The Cookie Report

Cue newsroom music: doot doo-doo doot doot, doot doo-doo doot doot...

Today was Baking Day chez MomVee, and the results were distinctly mixed. I'm going to take off on a real flight of pop psychological fancy here and posit that the poorness of my cookies reflects my ambivalence at the very idea of cookies in light of R.'s illness and my own desire not to get fat again.

First up: Klejner. This did not go well. I'm really glad that deep-fried things are bad for you, because I am never deep-frying anything ever again. Either the thermometer or the recipe was a total liar, because no matter what temperature the oil was, the cookies browned too fast. Also, the recipe I linked is not the one I used. I used a recipe with three eggs in the dough, and the cookies puffed way up, and my great-grandmother's Klejner were not puffy.

Next: Lemon-Lavender Shortbread. These turned out great. I substituted brown rice flour for 1/4 of the cup of flour, as suggested by Laurie Colwin in More Home Cooking. Also, I pressed the dough into my madeleine pan, which was a risk, but it worked. I wanted the cookies to look like shells because they are for dessert on December 23rd, when I am serving bouillabaisse and doing a sort of South of France theme. There are only 18 of them.

Cranberry-pistachio biscotti. I have had this recipe for so long that it didn't come from the Internet, so no link. They would be much better if I had not left them in the oven too long after I turned all the pieces during the second bake. They are still edible, but the festive Christmasy green and red are all pretty much brown.

I made lots of walnut-stuffed dates on Saturday, so I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

Please, someone, use the hilarious gift tags at Angry Chicken.