Gingersnap Palmiers (Pg 51)

So I didn't completely fail at this recipe, but it wasn't a total success either. I guess I'd give myself a B-. There were a few complications, and most of them I blame on my oven, but I'll get to that.

If you're like me, you're wondering to yourself, "Self? What the heck is Palmier? How do I even say that?" Of course, if you know how to speak French you're probably not asking yourself the second part of the question, but I asked myself. It's pronounced "pahlm-YAY" but I like to say it phonetically, cos I like to do that with French words. It's funny. It's funny to me, at least.

So I'm browsing around online for information about these cookies, and a lot of pages say "This is a simple recipe!" Well they weren't talking about

the recipe from the Martha Stewart cookbook.

It started out simple. You don't even have to make the dough, it calls for

pre-made pastry dough. And then you make a mixture of sugar with some

spices, and you make a syrup of brown sugar, molasses and freshly grated

ginger. All you have to do is sprinkle the sugar mixture on the dough, then brush the syrup on, and then you roll both ends to meet in the center. Then you put the logs of dough in the freezer. 

I always make too much work for myself by not reading the directions all the way through before proceeding. And like an idiot, I keep telling myself I will change this bad habit, and I keep doing the same thing over again. In this case I should've saved the sugar mixture and the syrup because they're used again right before putting the cookies in the oven, but I didn't realize and I thought I was done with them so I threw them out. Oops. So I had to make more the next day. Oh well.

So I ran into a huge issue here with my oven temperature. The recipe says to first bake them for 10 minutes at 425 degrees, then take them out, flip them and brush more syrup on them, and bake them for another 10 minutes at 400 degrees. Now, I've mentioned before my oven has a bit of a problem with keeping the temperature steady. I had pre-heated it to 425 and literally left it at 425 for like, 40 minutes while I was prepping the cookies. It stayed constant. Until I put them in and 8 minutes into them baking it shot up to 450 degrees. WHAT THE......?!? 

Yeah, I was a bit angry. Especially because these are made with puff pastry, which, as the name implies, puffs when it's baked. These puffed out way too much and lost their cute little heart shape. One of the things I found online said to watch these while they bake specifically because they'll puff out too much, and it said make sure your temp isn't too high. If I ever bake them again, I'm just baking them at 400 degrees like every other sensible recipe says.

So I was a bit disappointed with the way these looked but they taste pretty nice. I found them to be a bit sticky. The syrup is brushed on top of the cookie halfway through baking. Even though it ends up getting pretty crispy, it's still pretty sticky. But it does taste a lot like gingersnaps, which I love. That would be the brown sugar and molasses, which I love.

Another thing I found online says that these are sometimes called Elephant's Ears. I've never seen a real live elephant ear, but I'm pretty sure that they are bigger than these cookies.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 3.5 dozen.

Actual: 2 cookies short of 3.5 dozen. Huh? I guess I sliced a couple of them too thick.

26 recipes down, 149 to go.

Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies (Pg 67)

I have to admit that I cut a corner on this cookie. I was supposed to use bittersweet chocolate chunks...meaning a full bar chopped into big chunks. Instead I used bittersweet chocolate chips, already made into little chips in the chocolate factory. I'm sorry, I was feeling lazy. The taste is the same.

Another thing I really wanted to cut corners on was this. After the dough is made, it's refrigerated for 2 hours until it's firm. Then you roll the dough into balls, then you put the balls in the refrigerator for 20 minutes, then you roll them in sugar. It all just seemed unnecessary.

I tried one batch without refrigerating the balls. It worked, but I didn't roll them in sugar. The rolling of sugar makes it look prettier.

I think, but I can't really be sure because I didn't test it, that if you don't refrigerate the balls, you can't roll them in sugar because the dough is too sticky. I think the refrigeration makes them firm enough that you can roll them into balls.

I had a casualty while I was making these. I was rolling one into a ball and my Mom was watching TV in the other room and she called me. "Come look at Mickey Rourke when he was young and hot!" she called. How could I resist? I ran into the other room with the cookie dough ball still in my hands and when I saw Mickey Rourke being so young and hot, I was in such shock that I dropped the cookie. I'm just saying, I wish I had had the foresight to put the cookie down before I ran to look at the TV.

