Vanilla Cupcakes

I've been on the hunt for a decent vanilla cake or cupcake recipe for a while now, and I've finally found one I like. It's light and fluffy and tastes like butter and vanilla. I really like it. I made these for my friend's birthday the other day. I topped them with chocolate icing and white sprinkles... so it makes it hard to tell from the picture that they are vanilla cupcakes.

2 1/4 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla (or more)
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare 24 muffin cups.

Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the milk, vanilla and butter and beat well at medium speed for at least one minute. Add the eggs and beat again at medium speed for at least three more minutes, scraping the bowl as you go.

Fill muffin cups about 2/3rds full. Bake 20-25 minutes.

Cookie Press Cookies

My Grandma gave me a cookie press for my birthday and I couldn't wait to try it out. I found this recipe and made the cookies a few weeks ago but I forgot to take pictures! So here it is now, cookie press cookies a.k.a Spritz Cookies

2 cups butter, room temperature (must use butter!)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
4 cups flour

Preheat oven to 350. Put cookie sheets in refrigerator. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla. Slowly add in flour. Mix well. Fill cookie press with dough. Squeeze out cookies, following instructions included with the cookie press. Decorate as desired, with sprinkles or whatever else you like. Bake for 10 minutes. When you take them out of the oven you can glaze them (recipe to follow) or just leave them plain. Make sure you return the cookie sheets to the refrigerator after each batch. I usually have 3 cookie sheets going at a time, one in the oven, one in the fridge and one with waiting cookies on it.

Glaze
1 cup icing sugar
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla

Mix together. You may need to add more milk or icing sugar to get it to the right consistency.

I love these cookies! And I love my cookie press! It makes it so much easier to make sugar/shortbread cookies without all the rolling and chilling and rolling and chilling of the dough. And, as you can see it makes A LOT of cookies! Almost too many, and unfortunately due to the one egg, you can't halve the recipe very easily.

Vanilla Pretzels

Originally posted June 8, 2009

I made these this afternoon because I had 3 egg yolks left over after the cupcakes I made on Saturday. The recipe's out of my Christmas cookies magazine and I've been eying it for a while.

Plain Vanilla Pretzels

6 tbsp butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup milk
2 1/2 cups flour
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tbsp water
Pearl decorating sugar (I don't know what this is but it's just for decoration so I used icing sugar instead)

Beat butter and flour together. Add in baking powder and salt. Beat in egg yolks and vanilla. Then gradually add milk and flour. Gather the mixture into two balls and chill for 4-24 hours.

Preheat oven to 350. Pinch off a bit of dough at a time and roll into a rope about 9 inches long on a lightly floured surface. Twist dough into pretzel shape. Beat together final egg and water and brush over pretzels. Sprinkle with decorating sugar. Bake for 13-15 min.

I made these again a few weeks later and I dipped some in chocolate and covered some in sprinkles. The results were pretty tasty.