Rhubarb Crumb Bars (Web)

As I mentioned before, I am going to be replacing some of the recipes in the book with other Martha Stewart recipes. If any of the recipes in the book have nuts that I'm too allergic to, I'm not making them, and in order to keep the amount of recipes at 175 I will just use some recipes from the web.

Which is actually pretty brilliant because I had subscribed to Martha's "Cookie of the Day" e-mail list. This makes it a lot easier to find replacement recipes.

I got this recipe from the e-mail list about a week before we got rhubarb from our farmer. Leave it to Martha to have all the seasonal recipes perfectly timed. I was excited because it was something different, and it's always exciting to use fresh, local, seasonal produce in cooking or baking. The recipe calls for 1/2 a pound of rhubarb, and we got 1 pound and didn't have any other plans for it, so I doubled the recipe.

I must've miscalculated something in the doubling process. The cake part wasn't quite right. There wasn't really enough of the cake batter to cover two 8inch square pans. But I went with it anyway. When these were immediately done, they were still too tart from the rhubarb. There isn't a lot of sugar mixed in with the actual rhubarb, it more gets its sweetness from the sugar crumb topping. The next day, some of the sweetness from the crumb had settled into the rhubarb and it was delicious.

I know for sure something was wrong with the measurements because I ended up making these again, and again doubling it, but the cake batter part came out completely differently. The second time, the one pictured here, came out perfectly. It was a perfect crumb cake bottom. Dense and rich and sweet. The crumble topping, of course, is delicious. It's melted butter and brown sugar, how can you go wrong? All together the bar is absolutely delicious. Sweet and tart, rich and satisfying, just perfect. I'm slight obsessed with it. It's a good thing we will be getting at least a pound of rhubarb every week until our farmer runs out. I will be making a lot more of this.


Yield:
Recipe predicts: 16.
Actual: 12, I cut them bigger.

59 recipes down, 116 to go.

Mocha Shortbread Wedges (Pg 133)

Some of these recipes are just starting to seem redundant. There's so much shortbread, and as much as I love shortbread, how many different kinds do you need? I just recently did the Cocoa Shortbread and that wasn't very exciting. This was a little bit better, it was thicker and made in a round pan like normal shortbread wedges. The texture was nice. But it was just kind of....uninteresting. It has espresso powder in it, hence "mocha" in the title. Coffee with chocolate is always nice. But I was honestly just bored. Seriously, just bored.


Yield:
Recipe predicts: 8
Actual: 8

58 recipes down, 117 to go.

Earl Grey Tea Cookies (Pg 231)

I'm not one to toot my own horn, but I have to say that I get tons of compliments on my baked goods. I'm good at baking. It's a gift.

However, what I do not have a gift for is making round cookies actually....round. This is yet another recipe that requires the dough to be rolled into a log and refrigerated. This one recommends using a paper towel tube to keep the round shape, but I didn't happen to have any of those on hand. And even when I have used the paper towel rolls, the cookies still don't come out perfectly round, so I've pretty much given up. They'll be whatever shape they want to be.

They came out rectangular, with somewhat rounded edges. Like most of these cookies turn out. Whatever; a cookie's a cookie, no matter what the shape.

Looking at these, everyone thinks they're poppy seed. Even after eating them, they usually think they're poppy seed, because there's citrus in them so people think it tastes like lemon poppy seed. This pretty much proves my theory that poppy seeds have no flavor. If it looks like a poppy seed, you'll assume it's a poppy seed because you can't really identify the flavor.

The little black flecks in these are definitely not poppy seeds. Rather, they are tea leaves. What you do is actually cut open an earl grey tea bag and put the tea in with the flour. I guess if you had tea leaves instead of tea bags, you could grind the tea leaves into a finer powder, using a coffee grinder or a food processor.

These also have orange zest in them, to give it a nice little bite. As I said, the flavor is not really identifiable. But they do taste very good. They have a shortbread consistency, which everyone loves. Even though they fool you into thinking they are poppy seed, I call these a success.


Yield:
Recipe predicts: About 8 dozen.
Actual: 4 dozen.

57 recipes down, 118 to go.

Oatmeal Bars with Dates and Walnuts (Pg 216)

I apologize for the ugly picture and that I didn't take the time to arrange them nicely for the photo shoot. Making these bars was a traumatic experience for me, one that left me so scarred that  I slowed down my baking a lot.

Although, to be honest, it was also the coming of beautiful warm weather that made me slow my baking a little. I mean, who wants to be in the kitchen all day with the oven on when it's 85 degrees out? As much as I love baking, in weather like that I'd much rather be sitting outside in the sun reading Twilight, but that's another story.

But I digress. We all know about my nut allergies. I have to be careful when I'm baking with nuts. I've baked with almonds with not much of a problem, and I've baked with pecans and just had some uncomfortable itchiness but nothing too bad. Well, as the title of this recipe suggests, it had walnuts in it. Apparently walnuts are pretty dangerous to me.

I was very careful not to touch them at all. I had to toast them so I poured them from the bag onto the baking sheet and spread them around with a spoon, no touching. Throughout the whole process I used a spoon to scoop them, spread them, etc. Well, all the caution was not enough, because apparently I can't even breathe when I'm in the same room with walnuts.

