Cookie Project Part 2: "Scrooged is supposed to be a comedy?!"

Today's cookies, coming from the December 2008 issue of Bon Appetit magazine, are Cinnamon Pecan Shortbread.

Some of the reviews were not so great on these, but once I had my finished product, I was convinced that whoever wrote the reviews a) does not know how to follow directions (cookies did NOT spread, nor did they crumble, per A Cook's review b)is a bag of hot air ("high investment, low return"?!?!?! Seriously...what did you invest in?! It's butter, sugar, and flour. Who doesn't have this crap in their pantry???) c)is a Christmas beast monster. (How can you not love pie crust?!)

Anyway, I was pleased with the result. These were really easy, and I didn't actually have to buy anything except for the pecans (which were on sale anyway).

My holiday programming was 'Scrooged' with Billy Murray. I was not amused or impressed, and I will leave it at that.

Because I was pretty lazy and unproductive yesterday, I decided that I was also going to make marshmallows today. I made them last year for Christmas, and they are incredibly easy, and not they're also not labor intensive. And they're also kind of fun. These are just regular vanilla marshmallows, but I think when I do my actually Christmas baking stuff next weekend, I'm going to make some mint ones as well.

Slab of Marshmallow!

Slab of Mallow can be rolled!

Chopped up mallow, ready for hot chocolate!

R.I.P Thanksgiving leftovers

For some reason, my mother and I are in the habit of cooking enough food for a small army for Thanksgiving, when in actuality there are usually only between 6 and 8 people there, plus whatever random friends my siblings and I can scrape up to come over and help us consume massive amounts of pie.

And every year, there are 2 kinds of cranberry sauce. 'Regular' and 'orange'. And every year, I'm pretty sure my mother and I are the only ones who actually EAT the cranberry sauce. This year I made both. I left the orange with my mom because it's her favorite, and I brought the 'regular' back with me. Alas, I ran out of turkey far before running out of cranberry sauce, and sat around trying to figure out what to do with the leftover sauce.

*light bulb* I love pastries. More specifically, I love turnovers. (Oh, and cream cheese) This was a delicious brain child.

Cranberry Sauce
1 cup sugar
1 cinnamon stick
2 tsp finely chopped fresh ginger
2 tsp grated orange peel
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1 bag fresh cranberrys

In a pot, combine 1 cup water, sugar, cinnamon stick, ginger, orange, and cloves. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until sugar dissolves. Add cranberries, and bring to a boil. Lower heat until medium, and simmer, stirring, until thickened, 8 minutes. Remove cinnamon stick. Chill.

Cream Cheese Filling
1 8 oz. package cream cheese
1 egg
1/3 c. sugar.

Blend in an electric mixer until smooth.

Prepare phyllo dough (as I did) or puff pastry according to package directions. Place 1 Tbsp each of cranberry sauce and cream cheese mixture at one end of dough strip. Fold flag style. Brush with butter. Bake for 13 minutes at 350F.

Cookie Project part 2 (yeah!)

Today's recipe was taken from the December 2009 issue of Bon Appetit. The recipe: Lemon Cranberry Florentines. At the risk of sounding like an idiot, I will admit that I didn't have any idea what a Florentine was. Thanks to Wikipedia for enlightening me on this one. "A Florentine biscuit (or, simply, a Florentine) is a confection made from setting nuts and candied cherries into a caramel disc, which is then coated on the bottom with dark chocolate". However, the picture that accompanied the entry did not resemble a cookie, or, for that matter, even a 'biscuit'. At most, it looked like a charred English muffin that got stuck in a commercial restaurant toaster (I know this from experience). My outlook was grim for this project.

However, my hopes for the recipe were somewhat bolstered by the really cute picture that was in the magazine spread (yeah!):

Well, you know what happens when you follow a recipe to a T? How it's usually supposed to work out? (yeah!) Well, it didn't this time. I did write a rather scathing review on Epicurious, but for some reason, it has magically disappeared. Now I'm going to air my grievances.

A) I had the same problem here as I did with the last recipe with the quantity that can be produced by this recipe. It's duly noted that the same person penned both recipes. This, once again, is apparently supposed to make close to 40 cookies. Once again, I got 2 dozen.

