Hey all! So, this is my first blog post. Not sure quite how to do this thing so I'm going to wing it. I am in culinary arts at my local college. This quarter I am just doing academics though, so I have been busy and haven't been able to do much baking.
I thought I'd post some of my old pictures of baked goods and such and some recipes since I won't be making much at the moment. My last quarter was super fun! I was in the bakery and everyone in my class was great :)
One of my favorite things we made last quarter would definitely have to be Smør Bullar!
It's a Danish Christmas cookie that we made for our Scandinavian buffet. They are round like snowballs and have pecans inside. And when they are taken out of the oven they are repeatedly sprinkled with powdered sugar until totally covered!
I really love the taste of these cookies! I made them quite a few times during the Christmas season and other people seemed to like them. I would say that they were popular, but they were only really popular with me :) A few of the people in my class like them too and they went pretty fast during the Scandinavian buffet! Here's the recipe we use for these (with my little comments):
Smør Bullar
1 cup butter
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cups pecans, chopped fine
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. (For a regular oven. I do not own a convection oven, so mine didn't turn out quite as well as the ones I made at the college bakery. The bottoms browned much faster than the top instead of getting that nice even bake. Preheat oven to 350 degrees if using a convection oven.)
Cream butter and sugar thoroughly. Add flour (I sifted it right into my mixer bowl), salt, vanilla, and pecans. (I chop them with a knife till they are pretty small pieces. They can't be big chunks. Also add the pecans in at the very end.) Mix well. Cover dough and chill.
Roll dough into small balls, and place 2 inches apart (I think I used a number 100 scoop) on a parchement lined baking sheet. Bake until they have firmed (set) but don't let them brown. (My bottoms browned since I have a weird oven and it's not convection, but they turned out fine anyways. Mine took about 10 minutes to bake. I rotated them after 5 minutes.)
Roll in confectioners' sugar while warm. When cool, roll again in confectioners' sugar. (I sifted the sugar over top of the cookies when I took them out of the oven and then I let them cool. After that I sifted more and moved them around with my hands to get the cookies totally covered.)
A double batch makes 98 cookies. And if you are using a convection oven, bake 8 minutes.
These cookies are a great Christmas treat and they are also very pretty and elegant!
I think I'll end this post here. I have a lot of work to do this weekend to get ahead as I am going away to California next week. Camping, exploring, visiting my sister, better weather than gloomy Washington (though it's actually snowing hard at this moment. It's beautiful!), and time with my family; sounds pretty good to me! I'll post my pictures in another blog post once I get the time to! Thanks for reading if you actually read this whole thing and to all my fellow Skagit county friends, be safe on the roads! And enjoy the snow <3