My reaction wasn't as bad as it could have been. I didn't go into anaphylactic shock or anything like that, but I did get a horrible case of hives on my arms. Hives don't sound that bad, but these were bad hives. I won't get into all the details because it would be disgusting and you would no longer have any interest in reading about food. Suffice it to say, it was very uncomfortable. My body fighting the toxin made me so tired I took a 2 hour nap, and when I woke up the hives were still bothering me. I even had to call out of work.

I had a hard time believing I could get such a bad reaction just from being near walnuts, but there was no other explanation for that reaction. So I didn't bother with arranging these all nice and pretty for a picture, because obviously I didn't want to touch them. 

I unfortunately now must alter this project a little bit. From now on I will be avoiding recipes with walnuts, and probably peanuts also. I am going to replace them with other recipes from Martha Stewart so that I still do 175 recipes, some of them just won't actually be from the Cookies cookbook, but I will note them at the time.

My mother tried one of these bars and said they tasted like a hippie made them. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but that's the only feedback I had on these so that's all I can tell you.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: About 2 dozen.

Actual: I don't know, I didn't count.

56 recipes down, 119 to go. 

Cranberry-Pistachio Cornmeal Biscotti (Pg 160)

This was nearly one of the most exciting moments of my life. Making biscotti. Seriously. I never thought I could do it. Even with all the baking I've been doing, there are some things that for whatever reason I have convinced myself are too complicated. This was one of them. It just seemed way out of my league and way too complicated.

I was so wrong. It was so easy. The dough was really basic and then I just shaped it into two "logs" which were more rectangular than round. The logs are baked once, then taken out and sliced into these beautiful biscotti shapes, and then baked again. Viola. Super easy.

Not to mention super delicious. I love pistachios, maybe because it's a nut that I'm not allergic to so I find it exciting. But I really do love pistachios and I love cranberries. The cranberries were a bit much. I'd make them with a little less cranberries or even without, because the dried cranberries always stick in your teeth. Or maybe that's just me. There's also cornmeal in the dough which gives it a nice crunchy texture. Very delicious and definitely worth making again.

Yield:

Recipes predict: About 2 dozen.

Actual: About 2 dozen.

55 recipes down, 120 recipes to go.

Coconut Biscuits (Pg 249)

These were supposed to be crunchy. They came out more chewy. It could've been because I added a tiny bit too much water.

It was a really weird recipe. There's no butter or eggs; just flour, sugar, and shredded coconut and then you add water to turn it into a formable dough. Apparently it's a traditional Jamaican recipe, which made it sound really good to me. But I really think they didn't come out exactly right.

They were alright, cos you've got all those sweet coconut flakes. It can't really be bad. But it wasn't that impressive. Maybe if they came out crunchy that would've been nice, but like I said, they were chewy, and a bit sticky.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: About 3 dozen.
Actual: 1 dozen. Eh.

54 recipes down, 121 to go.

Iced Hermits (Pg 102)

I'd been wanting to make these for a long time but I never had candied ginger on hand. One time I bought candied ginger but it all got eaten before I got to making these bars. So this time I got extra, some for eating and some for baking.

The actual bars here were so delicious. Tons of great gingerbread-like spices: ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, cloves. And dark brown sugar instead of white sugar, and molasses. Seriously, this combination is just so delicious. So these were really similar to the Gingerbread-Whote Chocolate Blondies but the difference was the little extras.

Instead of white chocolate chunks this has raisins and candied ginger in it. Obviously the candied ginger is for the topping also, but there are also bits of it in the actual bar. I'm not crazy about candied ginger, and the kind I got this time was a little extra spicy, so I wasn't crazy about it from that perspective. If it were just raisins I would've loved it, and if it was chocolate I would really really loved it, but then it'd be just like the other ones.

Apparently the reason these are called hermits is because they're better after they've been stored away for a couple days, like hermits. It gives the flavors more time to mingle and deepen. I've actually found that most cookies are better after a day or two for that very reason.

Yield:
Recipe predicts: About 3 dozen.
Actual: 2 dozen.

53 recipes down, 122 to go.

Cocoa Shortbread Diamonds (Pg 155)

I love shortbread and I love chocolate. Nothing should be better than these. But alas, they weren't that great.

They weren't bad, they just weren't great.

Shortbread is supposed to be thick. These were thin. I'm not sure why. I think if I made the same dough and just put it in an 8inch square pan and made it thicker and just cut it into rectangles it would've been better. But this dough was rolled out to 1/4 inch thickness. I probably rolled it too thin, but 1/4 inch is still pretty thin.

The recipe says to cut these into diamond shapes, but guess what? I don't have a diamond shaped cookie cutter. I know, my kitchen is so poorly stocked. So I just cut these into, as you can see, rectangles. There was also supposed to be a white chocolate drizzle. I just thought it wasn't necessary so I didn't bother. I know, I'm so lazy. So this is what these are supposed to look like, and you can see how mine looked.

So they really came out more like wafers than shortbread. Not bad. They could've been a little more chocolately. But overall I was not impressed.

Yield:
Recipe predicts: 1 dozen.

Actual: Almost 3 dozen, but I made mine a lot smaller.

52 recipes down, 123 to go.

Carrot Cake Cookies (Pg 202)

Oh the sandwich cookies. There are so many in this book. It's kind of out of control. All the ones I've made so far have something in common: they really don't need to be sandwiches.

Don't get me a wrong, a sandwich cookie is nice and everything, but it's just so much. And they're hard to eat because the frosting middle always oozes out all over the place. I prefer to take them apart.

