January Frenzy

Since my last post, everything has gotten started up again, which means that I have to convince myself that I do, indeed, have sufficient energy to work hard all day, work out in the evening, and then go to bible study or some other activity after (or before, depending on the day) that.  I'm back on the kind of schedule where I spend my whole weekend in the kitchen preparing food to eat during the upcoming week.  In fact, I'm so busy that yesterday, on my birthday, I didn't even have the time to do anything out of the ordinary.

Yes, I'm 25 now.  All comments about how scary being a quarter of a century old is supposed to be aside, I'm actually really content with where I am in life, and am excited to see where things will go in my future. I'll only start sulking about my age if I hit 30 and still don't have my PhD... but if I can stay focused on my research that will not happen.

I started teaching (reminder: I'm teaching elementary science education) this week, and I have to say that this is, by far, the most fun teaching gig I've ever had.  In class on Tuesday I had to discuss very philosophical things like how to ask good questions and uncertainty, and so - no joke - I had my students count noodles.  The point of this exercise was that I didn't specify what "full" meant for the cups they were filling, plus there is a natural variation in the settling of the noodles, so students got several different counts, and we talked about why that occurred.  It's very simple stuff, but the idea of this course is to highlight the points that are important to bring up when teaching science to K-4 students.  But yes, teaching is awesome.

The cookies I've made over the past couple weeks have also been pretty awesome, despite misgivings I had about both recipes:

133. Chrusciki Leaves
Chrusciki are Polish sour cream cookies that are fried instead of baked.  As a rule, I am not a fan of fried anything, and so the idea of these cookies was just disgusting to me.  The recipe claims a yield of 9-10 dozen, and, even knowing how the yields change completely with unspecified cookie cutters, I knew I would never be able to peddle off a full recipe's worth of these cookies.  Thus, I made a half batch, which still called for half a dozen eggs and yielded about 5 dozen cookies with a standard-sized cookie cutter.

These cookies are flavored with sour cream, vanilla, lemon and orange zest (but I only had orange), and Cognac.  The mix of these is very light, and the cookies themselves have hardly any sugar in them.  Actually, starting out, these cookies have a relatively healthy set of ingredients.

...And then I had to deep-fry them.  Ugh.  Gross.  My apartment smelled like hot oil for days.  But the cookies - oh, the cookies - turned out light and delightful, with a faint flavor that was brought out fantastically by the confectioners' sugar sprinkled on them.  Since they'd been rolled out and cut into leaf shapes, they had a pastry-like texture which I and my friends really enjoyed.  The funny thing is, there's probably the same amount of fat in these as there is in shortbread cookies.  Maybe I shouldn't be so grossed out after all (or maybe I'm going to have to start avoiding shortbread).

134. Raisin Bars
I mentioned that I had misgivings with both of the recipes I'm posting this week, and I guess the potential problem here comes from one of the few ways I am picky - I don't really like raisins very much.  That said, the recipe suggest substituting figs or dates, which are quite similar in flavor and texture, but when I can I try to do things as written.

The crust of these bars is made with vegetable shortening, brown sugar, lots of rolled oats, and the usual mixture of flour, baking soda, egg, vanilla, and salt.  Using vegetable shortening instead of butter made the crust more crisp, and the brown sugar gives it a nice rich flavor.  The filling is chopped raisins, lots of white sugar, apple cider, and water, boiled together with some cornstarch to thicken it.

The filling sandwiched with the oatmeal crumble dough (and baked, of course) was pretty amazing - I'm surprised that both elements were so sweet, but still weren't overwhelming.  I think it helped that there was a decent amount of salt in the crust.  I also, upon tasting these, was reminded of my great weakness: I have no ability to resist food nostalgia.  These raisin bars tasted so much like my Grandma Carol's date bars that I ate like five of them as soon as they were cool.  To be fair, my office-mates couldn't resist either, so maybe it's just the fault of these cookies tasting REALLY good.  Seriously, try making them.  They're simple, and if you're lazy/cheap like me and forgot/don't want to go out and buy apple cider, you can throw in some of a packed of instant cider mix and everything still turns out great.





