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.
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