Eliza's Tea Party and Sugar Cookie Recipes

Every year since she turned 2, Eliza has had a tea party for her birthday party. It's become a cherished tradition for her that she's determined she'll do every year for her whole life.

The menu for the tea party is pretty simple: cucumber sandwiches, banana and peanut butter sandwiches, snipped little clusters of grapes, baby carrots, sugar snap peas, sometime some fancy little tarts or chocolates, herbal tea and sparkling cider to drink; then after a break to open presents, we decorate and eat heart-shaped sugar cookies.

The main key to a tea party seems to be presentation - as long as everything looks fancy, the girls are delighted.

Since it was Eliza's birthday recently, I wanted to get down all the "recipes" for the tea party menu items. I remember having these treats when I would go over to my friends houses after school when I lived in England when I was 6, 7, and 8.

Cucumber Sandwiches

Ingredients:

• thinly sliced bread - white or wheat (get as square a loaf as you can find - easier to cut off crust and cut into neat triangles)
• whipped lite or regular cream cheese (way easier to spread than regular cream cheese)
• sliced English cucumbers (the English ones have a thin skin so you can leave the skins on - if you get regular cucumbers, you'll want to peel them)

Spread a thin layer of cream cheese on two pieces of bread (sometimes we do one slice of white, one of wheat on the same sandwich). Place 4 cucumber slices on the bread. Put the sandwich together. Cut off crusts (I've never been a crust-cutter-offer but it makes the sandwiches more uniformly shaped and fancier-looking). Cut into squares or trianges (Eliza says triangles are way fancier). Arrange on a pretty tray.

Banana and Peanut Butter Sandwiches

Same as cucumber sandwiches but use peanut butter (or Nutella or Cookie Butter from Trader Joes to be less healthy and more yummy) instead of cream cheese and bananas instead of cucumbers. We liked to put as many sliced bananas on each sandwich as we can fit.

Herbal Tea

The biggest hit at our tea parties has been Wild Berry Zinger (Celestial Seasonings). I put several tea bags into a the hot water in a tea kettle, let that brew a while, then add a fair amount of sugar and honey. Most of the kids haven't tried herbal tea but they generally seem to like it a lot!

Eliza's Sugar Cookies

Here's the sugar cookie recipe we always use. I have to say sugar cookies are a real investment of time (and I think there are a lot of yummier kinds of cookies) so we really only make them once a year. This recipe is the best one I've found - they're soft and tasty and the frosting is pretty darn good.

1 1/2 c. butter

2 c. sugar

4 eggs

1/2 c. milk

Cream together the above until smooth, then add...

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp cream of tartar

2 tsp vanilla

6 c. flour (add one cup at a time)

Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

Roll out and cut with cookie cutters.

Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes (or until just slightly browned on the very edges if you want soft cookies).

Buttercream Frosting

1 cup butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla

4 c. powdered sugar 

2 tbsp milk (or a little more or less, depending on desired consistency of the frosting)

Cream butter, vanilla and one cup of powdered sugar until smooth, then add the rest of the powdered sugar, one cup at a time. Add the milk at the end, a little at a time, until the frosting reaches desired consistency. Add food coloring if you want.

Decoration ideas: red-hots (little cinnamon candies), red sugar sprinkles, valentine-colored M&M's, chocolate chips, conversation hearts.

Here's Eliza with her birthday cookies over the years. Fun to watch her growing up in these photos!

  

Banana Cake (with Nutella or cream cheese frosting)

We found this recipe last year when the twins' wanted to try something new for their birthday. We made it with the cream cheese frosting and it was GOOD. Then this year, we tried the same cake with Nutella spread on it as frosting. Super good in a different way.

