When my daughter started school this year, we knew the
sixth graders would be working on a pumpkin project. We had experience with
this particular project because she had to do one in the fifth grade at her
last school . . . we learned from our mistakes.
This year the teacher chose the topic of children’s books
and they could have partners. My kidlet and her friend OJ got their heads
together and chose a book called Bear
Wants More by Karma Wilson and illustrator Jane Chapman.
 |
| Bear's head |
The girls decided to make the pumpkin into Bear’s head (cute, isn't it?),
and they will be working on a background poster with the narrative and
illustrations today (so no pic yet, sorry). So when they were over at our house
to do Bear’s head, they were talking about his little friends and how Bear
wanted some Honey Cakes.
Of course, having too much time on my hands, I decided to
find a recipe for honey cookies . . . er cakes and make them. I found two
recipes that I liked and sort of merged them.
I will tell you that this recipe makes a gooey dough and
the cookies bake into a cakey cookie. The thing to remember is that this recipe
isn’t very flavorful, other than the honey and a touch of ginger, because Bear
likes them this way!
Honey Cakes
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter1 cup honey (Orange Blossom honey, of course!)
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. ginger
4 cups flour
Turbinado sugar
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Melt together sugar, butter and honey over medium heat.
Let mixture cool. Sift baking soda, baking powder, salt, ginger and flour into
large bowl. Beat eggs and add vanilla in small container, add some of honey
mixture if still hot to temper the eggs. When eggs are tempered, add to honey
mixture, mix well. Add honey mixture into flour mixture. Stir until flour is
mixed in.
Using a medium cookie scoop, scoop cookies 2-inches apart
on parchment lined cookie sheet. Sprinkle Turbinado sugar on top of each
cookie. Bake for 12 minutes or until golden brown. These cookies are 3-inches
in diameter.
Hints and
suggestions:
·
I put the honey sugar mixture in the
refrigerator to chill
·
Since my liquid measuring cup was already dirty
from the honey, I used it to lightly beat the eggs
·
I use a large mesh strainer to sift the flour
mixture
·
Tempering the eggs--Adding
the eggs to a large quantity of hot tends to cook the eggs. We don’t want that.
We want to bring the eggs up to the temperature of the hot liquids gradually by
placing a little bit of the hot liquid into the eggs and quickly incorporating
it (beating it). Do this process a few times and then add the add mixture into
the hot liquid mixture.
·
Though I use Silpat sheets, I still like to use parchment
paper to bake cookies. The bottoms don’t overcook that way.
·
Normally, with this cookie scoop I can make 8
cookies per cookie sheet, but I only made 6 cookies per sheet with this recipe
since I didn’t want them running into each other.
·
In this picture, I hadn’t tried the Turbinado
sugar yet. The large sugar granules give the cookie a little bit of texture and
crunch without adding too many other elements.
