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Chicks & bunnies by the bunch – Easter critter cookies kids love to munch

 

Baby chicks and bunnies arrived at Anne Arundel County Farm, Lawn and Garden Center and Homestead Gardens Severna Park this week, reminding me that it’s time to bake  sugar cookies in the shape of springtime’s cutest critters. 

I first baked my  Critter Cookies to bring along to my parents’ annual Easter dinner as a gift.  Much appreciated  by the grandchildren, they became a tradition. 

I’ve honored the tradition,  making and rolling out cookie dough on the same marble topped cabinet my great-grandmother Kate Shipley used.  Grandma Kate handed down the cherry wood cabinet to her grandson –  my father, Sheldon Shipley Owings, Sr.   Nowadays,  it resides in my kitchen.

It’s great fun to recruit kids to help cut out and decorate these cookies once you’ve assembled the ingredients and made the dough.  You’ll need cookie cutters (I use chickens, bunnies and Easter Crosses) and a lightly greased cookie sheet or two.

Easter Critter Cookies from Sharon Lee’s Table

I slightly altered this decade-old recipe I found in an issue of Country Living Magazine  and sometimes half the recipe which works equally well.

  • 1 cup unsalted butter – room temperature
  • 1-1/2  cups sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 3 cups all purpose or…  I prefer unbleached flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

For Icing

  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 pound confectioners’ sugar sifted
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla
  • Milk

Cream the butter and sugar together until the mixture is light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs one at a time and add vanilla.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt and fold them into the mixture.

 

Then remove the dough and, with floured fingers, lightly form it into a ball  and wrap it in plastic wrap.  You’ll need to chill the dough for at least 3 hours or leave it overnight.

 

Retrieve and divide the dough into sections for rolling out on a lightly floured surface.

 

Roll it out in a circle to 1/4 inch thickness and cut out shapes with your cookie cutters.

 

You should be able to cut out four dozen shapes.  Arrange them on a lightly greased cookie sheet or two (I prefer my time-worn sheets that aren’t pretty but bake evenly.) 

Place in a 350 degree oven for 8 minutes or until cookies are just golden. 

Cool on a rack and prepare icing.  Divide into as many bowls as you like and add food coloring.                                            

Spoon icing into pastry bags using your favorite tips.  (I’m partial to ones that allow for plain piping.)

The cookies are delicious plain but it’s more fun to decorate them.  You can  spread icing over the entire cookie or you can outline them.

Add character by piping on eyes,  wings or bunny tails… even dots or stripes.

You’ll have lots of yummy cookies to plate for a gift or for your Easter table….

along with a bowl of dyed Easter Eggs.

(See “Easter Eggs The Easy Way” under the Seasonal Category or Archives for April 10, 2017.)

 

 

 

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“Hummingbird Cake” – Your guests will hover round Brenda Justice’s heirloom dessert

One afternoon, over coffee, my friend Atalie Payne’s mother Brenda Justice mentioned an old southern recipe with the charming  name “Hummingbird Cake”.         

She described the three-layer cake made on special occasions by her mother, the late Virginia Thomas, as sweet, dense and delicious.  Daughter Atalie remembered tasting her grandmother’s Hummingbird Cake while visiting the family home in Cumberland, Maryland as a kid and finding it scrumptious.

Grandaughter Atalie Justice Payne, her mother Brenda Justice and her grandmother Virginia Thomas who said she’d gotten the recipe from her sister.

 

 

Brenda graciously offered to share the recipe her mother jotted down so many years ago on the 3 x 5 cards seen below.  You’ll note that they are well-worn.

 

Like hummingbird nectar, Hummingbird Cake is sweet, as can be seen from the list of ingredients.  So it’s offset with a cream cheese frosting made from four simple ingredients.

A native of Mathias, West Virginia before moving to Maryland, Virignia loved southern recipes like this one.  Brenda and her daughter are equally fond of it. And now, her granddaughter Elise has tasted Hummingbird Cake for the first time….and loved it!  So, chances are, the recipe will live on through four generations.

The Justice and Payne families now share it with us.  We’ll take you through it step by step.

Hummingbird Cake 

I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of cook and figure the fewer ingredients, the better.  So I was seriously intimated by this recipe… with three layers and a dozen plus ingredients.  But I laid out the ingredients ahead of time and plunged ahead.  

I first measured 3 cups of flour and 2 cups of sugar into a large mixing bowl.  Then I added 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon  to the dry ingredients.

 

 

I turned the dry ingredients over from the bottom until well blended.

 

 

Then it was time to prepare and add the wet ingredients. 

The recipe requires 2 cups of mashed bananas.  I discovered I needed four bananas to equal 2 cups.  Next, I beat 3 eggs together and measured out 1 cup of oil and set them aside.  (I used canola oil but other vegetable oils work fine.)

I continued preparations by opening and setting aside an 8 ounce can of pineapple and finely chopping the required cup of pecans.

Next I added the beaten eggs to the dry ingredients, followed by the cup of oil.

 

The instructions said “DO NOT BEAT” so I stirred the liquids into the dry ingredients… a task that took a bit of muscle.  

The resulting batter was stiff.

 

Luckily, it thinned out considerably when I added the pineapple, followed by the bananas and vanilla, and gave the mixture a good stir.

 

 

By the time I folded in  the pecans, the batter had become dense but smooth and workable.

I was now ready to pour the mixture into three 8 inch layer cake pans I’d lined with rounds of brown paper cut to fit.  (The recipe calls for greasing and flouring the pans which would probably work just as well. )

The filled pans were ready to go into a 350 degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes.

 

With so many good ingredients, the layers were already looking yummy.

 

 

 

 

They did not disappoint.  They were golden brown and fragrant when I tipped them out to cool on racks for ten minutes.

 

 Then it was time to assemble and frost the layers.  For the icing, I creamed together 1/2 cup of butter and 8 ounces of cream cheese, added one 16-ounce package of powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla and beat till light and fluffy.   I iced the first layer, set the second atop it, applied more icing and topped it with the final layer.

I finished the frosting with a swirl and carried the cake to my dining table… 

where it took pride of place as a special dessert to be served with coffee.

Hummingbird Cake, with its bananas, pineapple and pecans, to say nothing of its creamy icing, is sweet, dense and delicious.

I generally depend on an easy-to-make standby recipe I call “My Mother’s Cake” (see the final blog entry under the dessert category) so I was apprehensive that I wouldn’t get this cake right.  However, I received the seal of approval from both Brenda and Atalie who said my version tasted just like the Hummingbird Cake made by Virginia Thomas.

Though time-consuming, Hummingbird Cake was worth the effort.  I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have.