The Great Bear Bake Off

Welcome to

The Great Bear Bake Off!

Three beary energetic young bear bakers square off in a holiday baking challenge.

Our contestants are all amateur bakers:

          

Ben                                   Jake                                   Jerry

We're beary pleased to welcome a special guest judge who will assess the work of our bakers and name a winner: famous English food writer and television presenter Mary BEARy (i.e. Mary Berry).

Welcome Mary, thank you for being our judge. "It's lovely to be with you today, and I'm looking forward to see what these young bakers can do" notes Mary. The baking challenge for today is to make and to decorate Christmas cut out cookies!

Our contestants gather the necessary ingredients and make the cookie dough:

THE RECIPE:

Mix together: 3 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1 teaspoon salt. Add 1.5 cups Crisco shortening into the mixture; work in like pie crust. Add in 2 beaten eggs, 3 tablespoons milk, 1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract, and 1 teaspoon cream of tarter. Mix well; it's easier to mix using your hands. The dough will be very sticky.

Chill dough overnight in the refridgerater. Next day, preheat oven to 350 . Working in batches, roll out some of the dough thinly on lightly floured board or between two pieces of parchment paper. Keep the rest of the dough chilled. If dough becomes too sticky, try not add additional flour (that makes for tough cookies), rather re-chill dough.

Bake for 8-10 minutes and watch carefully, cookies brown quickly. Frost with butter frosting and decorate. Keep finished cookies refridgerated in tins.

Because the dough must chill overnight, our bakers begin to roll out their cookies the next day. Let's see how they're doing. Jake has done a nice job rolling out his dough: "Yes, thay turnned ouT reelly well dude!"

Ben is carefully inspecting his cut outs before he puts them in the oven. He says, "They look good so faR, I hope they tazte great."

After baking all their cookies, our chefs spend quite a bit of time frosting and decorating them with sprinkles and colored sugars. They each then selected two cookies for Mary BEARy to judge.

Mary says "Well these do look like interesting cookies. Let's look at each contestant's cookies separately on the judge's table."

First up is Jake's cookies:

Mary notes, "What festive cookies. I like the use of the candy eyes, and the sugar sprinkles add sparkle and interest. The cookies taste very nice too. Overall, a very nice job Jake!"

Next is Jerry's cookies:

Mary comments, "Hmmm, well we seem to have a problem here; someone has nibbled on one of the cookies." Jerry replies, "That waz Me, I waz hungree!" Mary continues, "although the cookies have a nice flavor, I would have liked to see a bit more decoration, and we can't serve cookies to our holiday guests with bites out of them."

Finally, Ben's cookies:

Mary says, "Now this plate of cookies is what I was looking for. They are baked well, are scrumptious, and beautifully decorated. They would be a lovely addition to any holiday party."

Mary announces, "I think we have a winner of this first Great Bear Bake Off. For his delicious and creatively decorated Christmas cut outs: Ben!"

Congratulations Ben! Ben receives an autographed photo of Mary and basket of baking essentials: a new rolling pin, lots of cookie decorations and sprinkles, and new cookie cutters.

Are you baking any cookies for the holidays this year?