New Mixer -- At least new to us...

[Jeremy] As alluded to in the last post, we have recently acquired something to help compensate for the inadequacy of our first family mixer (a little dark brown and tan hand mixer with it's own box). Ethan has loved to play with it, but when we got to the the big time with sugar cookies last week, it just didn't cut it -- it gut gummed up with butter and flour and just growled, but ceased to mix. It's not broken, it has just met it's match.

As Jody was finishing the mixing by hand, she mentioned that I should pick up the "big mixer" from Nana when Ethan and I visit her on Saturday. I remembered hearing about this mixer before (and even remembered seeing it with its stretchy velvet cover), but I had never had any interest. That was all before I became a stay-at home dad, however... Ethan and I were both excited when Nana revealed to us her crisp, white and chrome Kitchen Aid Heavy Duty Mixer (For household use only).

We got it on Saturday, cleaned it up Sunday morning and baked oatmeal raisin cookies with it Sunday night. It is truly an amazing machine... Housewives everywhere should demand one of their husbands.

Ethan is mesmerized when it is turned on... and to be honest, so am I.

Cookies, Cookies, Cookies!

[Jeremy] Winter time has meant that Ethan and I are spending a lot more time indoors. It hasn't really snowed yet, so the weather is either REALLY cold, or wet and miserable. One of the things we like to do is bake. We have a neighbor that has a wheat allergy so we have been experimenting with some wheat free cookie recipes. Our most successful one was a spelt cookie with a lemony zest.

As it happens, s group of med students with kids planned a cookie decorating party at the med school. I looked up a shortening free, old fashioned cookie recipe and we went to town. Since you have to chill the cookie dough, it was a two-day affair. The only sad news was that our little hand mixer couldn't mix more than about half of cookie dough. Jody had to do the rest by hand. We now have a solution to this problem, (but that is another post all by itself). Below are some pictures of our the great cookie epic.

It took us a while to figure out that we had to use A LOT of flour when rolling out the dough to cut out the shapes. We took a trip to a very trendy kitchen shop in downtown Hanover and Ethan picked out this cookie cutter.

We only have one cookie sheet, so it took us almost two hours to get through the four dozen cookies that resulted from our epic labors.

As is the prerogative of any cook when in his kitchen, Ethan occasionally took samples of the product, for Quality Assurance purposes only I assure you.

Mama joined us with our cookies at the med school lounge and guided Ethan through his first time frosting cookies.

Some of the final products...