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Bake Fortune Cookies Yourself

What does the new year bring? Maybe a fortune cookie can tell us. The little lucky charms from your own oven taste much better than the ready-made variant. And the great thing is: You can make your loved ones happy with personal wisdom.

Full of hopes and wishes we start the dewy year on New Year’s Eve: A new love… a new job… the longed-for marriage proposal… What will it bring?

Hardly anyone is immune to kitsch and superstition on New Year’s Eve. How else could it be explained that adult humans hold up misshapen drops of lead to the light and claim they are seeing a dragon/sword/flower?

Chinese fortune cookies are also very popular at the New Year’s Eve party. Bake the little crescents yourself this year! It’s very simple and your place as a lucky fairy is guaranteed.

Sayings for your fortune cookies

Before you start preparing the cookie dough, it is best to write down the small wish lists. Song lyrics, Bible verses, the funny saying on the house wall: Everything is allowed. For anyone lacking inspiration, we’ve rounded up some fortune cookie all-time favorites.

Of course, the best thing is if you make the sayings for the fortune cookies as personal as possible. If you don’t have much time or are going to a larger party where you don’t know all the guests, these evergreens are suitable, for example:

  • “If the old year was successful, then look forward to the new one. And if it was bad, then even more so.” (Albert Einstein)
  • “The new year has a clean slate until you put it on.” (Hans Fallada)
  • “Greet the new year with confidence and without prejudice, then you’ve already half won it as a friend.” (Novalis)
  • “Is it getting better? Is it getting worse?” is the question asked every year. “Let’s be honest: life is always life-threatening!” (Erich Kästner)
  • Note: This cookie may contain traces of happiness.
  • “He who knows how to enjoy life does not need riches.” (Chinese proverb)
  • “Before you set out to change the world, go through your own house three times.” (Chinese proverb)
  • “Anyone who asks is a fool for five minutes. He who does not ask remains a fool forever.” (Chinese proverb)
  • “Don’t be afraid to walk slowly, just be afraid to stand still.” (Chinese proverb)
  • “Habits are first cobwebs – then wires.” (Ancient Far Eastern wisdom)
  • Bake fortune cookies yourself – this is how it works

Ingredients

(for about 20 fortune cookies)

  • 1 egg white
  • 1/8 tsp vanilla flavoring
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • 30 grams of flour
  • 30 grams of sugar

That is how it goes:

  1. Using a hand mixer, beat the egg whites with the vanilla essence until fluffy but not too stiff.
  2. Sift the flour into the egg white mixture and also add salt and sugar. Whisk everything well until a liquid dough forms.
  3. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
  4. Grease a baking sheet and place teaspoonfuls of batter on it. Using the teaspoon, spread out the dough in a thin circle.
  5. Place the sheet in the hot oven for 3-5 minutes, until the edges of the cookies are brown.
  6. While still hot, remove the biscuits from the tray with a spatula. Now put a small folded sheet of paper with a motto on each biscuit and fold the biscuit loosely into a crescent.
  7. With a glass or mug rim, you give the fortune cookie its characteristic crease.
  8. Let the cookies cool and harden on a wire rack.
  9. Look forward to the surprised faces of family and friends on New Year’s Eve! 🙂
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Cooking Tips

Simply Bake Grandma’s Cookies Vegan

Bake grandma’s cookies vegan easily: Vegan visits are announced at Christmas time and all recipes contain animal ingredients? This is how you replace butter, egg, and milk in Christmas recipes.

Bake classic vegan cookies

Cinnamon stars, vanilla crescents, gingerbread… Grandma’s cookies are so delicious, but unfortunately not vegan. We will show you how you can enjoy the pre-Christmas period to the fullest and easily replace butter and co in the recipes. The list of sweet Weinach delicacies is long and when you think of the beguiling smell of cookies in the kitchen, the Christmas season can’t come quickly enough. But what to do if you want to do without animal products or are planning a vegan visit? The following tips will help you to replace butter and co easily and successfully.