Twin's Birthday Banana Cake

2 cups bananas, mashed, very ripe (about 4 bananas)
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups white granulated sugar
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups buttermilk (or use regular or whole milk and add 2 tsp vinegar, set aside for 20 minutes to allow it to sour)

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 300 degrees (not convection). 
• Grease and flour a 9 x 13 pan (or two round cake pans for a layer cake). 
• Mix mashed banana, lemon juice, butter, eggs, vanilla, and sugar until quite smooth (you don't even have to mash bananas first if they're quite soft and ripe and if you've got a Kitchen Aid mixer or similar – you can start on slow speed and gradually increase speed until you're whipping everything together until smooth) 
• Add flour one cup at a time, adding some of the buttermilk in between each cup and adding the salt and baking soda with the last cup of flour 
• Pour batter into prepared pan(s) and bake in preheated oven for 55-60 minutes or until cake is set and toothpick inserted in center comes out mostly clean.

Cream Cheese Frosting (can use Nutella instead if you want)

1/4 cup butter, softened
4 oz cream cheese (½ an 8 oz brick)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups powered sugar
Garnish: Chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

Directions:
· Cream the butter and cream cheese until smooth.
· Beat in 1 teaspoon vanilla.
· Add icing sugar and beat on low speed until combined, then on high speed until frosting is smooth.
· Spread on cooled cake.
· Sprinkle chopped walnuts over top of the frosting, if desired.

Original recipe - slightly different: http://www.food.com/recipe/best-ever-banana-cake-with-cream-cheese-frosting-67256#ixzz1jNK7AZk6

Chocolate Cinnamon Cake - Ashton's Favorite

Thursday was Ashton's birthday (he's 13 - how did this happen? Pictures of the birthday boy and his special day coming soon) and as always, he requested this delicious cake. It's moist and rich but not too heavy and the hint of cinnamon is great. And you don't have to wait for it to cool before frosting it which comes in handy when you're always running late (like me). I found this recipe in the recipe book "Favorites" by the Ivory Family many years ago but have tweaked it and made it my own.

Ashton's Chocolate Cinnamon Cake

CAKE:
Bring the following to the boil in a sauce pan:
1 cup (2 cubes) butter
1/4 cup cocoa
2 squares of unsweetened baker's chocolate (or another 1/4 c. cocoa if you don't have the unsweetened chocolate)
1 cup water

Pour boiling mixture over:
2 cups white flour
2 cups white sugar
Mix together until smooth

Then mix in:
1/2 cup buttermilk (can put 1 tsp vinegar in 1/2 cup regular milk and leave it for about 30 minutes to curdle and use that)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 tsp salt

When thoroughly mixed, pour batter into greased 9x13 baking pan. Bake 30 to 35 minutes at 350 degrees (until toothpick inserted in center comes out pretty clean).

GLAZE: (I usually just make about 1/2 this amount but if you like a lot of frosting, go for the full amount!)
Bring to a boil:
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup cocoa

6 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla


Remove from heat and then add powdered sugar gradually and stir in nuts (if you want)
3 3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)

Pour glaze over cake while it's still warm. Refrigerate cake to help glaze set up before serving. Or serve warm.

Great with ice cream.

Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last Monday we got a special little present in the mail - a new beater for our Kitchen Aid mixer (the mixer is 14 years old and the coating was peeling off the beater it came with - the kids were quite concerned as cookies are pretty important around here . . .). The kids insisted we celebrate the new beater by making cookies. And since they can pretty much make cookies on their own and I'm always up for a good cookie, I was happy to go along with the idea.

We have three favorite cookie recipes - all with some healthful qualities, all totally delicious. Mostly we make a lot of pumpkin cookies this time of year but the chocolate chip oatmeal cookies still happen quite a bit too. We hadn't made our other favorite cookies for a while and had some overripe bananas on hand so we went with these banana oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and re-realized how good they are.

Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are great to make when you've got overripe bananas sitting around. And I think they make a pretty darn good breakfast if you're in a hurry (all that oatmeal and bananas plus not a lot of sugar - better than a lot of breakfast options out there!). You can even make them in muffin tins (they work great that way) if you want to make them into a more presentable-seeming breakfast food.

Sorry I don't have a photo. The cookies were gone before I remembered to take a photo!

