Baking inspired by books - Snickerdoodles

During the winter I love eating snickerdoodles because they just taste like Christmas and happiness, and they are certainly my favorite cookies in the cold months, so I'm eating way more of them than I'm supposed to. (Also, I'm really sorry for the terrible lightning of the picture beneath.)

"We are in the kitchen. Margot is at the table on her computer; I am sitting next to her, rolling cookie dough into balls and dropping them in cinnamon and sugar. Snickerdoodles to get back in Kitty's good graces. Earlier, when I went in to say good night, Kitty rolled over and wouldn't speak to me because she's still convinced I'm going to try to cut her out of the Paris trip. My plan is to put the snickerdoodles on a plate right next to her pillow so she wakes up to the smell of fresh-baked cookies." (To all the boys I've loved before, chapter 1)

Before reading To all the boys I've loved before by Jenny Han (you can read a review here) I've never heard about snickerdoodles because they are pretty unknown here in Germany. So when I read this amazing book I had no idea what kind of cookies these are (I even thought they had something to do with snickers), but since Kitty is so obsessed with them, I searched for a recipe and made them. I'm honestly so glad I did because I just love them so much!

Ingredients:

-230g flour
-1/2 TS ground cinnamon
-2 TS baking powder
-1 pinch of salt
-115g butter
-150g sugar
-1 egg
-1 TS vanilla extract/8g of vanilla sugar
-sugar and cinnamon for cinnamon sugar

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 190°C.
2. Stir your butter, then mix in your sugar and vanilla sugar/extract, add your egg and stir everything together.
3. Mix your flour with the salt, cinnamon and baking powder in a seperate bowl.
4. Stir your flour mixture in the butter mixture until you have a nice dough.
5. Form small balls of the dough and roll them in cinnamon sugar.
6. Bake them for about 10 min until they start to turn golden-brown.

I hope you enjoyed this recipe. Happy baking!

Leah

Baking inspired by books - Lemon cakes

I just want to say at the beginning of this post, I'm nothing close to a professional baker, but I simply love baking, so I thought I'll share this really easy and quick recipe with you, that reminded me so much of one of my most favorite book series. I hope you'll enjoy reading this and maybe you'll even give it a try!

"There's going to be lemon cakes and tea," Sansa went on, all adult and reasonable. Lady brushed against her leg. Sansa scratched her ears the way she liked, and Lady sat beside her on her haunches, watching Arya chase Nymeria. "Why would you ride a smelly old horse and get all sore and sweaty when you could recline on feather pillows and eat lemon cakes with the queen?" (AGOT, Sansa I)

Later came sweetbreads and pigeon pie and baked apples fragrant with cinnamon and lemon cakes frosted in sugar, but by then Sansa could not manage more than two little lemon cakes, as much as she loved them. She was wondering wether she might attempt a third when the king began to shout.(AGOT, Sansa II)


As every reader of the A song of ice and fire series by George R.R. Martin knows, Sansa Stark absolutely LOVES lemon cakes. The last time I ate lemon cake before reading these fantastic books was probably over five years ago, so I wanted to eat some and when I made them, I realized they taste amazing. They're really lemony and pretty moist (God, I hate that word) and just delicious. One small warning: the "frosting" (or whatever you wanna call it) is really sweet (and quite unhealthy), but since Sansa has such a sweet tooth, I'm sure she'd love it. The lemon cakes are probably not fancy enough to be similiar to those she ate in King's Landing, but I can definitely see her snacking on them with Sweetrobin in the Vale!

Ingredients:

Batter:                                                                     Frosting:
-200g butter                                                            -30g butter
-200g sugar                                                             -30g sugar
-4 eggs                                                                      -1 egg yolk
-1/2 lemon (1 TS lemon juice, lemon peel of half a lemon)                      -30 ml lemon juice
-2/3 teaspoon vanilla sugar/extract
- 200g flour
-1 pinch of baking powder

Instructions:
1. Preheat your oven to 175°C (Use the hot air function)
2. Stir your butter, then mix in your sugar and vanilla sugar/extract first and add the eggs one by one and mix everything together.
3. Add in your flour, baking powder, lemon juice and peel and stir until you have a creamy batter.
4. Put the batter in any kind of baking pan or mold. (I used really cute looking flower shaped silicon molds.)
5. Bake them for about 15-25 minutes. Make sure to take them out of the oven BEFORE they turn golden-brown. Let them cool for 20-30 minutes before you add any kind of glaze or frosting.

6. For the glaze, melt your butter, then add in your sugar in small portions and stirr until it's completely dissolved. 
7. Add in your egg yolk and place the container with the mixture over a pot with boiling water and let it sit there for at least 10 minutes to kill off possible sallmonella in the raw egg yolk.
8. Mix the mixture once it's cooled down a bit with as much powdered sugar as you like to create a pretty thick glaze. Spread it onto your lemon cakes, let it harden and enjoy! (Use some lemon peel to decorate and make them look extra fancy.)

(Just mix 1 teaspoon lemon juice with about 30g powdered sugar to create an even simpler, yet still delicious glaze for the lemon cakes.)

So I really hope you enjoyed this slightly different post and you understood all the steps! I won't share recipes often, but whenever a book inspires me to bake something specific, I'll probably post it here. Happy baking!

Leah