Holiday Gingerbread from Mohonk Moutain House Resort

The beautiful Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, NY has revealed their 2013 Gingerbread House creations for the season. This year’s gingerbread house takes it inspiration from Candy Land, the classic family board game first released in 1949.

Mohonk's professional chefs used a rainbow of luster sprays, candy rocks, fruit stripe gum, and chocolate kisses to create this year's sweet vision. The house took more than 300 hours to craft at Mohonk's historic New York Victorian castle resort, an effort accomplished by Executive Pastry Chef Eric Smith and his talented team.

Creating this wonderland requires no short list of ingredients! Think 325 pounds sugar, 100 pounds of flour, 100 eggs, 100 pounds of four, 60 pounds of egg whites and 30 pounds of candy!

The folks at Mohonk would like to share with our readers a special recipe on their take of healthy Ginerbread cookies.
 
Mohonk’s Healthy Gingerbread Cookies

½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened
½ cup unsweetened applesauce
¾ cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cloves
½ tsp. salt
1 large egg + 2 large egg whites, lightly beaten
¾ cup molasses
3 ½ cups whole-wheat flour
White frosting (optional, for decoration)
Almonds, pine nuts, dried cranberries, and raisins (optional, for decoration)

In a large bowl, mix butter and applesauce until blended. Add sugar, baking soda, spices, and salt. Stir in egg and egg whites. Mix in molasses and add flour. Cover and refrigerate dough for 2 hours. Preheat oven to 350°F. Mist 2 baking sheets with canola oil spray; set aside. Remove and roll out dough to ¼” thick. Use a 2” to 4” gingerbread cookies cutter to make shapes. Re-roll scraps of dough as necessary. Place cut-outs on prepared baking sheets 1” apart. Bake for 12 minutes or until golden brown. Cool for 20 to 30 minutes and decorate with frosting, nuts, and dried fruit, if desired. Makes 48 mini-cookies.
The annual gingerbread house is just one of many special holiday traditions at Mohonk Mountain House, located about 90 miles north of New York City.

Holiday Baking with Kids

Blue Snow Cookie Trees

When I baked with my kids, both of them had an egg allergy.  Since you don't want your children eating raw eggs when they taste the dough (how can they resist?) it's safer to use a shortbread recipe for making cut-out cookies.  

Cut-Out Shortbread Cookies

2 cups unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar

4 7/8 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

Simplest Frosting

Confectioners sugar

Milk

Equipment

Mixer

Rolling pin

Tree cookie cutters

Wilton blue sugar nonpareils/sprinkles

Food coloring

Tiny spoons

Mix butter & sugar on medium speed.  Mix salt into flour, add to butter & sugar until fully blended. Dough maybe a little crumbly but push together by hand.  Take out a 5" ball to work with at a time.  Flour a flat, clean surface.  With rolling pin roll out dough to 1/4" thick layer.  Cut with tree cookie cutters and place on baking tray.  Bake for approximately 14 minutes in middle of 325 degree oven or until edges are lightly brown.  Cool.

Wilton Sprinkles can be found at your local Michael's

I never felt that taking out the cake decorating set, with nozzles and everything else was going to be anything but an exercise in frustration for my smalls, so instead we would mix a very little milk, like two teaspoons, with a cup or more of confectioners sugar, and then add the food coloring of their choice.  It should be quite thick, not runny at all.  We would then spoon the sugar frosting on top of each cookie, spreading it in place with the back of the spoon.  Then they would add sprinkles of all sorts on top.  Then my daughter thought of dribbling a second color of frosting onto the cookie while the first layer was still wet.  She liked to make plaid Christmas cookies.  From her novel method came the idea for these pretty blue trees.

Simple and Elegant

 Mix up a bowl of white and a bowl of sky blue frosting.  Frost with the blue layer and then, before the frosting dries and sets, dribble from the tip of the spoon a zig zag of white frosting.  It may take a little practice at getting the timing and flow right. Put blue nonpareils along the white zig zag.  Let dry.  Frosting will become hard in about an hour, and then put cookies in a plastic container.

Mug from Cerulean Blue, cards from My Zoetrope and KBatty, plate from Megan Hart Porcelain 

 After all that work, it's time to relax with a little hot chocolate.  Happy Holidays, everyone!


Jody Lee

www.astudiobythesea.etsy.com