Ingredients:
1/4 cup (1/2 cube) softened butter
1/2 cup ground flax seed (or another 1/4 cup butter if you don't have the flax seed but better with flax)
1 egg
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (2-3 overriped bananas - I just put them in the mixer w/o mashing first, works great)
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups white flour (or 1 cup white and 1/2 cup wheat)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves or allspice
2 cups quick oats
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)
1 cup chocolate chips

Instructions:
Mix together butter, flax seed, egg, bananas and sugar until somewhat smooth. Dump in flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and cloves and mix those in until incorporated. Then add the oatmeal one cup at a time while the mixer is going. Then mix in the nuts and chocolate chips. The batter will be somewhat shiny and stiff.

Put spoonfuls (or use a mini ice cream/cookie dough scoop - my favorite utensil) onto cookie sheets. They will spread a bit but stay sort of puffed up so they don't need to be really far apart on the sheet.

Cook at 350 F for 7-9 minutes (take out as soon as they get just slightly brown on the very edges).

Makes about 3 dozen (36) cookies.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread

Just had to share one more conference weekend favorite:

This recipe is from my mom and it is GOOD. Fall and pumpkin bread go hand-in-hand in my book. We always have a couple loves of this around to snack on during October General Conference. You can whip up the batter in just a few minutes and I think it's way better than any pumpkin bread I've had from a bakery.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread

Put the following in a large mixing bowl:
1 15 oz can of canned pumpkin (about 2 cups)
3 cups of sugar
4 large eggs
1 cup canola or vegetable oil (I use 3/4 c. oil and 1/4 cup applesauce - I think it's even better that way)
MIX TOGETHER until smooth, then add:
3 1/3 cups of flour, one cup at a time
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
(if you don't have cloves and/or nutmeg, allspice also works well)
MIX TOGETHER, then add:
1 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips and fold them into the batter
Add 1/2 cup to 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans if you like

Grease loaf pans. Put into 2 large loaf pans or 3 smaller loaf pans (fill about 2/3 of the way). Bake at 325 F for 60-70 minutes (until a fork or toothpick inserted in the center comes out with just a few crumbly bits of bread).

My Favorite Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

I grew up in a cookie family. Some families are pie families. Some families are ice cream families. Some families are into cake. The Eyres were firmly into cookies. As teenagers, my sister Shawni or I made cookies all the time after school. Our friends and younger siblings and all their friends had handfuls of cookie dough (a lot of times, the cookies never made it to the oven and we'd never really heard of salmonella but no one ever got sick) and fresh hot cookies for their after school snacks in our crowded kitchen - always the gathering place. 

Now, whenever my extended family gets together, someone is whipping up a batch of cookies at least once a day. Our kids have been trained in cookie-making from young ages and they do a lot of the cookie baking these days. Most of us have developed our own special versions of the oatmeal chocolate chip recipes we made and experimented with when we were growing up.  Shawni brought a great oatmeal-heavy recipe from her mother-in-law to our family. Jonah perfected a fabulous recipe including ground flax seed instead of some of the butter. Saydi created a recipe that includes coconut and rice crispies for an added twist. Oatmeal is a staple in pretty much all our recipes as are semi-sweet chocolate chips but more recently Levain copy-cat recipes entered the scene and those non-oatmeal chocolate chip cookies have become a favorite as well (this is my favorite recipe for Levain copy-cats). Everyone has their strong opinions about what's the best recipe but luckily, since we make cookies repeatedly when we're all together, everyone gets a chance to make their favorite recipe.

Here are a few photos I found quickly and easily of cookie-baking experiences over the years:

my sister Saydi making cookies with Ashton and Isaac the night before the twins were born

Ashton doling out the cookies to siblings and cousins

Liza and Silas work as a team to make cookies
(this is how many should fit on a cookie sheet for the recipe below - and the cookie scoop is a great thing!)

Anyway, over the years I've fine-tuned what is now MY favorite oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. And here it is - for posterity - and for those who might want to try it out!