Replace butter

You can simply replace butter with margarine or oil in many recipes. In the meantime, there are often vegan products with butter flavor in the supermarket, so the taste is hardly changed. If the consistency is crucial, it is best to use a plant-based butter alternative, such as Alan.

Replace egg

Vegans also do without eggs, as egg production is perceived as the exploitation of the hens and as unnatural. However, eggs belong in many cookies and cakes – you can easily exchange that for a vegan product. However, it depends on what kind of pastry is needed.

In cakes and stollen

Instead of an egg in the cake and stollen batter, you can use half a mashed banana or two tablespoons of applesauce. The applesauce is almost impossible to taste. Depending on your taste, you can decide in the vegan stollen, as in the original, whether you want to add lemon peel, raisins, and the like or rather leave them out. The recipe variations there are as varied as the tastes of the tasters.

In cookies

Seeds soaked in water are particularly good for replacing eggs in cookie dough, for example, linseed (1 tbsp seeds plus 3 tbsp water) or the trendy superfood chia seeds (1 tbsp seeds plus 3 tbsp water). Depending on the seeds, you can also get important omega-3 fatty acids, mucilage, linamarin, protein, and lecithin (linseed) or vitamin A, niacin, thiamine, riboflavin, and folic acid (chia seeds).

As whipped cream

Whipped egg white is probably the product that is the most difficult to replace, but that can also be done: aquafaba, the water from chickpea cans or jars, is the keyword here. Thanks to its high protein content, you can easily whip it up. At the latest after the addition of icing sugar and other delicious ingredients, there is no longer any taste of the legumes’ own taste.

Replace milk

Vegan milk alternatives are now available in every discounter. Soy milk and oat milk are the most common there, but try almond milk for your vegan Christmas treats (e.g. for marzipan pastries), and coconut milk if you want it to be a bit more exotic. But you can go there according to your personal taste and availability in your favorite supermarket.

Happy vegan baking

You can quickly and easily modify and bake any of your grandma’s favorite recipes for vegan food lovers and those who want to try something new. And with the thought of the scent of cinnamon and freshly grated orange peel, we wish you a lot of fun trying out and eating the vegan cookies and a contemplative (before) Christmas season!

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Cooking Tips

This Keeps Christmas Cookies Crispy Longer

Cookies only taste good when they are fresh and crispy. You should store shortcrust biscuits as airtight as possible. Otherwise, they will absorb moisture and taste sticky. Butter biscuits, black and white pastries, vanilla crescents, and other Christmas biscuits stay crispy and fresh in the tin for up to four weeks.

With the right tips for storage, you can ensure that your Christmas cookies last a long time and give your Christmas cookies a unique aroma. For example, it is important that the cookies are cool and the decorations are dry before wrapping, otherwise, the cookies will stick together.

Shelf life for Christmas cookies

Baking delicious Christmas cookies is part of Christmas. But with a large number of biscuits, the question arises as to how they stay fresh for a long time. Dry Christmas cookies will stay crisp and fresh in airtight metal or plastic jars at room temperature for four weeks or more. Cookies filled with cream only keep for a week.

You can neither freeze Christmas cookies with chocolate nor store them in the fridge, otherwise, the chocolate will turn gray and unsightly. These cookies should only be stored at room temperature in the cookie jar for a week or two.

Gingerbread, cinnamon stars, honey cake, Printen, and fruit bread taste best after 2-3 weeks of storage in a tin with a piece of apple, orange, or lemon peel. In this way, the pastries can be kept for several months. Our ideas for keeping the Advent wreath fresh longer are also interesting.

Store biscuits correctly in the tin can

Airtight tin or plastic containers are suitable for storing biscuits. You should place the greaseproof paper on the bottom of the tin so the cookies don’t rest directly on the metal. It is worth storing the biscuits separately according to type if they are seasoned differently. They will then better retain their aroma.