That's about it for cookies, until tomorrow.  I did want to share one more brief thing, though.  Last weekend I tried a new vegan chili recipe (although it wasn't touted as such), for Sweet Potato and Black Bean Chili.  This is mostly a standard chili, but it has chunks of sweet potato in it, plus ground chipotle (or cut up dried chipotle since I couldn't find the original ingredient at the store) to give it a nice spicy, smoky flavor.  I am running out of gushing adjectives, but I was very impressed by the result of this recipe, and was thrilled to eat the leftovers during the week.  It was even better when I stole some of my boyfriend's spicy chipotle sauce to give the chili more kick (I thought it was a little too mellow).

and I keep rollin' on

Well, I've done it again.  I keep saying I'll post more regularly, and then I take longer and longer breaks from actual cookie posts (although I've put up a couple other random things to prove I didn't die).  This time, some of it is due to an attempt to go to bed by midnight on school nights.  Tonight, clearly, is a fail on that.  Some of my non-posting is due to just being insanely busy - this semester I'm taking a Quantum Information class and a Jazz dance class, teaching intro Physics, still active in a bible study group with GCF, baking and cooking on a regular basis, doing research in the lab (a never-ending and hugely time-consuming thing) and flitting around doing silly things with my boyfriend.  As my dad has said before, I do well when I build up a certain level of chaos and then maintain it through the semester.

In what I imagine to be a slight break in the chaos (read: I got my homework done early and am waiting for something in the kitchen to finish), I present yet another cookie update!

79.  01.02.10 Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies
I made these the day before leaving my dad's house to return back to the middle of nowhere, and so I chose something that wouldn't involve outlandish ingredients, and would hopefully be eaten quickly.  These are made with a basic brownie batter, with a filling that is mostly peanut butter and confectioners' sugar swirled around in the batter.  The idea is nice - after all, chocolate and peanut butter are delicious together, when done properly - but the execution was a bit mediocre.  When I ate these, all I could taste was the peanut butter, and not the (expensive) chocolate melted in the brownies.  Although it tasted good, I think that if I want to the taste of eating peanut butter straight, I'll forgo the baking for a spoon and the PB jar.

80.  01.10.10 Cappuccino-Chocolate Bites
The weekend after I returned to my apartment, I flew down to Louisiana to visit my sister and brother-in-law, who are both actual rocket scientists.  This was actually interesting times, because my original flight was canceled due to lots of snow in Central Illinois, and I had to fly the next day.  I was totally okay with that, since I learned to drive in South Florida and am still terrified of snow driving.  But yes, the cookies.  I decided to make these because my brother-in-law is into making his own espresso, which meant that I could easily acquire the 1T of ground espresso beans the recipe called for, without ending up with a bag of coffee I couldn't use.  The ground espresso was mixed into the cookies, which otherwise had a basic shortbread texture (you know, butter, confectioners' sugar, that kind of thing).  These cookies were then sandwiched with a milk-chocolate ganache and sprinkled with cocoa powder and confectioners' sugar to make them look very pretty.  In general, I find milk chocolate to be inferior to, well, everything ever, but in this case the richness of the ganache (yes, I consider milk chocolate to be rich) helped to mellow out the espresso so that every bite was a good experience.  Of course, it is wise not to eat these late at night, but I believe the ones I left at my sister's house were eaten for breakfast the next day (cookies for breakfast are always a lovely idea).

81.  01.16.10 Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Feeling that it was time to make some good, traditional cookies after all the rich and fancy stuff I'd made recently, I went to the the store and finally picked up the special ingredient for these cookies.  These are ordinary oatmeal raisin cookies, except that they also have toasted wheat germ in them.  In theory, this helps to make the cookies more hearty (and maybe more healthy, although health and cookies aren't too often put together).  Wheat germ is hidden by things like oatmeal in the grocery store, and is unfortunately sold in fairly large quantities.  However, these were pretty good cookies, so I don't mind making them again to use up the left over ingredients.  This time around I messed up a little: I was baking these while folding laundry, or some other such chore, and so didn't get a chance to check one of the earlier batches for baking time.  Thus, it turned out that these were a little crunchier than I think oatmeal cookies ought to be, but I think in the future if I reduce the baking time by 2 or 3 minutes they should come out close to perfect.

