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Cookies
It's the yearly celebration of the Zombie Baby Jesus, and given that you're a totally penniless bike racer, how are you gonna adhere to societal norms of giving worthless shit to people semi-close to you?
Answer: Baked motherfucking goods.
I'm a huge fan of the offerings over on Smitten Kitchen. Deb speaks to my inner Paula Deen on a pretty much daily basis with an amped up dose of sardonic articulation.
On the docket this year: The basic slice-and-bake cookies and homemade oreos. I also made the crispy salted oatmeal cookies raved about, but found them not much to my liking...so I promptly fed them to coworkers and housemates.
Modifications to the slice-and-bakes included a double dose of almond extract, mixed in zest of a couple oranges, then a roll and dusting in a crushed blanched almond/turbinado treatment. I made my logs pretty thin, so the finished product resembled something like a big plantain chip, but g'damn are these good with your morning coffee. Break through the sugary almond crust into a sandy, buttery, citrusy interior. OMNOM.
My molestation of the Oreos was pretty heavy. I was reading horror stories in the comments about how they were rising too much with use of standard baking cocoa instead of Dutch-process. Again, poor, not shelling out $8 for a can of the stuff at WF when I've got a perfectly good tin of Hersheys that's gonna get neglected for the rest of the year - especially when the cream filling is going to be the centerpiece. In hopes of counteracting the puff-puff, I rolled the dough out to about a quarter inch thick and used a cutter for the wafers instead of spooning it out. Success! They puffed a bit in the oven, but then would fall - this was my barometer for doneness. Anywho, wafers done, I went after the cream filling. I abhor veggie shortening - not only is it nasty and boring, if I were to invest in a can it would sit on my shelf until the following Christmas, at which point I'd probably buy ANOTHER can out of concussion-addled forgetfulness. Instead of it, I subbed a mix of half duck fat and half heavy cream for the shortening. A little more liquid than the standard Oreo filling at 75 degrees, but given that Utah's an icebox between Nov-Feb, I'm pretty safe. I also had orange zest from the sliced cookies leftover, so mixed that in with (again) almond extract. Needless to say, between the duckfat and orange in the filling, these are pretty "OMFG" inducing.
My only fear is the Oreos might get lost in the morass of Pillsbury-prepackaged-crap-cookies I keep seeing in vast quantities. Gross.
Anyone else get baking-heavy this time of year? Cookies interest me because the same basic 8-9 ingredients seem to always be able to morph into totally different forms depending on prep. Kinda cool.
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(orange almond sandies atop)
Originally Posted by maunahaole
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