Anyway, the idea here is to have a little carrot cake sandwich. The cookies themselves are very cakey, which I love. They are chock full of shredded carrots, raisins, and oats, making them chunky and satisfying. They really do taste like carrot cakes, they're just in cookie shape. And then, of course, it's a classic cream cheese frosting for the middle.

I really liked the cookie on its own, and I would've just eaten them as carrot cake cookies without any frosting. Once you get to the part of making the frosting and whatnot, you might as well just make carrot cake cupcakes, or just go all the way and make a carrot cake.


Yield:
Recipe predicts: About 3 dozen.
Actual: 2 dozen.

51 recipes down, 124 to go.

Gingerbread-White Chocolate Blondies (Pg 191)

I didn't even eat any of these because I don't eat white chocolate, but I'm in love with these. Look how pretty they are.

I will definitely make them again, and I will make them either with no chocolate or with dark chocolate chips.

It was supposed to be made with white chocolate chunks but I didn't have a white chocolate bar, so instead I used white chocolate chips. There's really no difference, honestly.

The batter was so heavy I could hardly spread it in the pan. It's made in a bigger pan than the usual 8inch square brownie/blondie pan. The recipe actually calls for a 12x17 inch baking pan. That's very large, apparently. I don't remember ever seeing one. I used a 9x13 inch, which is still pretty big. So the blondies themselves are supposed to be a little bit thinner because the batter would've been spread out more, but I don't see how that's possible because the batter was really heavy and didn't like being spread around. I just left it in a pretty big lump in the middle and it spread out during baking.

I tasted the batter itself before I added the white chocolate chips and it was delicious. It has molasses and ginger and cinnamon and lots of other gingerbread-y stuff, and I love gingerbread. So yum.

Someone who ate one of these said they were like heaven. I can't verify that, but I'll just say these are pretty darn good. Gingerbread is always a winner and these were very moist and gooey. Definitely a keeper and definitely will be on the menu for holiday baking.


Yield:
Recipe predicts: 4 dozen which would be 48.
Actual: 20 but that's really because the pan wasn't the right size.

50 recipes down, 125 to go.

Chocolate Waffles (Pg 214)

This was so much fun. I love trying new things and I love it when something is different and unexpected. Like a cookie that's impersonating a waffle. How cool is that?

The dough is pretty similar to any chocolate cookie, except it does have more eggs (4, to be exact) which I guess helps it say together when it's in the waffle iron.

The only waffle iron we had in the house happened to be a belgian waffle iron, which obviously makes a thicker, bigger waffle. This is what Martha's looked like. I think the shapes I was getting were a bit different than what you'd get from normal waffle iron, but you still get the waffle effect. I think they're pretty cool.

The cookie was good but I think it was a bit on the dry side. The chocolate glaze was good but I didn't really have enough to cover all the cookies I made, so I used it sparingly. And the confectioners' sugar is really just to add to the illusion of it being a waffle. So they were fun to make and a cute idea but as a cookie there are other tastier choices.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: About 4 dozen.

Actual: About 3 dozen, but they were bigger than they should've been, so that's probably why.

49 recipes down, 126 to go.

Other Baking

As I said before I sometimes get distracted from my project and start doing lots of other random baking. I'm in the kitchen so much now that I've actually come to really love it. Also, I've been getting a really great response to the things I've been baking for friends and family and I've been getting people requesting specific things and I've been experimenting with gluten free baking and lots of other fun things. So I wanted to share some of what I've been up to.

Quite obviously, this is a birthday cake. It was for my nephew's 4th birthday, and there he is enjoying his birthday moment. So what's with the inside of the cake? It's a checkerboard cake. We've had this checkerboard cake pan in the the house pretty much forever, and I've been wanting to make one pretty much forever. 

It was pretty tricky to make. It takes a lot of patience. There's a divider that you put in the round cake pan and you have to alternate chocolate and vanilla cake batter and make sure they don't get mixed in together. And you have to do that three times. But look how cool it is! It was definitely worth the effort. I'm not sure my nephew fully appreciated the checkerboard design, but he definitely enjoyed eating it.

Is it a cookie, a brownie, a pie, a cake? What is it? It's a Brookie! I had so much fun with this. I actually had taken a little break from baking, about a week without baking anything, and I mentioned that I was anxious to bake and try something new. A friend of mine recommended I try this because she had just seen it on the Martha Stewart show. A cookie meets a brownie. Genius.

The recipe calls for making them in mini pie pans, but I didn't have enough of them so I just made one that way. Also it seemed way too large for such an indulgent treat. So besides the one round one, I put the rest of the batter and dough in a brownie pan and cut it into squares. I liked the squares better.

These were really delicious. The cookie was great and the brownie was amazing. Really rich and delicious. And you can see in the second picture how the chocolate was all melty and gooey. Yum yum yum.

I have quite a few friends with allergies, and one of my joys is providing them with tasty allergen-free baked goods. Sometimes it's gluten-free, sometimes gluten-free and egg-free, sometimes gluten-free and sugar-free, nut free, dairy free, etc etc. As crazy as it sounds, these kinds of challenges are really exciting for me. A lot of the stuff I've made hasn't really worked, and a lot of it comes out really delicious. I find it very satisfying and fulfilling when the recipes work.

These chocolate chip muffins were gluten-free and egg-free. For the first time I used flax seeds as a substitute for eggs. I had heard about it and I was very curious about it because it sounds so strange. Surprise of surprises, it totally worked. You have to grind the flax seeds up in a coffee grinder and then let them sit in water for about 10 minutes, and then it becomes a gooey gelatinous substance, similar to eggs. I think with eggs they would've risen a little bit more, but these had a nice moist yet crumbly texture. They were tasty. 

