Cookies Galore

I was just too tired last night to tell the story of our cookie baking day.  We got ‘er mostly done.  All together we ended up with 8 different kinds of cookies.  There are chocolates, and peanut butters, and sugars of many different varieties.  There was one we had to scrape.  Mother over heated the butterscotch chips in the microwave.  Since we didn’t have any more butterscotch chips, we had to abandon that cookie.

Emeril's Lemon raspberry thumbprint cookies

Another disappointment was the chocolate peppermint pinwheel cookies—a recipe I had seen Alton Brown make on his show on Food Network.  The cookies spread out all over the pan during baking.  The first pan full got too crispy because they were so thin.  I reduced the cooking time on the next pan full, but they were too limp and would fall apart when picked up.  That happened to be the bag Gene sat on when I got home, so they are now broken into much smaller cookies.  They taste very good and I like the recipe although they are a little more difficult to make.  The cookie dough is rolled into a log and sliced.  I think my problem was that I didn’t make my slices thick enough.

Forever Ambers waiting for their second
dusting of powdered sugar.

Mother has had a little difficulty with the chocolate chip cookies.  She decided a couple days ago that we had far too many cookies to make in one day.  To ease our workload for yesterday, she made a batch of chocolate chip cookies on Monday.  She related this story to me Monday evening, but I have now forgotten what caused the interruption which resulted in her putting twice the amount of sugar in the batter.  Of course, she didn’t realize it until the cookies were baked.  We added chocolate chip cookies back to our list and after lunch she mixed up another batch.  I was busy on the other side of the kitchen and not paying attention to what she was doing other than to make sure she wasn’t interrupted and to ask if she had included all the ingredients.  This batch of cookies also ran all over the pan during baking and crumbled all to pieces when she tried to remove them to a rack to cool.  Several hours later we discovered that she had used “light” margarine instead of the regular kind.  That probably caused that problem.  I talked to her on the phone this morning just as she was starting the third, and hopefully, final batch of chocolate chip cookies.

Wedding cookies, one of my favorites.

Besides the Alton Brown chocolate peppermint pinwheel cookies, I tried another new recipe.  This one I had seen Emeril Lagasse make on his show and they turned out wonderful.  It is basically a lightly lemon flavored sugar cookie with a filling of raspberry jam.  Very tasty and easy.

At the end of the day, we each had a nice variety of cookies to share with friends and neighbors.  Before I could even get the kitchen cleaned up she had taken a tray full to her neighbor.  We only dropped one cookie on the floor.  Of course, we were too busy to pick it up so it stayed there most of the day.  At one point I saw my mother crawling around picking up the big chunks.  She proclaimed as she pushed the smaller crumbs under the edge of the cabinet that “she would get the vacuum out directly”.  I left before that happened.  If she was as tired as I was, I suspect those crumbs are still there.

This morning, after a slow start for me, Gene and I went over to Opryland Hotel to the craft fair.  This is a month long event each December as part of their Country Christmas.  Since it is such a lengthy show, several of the crafters stay in the campgrounds here on Music Valley Drive.  Each winter we have several neighbors participating in the fair.  Our next door neighbor this year has a booth and she gave us tickets to attend.  We were thrilled, of course, especially since we had never been.  We enjoyed seeing everything and had a nice long chat with our neighbor while we were there.

The rest of the day has been filled with housekeeping chores.  We are planning an early dinner because we have been invited to our neighbor’s on the other side for conversation later in the evening.  Busy, Busy!