Cranberry Almond Biscotti

26. November 2008 · Comments Off on Cranberry Almond Biscotti · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

So as promised, here’s some more cookie closeups from the Vollmer House.

Cranberry Almond Biscotti. This is one sophisticated cookie…cranberries are always so, well, holiday! What’s cool is that the only fat in the cookie is in the eggs (well, the almonds, too, I guess)!!!! So that makes them as healthy as my Holiday Surprise Cookies, right???

So here we go…

The dough mixes up pretty straightforward in the stand mixer:

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti
From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

This dough will be sticky…be prepared to keep your hands floured for the next part:

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Now, divide the dough into portions and pat it into logs of 2-3″ width onto an ungreased cookie sheet, or, in my case, baking stone.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

You’ll bake these in two shifts. The first shift is at 325, so don’t expect the logs to be browned when they’re done, just a little puffier.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Remove these bars to a cooling rack. I use two spatulas, one on each end of the bar, to move them.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

After about 15-20 minutes of cooling, you will then cut the bars into 1/2 – 3/4″ wide slices.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Move the slices back to the baking stone, this is going to bake at a VERY low temperature, so don’t be shy: pack ’em in!

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

These will bake at 300F for another 15-20 minutes, until super crispy-firm-dried-out. The way biscotti’s supposed to be.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Unfortunately, on this batch, there was leftover sugar on the baking stones from the Holiday Surprise cookies, so pardon the green sugar on the bottom.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Happy Holiday Baking!

Holiday Surprise Cookies

15. November 2008 · Comments Off on Holiday Surprise Cookies · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

This is Patricia (don’t let the Dr. Dave fool you). Tonight we made our first batch of cookies….

…but not before a shopping extravaganza at Costco on Veteran’s Day. Bulk packs of eggs, butter, sugar, powdered sugar, oatmeal, dried cranberries, vanilla extract…

…but not flour. There was a great deal on a 25 lb. sack of flour, but I couldn’t see myself hauling it home and taking up so much space in my tiny pantry.  Two 5lb. bags of Gold Medal from the commissary was fine.

So, the first batch of cookies: Holiday Surprise Cookies, courtesy of the Quaker Oats company. Hit the hyperlink to go to the recipe straight from the horse’s, er, Quaker’s, mouth.

I gave Dave the camera tonight and asked him to document our experience so I’d have some nice pictures with which to blog. He told me, “Okay, I’m going to be like Maryann!”. He did a great job, he took almost all the photos…

So, to start, we have to come up with a filling…this is the “surprise” in the cookie. In years past, we’d used Wilbur Buds, a Lancaster County, PA staple. In fact, the first time I made this recipe was to keep Dave and me from eating an entire bag of Wilbur Buds we’d gotten for Christmas in one sitting, I think. It was either 1999 or 2000…I can’t remember. The beauty of Wilbur Buds is (a) you can buy a combo pack of milk AND dark chocolate together and (b) the buds aren’t individually wrapped.

If I’d had the foresight to order the Wilbur Buds ahead of time I would have. But it was much easier to pick up some assorted flavored Hershey’s Kisses from my local mega mart. As can be seen in this photo, we had a lot of unwrapping to do.

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

As the boys were unwrapping about 100 Kisses, in 3 flavors shown here, I was preparing the dough. It’s essentially a sugar cookie dough replacing about 40% of the flour with oatmeal.

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies
From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

Look at those oats — your cholesterol is lowering just looking at it, right? Don’t worry…won’t happen: there’s 2 sticks of butter in the basic recipe…and I doubled it tonight!

Once the chocolates were unwrapped and the dough was ready, I set up the assembly line in the dining room. The boys were great — Jake stuffed the chocolate in the dough, and Timmy rolled the little ball of dough in the colored sugar and placed the ready-to-bake cookie on the baking stone. My job was quality control — I pre-measured wads of dough for Jake to stuff so they’d be uniform in side, and I made sure the cookies were properly spaced on the stone.

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies
From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies
From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

Does that look holiday or what?

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

We tested the cookies, of course, and everyone in the Vollmer clan gave them a thumbs up!

The Wall!

13. November 2008 · 6 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,


Okay, now that I’ve gotten all my political blogging out of the way (see yesterday’s), I can go back to my usual housewife/Mom/Air Force wife-type posts, tee hee.