B) The baking information is WAYYYYYY off. If you bake these things at 350F for 16 minutes, you know what you're going to have? (yeah!) Not cookies! You're going to have lumps of black crap and a house that smells like carbon.

C) Please note that a combination of A+B left only 12 cookies that may have been viable for eating, but the cookies didn't flatten into discs really. Take a look at the picture above, and then take a look at what these things come out looking like:

I didn't even bother putting the chocolate drizzle on them. I ate one. It was mediocre and I didn't care to eat another one. My roommate decided to try one, and I could tell there was some sort of deep internal struggle taking place for him not to spit it out into the waste can.

This is a big old fail. The combination of cranberry, lemon, and almond was good, just not here....perhaps in an oatmeal cookie? (yeah!)

You might be wondering why this post is flecked with 'yeah!' all over...and I shall tell you. Because of the 1983 epic Christmas-time movie "Trading Places" with Eddie Murphy, Dan Akroyd, and Jamie Lee Curtis. The jail scene? Surely it's coming back to you now. And now, for Christmas-time funs, here's a selected excerpt that I shall leave you with for the evening:

Cookie Project part 1.2

I love ginger. I mean I really really love ginger. I think that my love of ginger has actually surpassed my love of cilantro. And my love of cilantro is pretty intense. Not this intense, but intense none the less. I think there was only one time I had ginger and it was not enjoyable. I will recount this memory for you:

Twas in the cramped quarters of this limousine on the day of my sister's wedding.

It was indeed a most glorious day, where the whiskey ran wild and free like the most wild and free river you could imagine. Any day that happens, you know it's going to be a good day, or at least you THINK you know it's going to be a good day.

Then my sister's brand new husband decided that while we were in Chinatown doing pictures and what not that he REALLY REALLY needed this ginger candy. And once he had obtained this magical item, he insisted that everyone try it. It was LIKE regular crystallized ginger, but only if you didn't boil it first. It was almost as if someone took a piece of raw ginger, dipped it in adhesive, and then covered it in sugar to trick you. Not good. Extremely potent. And the kind of thing that can only be washed down by chugging a Miller Lite.

But I digress.

Because of my love of ginger, I was very, very happy to see a recipe for Triple Ginger Cookies in the December, 2009 issue of Bon Appetit, mentioned in my previous post. The recipe came along with this really cute picture:

If you can't appreciate that picture, I'm pretty sure you have no soul.

I made a few slight modifications to the recipe. 1)used about 1/2 c. rather than 1/3 c. crystallized ginger. 2)I realized I didn't have any molasses. I went to Target to get some. I checked the baking aisle, didn't find any. (I today learned that molasses is located in the breakfast aisle, next to the maple syrup). But, because I'm a genius, somewhat akin to MacGyver (but in a more kitchen-y sort of way), I simply replaced the 1/4 c. molasses with 1/8 c. dark corn syrup (because when the hell else am I ever going to use it) and 1/8 c. honey bear (because honey bear is always watching).

A couple things here though, no matter how much I rolled the dough into balls, they did NOT get a cracked surface. Oh well, not a big deal. What the big deal is, is that this recipe says that using tablespoon sized balls of dough, you'll get forty cookies. My ass. I wound up with a mere 2 dozen. They were delicious of course, but I really wish i had 40 them, not 24. Here is a picture of the finished product being eaten by one of my lovely housemates:

Whilst the cookies were in the oven, I turned my attention to a horrible piece of Christmas programming. If you like 1989, obviously fake head wounds, useless screaming, and overly exaggerated and stereotyped mental hospital escapees, AND you also like Christmas, then I have a treat for you. Witness this episode of 'Tales From the Crypt', Season 1, titled "And All Through the House":

Cookie Project part 1

A couple of the recipes that I'm planning on doing for Christmas call for decent quantities of crystallized ginger, and I don't know why, but I'm having a slight problem locating it. Also, if you try to find it online, it seems to be ridiculously expensive. But since crystallizing ginger is pretty much the same as candying things, and since I have candying skills, I decided to make my own, and made about 3/4 lb. of it.

Since the ginger I had wasn't young ginger, thinly slicing it with a santoku knife wasn't working really well. The ginger was far too fibrous. I wound up using a vegetable peeler to slice the ginger, and it worked quite well.

