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Ok, so the first post was called Pierogies. I was informed (by Nick) shortly after publishing the post that it’s actually Perogies. Subtle, but different. I swear I looked it up! But, I’m going to go with the “spelling that has been used for three generations of my Polish family.” Three generations, huh? I dig.
Anyway, writing the original gave me a major hankering for p(i)erogies, and Nick will never say no to them, so we went for round two. I won’t go into detail about the process, since you’ve seen it already, but I will show you how to put the dough together. Cause it’s super hard. Or something. :)
Put three cups of flour and six eggs into a bowl. Using your very clean hands, mix until “rollable.” (Not too floury, not too sticky. I had to add more flour a few small hand fulls at a time.) I found rolling the dough significantly easier after Nick told me to let the dough rest for a bit. Roll it out thinly, and then cut and assemble. Like so:
I seriously almost didn’t get pictures of the end result again! As soon as they were out of the water, we sat down to eat and I had already gotten one down before I remembered. P(i)erogies are that good, according to me. (And you can trust me, right?) After making everything in one go, I totally understand why this process is drawn out to an all day event on Christmas Eve. They’re simple, but time consuming to put together. But, when you’ve got friends in the kitchen and some grown up hot chocolate, the time goes by pretty quickly.
You could get all sorts of fancy with your fillings, but I really just love these the way they are. No matter how long they take. And no matter how they’re spelled.
I remember that first bite vividly. The whole family was staring at me, waiting with bated breath to see my reaction. This was an extremely important dinner, as it would be the deciding factor in shaping my future. You think I’m kidding, but I was specifically told that I couldn’t marry into the family unless I liked pierogies. It’s a lot of pressure for someone who’d never had sauerkraut, let alone heard of a pierogi.
I knew about pasties and pot pies (I am Irish, after all), but pierogies? My husband’s family is Polish by descent, and celebrates by eating pierogies every Christmas Eve.
And so I poured a little butter over the top, added a few shakes of salt and pepper, cut off a small corner piece and cautiously took a bite…
It was amazing, needless to say (as anything drenched in melted butter tends to be). I was surprised by the contrasting flavors–vinegary sauerkraut, moist, chewy shell. It was what I thought it would be: simple, recognizable; but I was surprised at how well the few ingredients complimented each other.
We’ve tried pierogies a few times on our own, to great success. But nothing compares to that family meal. During the holiday season when everything is so sweet-centered, it’s nice to have a meal that’s tart and savory.
And now I have some bad news. My mother in law starts this process first thing in the morning. And she’s a very early riser. I came up the stairs and the dough had already been assembled and she was rolling it out and cutting it into triangles. I don’t have the photo step-by-step that I normally include. The good news is that this means I’ll just have to make pierogies sometime soon. Darn, huh?
It starts with eggs and flour. A lot. To quadruple/billionuple her normal recipe, she used two dozen eggs and 12 cups of flour!! (Don’t worry though, we seriously love our pierogies, and that amount of eggs and flour gave us about 80 of them. You can use 3 cups of flour and 6 eggs to start) She also added a bit of salt and pepper to taste. You can start with a wooden spoon, but eventually combine with your hands to make a pie crust like consistency.
Roll it out pretty thinly, and then slice into triangles.
While that’s going on, start your sauerkraut in a frying pan with some buttah. We usually use a whole, very large, jar.
The frying time of the sauerkraut is a bit of a debate between my husband and his mother. She likes to cook it for quite awhile, but my husband likes to cook it just until the kraut absorbs the butter and is heated through. I tend to side with my husband, because I really like the flavor of the kraut to burst.
Fill each triangle with kraut, and pinch the edges to close. The kraut will be moist enough that you shouldn’t need to add water or egg wash to the edges. Make sure they’re really sealed though! You don’t want any of the good stuff to escape.
Place sealed pierogies on a slightly damp towel. Repeat the process again and again until you run out of dough. If you run out of sauerkraut, make more, silly!
Here’s another point of “contention” between my husband and his mother. When she’s finished stuffing all the dough, she lets the pierogies rest between two damp towels for several hours (until dinner time) like so:
My husband is ready to go as soon as the last pierogi is stuffed. This usually results in a few of the resting pierogies disappearing.
I may or may not have consumed a few of these a little early too. Can you blame me?
When it’s actually dinner time, bring a big pot of water to a boil. Add the pierogies in batches. You’ll know when they’re ready because the dough will change color and harden. Before you pull them out of the water, melt “some” butter.
To serve, place hot pierogies on a plate. Drizzle with butter, flavor with salt and pepper, and then keep track of how many you eat to know who the winner is. Oh wait, maybe that’s just us…
And now I have more bad/good news. We were in such a hurry to eat that I didn’t snap any photos of these beauties plated and ready for eating. Further reason to make them again, yes? I’ll just have to post a follow-up…and buy more butter.
The title pretty much says it all. While staying with family over the Christmas weekend, I spent one morning in the kitchen making cookie after cookie. There have been a few iterations of style, but the basic concept of sugar cookie + Nutella + candy canes = get in my mouth! stayed pretty constant. I had a lot of fun, and these cookies made great gifts. They’ll also make nice New Year’s Eve treats. Although candy canes are seasonal, peppermints are not, so if you need these cookies in July, it shouldn’t be too hard to pull off.
I started with basic sugar cookie dough:
I rolled out the dough and then used my very fancy cookie cutter:
If your cookie cutter isn’t this fancy and complex, don’t feel bad. Just use what you have 
Have you ever tried to find cookie cutters right before Christmas?