82.  01.23.10 Cherry Almond Biscotti
Since the last week had gotten me all excited about specialty ingredients (and I wanted to use up some old dried cherries sitting in my kitchen) I went to the grocery store and bought some amaretto (almond-flavored liqueur) to make these biscotti.  I'll point out as a side note, amaretto is tasty stuff.  But back to the topic at hand: here the dried cherries are boiled in amaretto until properly hydrated, and then added to the biscotti dough along with blanched almonds and a little bit of the leftover cooking amaretto.  The dough is baked first in a log, and then sliced and baked again, as is done for biscotti in general.  I found that these were very delicious - although the texture of the cherries was a little unexpected in the otherwise crumbly biscotti texture, they added a nice taste, as did the amaretto, which was pretty subtle.  I'm not sure about the feasibility of making these again, though, as you may recall, I've complained before about how expensive dried cherries are.  Maybe someday when I get a fancy job I'll be able to afford lots of crazy ingredients, but for now I'll try to live within my means.

83.  01.31.10 Butter Cookie Sandwiches with Chestnut Cream
Well, these guys look fancy enough, although they weren't particularly complicated to make.  The cookies are basic shortbread cut into 1-1/2" rounds, so they're quite small.  The centerpiece of this recipe is supposed to be the chestnut cream filling, which is made of butter, confectioners' sugar, and chestnut cream (crème de marron, to be fancy about it).  These sandwiched cookies are then dipped in melted semi-sweet chocolate to get their nice appearance.  Although they look very nice, I was a little disappointed with these cookies - the chestnut cream was difficult to find and expensive to buy, so when I tasted these and the filling tasted just of butter, I lamented the waste of money this turned into.  The chestnut cream itself tastes of chestnuts, as it ought, considering it's made of chestnuts and sugar, but the flavor just didn't come through all the other things going on in the recipe.

84.  02.06.10 Gingersnap-Raspberry Sandwiches
I have always been a big fan of molasses/ginger cookies, and although this one doesn't have any molasses in it, it sure had potential to be delicious: aside from regular cookie ingredients, this recipe features a large dose of ground ginger and maple syrup.  Unfortunately, I messed up when baking these cookies and did not bake them quite long enough, leaving them with a funny taste that didn't let the ginger shine through properly.  Although the recipe calls for putting raspberry jam between these cookies, I found that doing so was a hassle, as the jam oozed out all over the place and didn't taste very good with these kind of funny-tasting cookies.  Ah well, perhaps I'll have success with these another time.

85.  02.14.10 Raspberry Honey Financiers
For all that I complain about the silliness surrounding Valentine's Day, I have to say that I had a lovely day spending time doing non-consumerist things with my boyfriend, and sharing these cookies (well, more like mini muffins) with him.  The dough for these is made with butter, lots of honey, toasted and ground blanched almonds, sugar, cake flour, and egg whites.  The honey and almonds are the strong point here, to give a nice sweet taste and a little bit of crunch.  The red hearts shown in the picture are raspberry juice strained out from a puree.  The raspberry taste wasn't particularly strong, but the hearts were cute, and that was exactly the effect I was going for (well, and that the recipe told me to do).

86.  02.20.10 Ne Plus Ultra Cookies
Since winter insists on hanging on, and the Midwest has turned into a mess of snow and rain and potholes the size of a small vehicle, I decided it was time to make some comfort cookies.  That means simple tastes and chewy cookies, preferably the kind that can be eaten warm out of the oven with a glass of milk while watching the Winter Olympics.  This recipe gave me exactly what I was after: these are basically over-sized chocolate chip cookies with pecans and raisins added to them.  Usually I would object to nuts and raisins getting between me and chocolate chips, but because these cookies were so large, these ingredients prevented the cookie from being too rich to eat in one go.  To any novice bakers out there, I would suggest these cookies as a good project.  They are extremely simple to make, and they taste just a little bit better than standard chocolate chip cookies (and about a million times better than that nasty pre-made dough they sell at the grocery store. ick).  As usual, if anyone is interested I am happy to share the recipe.


...And that brings me up to date with my cookies.  This means, unless I've had a counting fail, that I am at 84 recipes already, which is nearly halfway through the book.  I may have to start organizing my efforts so that I'm not left with all the difficult recipes in my last year of this project.  For now, though, it's time to get some sleep, so I can get back to aligning optics in the morning.

epic backlog - recovery!