This ginger is going to be used in Triple Ginger Cookies and Gingerbread Cookies. Whatever's left will probably just be eaten plain or put into hot tea. Another awesome thing about candying things? Syrups! I have a jar of lemon syrup in my fridge from some lemon peel I did awhile ago, and now I've got a jar of ginger syrup that I can use to spice up delicious alcoholic beverages.

Crystallized Ginger
3/4 lb. fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
3 c. sugar, plus more for coating, if desired
3 c. water

Place ginger slices in a large pot. Cover with water, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for 10 minutes. Drain, and repeat.

Add the sugar and 3 cups of water to the pot. Cook until temperature reaches 210F.

Remove from heat and let stand, one hour. If you're coating the slices, draing the syrup and toss slices in sugar. Shake off any excess sugar. For either, place slices on cooling racks overnight until dry.

To get myself more in the Christmas spirit, I've also decided that each portion of the cookie project will coincide with a viewing of some sort of holiday related programming. Today, I watched a Christmas episode of 'The Twilight Zone' from 1960. The episode, entitled "Night of the Meek". It's about a drunk department store Santa with a magical sack that turns garbage into presents!! It was completely uninspired and features one of the worst fake beards I've ever seen. You can check it here.

Or if you like horribly botched conversion and dubbing, you can check it below:

Watch 11. The Twilight Zone - The Night of the Meek in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Thanksgiving was amazing. Serious blogging activate

Well, I did mean for my Thanksgiving post to be lovely and filled with pictures, but when it came down to it, I was too exhausted and hungry to spend time taking pictures of everything I made. And I did make a lot.

What's funny is that most of the recipes were pulled from cooking magazines I've been collecting, but the dish that seemed to go over the best, and the one that everyone had to have seconds of, is an old standby of my grandma's.

While it might not sound too charming, it is delicious, and has been pretty much my favorite holiday food since I was a wee child.

Good old macaroni and cheese with corn. It's the easiest thing ever. Take a pound of uncooked pasta (preferably shells). Dump it into a 13*9*2 baking dish. Add 2 cans creamed corn, and 1 can corn kernels (drained). Add 2 sticks of butter, cut into tablespoons, and 1.5 lb processed cheese foodstuff (aka Velveeta), cubed. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes.

Works wonders. I made it for a cookout we had over the summer. Everyone was quite skeptical about it at first, after they saw me putting it together, but once they tried it, they were in love. Unfortunately, there usually aren't ever any leftovers.

But anyway, seriously blogging project. I've been having a pretty horrid time with cookies lately. I didn't use to have this problem, but whenever I bake them now, it's just a disaster. With Christmas season coming up, I'm planning on getting back on track with baking, and to do so I'm working through all the Christmas cookies in the December issues of Bon Appetit for the last two years (with the exception of the coconut macaroons, because I made them last year), 9 cookies=9 circles of hell.

It's going to happen.

I Made a Roast for the First Time

Just goes to show how much your palate changes over the course of time, I suppose. I really disliked roast growing up. Don't know why, just something I was not into. I found a recipe a while back for a roast, and something in my head decided it sounded pretty damned wonderful. Magic ensued.

This was my roast after I rubbed salt and pepper into it. A 2 pound boneless chuck eye roast. I got it on sale (I feel the need to note this, because I am a cheap ass about purchasing meat). I think it looks like a damn fine piece of beef.

Roast Beef with Coffee Gravy

Adapted from this recipe
1 2 lb beef chuck roast, fat trimmed
fresh ground pepper
kosher salt
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 large onion, sliced
2 bay leaves
1 c. baby bella mushrooms, rinsed and quarterd
1 can beef broth
2 c. fresh brewed coffee
2 Tbsp. flour

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Rub salt and pepper into beef. Let sit 10 minutes. Heat oil in a large skillet. Brown beef on all sides. Move to baking pan. Add onions and mushrooms to skillet and saute, two to three minutes.

Add bay leaves, beef broth, and coffee to skillet. Bring to a simmer. Add to roast in baking dish. Cover and roast for 3.5 to 4 hours, until tender. Remove the roast from the pan.

Strain juices through a mesh strainer and into a skillet, discarding any solids. Add gravy to skillet and boil, about five minutes until thickened. Strain once more before serving.

I am not generally a beef gravy kind of person, but this gravy has made me a believer. It was amazing, especially when sopped up with crusty French bread.