Beauty Comes from Within: Sexy-Ugly Hedgehog Cookies

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One of the BF's favorite kind of cookies is oatmeal chocolate chip, for which he'll hardly get a raised eyebrow from me: the toothsomeness of an oatmeal cookies with the sweetness of chocolate?  Obviously.  I myself am a fan of the good old oatmeal raisin as well, but the more people I poll, the more I feel like this cookie has unfairly fallen out of favor.  Alas, poor oatmeal raisin... well, more for me!

Anyway, when I went to visit the BF in Boston a few weekends ago, I planned on bringing him some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, but for some reason (I guess because, really, I wanted to eat them), I went with my gram's chocolate chip shortbread cookies instead.  He was never any the wiser, and those cookies are the bomb, so I didn't feel too guilty.  I did, however, find myself craving them the following week (I suppose the idea had planted and refused to let go!), and as I was going to have some girlfriends over for dinner – and needed to make some cookies to mail to a friend for his birthday – I had an excuse to make them.

A not-so-short story about shortbread.

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You may sometimes wonder, as does my mother, who eats all this stuff I bake?  Well, for a while it was my classmates I depended on to make sure we wasted not, but then classes became fewer and farther between.  And other people started bringing snacks (usurpers!), and I didn’t want them to think I was trying to steal their thunders.  So when the bf started working full time I was pleased to be able to ply him with tupperwares full of brownies and coffee cake and cookies. 

Be careful what you wish for, or: how I managed to make a dish-/time-saving instrument take forever and use a million dishes.

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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! (that was a choir of angels, FYI)

Yes, folks, I'm afraid I must stop whining (or cut back, at least), because today my lovely and CRAZY boyfriend bought me a kitchenaid mixer!!!  

Today, we went to Divertimenti, one of our fave kitchen stores, so that I could finally use my gift certificate that the bf bought me a year ago.  I had my heart set on a tube pan, so I could make angel food cake (because I had conveniently forgotten that I needed an electric mixer to whip the egg whites, or maybe I was just planning on buying a crappy hand mixer... yeah I think that was the plan), and I found something called a Kugelhopf, which looked good enough and was surprisingly inexpensive.  That left me with some money on my card, so I also picked up a super awesome french press travel mug to help get me through the long nights of class.

And I was all set, as far as I was concerned.  And then the bf dropped the bomb: despite our agreement that we would NOT buy each other gifts for V-day (ok, so I broke it first, but I got him a little thing!), he had made up his mind to get me my heart's desire, a Kitchenaid Artisan Mixer. 

Now, two things caused me to punch him in the arm:

Gingersnaps and a new respect for composition

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I may not have a fancy camera, but I can at least move the cookies out of the kitchen and into the light!

When my boyfriend requested gingersnaps, I was hesitant.   They seemed like a lot of work, and while I've always liked them, they're not my favorite (and we end up with a LOT of cookies every time I bake, so I damn well better want to eat them).  Nonetheless, he does support my silly amateur baking endeavors with gusto, so I figured why not give the man what he wants, rather than just making him want what I give him (he's rarely complained, but still)?

OMIGOD chocolate chip cherry oatmeal cookies!

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So I've been paging through The Joy of Cooking, and there are about a million things I want to make: crepes, sour cream pound cake, chocolate mousse cake, and most of all angel food cake, which was my dad's favorite birthday dessert when I was a kid and so it always reminds me of being allowed to eat sweet things (starting to get a sense of why I'm so obsessed with baking?).  But, as mentioned in an earlier, whinier post, I don't have the tools required to make any of those recipes.  Nonetheless, I soldiered on, and last night I decided to try the famous chocolate chip cookies.  Then I watched Desperate Housewives and read a hundred pages of the book I'm assigned for class and had dinner and watched a BBC program on the African Rift...

Making do (and baking muffins), not making excuses.

Pin It I was reading through my new British muffin cookbook this morning, and I realized it's totally useless to me.  Everything is in weight measurements, and I don't have a scale (obviously).  So I wrote off the 5 pounds I'd spent on it and turned instead to my previously unexplored copy of The Joy of Cooking, which I hauled over here last summer and promptly forgot in the suitcase (it was rediscovered a couple weeks ago, along with my favorite winter coat; both presumed losses were sorely lamented).

Now THAT'S a cookbook!  Not only does it have a million recipes and variations, but it's super helpful on everything from bakeware solutions (separating a large pan with aluminum foil and weights to make it a small pan) to knife skills to candy making.  AND she doesn't just ASSUME you have fancy equipment like an electric mixer!  So advice is given on how to cream butter with the back of a wooden spoon, and how to whip cream with a whisk, and how to make truffles in the microwave (you heard!).  I seriously LOVE this woman.