Chocolate Square Oatmeal Cookies

I can't say that this is a cookie recipe that I will want to make over and over again.  Sorry Grandma, but I think there are slightly better, less touchy, similar recipes out there.  Fortunately I did read the whole recipe (including ingredient quantities) this time.  The ingredients do not mention anything about chocolate.  You actually have to get to the back side of the recipe, before you figure out that you need chocolate squares - yes, I suppose from the title it's a given, but square could also mean the shape of the cookie - and pecan halves, in addition to the chopped pecans. 

I did discover in reading the whole recipe that this is a rolled cookie that must "chill thoroughly".  I took "chill thoroughly" to mean overnight.  I'm honestly not sure that it matters, but if you are going to roll and slice chunks chilling does help.  I think you could just roll 1" balls and flatten to about a 1/4" thickness and bake just as easily.  I suppose slicing helps preserve some roundness, but I'm not Martha Stewart so my roundness had a definite flat edge that had to be re-shaped - you guessed it - by rolling into a ball and flattening.  FYI - for keeping the round shape while chilling MS does suggest putting the dough into glasses or mailing tubes (b/c I have those just lying around).

I think yield is variable depending on the size cookie you want.  The recipe says to roll into a 12-inch long roll.  This makes for about a 3-4" diameter cookie, because there is some definite spread.  I got 25 cookies out of my batch.  Also, because they spread and get thin, temperature and timing is a little on the finicky side.  Doesn't take a whole lot to burn them.

All-in-all not a very exciting baking day, but another recipe tried...



Attempting to cut the dough roll



These cookies spread a lot!! Small(ish) with lots of space





Add a chocolate square to each while still on the cookie sheet




Add a pecan half on top of the chocolate once the chocolate is a little melty (so it'll stick)



All cookies lined up to cool



Delicious Cream Cookies - Variations

So my encouraging office mates suggested that I consider varying the flavor of these cookies just a bit.  Being something of a scientist and loving a good experiment I decided to give it a try.  I quartered the recipe - yes, that dreadful math thing - and gave it a whirl.  I only got through 1 experiment before inconveniently running out of baking powder.  :-(

*Keven's hint - to quarter something like 2/3 cream, use a food scale to weigh the 2/3, take that measurement in ounces and divide by 4.  Then use the scale to measure the quartered amount.

instead of raisins, nuts, and lemon extract:

Experiment #1 - Cranberry Orange

1/2 t orange extract (I discovered orange isn't quite as strong a flavor as lemon)
1/2 C dried cranberries
1/4 - 1/2 C pecans

Experiment #2 - Dark Chocolate Cherry

1/2 t almond extract
1/2 C dried cherries, diced a little they're kind of big
1/2 bar chopped 70% dark chocolate (I used "Theo & Jane Goodall 70% (cacao)" chocolate bar. Theo Chocolate is the only organic fair trade certified chocolate in the U.S.)

Experiment #3 - Blueberry Lemon

Experiment #4 - Orange Chocolate

1/2 t orange extract
1/2 C mini chocolate chips

Delicious Cream Cookies

The lesson of this recipe is to always read the ENTIRE recipe before starting.  I thought I was doing good reading (and finding, more on that in a minute) the ingredients.  I failed to read the quantity of the ingredients.  Four and a half cups of flour would have been a good clue.  Clearly this recipe was created by someone who needed to give a sugar high to their entire church, school, or mass gathering of every friend ever made.  So far this recipe has made 56 cookies and counting.  That's A LOT of cookies.  And yes, it can probably be halved, although my use of 5th grade math skills and fractions usually fails me. I don't think I'd come up with any difficult fractions, like half of 1 egg, since there are 4. 

The most difficult part of this recipe, oddly enough, is finding the cream.  Yes, there's heavy whipping cream, creamer, soy cream, half and half, buttermilk, milk, cream cheese, creamed corn, etc.  But finding straight-up cream is actually rather difficult.  I conveniently had to go to Whole Foods for coffee, so I decided to check and see if they had such a thing.  My options were Light Cream and Heavy Cream.  Heavy cream is used for whipping, so I opted for "Light" cream.  The label suggested use in my coffee and it indicated that it was good for use in my favorite recipes.  In 20/20 hindsight, I looked up the definition of "cream".  The Food Substitution Bible (FSB) says it's "The luscious milk fat that rises to the top of milk that hasn't been homogenized."  Hrmm, mine is labeled homogenized and pasteurized.  So in the end, mine is still basically coffee creamer.  *sigh* 

Another ingredient of issue was the 1 tsp lemon.  I went out on a limb and guessed that it meant lemon extract.  Turns out I was right. 

Properly defined ingredients or not, the cookies are nice and light with just a hint of lemon flavor. 

Yield: 103

Jeez, you don't put pictures up of a little non-descript cookie and everyone wants to see them.  Sadly (or not depending on who you are) the cookies are all gone, but I did take pictures of the quantity of dough.  I got a little distracted and didn't get pictures of the cookies.