After I finished with my Qual, it was time for work. And homework. And catching up with all the people I'd been neglecting. I took the next several weeks to make tasty cookies, but I didn't really get around to posting. Nothing was too exciting about life, so I'll just talk briefly about the cookies.

(Marked as a best cookie) (63) To be brief about these first cookies will be difficult, because they were very delicious! I had carrots left over from making a carrot cake, so I used them to make carrot cake cookies. The cookies are a basic recipe, with carrot, raisins, and oats, as well as cinnamon and nutmeg. The filling is a standard cream cheese frosting. The cookies turned out nice and soft, and paired with the frosting kind of tasted like the Little Debbie oatmeal pies that I used to eat as a kid... except that these are a lot healthier, and the filling has no weird unidentified hydrogenated death oils. Honestly, I think this is the tastiest recipe yet. Hooray!


These next cookies were chosen so that I wouldn't get totally stuck in a pattern of cookies with filling, and so that I could get them done a bit quickly - I spent all day Saturday being involved in a wedding (congratulations Josh and Janine!!). Although, actually, these are blondies. Here, a basic blondie batter (you know, brown sugar, flour, eggs, butter) is mixed with (and covered with) chocolate chips, coconut, walnuts, and dried cranberries, then put in cupcake tins. Unfortunately, some of the stuff on top was a little loose, and fell off when people were eating them. The blondies were pretty good, but if I make them again I'll definitely be putting more cranberries in them. (64)

The week after I went on a baking spree (this is the same week I made those cake balls) and made what my cookbook calls Sarah Bernhardt cookies (65). According to Wikipedia, which is the source of all credible knowledge, Sarah Bernhardt was an exceptionally famous French stage actress in the late 19th century. My cookbook claims that this name is due to the many layers of these cookies resembling the layers of characters Bernhardt played. Or something like that. I don't know about these things, but I do know that I really like these cookies: these are almond macaroons (which kind of taste like marzipan) with a dollop of chocolate mousse on top of them. The whole ensemble is coated in semi-sweet chocolate mixed with just a little bit of vegetable shortening. Since they were covered in chocolate, I had to work hard to get people to eat them, but once they tried them, they were impressed. I like to describe their taste as very high class, and considering the cost of the almond paste in the macaroons and the amount of time taken in preparation, I think the description is fairly accurate. Maybe I'll make these again sometime for something fancy.

it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed...

I will begin this post by promising that I am not baking cookies so I can be popular. I will also promise that I will not start doing Kristen Chenoweth yodels, if only because I am not a coloratura.

Classes here begin this Monday, so I have been savoring my free time. This fall I am taking two upper-level undergraduate courses and a graduate-level course, plus teaching three sections of Physics 101, which is about as basic as it sounds. My courseload is somewhat heavy for a TA, but I'll survive, as I always do.

It turns out that this year I am sharing a grad student office with two other first-year women. We have decided to make an effort to make our office more comfortable. So far this has meant getting rid of a desk and purchasing a coffee maker from the YMCA garage sale thing. Next weekend we'll probably try to find a small sofa. Right now we're having some difficulty with people coming by to hang out in our office (it's good because I like people but it's bad because it makes work nearly impossible), so it might become harder to be productive when there's a couch.

Oh, right, and another reason why too many people will come by next Monday is that I made cookies (7)! These tasty morsels are made with a basic cookie dough (flour, sugar, eggs, butter...), and then have white chocolate chips, sweetened flaked coconut, old fashioned oats, chopped walnuts, and golden raisins added in. I have to admit that this recipe called for a little more elbow grease than is typical of a cookie recipe. It was worth it, though: I usually don't like nuts or raisins in my cookies but the blend of all the ingredients is phenomenal. In any other cookie I think the white chocolate would be too rich, but the coconut and oats really beef up the cookie such that the chocolate is a nice addition. Plus I can lie and say that they're healthy, because there's raisins!


I think that's about it for now... I should get to sleep so that I can continue my church shopping in the morning. I know there was something I was thinking about a couple days ago that I wanted to post here, but I've forgotten it. If you're lucky, I might post my thoughts about church shopping. Or TAing, although FERPA forbids me from referring to actual students (by name, at least.. I've got to check those rules out).