It is very important that you store crunchy and soft Christmas cookies separately. Between cinnamon stars, macaroons and gingerbread, a speculoos would quickly become soft and the soft biscuits in turn rock hard. You should put crispy biscuits in the cans immediately after they have cooled down. With soft biscuits such as gingerbread, you should only close the lid of the tin tightly when the Christmas biscuits have softened (after about 1 week). Also, note helpful tips on storing food correctly.

Make dry biscuits and hard gingerbread soft

Another good tip. Dried cinnamon stars or hard gingerbread become soft again if you put a piece of apple, lemon, or orange peel in the tin. The fruit bowl also gives the biscuits a fruity aroma. If you want it tasteless, you can also put a slice of fresh bread in the cookie jar. But be careful, change the fruit bowl or the bread every 2 days so that no mold forms.

Freeze Christmas cookies

If you want to start Christmas baking long before Christmas, you can also freeze your Christmas cookies so that you can give them away from fresh and crispy later. You can easily store gingerbread in the freezer. In addition, shortcrust pastry is particularly suitable for freezing. The shortcrust pastry category includes, for example:

  • butter cookies
  • Vanilla crescents
  • Hilda rolls
  • Linzer biscuits
  • Shortbread cookies without the chocolate icing
  • heath sand

Black and white cookies

Freeze the cookies in portions in freezer bags or freezer containers. After defrosting, bake them for 5 minutes at 180°C. In this way, you can keep large quantities of Christmas cookies crispy and fresh for longer. You can always decorate the cookies afterward. In addition, note our tips for freezing bread.

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Cooking Tips

Christmas Cookies: Store Them Properly, Keep Them Fresh and Use Leftovers Sensibly

Storing Christmas cookies correctly is important so that you can enjoy your cookies for a long time. We’ll show you how to keep Christmas cookies fresh and how to use leftovers sensibly.

Storing Christmas cookies: This is how you succeed

Whether cinnamon stars, vanilla crescents or gingerbread – cookies are part of the Advent season. So that you can enjoy your homemade biscuits throughout Advent, you should make sure that they last as long as possible. Therefore, we have put together the best tips for you on how to store Christmas cookies properly:

Store by type: After baking, all types of cookies should be allowed to cool completely before tinning. The glaze or other decorations must first dry completely. Otherwise the biscuits may stick together. Then store the Christmas cookies according to type in different airtight cookie jars. You should also wrap homemade stollen in a kitchen towel.
Shelf life is related to the type of cookie: The use-by date is closely related to the type of cookie. Dry cookies can last up to eight weeks. However, if your cookies have a cream filling, you should use them up within a week if possible.
Freezing Christmas cookies: If you can foresee that you will not use up your cookies in time, you can simply freeze them. You will need an airtight container to put your cookies in after they have cooled. However, be careful not to freeze cookies decorated with chocolate. Chocolate turns gray in the freezer. If you want to thaw the frozen pastry again, take it out of the freezer and let it sit at room temperature for several hours.

Tips for making good use of leftover pastries

Storing Christmas cookies properly can avoid food waste. But what to do if there are leftovers? With our ideas you will be able to use what is left over. So nothing has to end up in the garbage, but can be used elsewhere.

Second chance for leftover cookies: You can crumble many types of Christmas cookies and use them instead of biscuits for various recipes. In this way you can refine (vegan) tiramisu or other layered desserts, for example. You can also use them to make sprinkles for apple crumbles. You can melt leftover chocolate and use it as a glaze for cakes or fresh pastries.
Utilize expired ingredients: Each food item is given a sell-by date before it is sold. However, this date is not to be taken so strictly for all foods. Because ingredients such as baking powder, flour or spices can keep much longer. Therefore, you can use these basic foods for baking for a long time without hesitation. Read more: Forget the best before date – many foods last longer than you think
Cookies as a gift idea for friends and relatives: What Christmas cookies you don’t want to store with you may be missing from others. How about giving your homemade treats to friends, acquaintances and relatives? Not only do you give your loved ones a little treat, you also don’t have to throw away your leftover cookies.

