Tonight I was not lazy.
Conrad headed off to the airport, heading to Richmond for a couple of nights. No sooner was he out the door than I had some fennel, shallots, and garlic in a pot, setting the stage for a dinner of fat mussels.
They really were very good - I think I could have cooked them in dishwater and the mussels would still have been lovely. How nice that I had a tasty tomato broth instead.
Some salad, some cheese with walnuts and olives, some white wine. I was set. I was full. My pants will fit tight tomorrow.Worse for my waistline? Dessert. What was that you ask? Numerous finger dippings and pinches of dough as I made two batches of cookies and two cakes.
I played around a bit with a maple walnut cookie recipe I found on Joe's blog (Joe, if you read this, is the dough supposed to be dry? I ended up adding an extra egg to help bind it, and I wonder if I somehow misread how much fat or fluid was otherwise supposed to be in it). The cookies taste quite lovely - I'm a huge fan of maple and walnuts in any case - but I think they aren't a great first attempt.
The other batch are the peanut butter cereal cookies. Again, I think not a great first effort (Joe calls for Cap'n Crunch while I used Peanut Butter Puffins, for example), though I imagine someone at work tomorrow will be glad to have one or two for dunking into coffee.I'm not posting the cakes. Simple cakes. I started making Karen Barnaby's fresh ginger and buttermilk cake and fond myself having to improvise a little when I found I was missing an ingredient or two. The other is a lemon poundcake from a cookbook by Cindy Pawlcyn. She makes it with almond ground with the sugar, but, lacking almonds I've gone with Pistachios. It will soon come out of the oven. I think I'll cool and wrap both, freezing them for later consumption.
Ugh, I think I've eaten too much sugar tonight.
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7 comments:
What a nice way to cap off my evening...reading a blog from Peter :)
PS - I like the thick-looking cookies! Are they the peanut-butter ones?
The ones in front are the maple walnut, the ones in back are the peanut butter cereal.
And thanks!
:-)
Oooh...it's the maple-walnut ones that look just splendid, then...nice and thick...more to sink my teeth into! :)
Peter - of course I'm reading!
I went back to my notes and it says that the dough should be fairly dry and almost crumbly (but not quite) so you get thick cookies. However, I think 3 cups flour might be a bit too much, especially if you have a heavy hand with measuring flour. 2 1/2 to 2 3/4 cups might yield a better dough with enough power to stay thick.
I love Babara's puffins and was wondering if those cookies would work with them! What didn't you like about them? Our cookies were fairly firm, but not crunchy or crumbly as some peanut butter cookies can be.
Ah, Joe, I'm glad you responded!
It sounds like the dough initially turned out close to what your notes indicate, but I will try it with a little less flour next time.
I love the Puffins cereal, never fear. Here's the funny thing I'm unsure of: I've never eaten Captain Crunch. So, in measuring out the amount of whole cereal, is it turning into the same amount of crumb or not? The puffins are big and kind of airy, so would they yield as much volume of cereal when crushed as the smaller-looking Captain Crunch?
The cookies are tasty, I will say, though I may have baked them a bit long. I used dark brown sugar this time, though I suspect you used light brown sugar in yours. Is that correct?
All in all, the colleagues downstairs are not complaining about them in the least. I let them know that I'm auditioning cookies for Christmas baking, and they dig right on in!
Peter -
This is a very good point. The crunch cereal is very small and much more dense than the light puffins, so I would think that you could have been short on total cereal amount. I wonder if I gave you the weight of what that much crunch cereal is if it would even out?
I did use light brown sugar, dark would work, but the molasses flavor might compete a bit with the light peanut butter flavor.
I need to get going on my Christmas testing!
Peter, Peter...I had peanut-butter Puffins for the first time today...and I thought of you :) I was in the States at a friend's wedding. I'll email you more details...
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