Mom's Famous Sugar Cookies - Shamrock Style!

Hello again! I have another recipe for you for St. Patrick's Day...Shamrock Sugar Cookies! My mom always used to make these each year for St. Patty's, and even though I haven't really been home for St. Patty's Day in recent years, I think of these cookies each time the holiday comes around. :) And this year I decided to make them on my own!

For a change, I'll share all of the pictures with you first, followed by Mom's "famous" recipe for the cookies...

Here's the cookie recipe! And then I'll share the frosting recipe...oooh, the suspense!!

-3/4 cup margarine (1 and 1/2 sticks)

-1 cup sugar

-2 eggs

-1/2 tsp. vanilla

-3 cups flour

-1 tsp. baking powder

-1 tsp. salt

Beat margarine and sugar until light and fluffy. Blend in eggs and vanilla. Add combined dry ingredients; mix well. Chill several hours or overnight (or even just one hour works too, according to Mom :)). I actually made this dough ahead of time and froze it for a few days until I was ready to make the cookies... Here are a couple pics of my dough, ready for the freezer! And yes, that's red saran wrap.

When you're ready to make the cookies, on a lightly floured surface, roll the dough and cut with cookie cutters. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 5 - 7 minutes or until done to your likeness. Cool slightly on the pan and then cool on a rack.

Okay, frosting time! I had to do the frosting just like Mom did...she always made it the perfect mint-ish green color, and she'd usually put green sugar crystal sprinkles on them. So I did too! Next up are the pictures of the frosting making process, followed by the frosting recipe.

Here are the ingredients for the frosting:

-3 cups powdered sugar

-1/2 cup margarine/butter

-3 Tbsp. milk

-1 tsp. vanilla

-food coloring (green for St. Patty's, of course!)

Combine all ingredients, and mix well. Frost, decorate if you wish, and ENJOY!! :)

You can see from the pictures above that I put green sprinkles on some of the cookies before baking. I did that in case some people didn't like frosting (not sure who wouldn't like frosting though?! ;-)). I also experimented with a couple different shamrock cookies made with balls of dough rather than the rolled out dough. I made three little balls, rolled each one in sprinkles, and then smushed them together! And then I smushed a little "tail" on there too, as you can see here (it's the one on the left...obviously!). They were fun to make and tasty too. I'd definitely recommend trying it! I think it'd be a fun activity for kids to help out with as well.

Okay, now I have a confession to make... I didn't use a cookie cutter for the shamrock cookies! I looked in the stores but I couldn't find a shamrock shaped cookie cutter. Had I been thinking waaaay ahead, I suppose I could have borrowed my mom's! But I clearly wasn't on the ball with that one. Now, I actually did try to make my own shamrock cookie cutter, I'll have you know. :) It was a process! It actually looked like a shamrock...but it didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped. I semi-followed instructions from this site, as well as this one. I won't really go into much detail in words here, but I'll show you a few pictures of my cookie cutter making process...if you want to read more about it, just check out those links I just provided!

The cookie cutter I made was a little flimsier than I'd hoped, and that's one reason why I didn't end up using it. The edges also weren't quite as smooth as a regularly manufactured one, so the edges ended up pretty uneven on the couple cookies I cut using the homemade cutter. So, despite my noble attempt at making my own, I didn't end up using it! I used a small paring knife instead...I hand "carved" each shamrock! They obviously weren't as uniform as cookies made with a typical cutter would be, but I actually kind of liked that. Each one was a little unique!! :)

Overall, this sugar cookie recipe was incredibly easy. You should try it! And obviously, the cookies end up being quite deeelicious! Everyone will gobble them right up, I promise you. 

You can try these sugar cookies for other holidays too. My mom always did! She'd make heart shaped cookies for Valentine's Day with pink frosting, and then she put little conversation hearts on each one. :)

♡

 She would often make them for my high school and college field hockey teams too. She even somehow found a horse cookie cutter! Skidmore's mascot was the Thoroughbred, so our team was lucky enough to have cookies shaped as our mascot from time to time. How fun is that?! Mom thought we were pretty special, apparently...and we all thought (and still think) she was (and is) pretty darn special too! 

Phew, that was a long post. I hope you were able to read it without getting too sleepy! ;-) And I hope you all have a wonderful St. Patty's Day filled with delicious, festive foods and drinks!

