Harper's Kitchen: Cooking Confessions
Apr. 6th, 2006 02:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kniteracyHarper's Kitchen: Cooking Confession
I love to bake bread. OK, that wasn't the confession. I love to bake bread and cakes, and I love to make sauces and things involving fruit and whipped cream, and I'm looking forward to finding an ice cream maker that fits in our new freezer. All these things are true. I love baking almost everything.
I don't like baking cookies. I like cookie dough, especially in ice cream-- but I don't like the finished product so much, and the truth is that cookies are a complete pain in the *ahem* to bake.
Tonight, I'm staying up to bake peanut butter cookies, because tomorrow is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
filceolaire's fifty-first birthday. Never mind that I'm still not feeling all that great. Of course, the only reason I can do this is that I'm still not feeling all that great, slept most of today, and so I'm awake and all.
But cookies. Pleh. It's not the mixing of the dough. It's not the hand-rolling. It's not the pressing the fork into the cookies so they'll have that characteristic peanut butter cookie look. It's the fact that when you make cookies, you have to make dozens of them or it's not worth the trouble, and that a panful of cookies only takes about 10-12 minutes to bake, and then they have to be cooled and put on racks and the next dozen has to go in. Cookies have to be micromanaged. There's only one kind of cookie that's really a joy to make, and I make them only around Christmastime. These are joyful because the dough is made, then refrigerated overnight and rolled into tubes. You cut the cookies off the tube, and you can bake them a dozen at a time, no messing about. Now, the truth is, you can do that with any kind of cookie; cookie dough is much more manageable after it's been refrigerated overnight.
Anyway, I know when I talk about my kitchen, you expect recipes, so here is the recipe for the cookies I made tonight. I can't give you the moravian spice cookie recipe (the ones I only make around Christmastime), because that recipe was on my old Wallstreet Powerbook, which is now a delightful doorstop, currently vacationing in Peterborough.
You need:
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda), dissolved in
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon milk (if needed)
1/4 teaspoon salt
Soften the butter. Whip it with a fork until it's fairly light, then add the sugar and stir it all together. Add the peanut butter and the egg, stirring lots. Drop in the teaspoon of vanilla. Mix the flour with the salt. Add the water/soda mix. If the mixture is really stiff, add the milk (I usually add it anyway).
Roll the dough into small balls, place a dozen of the balls onto a pan, then press the tines of a fork down into them, to flatten them. Make a criss-cross pattern by pressing the fork tines in again.
Bake at Gas Mark 4, 350°F for 12 minutes. Cool for five or six minutes in the pan, then transfer to a cooling rack. Whee, cookies!
I love to bake bread. OK, that wasn't the confession. I love to bake bread and cakes, and I love to make sauces and things involving fruit and whipped cream, and I'm looking forward to finding an ice cream maker that fits in our new freezer. All these things are true. I love baking almost everything.
I don't like baking cookies. I like cookie dough, especially in ice cream-- but I don't like the finished product so much, and the truth is that cookies are a complete pain in the *ahem* to bake.
Tonight, I'm staying up to bake peanut butter cookies, because tomorrow is
filceolaire's fifty-first birthday. Never mind that I'm still not feeling all that great. Of course, the only reason I can do this is that I'm still not feeling all that great, slept most of today, and so I'm awake and all.But cookies. Pleh. It's not the mixing of the dough. It's not the hand-rolling. It's not the pressing the fork into the cookies so they'll have that characteristic peanut butter cookie look. It's the fact that when you make cookies, you have to make dozens of them or it's not worth the trouble, and that a panful of cookies only takes about 10-12 minutes to bake, and then they have to be cooled and put on racks and the next dozen has to go in. Cookies have to be micromanaged. There's only one kind of cookie that's really a joy to make, and I make them only around Christmastime. These are joyful because the dough is made, then refrigerated overnight and rolled into tubes. You cut the cookies off the tube, and you can bake them a dozen at a time, no messing about. Now, the truth is, you can do that with any kind of cookie; cookie dough is much more manageable after it's been refrigerated overnight.
Anyway, I know when I talk about my kitchen, you expect recipes, so here is the recipe for the cookies I made tonight. I can't give you the moravian spice cookie recipe (the ones I only make around Christmastime), because that recipe was on my old Wallstreet Powerbook, which is now a delightful doorstop, currently vacationing in Peterborough.
You need:
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda), dissolved in
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon milk (if needed)
1/4 teaspoon salt
Soften the butter. Whip it with a fork until it's fairly light, then add the sugar and stir it all together. Add the peanut butter and the egg, stirring lots. Drop in the teaspoon of vanilla. Mix the flour with the salt. Add the water/soda mix. If the mixture is really stiff, add the milk (I usually add it anyway).
Roll the dough into small balls, place a dozen of the balls onto a pan, then press the tines of a fork down into them, to flatten them. Make a criss-cross pattern by pressing the fork tines in again.
Bake at Gas Mark 4, 350°F for 12 minutes. Cool for five or six minutes in the pan, then transfer to a cooling rack. Whee, cookies!