OK, it's not a dessert item, but bread still counts as baking. It turns out I love baking bread. This was an Irish soda bread I made for a St. Patrick's Day party. It was delicious. Seriously. So sweet and rich and delicious. I ended up making like, 3 loaves of it cos it was so great.

This is a gluten free Focaccia bread. I would've liked it if it had risen a little bit more, but obviously the gluten-free is going to be a little different. It was delicious anyway. The topping is red sea salt and some mixed herbs. I felt it was maybe a tiny bit too salty, but still delicious. I enjoyed it very much and will be making it again.

Still 127 recipes to go.

Cranberry Shortbread Hearts (Pg 114)

We all know how much I love shortbread. Just the thought of shortbread makes my heart melt. It just makes me so happy.

My baking pantry is a little crazy right now due to this project. Every time I'm at the store I find a few random things and I think to myself  "I probably need this for a cookie recipe at some point" and then I buy it. So I have lots of random things and then when I need to decide what to bake I rummage through everything and go over recipes and compare what I have to what I need and figure something out.

This is why sometimes my entries are widely spaced out. Sometimes I just don't have what I need and I can't manage to figure anything out. I'm past most of the basic ones that don't have weird random ingredients.

So flipping through the book and finding this recipe and discovering I actually had dried cranberries got me very excited. It's shortbread, how could I not be excited? So it was pretty much just a basic shortbread recipe plus dried cranberries, which I had to chop up which was a very sticky task.

Other than that there's not much to say. I obviously didn't make them into hearts. It didn't really make sense to make them into hearts. They were baked in a square brownie pan and then I would've had to cut hearts and then I would've had all the in-between pieces of shortbread. It seemed wasteful. I don't like to waste cookies. So I just cut them into rectangles as I would with brownies in the same pan. Not as cute as hearts, but just as tasty.

I actually wasn't crazy about the cranberries in this. They didn't really add enough flavor, and they were just sticky. But hey, it's shortbread so it's delicious. I love it.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 1 dozen hearts.

Actual: 20 rectangles.

48 recipes down, 127 to go.

Chocolate Charms (Pg 110)

My Mom re-named these Dirt Cookies. That's not as gross as it sounds, trust me. But let's be honest, they do kind of look like little clumps of dirt, don't they? They also have the texture of dirt. Like you know how you see cakes that are decorated for Halloween with crumbled up Oreos to look like dirt and then there are gummy worms coming out of the dirt? See, dirt is not always gross. If it's chocolate dirt, it's not gross.

There's a strong possibility that I messed these up, but I'm not entirely sure. It might just be a weird recipe.

After mixing the dough I noticed it was very dry. It wouldn't really hold together at all, it was just all crumbs. But the dough was meant to be refrigerated and that usually makes it hold together better. But it was only supposed to be refrigerated for 1 hour and I left it in there for almost 3 days. Hey, stuff happens. I don't always get right back to my baking when I expect I will.

3 days later the dough was still very crumbly and not holding together. But I have a feeling it was going to be like that no matter how long I left it in there, so if I made a mistake it was in the measuring for the dough.

The warmth of my hands as I was rolling it into balls helped it stay together, but it wasn't as neat as it was supposed to be. These were really supposed to be perfectly round little domes, and the cocoa powder was supposed to be completely coating them. The idea, as the book describes it, is that they look like a truffle, but then when you bite into them they're crumbly like shortbread.

Interesting idea, I have to say. I just didn't really want to dump all that cocoa powder all over the place. I treasure my cocoa powder. It all just sounded too wasteful, so I lightly sprinkled just a few for the picture.

These tasted good. Chocolate will always taste good. But they were pretty dry. You really had to have a nice glass of milk to wash them down, and in that case they were awesome. Without the milk...well, you know, they were dry. And had the texture of dirt.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 3 dozen

Actual: 2.5 dozen.

47 recipes down, 128 to go.

Maple-Pecan Shortbread (Pg 124)

This was one of those times that I wondered what I have gotten myself into with this blog/experiment.

Not to say that I regret starting or I am not enjoying it. I am loving it. Seriously: love, love, love.

But of course I knew that there would be some recipes that would be a pain in the neck, and the blog really wouldn't be interesting if there weren't some of those. So this was one of them.

First annoyance is that it called for cake flour. I'll have you know I was on a search for cake flour for quite some time. It's in this recipe and a few others throughout the book, so it's been in the back of my mind whenever I'm at a grocery store that I need some, and I had never found any. Then I needed to make a birthday cake for my nephew, so I really needed cake flour, and still couldn't find it. So I did some research online and found out you can actually make cake flour! You just add 2 tablespoons of corn starch to 1 cup of flour.

That was when I got really nerdy and I got excited about my new-found baking knowledge. It seems now I'm constantly running into recipes that call for cake flour, and now I know that if I can't find it in the store I can make it. This is so exciting.

Of course, then I found cake flour at the one store that I hadn't looked at, the one store that I never thought to look at, and it happens to be the one closest to my house. Go figure. But at least I know what to do in a pinch.

Next annoyance: pecans. I'm allergic. Nuts are a very dangerous allergy. I get scared to work with nuts. I should probably wear gloves to protect myself if I have to chop nots or whatnot, but I don't. I just try to get it done really quickly and then I wash my hands. Well the thing is with these that there are pecans in the actual dough, and the dough had to be rolled out to cut the circles, and then the nuts had to be placed on top for decoration which means pawing your way through the bag of nuts to find the ones that are pretty enough to be decorations. So this is a lot of handling of nuts.

