Comunidad Health Foods

 

I don’t make soup all that often, but I do make chili. I’ve even made it in the dead-heat of summer in an un-air-conditioned beach house, so it’s not uncommon for me to bring this well-loved dish into the warmer months. To me, it’s one of the perfect comfort foods, and unlike lasagna, macaroni-and-cheese, fried chicken and cream of ____ soup, it doesn’t have to kill your good dietary intentions – that means it earns double points in my book. I can only indulge in heavy, cheesy casseroles so often before I feel like my stomach is a bag of bricks – mushy, cheesy bricks.

Now that we’ve established that image, let’s get back to the task at hand – this turkey chili adapted from Rachael Ray. It’s simple, though not the kind of simple I was talking about on Tuesday. It’s got some heat behind it, enough to make me smile but not enough to make my mom push her bowl away politely. It was also really fast and easy to make, and keeps the dirty dishes to a minimum (a must if you’ve ever witnessed the aftermath of my cooking endeavors). The only change I would make would be to get rid of some (or all) of the turkey and swap in some crumbled tofu and beans. I’m not-so-slowly moving towards total veggie-dom, so lately I’ve been treating meat as a side dish. In this meal, it’s definitely the main ingredient, and I know some people will like that. It does keep it low-carb, if that interests you. Plus, I think ground turkey breast is some of the leanest meat out there (the original called for ground pork), so if you’re up for omnivorism, it’s still a pretty healthy choice. We can’t all be veggie-vores, right?

I made a healthy cornbread for dunking/topping/side-ing, after Rachael’s recipe instructed me to make corn cakes via a box mix. Right. So I thought it’d be the perfect opportunity to try one of the several cornbread recipes I have saved, and figured starting off with a healthy one would be good. The recipe comes from Food Stories, and it has several perks – it’s vegan (not that that matters if you’re pairing it with a turkey chili like I did – though it does mean my dad, who doesn’t mix meat and dairy, could enjoy it), easy to make, and does taste like cornbread. However, there is no mistaking this for its full-fat, full-sugar, down-home-cookin’ original. It tastes healthy, so I’m still on a hunt for a spot-on recipe. But this is good to keep in your back pocket. All I did to change the recipe was to add chives (as Rachael asked me to – or, well, she asked me to add scallions and I said absolutely not, I don’t have any, but I do have chives) and reduce the baking time to 15 minutes (all it needed). It finished baking just as I was finishing up with the chili, so dinner was ready in one fell swoop.

 

I also want to say that I had the honor of being one of Lauren (of NutriSavvy)’s 15 nominees for the Versatile Blogging Award! There’s a whole bunch of fun questions and pay-it-forward type nominations that I’m supposed to do, but I didn’t do a Thirty Minute Thursday post last week so I wanted to at least get today’s entry in. I will spend the next day or so thinking about all of the amazing food bloggers I watch (some from afar, admittedly), and be back. I just wanted to make sure I thanked Lauren before too many days went by! And if you haven’t checked out her blog, you should!

Do you think that “plain” is a negative word? I know it has its connotations – Plain Jane, plain looking – but for me, it really isn’t an inherently bad adjective. I get into a little bit of trouble sometimes when I go to refer to something as plain without intending it to be interpreted as a bad thing. For example, plain food. That sounds bad, right? But it doesn’t have to be. It could just mean simple. Clean. Some people get offended when I call a food plain, or if I say that they tend to enjoy plainer foods. Apparently, it can be synonymous with bland – and that, my friends, is inherently negative. But as my 12^th grade English teacher said, there’s no such thing as a synonym.

An overcooked chicken without anything on it is bland. Mashed potatoes are bland. Those really cool rice puffs from Wegmans or Whole Foods, without peanut butter spread on them, are very bland.

But a bowl of fresh pasta drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil is plain. A homemade dinner roll fresh from the oven is plain. Even a well-cooked fillet of tilapia with a side of steamed vegetables and a spritz of lemon juice is plain.