Mashing candy canes in a bag with a rolling pin is really fun. I’d seriously recommend it if you have any aggression you need to work through.
Since I was using cookie sheets, I lined them with parchment paper and preheated the oven to 400F. I sprinkled crunched candy canes on half the cookies, and left the other half plane, since those will end up as the bottom of the sandwich.
Depending on your oven, how thinly you roll the dough and the baking vessel, it will take anywhere between 10-15 minutes for the cookies to bake through. I hate it when the bottoms turn brown, and I actually like really soft, doughy cookies, so I usually pull them out a little early. Since I was giving these as a gift though, I figured I should put safety first and bake them all the way through. (Now you know how much I love the people who eat my cookies)
When the cookies were cool enough to handle, I broke out the big guns:
And then made magic:
These travel well due to the sandwich set-up, and they taste pretty darn fantastic, if I do say so myself!
But I didn’t stop there, my friends.
Then I rolled little dough balls,
dipped them in the candy cane,
and put them in the oven. The candy canes start to melt,
and when they cool, they have a candy coating:
So they end up soft and moist on the inside, but crunchy and minty on the outside.
You’re welcome.
The balls had to bake quite a bit longer, due to the thickness of each cookie. I think I left them in around 20 minutes, but you can test them periodically to make sure they aren’t burning on the bottom or raw in the center.
Like I said, so much fun with dough! I hope you try these sometime, but if you don’t have time to bake, maybe we could be friends, and you’ll get some for Christmas. In July.
I hope you had a Merry ChristmaHanuKwanzaa! I have lots to share, but I thought I’d start with something I excel at.
Cookies.
That’s right. Miss Health Nut (or Mrs, I suppose) loves making, eating, and giving away cookies. I break all my nutrition and moderation “rules” when it comes to cookies. I can pass up cake, pie, crisp…but cookies? They have to be some pretty nasty looking cookies for me to say no thanks. That’s why I don’t typically bake as much as I used to. (You know, back in the day)
Sadly, there are certain types of cookies that traditionally only appear on my counter during very specific times of year. Sugar cookies are high on of my list of favorites, but I only make them around Christmas and Valentine’s Day. (I always wondered why they aren’t called “flour cookies” since there is a LOT more flour than sugar, but flour isn’t nearly as appetizing I guess.) The great thing about sugar cookies is that they are essentially a blank canvas. You can create endless shapes, flavors, colors, etc. with the basic recipe. I like to make a big batch and do several different styles of cookie.
The ingredient list is short, but the method has to be pretty precise.
2/3 cup butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
4 cups flour (plus more for dusting work surface, although powdered sugar works really well for that)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
5 tbsp milk
Preheat oven to 400F while the dough is chilling, and either get your stoneware pans ready or line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Put your room temperature butter in a bowl. The temperature of your butter is the most important part, and often the hardest part to plan for. It has to be soft, but not runny. Firm, but not cold. You have to take it out of the refrigerator and start the exact moment that it reaches room temperature. Any longer than that, and it will be too soft. Sheesh!
Add the sugar to the bowl.
Mix until course and sandy. This is super easy with a stand mixer, but my mother in law’s egg beaters worked great.
Add the eggs and vanilla and mix. But not too much! It should look something like this:
Nick found this flour on sale, and it was really nice. Light and fluffy, not too dense.
Add the flour, 2 cups at a time. You don’t want the bowl too full of flour when you’re trying to get everything incorporated.
With the last two cups of flour, add the baking soda and salt. If I use salted butter, I only add 1/4 tsp of salt.
Mix just a little bit, and then you need to wash your hands.
Add 5 tbsp of milk (I used skim. My small attempt to make these cookies a little less calorie dense. If you’re a rebel though, don’t worry about it 
)
You’ll have to do the rest of the mixing by hand. It’s going to take awhile, so if you lifted weights earlier in the day, you might want to ask someone else to do it. My arms were juuuuuust about dead by the end, but trust me, there’s no other way. And you’ll make up the calories you burn by eating dough. (Just be warned that this dough does have raw eggs.)
You’ll be tempted to add more milk. Don’t!! It’s a bad idea. Really! I could never figure out why I sucked at rolling this dough out and had to add so much extra flour. It’s because I got impatient for the dough to combine and added more milk. I always ended up with a sticky, frustrating mess. If you just keep kneading and smooshing with your hands, it will come together and eventually look like this:
Isn’t that pretty? You can’t even see where I stole a taste. Perks of combining the dough by hand. You’re the only one who knows how much you started with
It’s best to refrigerate the dough before you go any further. Just wrap it in plastic wrap and hide it in the fridge (dough never lasted long in our house). This would be a fine time to preheat the oven to 400F.
I separated the dough into two batches so that I could do different flavor combinations (you’ll see), and it also helps to work with small amounts of dough and keep the rest refrigerated.
When you’re ready, lightly flour (or powdered sugar) a work surface.
I find that it helps to also put a little flour on the rolling pin. Roll the dough out to about 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into whatever shape you’d like, then top with sprinkles or bake plane for about 10-15 minutes. You’ll know when they’re done because they’ll smell like Christmas and be just a tiny bit darker where the cookie meets the pan.
And there’s your canvas! I’ll share a few of my ideas and let you know how they worked out (spoiler: deliciously!! some even involved Nutella) I’ll see you again before New Year’s, but happy baking until then.
