Sunday Sugarly: Muffins and Cookies

First off, I want to say sorry for taking a little bit longer on my Saturday Sweetly post this week. I did get a nice photo of some yummy iced cookies out of the delay, however. This Saturday I helped make some Apple Cinnamon Cheesecake muffins and some yummy homemade gingerbread cut-out cookies. We will start with the cookies. In one bowl, you add and combine the following ingredients:

 

•  2 1/4 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 6 tablespoons sugar

In a separate bowl whisk together:

• 1/4 cup margarine
• 1/2 cup molasses or pancake syrup
• 1 egg white

 Once you have finished whisking together the wet ingredients, add them to the first bowl and stir until there is no more loose powder. This is a little tricky, as the dough seems to get very dry after combining most of the powder. However, if you keep mashing the dough around, it will become sticky again and the rest of the powder combines in.

When the dough is ready, divide it into to 2 bowls and set them in the fridge for at least an hour. You divide the dough so that when you take out the dough in an hour, the other half can still be chilled while you work with one half at a time.

Once the dough is chilled, lightly flour a small section of counter and take one of the bowls of dough to work with. You also should probably pre-heat your oven to 350º F at this time so it is ready when you need it. The dough will be very firm when you remove it from the fridge, but should soften slightly as you roll it out. Use a rolling pin to get the dough to a thickness of about 1/8 inch. It seems thin, but will rise as it cooks.

Now that the dough is thin, you can use a cookie cutter of your choice and cut the cookies.

You should place the cookies about 1 inch apart on a lightly buttered cookie sheet, to leave them size to grow. Now pop the cookies in the oven and eight minutes later, you have a ginger-smell-filled house! Depending on what size cookie cutter you use, this will make about 24 - 30 cookies.

Now if you like your cookies extra sweet and tasty, (I do), then you can add a little cream cheese frosting to the top and some cute seasonal sprinkles.

Now onto the muffins. These seem like they would be hard, but they are actually quite simple to make, and delicious too! First you will need to pre-heat your oven to 400º F and find a mixer for making the cream cheese filling. The ingredients for the filling are:

• 1 package (eight ounces) softened cream cheese [to soften the cream cheese, all you need to do is remove the packaging and let it sit out of the fridge for a couple hours. Make sure to keep those doggy noses away from it though!   ;) ]
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat together the cream cheese and sugar first on high until it is not grainy from the sugar anymore.

Then add the egg and vanilla and beat those in, too. It should look about like this.

Next we need to make the muffins. These are the needed ingredients:

• 2 boxes Jiffy Apple Cinnamon Muffin mix
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup applesauce

Stir together the eggs, milk and applesauce well.  Add in the muffin mixes. The mix will be lumpy from the apple bits inside the muffin mix. 

Now you need two muffin pans with paper cups in them. This recipe can make anywhere from 12 to 18 muffins. Fill the cups about half-way or less, then add almost a tablespoon of filling on top. Make sure you add a little at first, so you have enough for them all. You can always go back and add more.

Once you have used all the cream cheese filling, cover it with another layer of muffin mix. This layer does not have to be thick, just enough so you cannot see the cream cheese anymore.

Now bake them for about 15- 18 minutes, and let them cool on a rack when they are done. Make sure once they are cooled to store them in the fridge; you do not want that cheese filling to spoil!

So, there you have them! Two delicious sweet treats you can enjoy all autumn. Do you have a favorite autumn treat, savory or sweet?