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Cooking Tips

Baking Biscuits and Cookies with Children

Baking cookies with children is always a good activity. And especially in the run-up to Christmas, this is a popular activity before the festival. So that baking cookie is stress-free, we have simple recipe ideas and tips that you should consider when baking together.

Baking together at Christmas time

Trying out different recipes, creating creative decorations and surprising friends and relatives with the delicacies is the epitome of a contemplative and loving time. Children also like to help their parents with baking and designing. From simple butter biscuits with sugar icing to Linzer eyes and hussar donuts with jam to marzipan potatoes and vanilla crescents, there is a recipe to suit every taste.

What cookies to bake with children?

However, some cookies are too big a challenge for children’s hands. A good example is Linzer Augen, where the individual layers of pastry have to be rolled out so thinly that cutting them out and handling them after baking requires great care. If the cookies keep breaking, frustration is inevitable. So think carefully about which cookies you can bake together. As a result, you prevent mishaps like cracking cookies or cake batter collapsing. The following recipes are also suitable for baking cookies with children and ensure fun in the kitchen:

  • shortbread,
  • wintry cookies,
  • butter cookies, and also vanilla crescents.

What tasks do children take on when baking cookies?

In some families, the mother and father take care of baking the cookies and only ask their children to help decorate them. What can definitely save time, however, takes away the opportunity for children to try things out for themselves and make new experiences. It is therefore best to plan enough time for baking when planning the weekend and to involve your children in the baking process from start to finish.

Depending on their age, children can then take on tasks as if they were under the supervision of their parents. Incidentally, children learn here that they can achieve great things themselves, which in turn strengthens their self-confidence. Because if your children not only decorate the cookies but also knead, shape, and bake them, they will be “proud as Bolle” at kindergarten age. Consequently, let them take over these tasks when baking cookies:

  • weighing ingredients,
  • kneading dough,
  • forming balls, croissants, or cookies
  • as well as cutting out and decorating the biscuits.

Observe hygiene when baking cookies

Good hygiene in the household should be a matter of course when preparing food. It is therefore important to teach children to maintain a certain level of cleanliness when baking cookies. You should make sure that you wash your hands properly before you start. This will get rid of bacteria and dirt. In addition, you should plan short hand washing cycles in between. Children in particular touch other things at work or put their fingers in their mouths.

that dough should only be touched with clean fingers. For this reason, washing your hands before baking is an absolute must. Here, any bacteria and dirt are rinsed off the fingers and do not come into contact with the cookies and dough. In addition, the following hygiene rules should be observed when baking cookies with children:

  • Children with a cold should not help or you will postpone baking the cookies. Then the risk of pathogens coming into contact with dough and cookies when you sneeze or cough is lower.
  • Raw eggs are a source of danger. Salmonella or other pathogens can adhere to the shell, which is why children should not eat raw dough. Or you can use a dough without eggs and a vegan egg substitute.

Bake delicious Christmas cookies

When the cold season begins, the anticipation of the Christmas season is great. Then gifts are bought, apartments and streets are decorated for Christmas and the Christmas tree is decorated. And special dishes are also prepared for the traditional festival. At Christmas, delicious and sweet foods such as gingerbread, chocolate cake, delicious biscuits, and cookies are very popular. These are not only served with a delicious Christmas meal but can also be enjoyed in the pre-Christmas period. Baking cookies together is a great winter activity for kids. The following recipe is good for baking cookies with children.

Make cookie dough instructions

To bake cookies you need the ingredients listed below. Then you can start making the cookie dough. To do this, first mix the dry ingredients such as flour, sugar, salt, and vanilla sugar in a large bowl. Then add eggs and margarine and cut into small pieces. Then quickly knead a coherent dough from the ingredients. After kneading you will get a golden-yellow dough, which you should divide into two equal halves. Form one half into a roll that should have a diameter of about 6 cm. The bright yellow rolling pin is now chilled in the fridge for about an hour or two.