Amount of dough left after 2 dozen cookies



Amount of dough left after 6 dozen cookies

Applesauce Nut Bread

What does one do with a random "day off" during the week?  Bake of course!

My next project plan was for a cookie, but I lack necessary ingredients and don't have the substitutions either (from The Food Substitution Bible (best "cook"book EVER): lemon oil + vodka = lemon extract).  So I decided to hunt through the recipes for one that included ingredients I actually have on hand.  I found this Applesauce Nut Bread recipe, which will conveniently get rid of the large quantity of applesauce I bought for another project that didn't work out.  The recipe is pretty basic, flour, egg, baking powder and soda, applesauce, sugar and some nuts.  I put it together as instructed in the recipe, which says to combine dry ingredients and then add the wet.  This is somewhat foreign to me since it normally goes in reverse.  Well, Grandma hasn't been wrong yet so I gave it a try (there are 10 minutes to go in bake time).  I also decided to make a second loaf - the recipe only makes one loaf at a time - and combine the ingredients with dry into wet.  I also added some cinnamon and cloves - I'm apparently out of nutmeg - just for fun. 

I know my grandmother made her own applesauce, so I'm guessing that's what she used.  I don't know if her applesauce had any spice in it, or if it was just apples.  My aunt cannot stand the smell (or taste) of cooking apples to this day b/c she'd have to remove the skins as the apples cooked.  Having made apple butter - applesauce becomes apple butter once you add brown sugar and other spices - this fall I can tell you that I cannot imagine having to remove the skins by hand. We used a food mill and that was hard enough. 

Bread is out of the oven!  Oh, I do have to admit to nearly botching the whole thing by forgetting to add the sugar to the "original" recipe. 

Back to the applesauce.  My applesauce says "applesauce made from real apples" and no sugar added.  Ok, I could maybe see adding sugar, after all that's what we did to ours for apple butter and apples can get a little tart in the cooking process.  I recall looking at the different brands for one without a bunch of extra stuff in it, i.e. corn syrup, water, something else I can't pronounce.  There were 2 and I wanted (for some reason) the bigger jar, thus my need to get rid of it.  But really, only two products in a standard grocery store that don't have a bunch of extra crap in the applesauce???

I think I have as much of a problem with the slogan "applesauce made from real apples".  Really??  Exactly what else would applesauce be made of??  Yes, yes.  Anything else resembling an apple, like pears, but still.  What happened to the good old days of food?  I read an article in the paper recently that quoted a book by Michael Pollan, if your great grandmother wouldn't know what the ingredient is, don't eat it.  I think I can get behind that. 



left one is the original version, right one is mine



Grandma's loaf, a little crusty on the outside, moist on the inside, highlights the applesauce and nuts



My loaf, cinnamon and cloves complement and dampen the applesauce a little, don't notice the nuts as much.  Moist w/ chewier crust.



Mmmmmmm



Butterscotch Brownies - Day 2

I don't know that anyone who recorded the recipe said, "holy crap! these are good" when the recipe was first tasted.  Especially sampling straight from the oven.  I like to think there was definitely a loud sound of sweetness satisfied though.

Things I've learned: I am greateful for nonstick cookware.  Trust the old folks, they knew what they were doing.  Butterscotch you find in stores pales in comparison to the real thing.  Finally, (as you'll see) one should not prematurely dump brownies (especially these brownies) out of the pan.

Oops, one more, the old folks had it right, but you can always change it up a little.  :)


One sticky brownie dough mass, there's no "pouring" into this pan!




One should definitely learn to wait, brownies apparently need time to set/firm up in the pan before extraction.
Brownies w/ Rum glaze.



Butterscotch Brownies

So one often gets to pondering certain accepted things when doing projects of this nature.  This week's ponderance is on butterscotch.  Some people love it and others claim to not care for it so much.  But what exactly is butterscotch?  Apparently, as you might have guessed, it's butter that has been heated and combined with sugar.  It is slightly less dense and brittle than toffee (another recipe from Grandma that we all know and love). It is not the flavor we've all come to recognize from hard candy, suckers, syrups, etc. The word "butterscotch" was first recorded in the Yorshire town of Doncaster.  It is also suggested that "scotch" is a derivation of "scorch".  I must say butterscotch is much more appealing than butterscorch.  Butterscotch in its first recording and creation is credited to Samuel Parkinson who owned a confectionary shop in Doncaster.

I decided that 2 batches of brownies should be made, since it only makes an 8x8 pan and I intend to take it to a social occasion.  This recipe actually has no butter and uses brown sugar instead of the original white.  Apparently the brown sugar is fairly common after the 1900's.  So I started making this recipe and had little confidence it would turn out.  As it happens, I should have had more faith.  It turned out wonderfully, is slightly chewy (in a stick to your teeth kind of way) and is generally fabulous!  It's a good thing I'm making 2 batches, and cutting tiny squares!

I'll even post pictures from the second batch; this one is going fast and I think I should go to the gym now...