Traditional Irish Soda Bread

Well friends, it's that time of year for one of my favorite holidays, St. Patrick's Day! Making Irish soda bread has been a tradition that Megan (my roommate and cousin, for those of you who may not know!) and I have kept for the past few years. Personally, I really enjoy soda bread although I think it might not have the best reputation out there. I've actually heard mixed reviews...some people think it's a bit dry and bland, and then others loooove it. Well, I just so happen to be one of those people who love it! I find it to be a tasty, comforting food. And the soda bread I make is not dry, so I don't know what those people who think it's dry are thinking! ;-)

Irish soda bread is a great bread recipe because it requires much less work than a yeast bread, which usually needs several hours for rising and a lot of physical effort for kneading! Today, I used my Kitchen Aid mixer for about 90% of the work, and I had to put forth almost no "man power." It was a piece of cake...er, it was a piece soda bread, I mean. :)

Alrightie, time to share the recipe! This year I tried a new recipe. I followed Ina Garten's recipe (she's the Food Network's Barefoot Contessa). It is quite delicious!! The recipe I used today can be found here, and a video of her making the bread can be viewed by clicking here. Her recipe gets a five-star rating, so it's gotta be good, right?

It was really a very simple recipe to make. It calls for normal ingredients, which, as you know, is always a bonus in my mind! The only thing I did differently today was instead of using the recipe's four cups of all-purpose flour, I used three cups of all-purpose flour and one cup of whole wheat flour. I am sure you could use half of each or maybe even make the majority of the flour whole wheat; it's your call!

This first picture above is of the dry ingredients with the cold butter slices...then you can see the buttermilk, which is the key ingredient, I think, for soda bread! It helps keep the bread from being dry. In the third picture I am pouring the buttermilk into the dry ingredients. Can you see those orange specks in the buttermilk? It's orange zest! 

Here you have the mixture as it's starting to come together...and next you can see the consistency of the dough once it's all mixed. It is a pretty sticky dough, just to warn you! Next, you'll want to mix in the raisins (or currants, whichever you prefer). Ina recommends coating the raisins with a tablespoon of flour, which I did here as you can see. It apparently helps keep the raisins evenly distributed throughout the bread instead of having them sink to the bottom. Good tip, Ina! :)

How do you deal with the sticky-ness of the dough? Well, I'd recommend flouring the surface on which you knead the bread...you don't have to knead it for long though, don't worry! As I mentioned earlier, that's one of the beauties of soda bread as compared to other breads.

Here's the loaf, just before it's ready to go in the oven. Notice that I scored the top of it in a criss-cross design. This will help the bread cook through and help you be able to detect it's "doneness."

You can see the bread here as it's baking in the oven...looks sooo good! I love how it's just starting to develop that nice, golden brown color...it's about halfway through the baking time here.

And here's the finished product. Love the look of this bread!! To me, it "says" comfort. :)

I enjoyed my first piece warm out of the oven without any "accessories" like butter or jam. I could eat it plain like that anytime, but I have also had it with butter, jam, and even a touch of honey. Deeelish! I'd recommend toasting it for a few minutes too if you're eating it a day or two after the original baking. After toasting, it'll seem like it came right out of the oven! I hope you'll try making soda bread soon too...and please let the Barbershop know what you think of it!

Banana Soft Serve

Hello friends! "Long time" no post (long time = 5 days). Sorry about that! I hope you've had a good week. I wanted to share the latest dessert to come out of the Barbershop...but first, I have to warn you that it does not require any baking! And even crazier, it only requires one ingredient. ONE! :)  

Yesterday, my friend Jenn posted some fabulous ideas for easy, healthy snacks on her blog. One idea for a healthy snack was banana soft serve. I clicked on the link Jenn provided, and the title of the post from another blog was "This Post Will Change Your Life." That's pretty serious sounding, I'd say! With a title like that, I knew that I just had to try it. So tonight, I made my own banana soft serve by following

this recipe from a blog entitled "Choosing Raw."

Since I mentioned earlier that this recipe only requires one ingredient, and since the title of my post is "Banana Soft Serve," I bet you can figure out what that one ingredient is... BANANAS!! But, they must be frozen bananas, fyi. Here's what you do... :)

Take a few frozen bananas (tonight I used two), and put them in a food processor. I cut them up into 1-inch, or so, sized pieces first (didn't put the bananas in whole!). 

Turn on the processor and let it run for a minute or two, stopping to scrape down the sides every now and then. The recipe actually says to let the processor run for five minutes, but honestly, the soft serve looked to be the correct consistency after only about two minutes! 

So I actually ran it in 30-second increments or so, scraping in between each one. Perhaps the consistency would have been a bit lighter had I run the processor longer, but I really liked the consistency that mine was tonight! 

I only ate half since eating the whole batch would have meant eating two whole bananas, and I didn't need to do that tonight! I did, however, "dress up" the soft serve by adding a dollop of fat-free, sugar-free cool whip and a drizzle of Hershey's syrup.

Yummmmmm. Seriously. It was such a delicious, guilt-free treat!! I would HIGHLY recommend you try it...SOON. ;-)