Valentine owls/harts

Time for Valentine day. Not that I would be a big fun of the circus going around it :), but I like to take the opportunity and celebrate just about everything. With cooking. Or baking. Not to mention that we were asked by the teacher to bring in decorated hart cookies, not less than 24. Huhhh... huuhhh.. I mean, I'm gonna make owls as well :D. Huhuuu!
I decided to use my Xmas vanilla crescent cookie recipe to make the Valentine harts (for the kiddos) and owls (for the teachers). I made slight modifications to the recipe to make the cookies a bit less soft, not because they are bad that way, but rather because I want them to be harder, not to brake right away in the kids' hands.
The shape idea came from the ArtCorps lessons where I saw some great owls recently, and accidentally I stumbled over a double-hart shaped cutter at Marshalls.. A while ago I saw a pic of an owl cookie somewhere, and just combined the three things together..
Tadaaaam.... and the friendship owls were born. And I'm dead tired 'cause it is over midnight and I just got the last tray out of the oven. Tomorrow still decorating the harts.. Ayayayyy...

Ingredients:
300 g pastry flour (you can use half whole grain as well)
200 g butter
80 g icing sugar (if you make the owl and don't use icing, you can add 100 gr sugar)
100 g almond flour (ground almond)
1 tsp vanilla aroma (optional)
1 egg

Decoration
colored icing, you can find how to make your own here

Mix the butter with sugar until creamy (and vanilla, if you add any), mix in the egg, add the almond and the normal flour, and work it well together in a soft dough. Place it in the fridge for about 30 min. The butter will harden again to make it easier to work with.
Roll it out thin, about 3-4 mm and cut it with your favorite cookie cutters.
Place them on trays covered with parchment paper. Bake them for 10-15 minutes at 175 C (350 F), depends how golden you want them.. My oven is not heating up very well, so I baked them for 17-18 min..

Prepare the icing in your favorite color, for Valentine white, pink and red are working just fine. Decorate the harts with dots, lines, etc.

For the owls, pinch the top of the hart a little, cut the bottom of the owl not to be so pointed (optional), cut \small circles (1 cm) of the though, place two of them on the upper part of the harts (for eyes) and place a mini chocolate chip in the middle of the circles.
If you make a round owl make small cuts on the bottom as feathers. Place an un-peeled almond for the beak.
Sprinkle them with the vanilla sugar while still hot.
Be careful, for the first half a minute/minute they are fragile, not so fragile though as the vanilla crescents.

Aranygaluska - golden wallnut dumplings

Nah, finally one of the things our family likes the most, yeast based goodies.
I'm cheating a bit with my aranygaluska recipe, traditionally a yeast based, spongy, walnuty Hungarian cake, and here are the reasons...
First of all, I fell in love with the cardamom in the Finnish "pulla" dough, so I add cardamom in my Hungarian aranygaluska, which is very untypical. You can omit it, if you want something more original..
Second, my kids don't like walnuts in cakes, so I replace it with almonds. You can stick to the walnuts.. (Or, if you are allergic to nuts, you can omit both the almonds and walnuts, and just triple the cinnamon portion for stronger taste.)
Third, I add a bit of cinnamon.. Just 'cause I like it :).

Ingredients
25 g icing sugar
250 g all purpose flour 
25 g butter
20 g fresh yeast or 1 tsp dry yeast 
pinch of salt
1 egg
120 ml whole milk
1/2 tsp minced cardamom (optional)
1 lemon peel grated (small lemon, if you have a large one half will be enough)

For rolling
100 g ground almonds or walnuts
70 g sugar
1 tsp cinnamon, flat (optional)
100 g butter

Vanilla cream
500 ml whole milk
1 vanilla bean (seeds)
4 egg yolks (if you like it less"eggy" you can add 3) 
70 g sugar
1 tsp flour 
rum aroma

Let the yeast rise for couple of minutes in the hand-warm milk with a large pinch of sugar.
Add the pinch of salt to the flour and crumble with the butter. Add the remaining sugar, egg, yeast and the remaining milk, and work them nicely together in a soft dough.
Let it rise for 30 min.
Pinch from the dough balls of about 2.5 cm (1 inch) diameter, roll them into the melted butter and then in the sugar/almond/cinnamon mix.
Place them evenly in a buttered and floured 26 cm cake form (not too tight, they will grow still..) and let it rise for another 30 minutes.
In many Hungarian recipes the dough portion is double and there are several layers of dough-balls placed on top of each other. I prefer it this way, and rather bake two portions if needed, as I find the final result more fluffy and light.
Before putting them in the oven, sprinkle on top of the dough-balls some additional butter and almond-sugar mixture.

In a 170C (350 F) preheated oven bake them for 30-35 minutes, on the top rack of the oven.
Serve still warm with the cold vanilla cream.

If you prepare your own vanilla cream, while the dough balls are rising in the baking form you can make the cream.
Whisk the flour evenly in 200 ml milk, bring them to slowly boil and cook until it thickens a bit, ~5 min, stirring constantly. Add the remaining milk and bring to boil, for additional 3 min.
Mix well the egg yolks with the icing sugar, and pour it into the boiling milk, and let it thicken for additional ~3 min but DON'T boil it anymore or the egg will cook and it will have a terrible eggy taste, again stirring continuously.
Remove from heat and let it cool.
Serve with the aranygaluska.

Vanilla/almond crescent shaped cookies or Vaníliás-mandulás kifli

I have a favorite Xmas and New Year coffee cookie, a kinda linzer if you want to give them some names.
They are VERY easy to make, trust me, don't bother with the ones in the shop which are full of E-s :).

Ingredients:
250 g pastry flour (you can use half whole grain as well)
200 g butter
80 g icing sugar
100 g almond flour (ground almond)
1 tsp vanilla aroma (optional)
Vanilla sugar for rolling the croissants

Mix the butter with sugar until creamy (and vanilla, if you add any), add the almond and the normal flour and work it well together in a soft dough. Form small, about 5-6 cm long and 1 cm thick croissants. Not too big ones, though the dough doesn't have baking powder it will grow pretty big, and don't make them very pointed at the ends either, it will burn too early.
Place them on trays covered with parchment paper. Bake them for 10-15 minutes at 175 C - 350 F(my oven is not heating up very well, so I baked them at 180 C), depends how golden you want them.
While still hot roll them in the vanilla sugar if you like them sweet, if you prefer them moderately sweet is enough if you just sprinkle them a little bit.
Be careful, for the first half a minute/minute they are the most fragile cookies I've ever baked, but eventually they harden enough to be able to manipulate them.

If you want to play with the shapes, you can also roll the dough, about 3-4 mm thick, and cut it with your cookie cutters, and even glue two of them together with jam, like raspberry or blueberry jam.
The dough is not easy to work with in this case, so better use two sheets of baking paper, one below and one on top when rolling, and you'll need some spatula to place the cookies in the trays.

PS. If you live in the US, like I do at the moment, and are struggling finding vanilla sugar, don't panic. Buy a small bottle with two vanilla beans like Simply Organic, cut them, take the small black seeds out and mix it with sugar, kinda filling the original bottle back till almost full, about 100g sugar. You can squeeze even the whole leftover of the beans in the bottle, it will intensify the flavor.
Close the cork and let it soak in the aroma for a week at least for best results.