I think my reaction was maybe caused more by fear, because my allergies are not as severe as they used to be. But after I had been working on the rolling and cutting and decorating for more than an hour, my hands started to get itchy and red. I gave up. My Mom was kind enough to help by finished the last couple batches, and then I just sat staring at them.

They were quite the adorable little cookies, so I didn't mind staring at them. They're brushed with egg before placing the pecan half on top, so it gives it a little shiny finish. Isn't it pretty?? I like the way they look. Of course, I couldn't eat one but I can tell you that they smelled magnificent. That might've just been the maple syrup but it could've been the maple and pecan combo, which apparently is delicious. I've heard that these taste very good. The texture was not very shortbready, but maybe it was just because my DIY cake flour didn't work, but it worked in the cake I made so that doesn't make sense. So I think this just wasn't a very shortbready cookie, so the title is misleading, but other than that it seemed good.


Yield:
Recipe predicts: 2 dozen.
Actual: Over 6 dozen. What? I guess I used a smaller cookie cutter, but I think they were a decent size.

46 recipes down, 129 to go.

Coconut Macaroons (Pg 62)

This was exciting for me. I had always been really curious about macaroons. Why? I'm not sure. I guess just because I couldn't eat them, because since I was young I was allergic to eggs. But with age (your body changes every 7 years, right?) and changing my diet, I have overcome my egg allergy. It's a long and complicated story, but now I get to eat macaroons!

I don't think anything could be easier to make. Coconut flakes, sugar, and egg whites and there you go. They were a little difficult to mold because the coconut flakes were unsweetened and they were completely dry so a lot of little flakes escaped and ended up all alone and burnt on the cookie sheet. But I guess something like that is hard to avoid, what with coconut flakes being so hard to control.

Besides that little complication, these were easy and fun to make, and they tasted really awesome. The recipe has three variations - the plain coconut, the chocolate chunk, and the chocolate. I didn't make the chocolate because it required changing the amount of coconut flake, and since I was doubling the recipe it just seemed like too much math to separate 1/3 of it out and recalcuate coconut flakes and whatnot.

So I doubled the recipe and then put chocolate chips in half of it. Both were really delicious, but I'm partial to chocolate so that was the one I liked better. I think the chocolate ones honestly would've been a bit too chocolatey, it might've taken away from the lovely coconutey flavor. I love coconut, and it's nice with chocolate, but you don't want the chocolate overpowering the coconut.



Yield:
Recipe predicts: 1.5 dozen, but I doubled the recipe so it should've been 3 dozen.
Actual: 5 dozen (half plain and half chocolate chunk)

45 recipes down, 130 to go.

Chocolate Chip Cookies for Passover (Pg 167)

I was very, very pleasantly surprised by these. As I said before I was doing a whole bunch of Passover cookies, and this one actually had Passover in the title so I had to make them.

Again, these look like normal cookies, don't they? But they are not made with flour like normal cookies. They are actually made with matzo meal and matzo farfel.

Don't get me wrong, I like matzo. But I never would've thought it could make a decent chocolate chip cookie. I mean, matzo tends to be a bit...dry. OK, that's an understatement; it's very dry. The dough itself was very dry. It was hard to form into balls because it would just kind of fall apart into little chunks. It has eggs in it to hold it together, but it's just not quite enough to really form a solid dough. But  the baking process really works some magic and they come out as actual whole cookies! And they taste really good!

It's seriously surprising. They're not moist but they're not crunchy either - they actually have a really nice texture. And because there's no leavening they're a lot lighter. They're satisfying but you don't get that heavy dense feeling like you sometimes get from cookies.

These were so good that after I gave them all away (which was only to 1 person because it didn't make a lot) I made more of them for my family and some other friends. I actually made a double batch so I could share with lots of people, because they're so delicious.


Yield:

Recipe predicts: 2 dozen.
Actual: 1.5 dozen.

44 recipes down, 131 to go.

Almond Macaroons (Pg 91)

In honor of Passover I made a whole bunch of Passover-friendly cookies for some Jewish (and non-Jewish) friends of mine. These were the first of the Passover-friendly cookies.

They might look like they are normal cookies made with flour and everything, but if they had regular flour they wouldn't be Passover-friendly, would they? They are actually made with confectioners' sugar and almond paste. 

I find it very interesting that sugar and almond paste can make a cookie dough. I guess the almond paste on its own is practically a dough. I mean, they use almond paste (or almond meal or almond something) to make marzipan which they sculpt into cute little shapes as cake decorations. I find that so fascinating.

I usually don't feel bad about the food allergies I have, but this is one of the times I wished I wasn't allergic to almonds, because I'm afraid to handle the almond paste too much. If I could handle almond paste more I would really love to experiment with marzipan and other fun things. 

I somehow made these cookies way too big, which I seem to do very often. I promise I read the instructions very carefully over and over again and it very clearly says "drop batter by tablespoons full" which I definitely did. I think maybe they should've been teaspoons full. In the picture in the book, the decorative almonds are pretty much the same size as the cookies themselves, and the almonds on mine are definitely not taking up the space of the whole cookie. Also it made exactly half of the cookies it should've.

I've heard these were very good, but of course, I couldn't taste them. But I do like the way they look, even if they should be smaller. 

