Key Lime Bars (Pg 303)

What I'm really loving about doing this blog is that I'm ending up doing things I never really thought I'd do, and in the process learning that they are easy, fun, and I really enjoy them. The Key Lime Bar is an example. I was slightly dreading making these and I'm not really sure why, but fate had nother plans for me.

My sister happened upon some key limes at the store and thought I might need them for a recipe so she was nice enough to buy them for me. There are a couple of lime recipes in the book but this is the only key lime recipe, so then I needed other very specific ingredients like graham crackers for the crust and condensed milk for the filling. My sister was kind enough to buy all of the above for me, but as she just told me, she didn't think I was actually going to have the nerves to make these bars. Nice vote of confidence, eh? 

So apparently there is a difference between limes and key limes, and whoever invented key limes is crazy.They're just like regular limes, but even smaller. They're really small. So each one doesn't have very much juice in it and doesn't have very much zest on it.

This is where the right tools really come in handy. I had squeezed a couple limes with a little hand squeezer and it was taking forever, so I got one of these. It helped so much! I got lots of limes squeezed really quickly and I had enough juice in no time. Hooray. Especially because it was really the juicing of the limes that was the big challenge, the thing that made me not want to do this recipe and the thing that made my sister think I wouldn't be able to do it. If I hadn't had my special lime juicing tool, it probably would've taken me 10 hours to juice all those teeny tiny limes.

Once the limes were juiced the rest of it was actually a lot of fun and pretty easy. Graham cracker crust is pretty basic - just crumble the crackers, mix with sugar and melted butter and there ya go. Easy peasy.
Then the crust is baked and once the filling is added it's only baked again for another 10 minutes or so. So I was pleasantly surprised that this was actually pretty quick and easy, and the results were fantastically delicious. I'll have to keep this one in mind if I never need to bring a nice hostess gift to a party or something. (Hint hint, someone invite me to a party.)

19 recipes down, 156 to go.

Coconut-Cream Cheese Pinwheels (Pg 61)

Wow. What a process to make these cookies. Sarah was joining me again and we had already done 2 other batches during the day and this was our 3rd recipe.

Needless to say, we were a little tired and weren't quite feeling up to the 20 different steps in the process of baking these. Seriously. We made a couple batches and then refrigerated the rest of the dough for the next day. So this was a 2 day process.

The process is this: Make the dough and the filling. Refrigerate the dough. Roll out dough and cut into squares. This was my favorite part. I love rolling dough and I got this neat little ruffly edge cookie slicer which is like a pizza slicer. It was fun to make the little squares.

Then the squares of dough have to be refrigerated for 15 minutes. Then you put a dollop of the coconut-cream cheese filling in the middle of each square. Then you slice diagonal lines from the corners to the dollop of filling. Then you fold every other tip down to make a pinwheel and press the center pieces of dough together and make a well in the top.

Are you still with me?

Now you use a pastry brush to glaze the tops of the pinwheels with beaten egg and then sprinkle them with sanding sugar. Then you bake for 6 minutes. Then you take them out and put the strawberry jam in the well in the center. Then bake for another 6 minutes.

Seriously. I was getting a little bit annoyed, so it was good that I was baking with someone else. I don't think I'd have the patience to make these on my own. And I can't even eat these because I'm allergic to the cream cheese, so I don't even know if all the trouble was worth it. I have heard (from my Mom and from Sarah) that the cookies are really good. Maybe they're worth it.

When I was rolling out the squares I had one little bit of dough at the end that wasn't really enough to make the right size square, so I just left it in an un-shaped lump and baked it. Sarah decided to put a dollop of filling and strawberry jam in it as she was doing with the rest of the squares, but it came out just like a little cup instead of a pinwheel. We agreed that it's pretty cute - like a little flower. Our verdict is that if we make these again, we'll just make them look like this and not bother with the pinwheel thing because it was just too much. They will still taste just as good if they look like this.

Yield:
Recipe predicted: 2.5 dozen.
Actual: 2 dozen.

18 recipes down, 157 to go.

Rum Raisin Shortbread (Pg 134)

So this is the 17th recipe I've made and so far there have been a few recipes that I wasn't entirely pleased with, but none of the recipes have actually failed.

There's a first time for everything.

As we all know, I love baking with rum and I had really been looking forward to making these shortbread cookies. I just love rum soaked raisins. I have a really good recipe for Rum Raisin Cupcakes and I made them for Thanksgiving last year. I am somewhat ashamed and somewhat amused to say that my 90 year old Grandmother got a little bit drunk from them; the frosting was just buttercream with rum. Delicious.

Anyway, onto the shortbread. I have no idea what went wrong. My friend Sarah was baking me with again and we were going along smoothly as usual, and after we mixed up the dough we had to shape it into logs. We realized something was wrong at this point, we just weren't sure what was wrong or what to do about it, but the dough was obviously too wet. Something must have been mis-calculated, mis-communicated, mis-measured, something along the way. Sarah and I are both very precise in our measurements, but this was just off.

Knowing it was too wet, we shaped it into lumpy logs and shoved it into paper towel tubes and refrigerated it and hoped for the best. But when I tried to slice it it was still pretty mushy and the knife just kinda crushed it into lumpy...blobs. Mushy lumpy blobs. It's especially weird because it's supposed to be shortbread, which is typically very dry. Again, I just hoped for the best and threw them in the oven. You can see how they came out.

They were burnt around the edges and still kinda under-baked in the centers and when I tried to remove them from the cookie sheet they just crumbled. It was all very sad.