Mix the other half of the dough with the cocoa powder and knead everything again. Then this role of dough also goes into the fridge. After the dough has been in the fridge for some time, the light and dark rolls of dough are cut in half lengthways so that you get two light halves and two dark halves of the dough. Then light and dark half of the dough is always put together, which gives you two-colored biscuit rolls that have a light and a dark side. Then cut the rolls into slices, which should be about one centimeter thick. Also, note our tips on how to bake grandma’s cookies easily and vegan.

  • 500g flour,
  • 2 eggs,
  • 250g margarine,
  • 130 grams of sugar,
  • Salt,
  • 1 packet of vanilla sugar,
  • 50 grams of cocoa.
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Food

This is How Sensational Shortbread Cookies Succeed!

Anyone who has ever taken a tray full of melted puddles of chocolate out of the oven instead of chocolate sticks is well advised to use these tips because fine shortbread cookies are not as complicated as you think if you pay attention to a few points!

Trick 17 for shortbread: The cold does it

Shortcrust pastry, for example, likes it cold. It is advisable to place the baking tray in the fridge for about an hour before you apply the dough, or if possible in front of the door or on the balcony. After the biscuits have been placed on the well-chilled tray, it is best to put them back in the fridge or on the balcony for an hour. Then they go straight into the preheated oven. This way the biscuits keep their shaped shape.

What eggs and butter might have to do with it… If the dough is much too soft, this may be because the eggs or yolks used are too large. If you get along well with your dough, you can try to use a little more flour in this case – but please dose carefully! Otherwise, the matter will become too tight and will not push well through the spout.

It might also help to use a little less butter next time. It is not advisable to use cornstarch in shortbread cookies, as the dough can become tough.

Hard is not hearty!

Shortbread is a sensitive dough that needs to be treated with a lot of attention. You should also give the butter enough time to become creamy. Depending on the temperature of the butter, it can take up to 20 minutes until it has really foamed well for a spritz dough. Of course, the easiest way to do this is with a food processor, but if you do it with a hand mixer, you have earned the sweet delicacy with plenty of butter in the end!

If the dough is too firm and cannot be pushed through the spout, it could also be because too much flour was used or the flour was mixed in for too long. Mix the butter and sugar very thoroughly until fluffy, then stir in the remaining ingredients (e.g. cocoa or grated organic lemon zest) and only briefly mix in the sifted flour at the very end.

It depends on the right tool

If it doesn’t work well with the piping bag, using the meat grinder with the matching cookie attachment will help. High-quality meat grinders are made of cast iron, which means that firmer dough can also be pressed through. In Spain, people like to eat “churros” with coffee, a shortbread baked in plenty of oil. In addition, you get your own churros presses, sometimes even made of sturdy metal.

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Food

Tips for Freezing Cookies

Why should you freeze cookies?

  • Too few biscuits were eaten at the Christmas party.
  • Too many cookies have been baked.

With a few tips and tricks, it is possible to freeze the leftover biscuits (Christmas biscuit recipes) and after a few weeks or months without much loss of taste Cookies don’t freeze as firmly, and some varieties are delicious straight out of the freezer (e.g. Machine Bakery). Due to the low water content, biscuits thaw quickly (e.g. vanilla crescents).

Proper packaging when freezing

You can use different materials as long as they can be closed as tightly as possible and are easy to clean. It is important that they do not give off any flavor to the frozen food.

Fresh storage containers that are airtight, watertight, aroma-tight, and dishwasher-safe are suitable for the Christmas biscuits. They must not break or become brittle in severe cold and must also close tightly when frozen. Most cans are suitable for temperatures down to -20 degrees and since they can be stacked well, the available storage space in the freezer can be optimally used.

To prevent freezer burn, seal the packs as tightly as possible. Vacuum sealing and sealing freezer bags is ideal for avoiding freezer burn. Careful knotting with a plastic clip or a rubber ring and avoiding air pockets are important, as the oxygen contained there slows down the freezing process and leads to a loss of quality. Basically, biscuits freeze faster in the freezer bag because the thin material lets the cold through faster and also adapts optimally to the frozen goods.

Do not leave any air in the freezer bag!

By the way: Freezer burn is not dangerous or harmful to your health.

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