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 1 dozen.

Actual: 6 cookies.

43 recipes down, 132 to go.

Sand Tarts (Pg 127)

I guess I underestimate myself and I tend to think I don't have a lot of patience. I guess the fact is I choose what I have patience for. For baking, I have patience, and it's when I make recipes like this that I realize how much patience I actually have.

Rolling this dough took an enormous amount of patience. The dough was very dry and crumbly and it had to be rolled very thin. And the cookie cutter was big, so it required rolling a piece of dough smooth and even enough to cut out one or two 3-inch circles. Rolling is always tricky - getting the pressure just right, having just the right amount of flour so the rolling pin doesn't stick but not too much flour that it makes the dough dry, on and on. So this was quite the challenge, but I do love a good baking challenge.

When something like this is very challenging and as I'm working on it I'm wondering why I'm bothering, I always think about how pretty it'll look when it's done. I guess it's the artist in me. I have the patience simply because I keep telling myself it'll look pretty when it's done so it's worth the effort.

These did look awfully pretty. The almonds were another challenge because I'm allergic, and I had these sliced almonds but do you know how many of them are pretty and perfect? Not many. So I had to sift through to find nice ones and my hands got a little itchy. That's why I made the last couple batches without any almonds. Plus these are meant to look like sand dollars, and I looked at some pictures online and I decided the cookies would look more like sand dollars without almonds. So I made all the sand dollars different - because in nature they are all different.

Of course I ate some of the ones that didn't have almonds. It is a very nice cookie. It's crisp and it has a little bit of lemon zest and I always love that tartness in the sweetness of a nice sugar cookie. That's pretty much what it is, a sugar cookie with almonds on it and cinammon sugar sprinkled on top. Very tasty, and very pretty, but a whole lot of work that I'm not inclined to do again anytime soon.

Yield:
Recipe predicts: 2 dozen.

Actual: 34 cookies, almost 3 dozen.

42 recipes down, 133 to go.

Giant Chocolate Sugar Cookies (Pg 163)

I know it's hard to tell what size these are from the picture, but I'll give you a hint. They're not "giant."

My lovely friend Amy joined me for a day of baking and we had already made a couple of batches of cookies. I was winding down for the day, as I tend to do, but Amy was on some sort of sugar rush and insisted on making another batch of cookies, so I let her pick one. This is what she picked. 

I was happy with her choice. These looked mighty tasty, and hello, they're chocolate and we all know how I feel about chocolate. So we happily whipped up a batch. And honestly, there's not much to say. It was pretty much...uneventful. It was a chocolate cookie.

The recipe says the yield will be 8 cookies. That's because they're giant, but as I said, these were not. I just didn't feel like making giant cookies, so I made them normal size, and guess how many it made? 41. Yeah. I'm sure a giant cookie is nice sometimes but I'd rather have a normal size cookie and I'd rather have 41 cookies to give away because that way I can give 10 cookies to each person, or something along those lines. After all I cannot eat so many cookies, whether it's 8 giant ones or 41 regular size ones, so they get given away.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 8.
Actual:  41.

41 recipes down, 134 to go. 

Lemon Poppy Seed Crisps (Pg 262)

This whole lemon and poppy seed thing is interesting. Don't get me wrong, I like it. Actually, I'd have to say that I love it. But the same day I made these I also made lemon poppy seed muffins (they happened to be gluten free, made with coconut flour, but that's another story) and they were delicious, even though half of them stuck to the muffin paper.

Anyhow. I was enjoying some lemon poppy seed muffins and lemon poppy seed cookies, and I just started wondering to myself, are the poppy seeds even necessary? I'm not sure what they really add. Lemon is such a strong flavor on its own it can overpower almost anything. And poppy seeds....do they even have any flavor? I mean I've had them on bagels and I can't really say what they taste like, it's more that they add an interesting texture.

It makes me wonder. Would these be just as good without the poppy seeds? I think they might.

They were absolutely delicious. They totally didn't work as the recipe stated, but they were totally awesome anyway. This was one that was supposed to be rolled into a ball and then rolled in sugar. The sugar was mixed with lemon zest - yum! Well there was no way in heck this dough was going to roll into a ball. It was very moist and sticky. Ball rolling requires a nice, dry-ish, dense-ish dough, not one that gets stuck to your palms. So I had the sugar mixed with lemon zest (yum!) and I just dropped tablespoons full of dough onto the cookie sheet, then I sprinkled the sugar mix on top, then sprinkled with poppy seeds.

There probably was something wrong in my measurements, or temperature of the butter, or some such thing, which is why the dough was wet and they didn't come out crispy. But do I care? No. Because they tasted darn good. But I think it's because lemon plus sugar equals deliciousness, I don't think it has much to do with the poppy seeds.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 2.5 dozen

Actual: 2.85 dozen (34 cookies)

40 recipes down, 135 to go.

Icebox Spirals and Bull's-Eyes (Pg 117)

Oh dear. Another disappointment. In the book these look so cool, and they seemed really interesting and fun to make.

They were indeed interesting to make. Fun? Not so much.

Admittedly the dough was really easy to work with, a great consistency for rolling out. Not too dry and not too sticky. But then comes the part of measuring rectangles and rolling logs and refrigerating and putting together and rolling and refrigerating and.....I'm tired just remembering it all.

