BEE SUGAR COOKIES USING ORGANIC EGGS

   Three weeks ago I was gifted about two dozen eggs from Eduardo's house. I was not sure about these fresh unpasteurized eggs, not sure of the expiration date and not sure how I was ever going to use these eggs in time!

   I am not a fan of those that waste food but sometimes with ill preparation it does happen  to the best of us.  With the economy and only being able to work part time my main goal has been to waste less, spend less and invest in quality. I was thinking I was going to have to bring back out Martha Stewart's Cooking School: Lessons and Recipes for the Home Cook. The second chapter in the book is dedicated just to eggs. Basically I would use the eggs to learn but waste them because I would not be eating them. I was not thinking that I was going to be able to use them in my baking/cooking due to past trauma with another farm's organic eggs. My thoughts were with the fact that I know my husband would be sick of eggs day three and then what would I do with all those eggs? I was raised in a house where we knew how to use coupons correctly (ie with sales and I learned to read the fine print so that the coupon would not be waste), knew the definition of BOGO (buy one, get one) and that side of me was not please with all that waste.

  I thought maybe they only had a week expiration date because they were not pasteurized. I remember reading in Martha's book that a fresh egg floats and a not so fresh egg sinks. I have read the same in other posts such as "ask me help desk." But at the time I never read anything about fresh organic eggs. I did however see part of a Keeping up the Kardashians show about deciding to get chickens to raise for the fresh eggs. But of course I could not make it through when they K's were talking about how gross it is to eat eggs while they went around wedgie-ing their siblings (talk about gross).

    I have heard wonderful things about the "farm fresh" organic eggs but I knew that they were not pasteurized so it concerned me. Recently there was a recall on eggs and I did not want my friends/family to get sick.When I had baked before with the eggs from a farm  it did not turn out right repeatedly. In fact my cookies got "fluffy." I had never experienced that before and it was my go to baking recipe. The owner of that farm said that often happens with those eggs.With Eduardo's eggs I did not have a problem with "fluffiness" and maybe it is because of a different breed of chicken?

Eduardo's eggs after being washed and now are being dried.
Afterwards I carefully dried them off with a cloth kitchen towel.

  When given eggs directly from some one's house or farm you need to remember to wash them gently and rub them clean. You can get salmonella from touching the outside of the eggs. Luckily I understood that. But I needed to do a science fair experiment and see if I could actually bake with them so I made a very small batch of sugar cookies. I had just received my marble pastry board with matching marble rolling pin and I wanted to elevate my cookies. Normally I just create the dough, wait 20 minutes then I roll the dough into a ball, smash some sprinkles in it and call it a cookie. This time I had purchased some insect theme cookie cutters and I wanted to make elegant cookies. I decided to use my insect theme cookies and to spell out the word "B-E-E" and jokingly have the theme be "spelling bee." I used the following recipe which my mother and I have used while I was growing up. It was somewhere in her recipe index but I have re-written it to have it make more sense to a home baker.

Insect cookie cutters, Letter B &E, and my new marble rolling pin and marble pastry board.
So excited to experiment with cookie cutters and to see if Organic eggs from Eduardo's can
be used in my baking without making people sick!

SUGAR COOKIES

Ingredients:





3 cups flour

Colored decorating sugars or sprinkles (for decorating)

1.5 teaspoon of baking powder

0.5 teaspoon of sea salt

1 cup of sugar

1 cup (two sticks) of butter

1 egg

3 tablespoons of cream (you can use skim milk/milk in a pinch)

1 teaspoon of Vanilla

Instructions:

1.) Sift together: flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium sized batter bowl. Put aside.

2.) Cut up room temperature butter into small pats of butter and place in the mixing bowl. Using the flat attachment in mixer cream the butter with the sugar.

3.) In a small bowl combine: egg, cream and vanilla. Beat the egg mixture with a fork to break up the egg. Add the egg mixture to the creamed butter/sugar.

4.) Add the sifted dry ingredient slowly folding it into the wet mixture. Run until the dough is mixed thoroughly.

5.) Cover the Sugar cookie dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate the cookie dough in the mixing bowl for about 20 minutes. Tip:This is so that dough can be formed but it is not dry/too cold to work with.

6.) After 20 minutes preheat the oven to 400 degrees.The cookies should bake 5-8 minutes after the oven is ready depending on thickness of the cookie. 



Sugar cookie dough on marble pastry board

Baking Sugar cookie tips:

Place the cookies on parchment paper or use silicone mats. I prefer silicone mats because they are reusable but they are a pain to clean. I heard they bake faster and are crunchier if you use parchment paper but it is personal choice to make.

I do not suggest making drop cookies. I sometimes use a mini cookie scoop and then flatten them because otherwise they never cook right.  I often though to save time roll it out by hand and make a big size cookie. Then I flatten out the cookie. Also it is good to spread on sprinkles and then I smash with the back of cookie spatula the sprinkles into the cookie. This way the sprinkles stay on and they are not wasted. It sounds weird but they get absorbed into the cookie and I think it makes them taste better.

If you are rolling out the dough wait until almost finished before preheating the oven in order to not waste power.

Never use spray Pam on the cookies for the cookies will just run off the cookie sheet and be a joined burnt mess of a Frankenstein cookie.  

Spelling Bee cookies made with Organic eggs

Close up of the small Bees, dragonfly and big bee coming out of the hive before being baked.



Close up of the circular sprinkled spelling bees before being baked.

The Spelling Bee coming out of hives after being baked. Look Ma! No Food poisoning!



Elegant cookies took me about 2 hours to roll and cut out. I have not come up with a way to smash in the sprinkles correctly. Yes, I smash my sprinkles into my round cookies and I think it makes them taste better and the sprinkles never fall off. I did not use sprinkles on all of the sugar cookies because I was getting tired. I also wanted to make sure I could not see "fluffiness" in my sugar cookies. I did not want to mask the possible dangers of salmonella. No where on my ingredient card do I want to add "made with extra salmonella-- enjoy getting food poisoning!"

  The good news is that the cookies came out great. They were pretty and elegant and were a big hit with my husband. They were elegant and tasty! It made me crave more experiments with organic eggs to see if it was fluke or not.

Giant Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe to follow in next post

   It was not a fluke. I made two big chocolate chip cookies with a hint of Reese peanut butter chips cookies. I am currently in love with the big cookie pan from Wilton. I actually fell in love with it years ago when the lady who took care of me after school, Jean Mellon, made  a cookie pizza in the mid to late 80's with something similar. I wish I had that recipe. Somehow the marshmallows were places to put in the candles and it was just so good!

  I saw if first on eBay and purchased one to try it out. I use my own cookie recipe but if you are not sure the first time I would recommend using their recipe if you are not confident. You have to remember to leave room so the cookie can spread and not to pack it too much in. With one chocolate chip cookie dough recipe that I use I can make one big GIANT cookie plus probably a dozen large cookies. I saw it on Joann.com and I got better deal with free shipping and bough 5 more. The pan is fantastic and it is going to make my Christmas cookies go by so much faster. I can whip up six different cookie doughs and put them in the cookie pans and I am done in less time. More variety and I can do two at a time at 20 minutes so in about an hour I can have what would have taken me two days to make! I also cut my cookies in wedges and it looks so much more chic.



  Now I am so excited about these eggs! I am also excited that it can help cut down on grocery costs. Jonathan is happy as well because he actually got to have all of the cookies instead of them going into work while he gets one. I am actually pretty excited about baking more and in the spring/summer having fresh ingredients to work with. This is all in part because of a new kitchen and free eggs!