I find these a bit too spicy, but that's just me. There's fresh grated ginger in them and ground ginger. I could've done with just the ground ginger. But they are good, and they're pretty. They're nice for Christmas.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 2 dozen 

Actual: 2.5 dozen!

25 recipes down, 150 to go.

Classic Shortbread (Pg 109)

There's something so comforting about shortbread. Maybe it's that it almost tastes like you're eating pure butter. Or it could be that it's just one of those simple classics. It's always the simplest things that become classic and that are so comforting.

I also love that it's so British. I imagine I just took a brisk hike through the English countryside with my Corgis and I'm sitting down to a nice warm cuppa Earl Grey to be enjoyed while reading some E.M. Forster.

Oh, sorry.

This recipe is ridiculously simple. The challenging part was pressing the dough into the tart pan (10 inch fluted tart pan with removable bottom, of course) and making sure it's neat and smooth. I wasn't entirely happy with the smoothness of mine. Some parts were a bit thicker. But it seemed nearly impossible to get it perfect. I tried.

I also wasn't so great with measuring out the center so I could cut a circle out and cut the wedges from the circle. It seemed like I needed some kind of architecture tools or something - like something to find the exact center, one of those little things that makes you draw a perfect circle, and something to figure out how wide each slice should be. My calculations were far from exact. Actually, there weren't any calculations, I just completely eyed it. It was close enough, but some wedges were definitely smaller than others.

Due to not really measuring to end up with exact wedges, I ended up with 9 wedges instead of the predicted 8. Score! So they came out a little messier looking than I would've liked, but they taste so great. The shortbread just crumbles and melts in your mouth. I love it.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 8 wedges.

Actual: 9 wedges!

24 recipes down, 151 to go.

Surprise Cookies (Pg 195)

So these cookies are....interesting. I'd really like to know where this idea came from.

It's a chocolate cookie, baked for about 10 minutes so it's just about done, and then you press half a marshmallow into the center and bake it another couple minutes. And when it's done baking and it's cooled, you put chocolate frosting on top to hide the marshmallow. Hence, the surprise.

I guess the idea is it just looks like a chocolate cookie with a dollop of chocolate frosting and then you bite into it you find a marshmallow. Surprise!

Interesting.

So This is what they look like before the frosting. I kind of like it better this way. The cookie itself is really good. It has whole milk in it so it's a bit more cakey and mushy. I like that. And with the marshmallow slightly baked it's gooey and sticky. I think with the frosting it's just a bit....much. But people seem to like them. I'm on the fence. I'd definitely dig the chocolate cookie on its own.

They were fun to make, but also a bit much. By the time we were putting the frosting on, I was kind of over it. Again, another reason for me to stop before the frosting.

Sarah joined me again for baking these. She's been joining me at least once a week, and she was complaining that there aren't any pictures of her on my blog. So here we are. We are both wearing Starbucks aprons. Aren't we cute? I look a little bit pissed off, but I really wasn't. It's just how I look sometimes.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 2.5 dozen.

Actual: 2 dozen.

23 recipes down, 152 to go.

Cream-Filled Chocolate Sandwiches (Pg 95)

So after my disappointment with the Honey Florentines I wanted to make a cookie. A dense, rich, hearty, comforting cookie. I found exactly what I needed.

I would've made these a long time ago had I had vegetable shortening in the house. It's not something I normally keep on hand, and I kept forgetting it in my grocery trips, but I finally remembered it.

These were well worth the wait. They are delicious. They are dangerous.

They were much easier to make then I expected. The cookie itself is very similar to Grammy's Chocolate Cookies, but of course smaller, and you don't have to refrigerate the dough before baking. I always like that because I can make them on the spur of the moment and I don't have to wait hours or a day before baking.

I have to admit I slacked off a bit and skipped a step when it came to the cream filling. The recipe says to put the cream filling into a pastry bag fitted with a coupler and squeeze a bit out onto the cookie. Well once I made the filling I realized how ridiculous that was. The filling was very thick. It was just butter, vegetable shortening, and confectioner's sugar, so it was like a very heavy buttercream. It was way too thick to put in a pastry tube so I just dropped a tablespoon full on the cookies. It worked out beautifully.