The bull's eyes are made by rolling either the light or dark dough into a log, and then rolling the opposite dough into a rectangle large enough to roll around the log. I tried this two different ways. I tried it the way the book says, which is to first chill the log and the rectangle in the fridge. I also tried by just doing it as soon as I rolled them out. My way worked better. The issue was once the dough was chilled it was too hard to work with, so I couldn't wrap it around the log easily.

A similar challenge came with the spirals. The process is to make two rectangles of the same size, chill them, then lay one on top of the other and roll them into a log. Once again, once the dough was chilled and hard, it was difficult to roll.

Besides all that, they are log shaped and as we know my log shaped cookies never turn out to be actual circles, but more like rounded rectangles. As you can see in the pictures, these all came out looking a bit....strange. Some are big, some are small, some are round, some are rectangular. They're just all over the place.

Besides all that, they didn't even taste all that great. The raw dough actually tasted better. Something happened along the baking way that made them less flavorful. Some people seem to like them, but I'm not impressed.

Or I just don't like cookies anymore. Is that possible? Hmm.....


Yield:
Recipe predicts: About 5 dozen.
Actual: 7 1/2 dozen. Whoa.

39 recipes down, 136 to go.

Anise Drops (Pg 64)

I'm one of those strange people who really likes black jelly beans and black licorice. Your Mother probably warned you about people like me.

For those who don't know, that strange, indescribable flavor of black licorice comes from an herb called Anise. Hence, I like to call these "Black Jelly Bean Cookies" even though they are not black and look nothing like a jelly bean.

Needless to say, I love these cookies. I must admit they are pretty strange. Anise is not a flavor you expect from a cookie. The texture is also unexpected. It's chewy on the inside and the outside is almost like a crisp wafer.

A lot of these got stuck on my cookie sheets but then I realized that I wasn't quite baking them long enough. They got stuck because the centers were still a little soft and the outside hadn't completely hardened into the wafer shell. So I cooked the last batch a minute longer and they came out perfectly, but before that there were a lot of mushy cookie centers being stuck to the cookie sheet. The cookies are still edible, of course, they just have a bit of a hole in the bottom.

I have to warn people before they eat these. Before I offer you one, I will ask you if you like black jelly beans. If you don't like black jelly beans, you will not like this cookie. If you do like black jelly beans, you'll probably love this cookie. I love it.


Yield:

Recipe predicts: About 4 dozen.
Actual: About 3 dozen.

38 recipes down, 137 to go.

Pistachio Lemon Drops (Pg 94)

I am not a fan of these cookies.

First of all, there is no butter in the dough. Second of all, there is hardly any flour in it. Who ever heard of a cookie dough that has no butter and 1 tablespoon of flour?? Not I.

Apparently the finely chopped pistachios, along with a whipped up egg white are supposed to hold these together. I mean, sure, they held together, but there's no substance. There's also light brown sugar in them. So what they end up tasting like is pistachios sprinkled with light brown sugar. I like both pistachios and light brown sugar, but not together, apparently.

Also, I resent the fact that "lemon" is even in the title, because there is so little lemon juice in it you can't even taste it. Really. No lemony taste.

Oh well. My Mom said they were good, but I wasn't impressed. Onto the next one.


Yield:
Recipe predicts: About 2 dozen.
Actual: 16 cookies. Hmm.

37 recipes down, 138 to go.

Other Adventures in Baking

Alright I admit it. I have a hard time focusing sometimes.

This "baking my way through a cookbook" thing is very fun and I'm always doing something different which I love. But I've ventured off a little bit and found myself spending some time with other baking projects.

I made these precious little cupcakes for a friend's birthday. They're actually a Martha Stewart recipe so I'm still on track in that respect. It's a basic yellow cupcake. I was a little challenged with the frosting. It was like a regular buttercream but for some reason it had milk in it, and as I was following the recipe I was thinking "This is going to have to make it too thin." Lo and behold. Very thin frosting. And I kept adding more confectioner's sugar to thicken it up but I actually didn't have enough! So I ran out and I had to stop with this consistency. It wasn't bad. It was not quite as thin as a glaze but it was kind of in that ballpark. It still tasted great!

Last week was Purim, and I had a special request for gluten free Hamentashen. How could I resist such an exciting new project? I have been doing quite a bit of gluten free baking and I'm really enjoying it. Plus I've always wanted to make Hamentashen because they are so darn cute and so darn tasty.

As usual, I wasn't entirely happy with the appearance of these, but considering how difficult the dough was to work with I'm actually pretty impressed with myself.

Gluten free dough tends to be very very sticky. Since gluten is the protein that actually binds wheat together, without gluten baked goods wouldn't stick together at all, so xanthan gum is added. Xanthan gum makes it really sticky. Like, really really sticky. Like I almost glued my hands together. But I figured out that dipping my hands in ice water helped when I was forming the cookies. I dropped some strawberry jam in the center, dipped my hands in ice water, and folded the edges up. It took a while and it was crazy but it was fun, and the cookies tasted delicious.

This cake was my first ever attempt at gluten free. I have to say the attempt was a success. I have to work on the frosting a little but the cake itself was outstanding.

I wasn't really sure what to expect with gluten free baking. I knew the texture would be really different, and for some reason I thought it would be gritty or chewy or just something weird. On the contrary, the gluten free stuff I've made so far is super light and fluffy. There's an almost airy quality. For cake it's really nice.

I got a lot of compliments on this cake. I tasted a bit and it was really good, but I don't really know what to compare it to. Someone said it was better than some professional cakes. I gave myself a little pat on the back for that.
;)


Still 139 recipes to go!