Here's how the cookies from this recipe are supposed to look
(the twins wanted them for their birthday "cake" a couple years ago)

Best Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Loosli Family Favorite

This is the recipe we've come up with after lots of trial and error over the years. It's super yummy and we love doing different variations – sometimes with chocolate chips and dried cherries or craisins and coconut, other times with chocolate chips and raisins, sometimes with chocolate chips and walnuts. As this recipe uses ½ the butter and less sugar than most recipes and has lots of oatmeal and some flax seed, it's quite healthy as far as cookies go.

This recipe makes the equivalent of a double batch of most recipes - about 40 cookies. If you want a smaller batch, cut it in half. Or make the whole batch, cook half and make the rest into dough balls to freeze and cook later.

Cream together:

2 cubes butter (1 cup) - softened

½ cup ground flax seed

1 ½ c. brown sugar (loosely packed)

1 c. white sugar

3 large eggs 

2 tsp vanilla

Then add:

1 ½ c white flour

¾ c. whole wheat flour (or more white flour for a total of 2 1/4 cups)

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

MIX IN with the rest, adding one cup of flour at a time and mixing until smooth

then add, one cup at a time:

3 ½ cups quick oatmeal

1 c. chocolate chips (or 1 1/2 cups if you like them more chocolaty)

Optional: (you can cut down a bit on the chocolate chips if you want to add all this stuff)

1 c. raisins, craisins or dried cherries

1 c. flaked sweetened coconut

1 c. rice crispies

1/2 - 1 c. chopped walnuts

Preheat convection oven to 350 degrees. Drop by spoonful (or cookie scoop) onto a cookie sheet. Should fit on two cookie sheets if you do 5 rows of 4 (plus there will be a little dough to eat!). Cook for 8-9 minutes. Take out when slightly brown on edges but still a bit doughy looking in the middle. Once cooled, put in the freezer if you'd like to have them remain super fresh for use in the future. Or eat the day you bake them!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies - Happy Fall!

Today is the first day of fall.  I love fall.  I love love love love love it. As summer falls away, the sun gets softer and the temperatures are perfect 70's. The light is somehow more beautiful.  The evenings and mornings are crisp. Hints of red and gold appear in the trees. And we've settled into a nice routine with school and lessons by the time autumn comes along.

To celebrate the first day of fall today, I kept Eliza and Ashton out of school an hour longer after we finished their eye appointments (Liza's eyesight is a bit better but she still needs glasses, Ashton's 20/20 - headaches he's been having must be from something else and I guess the focusing problems I talked to his math teacher about must be because he's got a kid next to him who's a talker, not because he can't see the board).  We've got the school carnival to help with all afternoon and evening so the only time we could do our first-day-of-fall tradition of making pumpkin cookies would be while they were out of school for the eye appointments.

Liza and Ashton were very happy to skip just a bit more school so we could make the cookies together.  And wow, are they ever good!  I've eaten 3 (plus way too much cookie dough).  But hey, they have lots of healthy pumpkin in them - and some whole wheat flour...

Here are the cookies - plus a leaf we found on the first brilliant fall tree we've seen -
it was right by our car at the eye doctor's parking lot.

Here's the recipe in case you want your own delicious fall treat:

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 ¼ cups canned pumpkin (one 15 oz can, however many cups that is!)
2 ½ cups sugar
½ cup canola oil
½ cup applesauce
1 tsp vanilla
4 cups flour (I like to do 3 cups white flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour)
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
1 1/2 - 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (depends on how chocolatey you want them to be)

Mix together all the wet ingredients and sugar.  Then add the flour one cup at a time, mixing between each cup. Add the baking soda and spices with the last cup of flour.  Then fold in the chocolate chips. Add a cup of chopped walnuts or pecans if you like (I usually do).

Drop by spoonfuls onto cookie sheet sprayed with non-stick spray. Bake at 350 for 10 - 12 minutes – be sure not to overbake! Take cookies out when they’re still a bit doughy looking. Makes about 40 cookies.

Enjoy!

Now I'm off to help set up for the school carnival.  How do I always end up helping with these things? At least I don't have 2 wandering toddlers to worry about while helping at the school as was always the case a few years ago...