Did I mention these cookies are delicious? It's the type of cookie that's almost a chore to eat, but it's so worth it. The cookies are chewy in the center but a bit crunchy on the outer edges and when you bite into it the cream filling squishes out. You can pull them apart and eat each one separately, or have fun and just eat it as a sandwich. It's not too messy.

It is a very rich cookie. You can't really eat too many of them, unless you're crazy like I am and you can't stop eating them. I had to give them away otherwise I would've eaten all of them in a day and I'm sure I would've gotten pretty sick from that. 

Yield:
Recipe predicts: 2.5 dozen.
Actual: 1.5 dozen. Oops.

22 recipes down, 153 to go.

Honey Florentines (Pg 29)

I really wonder why this recipe is in this "Cookies" cookbook. They're really not cookies, they're more like candy, or brittle. Of course, brittle is considered candy, isn't it? Whatever the case, I just wasn't happy with these.

The entire first chapter of the book is "Light and Delicate." I've been kind of avoiding the recipes in the first chapter because, honestly, who wants a light and delicate cookie? Cookies should be hearty and comforting. I'm not really into these prissy cookies. And I always think they're gonna be way too complicated to make. But then I realized that if I keep putting them off, I'm going to end up having made every other recipe in the book other than these, and I'll have to do them all at once. So I figured I need to start tackling these recipes, and I started with Honey Florentines.

The recipe is like, nothing. Melted butter, sugar, and honey mixed with a tiny bit of flour. Seriously, it's like candy. I was surprised that they came out looking the way they were supposed to, but I really wasn't impressed with how they taste. They're too sweet. I have quite the sweet tooth and I almost never say anything is too sweet, but these were. It's nothing but sugar and honey, of course it's way too sweet. And they're crunchy but they stick to your teeth.

I decided the best use for these is to crumble them up and use them as ice cream topping. I know, that's my default use for cookies that aren't good. What can I say? I like ice cream. I just crumbled these up and I'm keeping the crunchy mess in a ziploc bag in the fridge so I can have it on ice cream.

Yield:
Recipe predicts: 2 dozen.
Actual: I don't know, I forgot to count them before I crumbled them up.

21 recipes down, 154 to go.

Iced Oatmeal Applesauce Cookies (Pg 77)

I'm sad about these. I'm trying not to be too hard on myself but this is the second recipe in a week that turned out wrong and it's a little discouraging. But I shall carry on.

I'm guessing the mishap this time was with the applesauce. The recipe calls for chunky applesauce, and for some reason I couldn't find plain chunky applesauce. The only ones at the store that were chunky had a bunch of other flavors, like cinnamon or other fruit or junk like that. I thought that other flavors would interfere with the flavor of the cookie, so I went for a plain flavored applesauce that happened to not be chunky. I guess it was too thin and the dough came out too wet. And looking back on it, I'd go for the cinnamon flavor applesauce anyway cos the cookies, although they tasted good, they could've had a little more umph.

So once again, I just threw these in the oven and hoped for the best. They flattened out a lot more than I expected. And when I tried to take them off the cookie sheets with the spatula, the centers were all mushy and collapsed.

This picture is a bit blurry but you can see that the centers were falling apart so much so that this one had a hole in it.

As with my other mishaps, these were a mess but they tasted good. I guess the moral of the story is that cookies always taste good. Like I said, they could've had a bit more umph, but that's where the icing comes in.

They are supposed to have a maple syrup icing drizzled on top. That would add a really nice flavor to them, I'm guessing, but I honestly just didn't feel like bothering with it because the cookies just weren't right. I don't really skip parts of recipes like that normally, but I just felt like it was a lost cause so why bother with icing?

So the verdict is: If I can't find plain chunky applesauce, I'll make these again with cinnamon applesauce and I won't use the icing and I think the cinnamon will be a nice addition. If I can find plain chunky applesauce I'll try them again, and in that case I will make the maple icing which will be a nice addition. And they'll be prettier and they'll look like they do in the book which is like this:

Oh well. I live and I learn.

Yield:
Recipe predicts: 2.5 dozen
Actual: 34 cookies, almost 3 dozen.

20 recipes down, 155 to go.