Citrus Cornmeal Shortbread (Pg 142)

Have I mentioned that I love shortbread? Yes I have. I love shortbread. This is no exception.

This is another one of those buggery recipes where you make a log of dough and then slice it. I really like these in theory but as I've said before I just have such a hard time getting a perfectly round cookie and it drives me crazy. I guess I should learn the lesson not to be as hard on myself when things aren't perfect, but that seems to be a tough lesson for me to learn.

These have orange zest and cornmeal in them. It's an interesting combination, but it works. I tend to really like the cookies that have citrus in them. The citrus is never overpowering, it just adds a little tartness, a nice little bit of interest.

These being shortbread they are dense and rich with buttery goodness. They're small. Again, like little tea cookies. They are definitely quite a nice little treat.


Yield:
Recipe predicts: 3 dozen.
Actual: 5 dozen. Seriously.

36 recipes down, 139 to go.

Lime Meltaways (Pg 121)

I've had some challenges with these cookies that are shaped into logs and sliced. See Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C. I guess they don't look all that bad, but I'm a perfectionist and I'm bothered that they are not perfectly round. The dough, while it's sitting in the fridge, gets flat on the bottom. One recipe says to put the dough in a paper towel tube. That helped, but then as you're slicing it the bottom gets flat. One recipe said to continually roll it while you're slicing it, after you slice a few cookies, so it doesn't do that. That helps. But still none of them are perfect, and that bothers me.

So I thought I'd trick the dough this time by not even trying to make it round. I tried to make it a rectangle. That worked until I tried to slice the cookies. I guess the rectangle was too long and each cookie fell apart right down the middle. Foiled again.

So I went to the other go-to method: roll the dough in balls! I rolled a bit into a ball and flattened it with my palm. Viola! They look like little buttons. Aren't they precious?

They are very small. I guess they're nice little tea cookies or something like that. My Mom nicknamed them "Fairy Cookies" which is very fitting. They're little and delicate and sweet. I'm usually not a big fan of the little delicate cookies but these were really good. They're almost shortbread-y in texture so they're still really rich, what with all the butter. Butter makes everything better, obviously.

They're coated in confectioner's sugar while they're still warm so they have that nice snowy coating. The lime is not overwhelming. It just adds a nice little tang to the sweetness. I like these a lot.

Yield:

Recipe predicted: 5 dozen.
Actual: 5 dozen plus 2.


35 recipes down, 140 to go.

Magic Blondies (Pg 180)

I'm not sure what's supposed to be "magic" about these. Is it that the blondies magically turned themselves into cupcakes? That seems less like magic and more like me putting blondie batter into cupcake pans. Maybe I'm just underestimating my magical powers.

This one surprised me, because I keep seeing it in the book and I've really had no interest in making it. But obviously I have to make everything, so I was looking for something to do yesterday and I figured I might as well. Also I wanted to do some of the "Nutty & Chunky" ones cos I have a bunch of nuts that I've bought and I need to use them. Of course, I didn't have the right kind of nuts for this one. I needed chopped walnuts. I had lots of other nuts and no walnuts. But I looked through the recipe and I thought to myself, I just don't think the walnuts are necessary.

I know, I know, I've been saying I'm following every recipe exactly. But after I made the Double Chocolate Coconut Cookies I realized that a lot of these recipes are just overloaded with stuff.  Coconut flakes, nuts, chocolate chips, dried fruit, like everything under the sun you can think of. I made an executive decision. I decided it's not necessary.

So this blondie (in cupcake form) was supposed to have coconut flakes, chocolate chips, walnuts, and dried cherries. No walnuts. Plus that's better for me cos I'm allergic to walnuts so now I can eat them. Score.

I was surprised with these. They're good! The blondie batter was really smooth and sweet and delicious. Then all the stuff is mixed into it, and then you keep some of the stuff aside and sprinkle it on the tops. This is another thing I'd change. I'd just sprinkle a little bit of coconut flakes on top, mostly for looks. The dried cherries that were on top got too dried out, and the chocolate chips that were on top got too gooey and dripped all over the place. But other than that I really like these little guys. It's a cute idea.

Yield:
Recipe predicted: 12.
Actual: 12.

34 recipes down, 141 to go.

Dark Chocolate Cookies With Sour Cherries (Pg 98)

So this is another one that for some reason I had been really looking forward to. Apparently when I get too excited about a recipe and look forward to it too much, I'm disappointed in it.

First of all it took me a while to find dried "sour" cherries. Did you know that they always sweeten them? Yes, they do. I finally found them at Fairway, of course.

One thing I didn't like about this finished product is that it was too much. I've had that complaint about a few of the recipes so far. This one is chocolate dough, chunks of bittersweet chocolate, and the sour cherries. If I do them again it'd be without the bittersweet chocolate chunks. I'm not crazy about chunks in cookies anyway cos they get all melty and gooey and they're messy to eat and to store. So there's that. It's also just so much chocolate. And come on, I love chocolate, I have no idea why I'm saying this, I just felt the chocolate kind of overpowered the cherries. Maybe I've just been eating too many cookies and I'm sick of them. I never thought that would happen.

It probably is just my cookie overdose that's making me saying all this, cos I brought them to some friends and everyone said they were really delicious. I'm over cookies. For today, at least.


Yield:
Recipe predicts: About 3 dozen.
Actual: Exactly 3 dozen.

33 recipes down, 142 to go.