Sugar Cookies

My mom got married on 9/9/07 and I made 88 sugar cookies for her favors. They are so good! I've made them a few times since, and they always come out great!

I made a double batch of dough about a week in advance and stored it in the freezer. I ended up baking them 3 days before the wedding. We put them in clear bags and tied with pretty fall colored ribbon. They were still great the day of the wedding.

Ingredients

4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp pure vanilla
or
2 tsp fresh lemon juice and zest of 2 lemons
1/4 cup fine sanding sugar, for decorating (optional)

Directions

1. In a large bowl, sift together flour, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.
2. Use an electric mixer to cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs.
3. Add flour mixture and mix on low speed until thoroughly combined. Stir in vanilla or lemon juice and zest. Wrap dough in plastic; chill for about 30 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 325F. On a floured surface, roll dough to 1/8" thick. Cut into desired shapes. Transfer to ungreased cookie sheets; refrigerate until firm, about 15 min. Remove from refrigerator and decorate with sanding sugar if desired. Bake until edges just start to turn brown, 8-10 minutes. Cool on wire rack. 
5. May be stored at room temperature in an air tight container for up to 2 weeks.

Jam Jiggers

This is a recipe my grandmother used to make when my father and aunt were little and they still rave about it. Below is exactly how I received the recipe from my Aunt Sue.

It's a family recipe that many people on my father's side make.

1. Make or buy pie dough.
2. Make yellow cake batter according to directions
3. Raspberry or strawberry jam (seedless raspberry is best)
4. Grease muffin tins
5. Roll out pie dough and cut circles to fit muffin tin cups with sides about 1/2-1/3 up. Bake dough for a few minutes until not quite done but not raw. Do not remove from muffin tin.
6. Drop spoonful of jam into each muffin cup.
7. Pour cake batter over jam, but be careful not to fill too much.
8. Bake cake until done.
9. Cool a few minutes before removing jam jiggers from muffin tin. 
10. Cool before eating as jam can get quite hot inside.

Banana Bread

My munchkins enjoying some banana bread :-)

My mom has been making this recipe for as long as I can remember, so I don't know where it originally came from. But it's amazing and I'll never bake another (plain) banana bread as long as I live!


INGREDIENTS

Dry

1 3/4 cups flour

2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoons baking soda

pinch of salt

1 cup sugar

Wet

2 eggs

1 cup mashed bananas

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

-OR-

1 cup chocolate chips (optional)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour loaf pan.
2. Sift and mix dry ingredients together. Add wet ingredients and mix until well incorporated. Spread mix in the loaf pan and bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Yields 1 loaf.

VARIATION: spoon in to grease/floured or paper-lined muffin cups and bake for 18-20 min or until a toothpick comes out clean.

You can also substitute half of the flour for equal parts whole wheat flour.