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+ 5 to Constitution- Koulourakia (Greek Easter Cookies)

Last minute baking today to make some koulourakia for Easter since it is a tradition and help out my mom since she didn’t have time to make them. Now I know what your thinking. Easter? Girl that was last week. Yes… But my family is Greek and Orthodox so our Easter moves around based on the old calendar dates and this year it falls a week after regular Easter. Anyways these are a nice cookie for having with tea and coffee. Not sweet too sweet but also hard like a biscotti. I tried something new since my mother never made them with sesame seeds before I decided to add them as I had seen them before done like that. This recipe can be time consuming. Also I found that the dough got dry as I was making them so I just added a splash of orange juice to make the dough sticky again.

What you need:

1 [cup] butter, room temperature
1/2 [cup] granulated white sugar
2 eggs (reserve one yolk for glazing)
1 [tbsp] orange juice
3 [cup] flour, sifted
1 [tsp] baking powder
1 [tbsp] vanilla extract
raw sesame seeds

What You Do:

Preheat oven to 350F
In a mixer, cream together butter and sugar.
Add eggs and orange juice, vanilla extract and beat well.
With mixer on low speed, add dry ingredients slowly.
Mix until dough is smooth then time to get messy! Get your hands in there and knead the dough.
Pinch off one to one and a half inch balls. Roll these balls into a rope fold the rope in half and twist it twice.
Place cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet 1.5 inches apart.
Beat together remaining egg yolk and with a brush brush a thing coat onto cookies.
Lightly sprinkle with sesame seeds.
Bake for 18 minutes.

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+ 5 to Constitution- Pineapple Angel Food Cupcakes

Talk about a easy and fast treat! My boyfriend is crazy for pineapple and even more crazy about angel food cake so I decided to combine them to make a tasty low cal treat. Now originally this was suppose to be a cake but I decided instead to turn these into cup cakes to make them more bite size. It also made each bite have a crisp shell on the outside that tasted amazing. My family and I still cannot put our fingers on how the outside tasted beyond delicious.

Instructions
[1] Can Crushed Pineapple
[1] Angel Food Mix

-Set oven to 350°C
-Mix both ingredients together in a large bowl.
-Line cupcake tray with cupcake liners and fill the liners half full.
-Bake until the tops of the cupcakes are dark golden brown and the cracks are dry and not sticky to touch. (Now MY oven it was about 23mins but it may vary so please watch them.)
-Allow time to cool.
-Serve with Cool Whip and berries.

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+ 5 to Constitution- Low Cal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Spring semester is drawing to a close and as a result I have less time to bake new recipes and fewer time to write blog posts. I did try a new chocolate chip cookie recipe that was low in calories a week ago and over all the cookies tasted good. Really puffed up and cute looking. I am not going to post the recipe right now unless people are really interested (Then you can send me a request in my ‘Ask Me’ section.) since I am short on time right now.

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+ 5 to Constitution- Chocolate Chip Biscotti

I’m a big tea drinker and I was looking to make something to go with my evening tea and figured why not some biscotti? This was my first time making biscotti and I like to think I was pretty successful. I think the only issue I experienced was when I was cutting it. Some of the chocolate chips clumped together at the edges of the dough so when I cut it the pieces would fall apart on the edges. But other then not all of them being perfectly shaped nothing exciting went wrong.

Cooking Spray
[2 cup(s)] All-purpose flour
[1 tsp] Baking powder
[1/2 tsp] Table salt
[3 Tbsp] Mini chocolate chip
[1 cup(s)] Sugar
[2] Large eggs
[1 tsp] canola oil
[1 tsp] Vanilla extract

-Preheat Oven 325°F
-Spray baking sheet with cooking oil.
-In a medium bowl mix flour, baking powder, table salt then add in chocolate chips and set aside.
-With an electric mixer beat sugar, eggs, oil and vanilla extract together.
-Mix wet ingredients with dry ingredients. Stir until dough forms.
-Shape on baking sheet into a 13X3 inch log.
-Bake log for 30mins.
-Remove from oven and reduce temperature to 300°F.
-Wait 10mins for the log to cool and then cut 1/2 inch slices.
-Arrange the 1/2inch slices about 1 inch away from each other on the baking sheet standing up.
-Bake for 12 mins.
-Remove and cool then enjoy!

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+ 5 to Constitution- Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

Where do I start with these fail cupcakes. Well the first thing that I learned while making these is that some people need to test their recipe before they post them online or at least they need to double check them to make sure they have not left out any steps. Why? Because the icing part of the recipe was TERRIBLE. I had hoped to share the recipe with others but after trying it out I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

So what went wrong? Well maybe it was an early warning from karma that these sugary treats were not going to turn out well when I opened the bag of carrots only to have them fly everywhere in the kitchen. I guess I over estimated my Hulk like strength on this bag as after originally struggling with the plastic to open it I ripped that sucker right in two. Anyways, after that while I was grating the carrots, once I had collected them from the floor and washed them, I grated the top part of my finger off. This was my own stupidity. Lucky I managed to move my hand away before contaminating any of the food but my finger is still throbbing as I type this. (/wuss) Now I have a convection oven at home and usually remember to turn off the fan when I am baking since most of the recipes that I deal with have instructions for regular ovens. Well I guess because I was so frazzled by everything that had happened thus far in my baking that I didn’t set the oven right and this resulted in me over cooking the cake part of the cupcake. I know… I know… a lot of my issues with time was the result of my own foolishness and I acknowledge this. But as I mention before I did run into some troubles when it came to the icing. I added everything exactly as instructed and it was the consistency of white glue. (as you can see in my picture.) Now had I been making cinnamon buns this icing would have been perfect but I wanted something I could pipe onto my cupcakes. I tried adding more sugar to see if that would thicken the icing up but after dumping a cup more in I was just not getting anywhere so I decided just so scrap the icing and use some store bought stuff I had in the cupboard. Oh well you live and learn I guess.

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