SATURDAY SCOOPS
Cookies for Christmas

Advertiser Staff and News Services

Gannett News Service

Baking them gives joy, too. May your home be filled with the sweet scents of sugar and flour and everything nice. Here are a couple of recipes:

Cutout Cookies

This dough is soft but easy to work with.

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 tablespoons cream or sour cream
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• Decorations, including colored sugars, cinnamon candy, etc.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients except decorations. Beat on low speed, scraping the sides of the bowl often, until the dough is mixed well. Divide dough in half, smash each half into the shape of a disk no thicker than one inch, wrap in plastic and chill at least two hours.

Heat oven to 400 degrees. On a lightly floured surface, roll one of the dough pieces to one-fourth-inch thickness.

Cut with cookie cutters. Place one inch apart on cookie sheets and decorate with colored sugar, cinnamon candy or other edible decorations if desired. Bake six minutes, or until edges are very light brown. Cool on racks.

Makes about four dozen cookies.

If you want to frost the cookies: Combine four cups powdered sugar with one-half cup butter, two teaspoons of vanilla and three or four tablespoons of milk. Beat until smooth. Divide among bowls and add colors, if you prefer.

Ginger Snaps

Elinor Klivans has written many user-friendly dessert cookbooks. This recipe comes from her "125 Cookies to Bake, Nibble and Savor" (Bantam, 1998). She recommends measuring the oil in a measuring cup, then measuring the molasses in the same cup; that way the molasses pours right out. Try doubling the amount of ginger listed in the recipe.

• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 3/4 cup canola oil or corn oil
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar

Position two oven racks in the lower middle and upper middle of the oven. Heat the oven to 375. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Sift flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg together. Set aside.

Put the oil, molasses, brown sugar and egg in a large bowl and beat on medium speed until smoothly blended, about 30 seconds. On low speed, add the flour mixture and mix until incorporated. Chill 30 minutes or longer.

Put the granulated sugar in a small bowl. Measure a tablespoon of dough. Roll it between your palms into 1 1/4-inch balls. Roll each ball in the sugar to coat.

Place the cookie balls two inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake for 8 minutes, reversing the baking sheets after four minutes front to back and top to bottom to ensure even baking.

The cookies will be evenly brown and have large cracks across the top, and will flatten toward the end of

their baking time. Cool them on the baking sheet for two minutes, then transfer them to wire racks to cool completely. The parchment may be reused for cookies.

Makes 32 cookies.

Tips for better baking

Tips and shortcuts that will help your holiday baking go smoothly:

• Parchment paper is a great nonstick surface for cookie sheets. It also can help speed the baking (you can set up a parchment, then slide it onto a tray). Look for parchment in your supermarket near the foils and plastic wraps. You can reuse parchment several times before it becomes too brittle.
• Good bakers measure carefully. "Winging" or improvising a recipe is possible, but careful measurements make perfect cookies.
• Do you want to substitute salted butter for the unsalted called for in the recipe? That's safer when you're making spicy cookies or rich chocolate cookies. If you are making shortbread or sugar cookies, follow the recipe.
• Cookies freeze well. But to have fresh cookies at a moment's notice, freeze the dough instead, and pull out only as much as you want to bake right away.

Kapolei's 'Sunset' celebrates 100 years of powered flight, 'Pirates' onscreen

An aviation celebration takes place 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day at Kalaeloa Airport, featuring air shows, acrobatic flying and exhibits. Astronaut Carlos I. Noriega, who flew on the shuttles Atlantis and Endeavor, will be at the airport this afternoon. He also will be the grand marshal at the annual Holiday Electric Parade, which begins at 6 p.m. today at Kapolei Hale, traveling down Kamokila Boulevard to the fairgrounds. And Noriega will appear from 2 to 4 p.m. tomorrow at the Sprint Hawaii Family Fun Tent to meet with youngsters.

They didn't forget the movies. Today it's "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," starring Johnny Depp. "Bruce Almighty," starring Jim Carrey screens tomorrow night. Each film begins at 7:30 p.m. and is edited for family viewing. Free.

Attendees are encouraged to bring unwrapped toys for Toys for Tots at Santa's tent in the Keiki Village. The event ends with a fireworks display tomorrow night. Sunset on the Planes hours are 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. today and tomorrow.

Nemo teams with Cousteau in PC's underwater odyssey

Click on the classroom for a look at sumptuous marine life, including coral, butterfly fish, boxer crabs, feather stars, lionfish, coral colonies and many others.

Download the PC screen mate, and Nemo and his friends will swim across your screen. You can also take snapshots with a special camera and e-mail the pictures to your friends.

Music going down at the Beach House

There's a massive musical bash tonight at the Beach House, next to the Falls of Clyde. On the schedule at the Winter Surf Trilogy Budblock XII: two stages including Linus, Last in Line, Amplified, White Lines, Maunawahi, Inoa'ole, Natural Vibrations and others. Doors open at 6 p.m.; for those 21 and older. $10.

'Candy Cane Lane' brings holiday cheer at Bishop Museum

It's a family event filled with entertainment, crafts, holiday train rides, pony rides and a petting zoo, cooking demos, chocolate demos and other goodies.

Admission is $3 per person, free for Bishop Museum members. There are nominal fees for some arts-and-crafts activities. 847-3511.

Journals are great stocking stuffers, easy for little hands to put together

Greeting-card Journals

• 1 greeting card
• 4 to 6 sheets of handmade paper or card stock
• 1 small hole punch or large paper needle (or quilting needle)
• quilting thread, embroidery floss or yarn
• optional: charm or tassel

Choose a greeting card that will look nice as the cover of a journal. Cut the paper or card stock to the size of the opened greeting card, and then trim it one-quarter inch all the way around. Fold the paper in half (fold each sheet separately to ensure a crisp crease).

Thread the needle. Line up the pages inside the card. In the inside of the card's spine, poke the needle one inch from the bottom. Pull it through the outside, up the spine and back through so it is one inch from the top. Repeat twice. Snip excess and tie off on the inside. Tie on a charm or tassel to hang from the bottom or from the outside of the spine if desired.

If using thicker thread, such as yarn, use a small hole punch to be able to feed it through the spine.

Variations: Rip the outer edges of your inner pages for a more handmade look. Make one journal for each family at your gathering. Use solid card stock for the cover and embellish it with rubber stamps, glitter, grommets, vellum paper, ribbons, collage art or embossing powder.