Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Stretching Your Eggs and Your Dollars

The moment we've been waiting for two whole years is here:  we are utterly swimming in eggs!  This is so exciting after the devastation we endured last year.  It's almost like Mother Nature giving us a really awesome Christmas gift. :)

Even though we are swimming in them, strategy is still important to me.  I like to try to save as many as possible for dishes where the eggs are the highlight of the meal instead of buried in it, since organic eggs tend to be more expensive, yet well worth the cost.  I was checking our health food market today, and the same type of eggs we offer here at the farm (cage free, non-GMO, organically raised) sell for $10.19 per dozen!!

Sometimes we just need to bake though, right?  Holiday baking is where it's at, eh?

We are big Christmas bakers in this household.  We could go through a dozen eggs easily during a day of baking.  With eggs scarce this past year, I had to come up with some creative ways to stretch those we did get from our ladies, so we wouldn't need to buy any in addition to what we produced. And that meant breaking up the eggs into yolks and whites and seeing what could be done.  My plan worked so well, I wanted to share it with you.

My family has been keen on thumbprint cookies for what seems like all of forever.  They are Lil' Farmer Mac's favorite cookie.  Come to think of it, they were probably my favourite cookie too as a kid, because my mom and my grandpa always let me help them make a batch or three.  As far as I know, this recipe is my Grandpa's.  He was an ol' farm boy from Ohio.  I remember taking a trip back there with him when I was a little girl.  He showed me how to coax a baby cow into sucking your thumb and how to catch big green grasshoppers and fireflies.  He was one cool dude, and he loved his cookie baking.

The recipe only uses yolks.  Depending on the number of batches you make, you could end up with 1-4 eggs whites.  While scouring my cookbooks, many ideas jumped out at me:  tuile cookies, meringue, macaroons.  Martha Stewart has a fabulous looking recipe for Peppermint Meringues with chocolate filling.  We ended up making French macaronswhich you could just about get a cavity from reading all the recipes out there.  (You say you don't have a pastry bag?  No worries, you can use a plastic zip-top bag with one corner snipped to pipe the cookies.)

Macarons left us with more yolks, which were turned into manicotti filling.  Or you could turn them into Swedish meatballs.

Surprisingly, after all this was prepared, we still had 6 eggs left for Eggs in a Window in the morning.

Grandpa's Thumbprint Cookies

Grandpas or Daddies are the best assistants when making these cookies because their thumbs tend to be bigger.  The bigger the thumbprint, the more delicious jam you can pack in!

1 cup butter (Grandpa used Crisco.  I'll let you be the judge.)
3 ounces of cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar (1/2 cup would even do)
1 egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 - 1/2 cups all purpose flour
jam or fruit spread

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix shortening, cream cheese, and sugar until well blended.  Stir in egg yolk and vanilla.  Add flour; mix well.  Roll into about 1 inch balls, place on lined cookie sheet, and make a thumbprint in each cookie.  Fill with approximately 1/2 teaspoon of jam.  Bake 15-17 minutes, or until golden brown around the bottom edges.  Please, please let them cool on the sheet pan.  The jam is searing hot.  These cookies are delectable, but not worth a trip to the Burn Unit.  


And if you've just plain run out of eggs, here's a bonus cookie recipe that doesn't need any eggs. :)

Pepparkakor

Reprinted by popular demand from Seattle’s Child, December 1981.

In our family, the spicy odor of pepparkakor baking in the oven heralds the beginning of the holiday season. Pepparkahor (Scandinavian ginger cookies) not only taste wonderful but are also durable enough to decorate a Christmas tree or to be given as gifts, when shaped like ginger people, hearts, pigs or birds and decorated with white icing swirls and a red ribbon bow. While these are traditional shapes, I remember, there is no limit to the shapes they can take when you make your own cardboard cutout patterns. Trimming the tree with cranberries, popcorn, paper snowflakes and homemade cookies brings us back to an earlier era when life was simpler.

The following recipe was used by my aunt, Stina Hurlen, who is from Dalarna, Sweden and was well-known for her excellent Scandinavian cooking. It will yield enough cookies to trim a small tree and can be doubled successfully. The dough keeps well in the freezer.

Ingredients
½ lb. butter or margarine
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup dark corn syrup  (We use molasses.  Again...you decide.)
½ pint sour cream
1 tsp. allspice
2 T. cinnamon
1 T. ginger
1 T. cloves
1 tsp. baking soda
4-5 cups flour

Combine the butter, sugar and corn syrup in a saucepan. Stir over low heat until the butter is melted and the mixture comes to a slow simmer. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Blend in spices and sour cream.
Add soda and flour, a little at a time, until well-blended.
The dough will be soft. Shape into a roll, wrap well and refrigerate overnight or for as long as a week. Unused portions can be frozen.

To Shape the Cookies
With a floured rolling pin, start rolling portions of the chilled dough on a well-floured board, then transfer to an ungreased cookie sheet and with a floured rolling pin roll the dough directly onto the cookie sheet to 1/8-inch thick.
Cut with cookie cutters or with a sharp knife cut around cardboard patterns you and your children have made. Lift away dough between the cookies.
Bake in a 325 oven for 10-15 minutes or until browned. Cool on the pan before removing.

To Decorate
Typically, these cookies are decorated with a white icing such as Royal Icing or use your favorite decorating icing or buy decorating icing in tubes at the grocery. Press the icing through a decorating tube with a plain tip, making swirls, writing names, and designs on the cookies. Allow the frosting to dry before hanging or storing the gifts.

To Hang the Cookies
Use regular sewing thread and a fine needle. Support the cookie from behind and carefully insert the needle and thread through the cookie at least ½ to ¾ inch from the top center. Leave enough thread to form a loop large enough to fit over tree branches. Or for gift cookies, attach a small red satin or yarn bow to the top center of each cookie. 

–Sonia Cole 



We'll have oodles of eggs for the foreseeable future, so if you are in need of some from the holidays, pay us a visit.  By the by, farm fresh eggs make FANTASTIC stocking stuffers. :)

What are your favourite baked goods for the holidays?

1 comment:

  1. What an absolutely delightful blessing! I am thankful to be purchasing your eggs from you. They are good. While thankful for your reasonable price, I am willing to pay more for eggs of this quality. When baking, I really use alot of eggs since most of our baking is grain-free and more paleo focused. Eggs are an important nutritional benefit in a healthy, balanced diet! Merry Christmas blessings to you and yours.

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