*) )

I have only recently come to love this recipe, as I just got it from Epicurious but I have tweaked the proportions a bit from the original and I add an extra bit of cocoa to make it even more chocolaty and the gingerbread cookies have chunks of candied ginger in them! Yum!

The great thing about these is that you can decorate them any which way you want and whether you’re hosting a decorating party amongst adults or children, it’s always a blast and you get a great reward in the end!

The method for both of these types of cookies are basically the same… just a different ratio of ingredients which is why I grouped them both in the same blog entry.

Happy New Year Everyone!!!

*NBD= No Big Deal (Sarcasm)

(Chocolate Roll Out Cookies) (Gingerbread Cookies)

Ingredients:
Chocolate Roll Out Cookies

2+1/2 cups All Purpose Flour (or 1 +1/2 cups Whole Wheat Flour + 1/2 cup All Purpose Flour)
1/2 cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder (Preferably Dutch Processed)
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
3 oz or about 1/2 cup Bittersweet Chocolate, Chopped
4 Tbsp of milk
1 cup Butter, Room temperature
1 1/3 cups Sugar
1 Large Egg
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Sprinkles, M&M’s, Food Colouring, and Royal Icing

Gingerbread Cookies
Note: I doubled the recipe, so the pictures are twice as much as the recipe.

1/2 cup Unsalted Butter at Room temperature
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1 Large Egg
1/2 cup Blackstrap Unsulfured Molasses
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/4 cup Freshly Grated Fresh Ginger
3 cups All purpose Flour (or a mixture of Whole Wheat, Spelt and All Purpose)
1 tsp Cinnamon
3/4 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Ground Cloves
Sprinkles, M&M’s, Food Colouring, and Royal Icing

Royal Icing:
A certain ratio of Liquid Egg white (in a carton) and a bag of icing sugar. Use an electric mixer or a hand whisk to mix it together to form a glossy, thick but runny, but not too runny mixture. If it is too runny, it won’t stick on to the cookie too well, if it’s too thick, it will be too hard to brush on. It needs to be pretty much a right balance. Add drops of egg white if it’s too thick, add more icing sugar if it’s too runny.
1/2 to 1 cup Liquid egg white (add it gradually to avoid a too runny mixture)
1 pound bag of Icing Sugar.

Method:
The basic method is as such for any kind of cookie recipe.
1. Mix dry ingredients together thoroughly
2. Beat with an electric mixer or hand whisk the wet ingredients together
3. Incorporate the dry mixture into the wet mixture until the mixture comes together to form a fairly wet dough.
4. For this recipe, you now need to wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate either over night or for a few hours until the dough becomes stiff enough to roll out and cut out with cookies cutters.
5. Bake for 15-20 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees F and then ice with Royal Icing and any other toppings you’d like.
6. Let dry on baking sheets over night so the icing doesn’t smudge when they’re put away in a cookie tin or wrapped up individually as presents.
In other circumstances, lets say if it’s oatmeal or chocolate chip cookies, you wouldn’t necessarily have to refrigerate the dough, you would be able to bake them off right away.

In Detail:
Chocolate Roll Out Cookies = In Normal Type
Gingerbread Cookies= BOLD Type

1. In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients: Flours, Cocoa Powder, Baking Powder, Cinnamon, Baking Soda and mix it all together thoroughly.

In the gingerbread mix: Flour, Baking soda, cinnamon, ground cloves, and mix all together.

2. Chop the chocolate and melt either in a microwave on medium heat for a minute or on a double boiler (a small pot of boiling water with a steel mixing bowl over top and heated with the steam). Add a little milk to make it smooth and set it aside.

Cut up room temperature butter into cubes, then beat with an electric mixer until whipped and smooth, then add sugar, vanilla, egg, and chocolate mixture until well incorporated.

For Gingerbread: do the same thing. cut up butter, whip it, add brown sugar, scrape down the sides of the bowl, add vanilla, and egg but add molasses instead of the chocolate.

Also add freshly grated ginger. You can use powdered ginger, but honestly… freshly grated makes this recipe so much better than the others I have come across. Cut ginger to the approximate portion you think you would need for 1/4 cup, cut off the skin and rasp it through a micro plane, cheese grater or mince it with a knife.

3. Dump dry mixture into the wet mixture. and mix until incorporated either with the spatula or with your clean hands.

Same with gingerbread, dump dry into wet. For this one I had to use my hands to mix the dough. It takes a couple minutes to knead the dough, but you basically know when it’s done when it is evenly coloured and has smoother “clay like” texture.

4. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and stick in the fridge. (The other dough’s in the fridge are Mexican Wedding cake, Linzer and Shortbread dough’s)

I cut the gingerbread into smaller pieces and flattened the dough before wrapping it in plastic wrap so that it would be easier to handle later on and would chill much faster.

5. After a couple hours have passed or you have gone to sleep and woken up again… take the dough out of the fridge. Dust the surface of a clean work space with some flour. In the case of the chocolate roll out cookie, I divided the dough portions after it was chilled for easier handling.

6. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Take the dough and beat it with your rolling pin a few times just to create an uneven working surface that creates more surface area and ridges to help roll out an evenly rolled piece of dough at about 1/6” - 1/8” thick. You may need to scrunch it all up and roll it out again if the dough is still too cold. The edges will undoubtly try to crack on you the first time around. If this happens, just roll it all up into a ball again… warm it up a bit with your hands and try rolling it out again. It should be much easier to roll out the 2nd time.

7. Dip your favourite cookie cutter into a bowl of flour and cookie-cutter it up like crazy and place on a parchment lined baking sheet. Now, bake it off at 350 degrees F for 15-20 minutes (I think…) Be careful not to forget about them while you do batches of baking off. Scrunch up leftover dough, and roll out again and cut out with cookie cutter again and again until there is no more dough left.

8. Optional: For part of the dough, I chopped up some candied ginger and kneaded and mixed that into the gingerbread dough to add a punch to the already gingery gingerbread.

9. Bake until slightly golden around the edges and let it cool on the parchment a bit before transferring to a cooling rack. The cookie will still seem a bit soft when you take it out of the oven, but it will harden up once it cools down. you should not over bake it and make it golden all over, because that will result in a dry and crumbly cookie.

This is when I had to box this up and take it with me on the plane with my carry-on luggage, on the bus and then to my friends’ home in Toronto. These cookies have travelled 3352 Kilometres! (2083 miles!)

The bus stopped right at the Fairmount Royal York (5 Diamond hotel) on the way ((not pictured* that’s Union Train Station on the left ) which is where we held the conference… the G20 summit was held there and the Queen Elizabeth stays there too …she has her own floor…yeah *NBD)

That’s what the Fairmount looks like on the inside… WOW is right!

The moment of truth. Dun Dun DUUUUUUN !! How many have been broken??? ONLY ONE!!! Awesome!

Now to decorate with Royal Icing and add decorative edible silver balls, dye some icing sugar, get a bowl of M&M’s going, and a bowl of sprinkles. Have a fun, creative bunch of people and either using a pastry brush or a piping bag… DECORATE! Yay!!!