Today I made a trip to Target to get something for my sister’s birthday (I know you’re reading this, Margaret!) I hadn’t been to Target since before Halloween — yeah, almost 2 entire weeks! So of course they wasted no time assembling the holiday aisles right at the entrance, just past the dollar spot bins.

Since one of the items I planned to get for my sister was just past the holiday items, we had to pass the holiday items.

And then we passed it.

The Wall.

It’s part of an aisle dedicated to stocking stuffers. You know what I’m talking about. See the picture above, it’s stuff like that. You know your 2-to-8-year-old kids suddenly lean out of the shopping cart and start pawing at everything on the aisle.

Floam, Play Doh, Star Wars action figures, Hot Wheels Cars, Crayola activities, Bratz miniatures, Polly Pockets, candy, puzzles, playing cards. Arranged in bins along the aisle, top to bottom.

Today Timmy was walking alongside me instead of riding in a shopping cart, since I was only running in for one thing, so he was able to easily reach into a bin filled with Star Wars Galactic Heroes miniature 3-packs. $9.99. This was rather cute, though, as the figures were “decorated”:

“No.”

“PLEEEEEEEEZE, Mommy?”

“No! Christmas is still 6 weeks away! Why don’t we ask Santa for it?”

“Because I’m going to ask Santa for a GeoTrax airport!”

“Oh.”

About a minute later: “Mommmmmmmmmmmy, I’ll be SOOOOOooooo SAAAAD if I can’t get this….”

“Would you like to spend your own money on it?”

“Yes!”

“Fine.”

And that’s exactly what we did. I came home and took $10 out of Timmy’s wallet.

I’m not trying to be mean. I’ve been VERY good about not getting the kids toys every time we go to the store. And now that Jake never comes with me to the store, I try even harder to avoid it.

And so it begins. For the next 6 weeks the kids’ senses (and mine) will be inundated with the sights and sounds of the holidays. While most of it is wonderful and magical, they’re also going to get flooded with Toys R Us wish books, Star Wars Clone Wars toy commercials, and Pixos ads.

Let the Cookie Extravaganza Begin!

03. November 2008 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

It’s that time of year.

“Election Season?”

Well, yeah, but that’s not what I’m talking about…

“Autumn? Leaves falling? Raking? I didn’t know there were leaves to rake in Nebraska…”

Yes, that too…but keep with me here…

It’s COOKIE TIME!

“So soon?”

In the Vollmer house, yes. Actually, this year is going to be extra early because I’ll be in Florida for most of December for some Air Force training.

But I typically do the cookie thing a little early anyway…

In 1997, I spent Christmas in Tuzla, Bosnia. It was surreal, the amount of kindness that gets showered upon servicemembers from all over the country! We had stacks of care packages taller than me in one corner of our weather office, filled with sweets, treats and books/magazines! And the “any servicemember” mail we received was so touching. Wasn’t I cute back then? I guess I was about 24 years old.

Note: This picture was part of a media photo shoot, a story was written up for the base paper about me and the work I was doing on the base.  One of those “in case there’s nothing better to report” kinds of things, but I don’t think it ever ran.  The hard copy print of this picture is one of the first digital photo printouts I’d ever seen, incidentally.


I’ve tried to send cookies to deployed folks every Christmas season since.

So this is the 11th year, and even after 9/11, when the military shut down “any servicemember” mail, I’ve known people in the hostile file zones every year…with a definitive address to send cookies.

That being said, I want to get the cookies sent out by the US Postal Service deadlines. One of the recipients this year is in an “093” zip code (within Iraq) so I need to get them mailed by December 4th.

I’ve typically done the cookies over Thanksgiving weekend, giving me the last week of November to get them mailed out. But this year Thanksgiving is late — so I expect to do the baking the weekend prior to Thanksgiving.

I have a repertoire of cookies that have proven reliable for shipment to the Balkans and the Middle East over the years, from biscotti to oatmeal cookies with Hershey kisses inside.

I will make a full recipe of Neiman Marcus cookies. Honestly, I don’t care whether the legend is true or not, the cookies are fantastic and a big hit no matter where they’re sent. I make them nice and small so they don’t fall apart in transit.

For the past couple years, I’ve attempted to get the boys involved…last year Jake wanted to break all the eggs, and then they both enjoy rolling the oatmeal cookies in the colored sugars. Hopefully this year they can do a little more, like measuring flour and adding ingredients to the bowl.

I’ll go ingredient shopping next weekend – I even joined Costco today, in part because of the outstanding deals on bulk sugar, flour and eggs.

I’ll keep you posted with pictures later this month!

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