The really really really sad part is that they taste amazing. Did I mention that there are rum soaked raisins in them? And did I mention that there's shredded coconut? And did I mention that there's orange zest? And all these things combined are really yummy. It's just really too bad there's not much of an actual cookie here. But I couldn't possibly throw this away. I figured there are a few options for it:

1) Cereal. Here it is in a bowl. Just add milk.

2) Ice cream topping.

3) Yogurt topping.

4) Just eat the crumbly mess with a spoon. It's good.

I will try these again sometime because I'm sure something went wrong and I really want them to work out. They're so delicious.

Yield:
Recipe predicted: 4.5 dozen.
Actual: One giant, crumbly mess.

17 recipes down, 158 to go.

Sweet Cardamom Crackers (Pg 263)

I'm not entirely sure why these are called crackers. I guess mostly because of the way they look. But as we all know, looks can be deceiving, and this is a perfect example. Although they look savory, they are definitely sweet and definitely very much a cookie. A very tasty cookie.

I liked making these. The dough was simple to make and was refrigerated for a couple hours, although it seemed like it was firm enough even after one hour refrigeration. It was a pretty cooperative dough to work with in the rolling and cutting department. Instead of using a cookie cutter you just use a pizza slicer and slice squares. I was very particular about it and got out the ruler and measured the squares, but if you wanted to be lazy you could just eye it. Some of my squares got a little squashed into rectangles anyway.

The topping is sugar, shredded coconut, and chopped pistachios mixed together and sprinkled on top before baking. It's a really great combination of savory and sweet, and it plays into the idea of it being like a cracker, with the pistachios being a nice little touch of savory.

The texture of the cookie itself is very light and almost pastry-like. The problem with really light cookies is that I want to eat them all. I always want to eat all the cookies, but when they're light I feel like it's not as bad of an idea. But I held myself back, honestly.

Yield:
Recipe predicted: 2 dozen
Actual: A little over 2 dozen, 28 cookies to be exact.

16 recipes down, 159 to go.

Pfeffernussen (Pg 131)

So here it is a month after Christmas and I'm still making Christmas cookies. Well, for a cookie this delicious I don't think anyone would blame me. I'll probably make these in August just for the heck of it, because they're so good. And for some crazy reason, I just really love shaking cookies in a bag of powdered sugar. It's the simple things in life.

It's obvious how a cookie becomes such a classic. The dough is simple, the process is simple, you don't need any fancy equipment, and the results are amazing. Spicy and sweet, just like I like 'em.

In case you're wondering, Pfeffernussen translates to "pepper nuts" but don't be fooled, there are no nuts. Allegedly they were named after nuts because of their shape. Wikipedia begs to differ with Martha on this, saying that nuts are traditionally part of the recipe, but we all know that Wikipedia is not the most trustworthy source. I'm gonna stick with Martha on this. No nuts.

Yield:
Recipe predicted: 3 dozen
Actual: 3 dozen

15 recipes down, 160 to go.

Double Chocolate Brownies (Pg 287)

I had a guest baker today! My lovely friend, Sarah, joined me to help with the baking. We got a lot of baking done, and she even brought coffee for my Mom, so I think Sarah will be helping me a lot more in the future.

I was especially thankful for Sarah's help because I was making brownies. I don't have a good track record with brownies. The only ones I've ever made were back in December when I first started this blog and they weren't very successful. The Cream Cheese Swirl Blondies were definitely nothing to write home about, and I really didn't understand the instructions on preparing the baking pan and I made quite a mess.

Of course, since I was dreading preparing the baking pan, and I had someone to help me, I delegated that task to Sarah, and she did a great job. She's apparently made a lot of brownies before and she was very precise in cutting the parchment paper and fitting it neatly into the bottom and buttering everything. I learned from her that this 2 inch overhang of parchment paper isn't really necessary. I was very happy, because that was the part that had given me so much trouble and had made such a mess. I will never do it again. Future brownie pans will not have any such 2 inch overhang of parchment paper, I'm sorry. Look how much nicer it is this way:

The brownies came out really really delicious. I mean, I don't think double chocolate can ever go wrong, especially at a certain time of month for us ladies, right? But seriously, these are really great. I gave most of them away and I really regret it. I keep thinking about all their rich chocolatey goodness. I've been dreaming about them.

I guess I need to make more.

14 recipes down, 161 to go.

Cakey Chocolate Chip Cookes (Pg 198)

It had been a really long time since I'd made chocolate chip cookies. I was definitely due. This particular recipe was intriguing to me because I have a fondness for soft, chewy, cakey cookies. Unfortunately, I seem to mess them up a lot. I guess I'm a little paranoid about under-baking them so I bake them a little bit too much. Or I know I will bake them too long so I purposely take them out sooner than I want to, and then they are under baked. It is quite a delicate balance, and something I am still perfecting.

Unfortunately, I couldn't eat this cookie because I used milk chocolate chips in it. I have my weird food allergies, where apparently I can eat cookies loaded with butter but I can't have tiny chocolate chips that have the tiniest bit of milk. Go figure.

I did try some of the batter and a piece of the cookie that didn't have any chips in it. It really is quite cakey and delicious. On its own it wasn't that impressive, but of course, I couldn't tell you how the cookie is as a whole, chips and all. I've heard good reviews. They do look awfully nice, except I think I slightly overbaked them and they were a bit too dark. Like I said, a delicate balance.

Another mistake I made was apparently I made them too large. The recipe was supposed to make 3 dozen and I made only 16. Wow. I guess I misunderstood how large a "heaping tablespoon" of dough is. I guess I can't win them all.

Yield:
Recipe predicted: 3 dozen
Actual: 16 

13 recipes down, 162 to go.