This Chickpea and Vegetable Penne Toss is also plain, but if you think that’s a reason not to make it (again and again and again), you would be sorely mistaken. This recipe is simple anddelicious. It’s far from extravagant, yet one of the most perfect meals I can think of around this time of year. It’s filling and quick to make, too.  And no one – and I mean no one – will call it bland. 

 

 

Today, I have a quickie for you. You see, I’ve been up since 7 and apart from a 15 minute jog, a hop in the shower and an oh-so-necessary baking venture consisting of chocolate and raspberries (can you blame me?), I have been up to my elbows in research about cinnamon and Type 2 Diabetes. All of this effort and time, just to come to the conclusion that more research is needed. So needless to say, my brain is deepfried, and it’d probably be wise not to launch into some long, complicated recipe. My summer course ends on Tuesday, so pretty soon I will be back to my old, totally sane self. Do not make any jokes.

This little gem is something I like to call Banana Mash Frosting. And yes, about 90% of the time I refer to this dish I start singing the Monster Mash song in my head. I just can't help myself. It (the recipe, not the song) is similar to a technique I saw over at Chocolate Covered Katie, which is one of the most fabulously creative blogs ever. Basically, this “recipe” came out of the realization that if you freeze a banana and then thaw it (something I do all the time for banana bread), it completely changes textures and turns much more liquidy than any regular banana ever could. When mixed with the right ingredients, it becomes this creamy, naturally sweet and unabashedly healthy spread. Think pancakes, waffles, yogurt, oatmeal, toast, fruit salad, granola – this baby can top or be topped with just about anything your heart desires. That little blob of a picture at the top of this post would be the mash atop a pumpkin pancake; I'm sure you can do a more artistic job than I did on this particular morning. You can also make riffs on the original with different nut butters, cocoa powder, and even other thawed fruit. So what are you waiting for?

 

I think I might be on a sugar high from all of these desserts I’ve been telling you about lately! 13 dozen cookies, the most outrageous layer cake I’ve ever made, Nutella FroYo – is it just me, or can you feel your pancreas begging you to give it and its poor insulin-generating cells a bit of a break? What do you mean, your pancreas doesn’t talk to you? Oh, nevermind…

To hush my internal organs and prevent them from staging an uprising, and to hopefully do the same for any of you with equally unruly body parts, I have something that is not at all a dessert. In fact, it can even be low-carb if you want it to be (as in, if you don’t decide that serving it with a side of warm, crusty Italian bread isn’t an absolutely fantastic idea), so we’re really pulling a 180 here.  You’re welcome.

I’m kidding.

No but really, these pizza portobellos are fabulous and the perfect remedy for a prolonged period of culinary indulgences. As it stands, it’s not vegetarian, but don’t let that dampen your spirits too much, all of my veggie-vore readers. Take out the turkey entirely or swap it with a crumbled veggie burger instead – I’ll bet most people will hardly know the difference. I used a turkey burger because that’s what I had. In fact, I described this dish in my notes as meaty, and I wasn’t even talking about the burger – I was talking about the mushroom. This dish is also kind of warm and comforting, so maybe wait until this heat wave rolls on by (come to think of it, a clean, crisp salad would have made a more seasonally appropriate blog detox than this, but alas, I’m doing the best with the busy hand I’ve been dealt) before hunkering down in your kitchen to make this. The good news is that if you’re not cooking for a crowd, you could totally make this on the stovetop and bake it in the toaster oven, no full oven heat required….which means no excuses. Unless you don’t own a toaster oven. In which case I need to ask why…no, no, that soapbox should be saved for another day.

 

Enough is enough already! My graduation cake has been dutifully transferred from fridge to freezer to preserve its integrity (really, it’s a sin that there’s any left over to go in the freezer at all, but such are the habits of my family when it comes to my baked goods – and I can only eat so much cake myself at any given time), and that means this post is long overdue. This cake…oohhh, this cake. My uncle ate 2 slices at my party. I sure as heck wanted to eat 2 slices at my party. I considered making a smaller cake for fear that we wouldn’t go through a full one, and that full-size cake was just shy of devoured in 20 very short minutes. Maybe less. This is just ultimate indulgence in cake form. It’s the reason why full-fat, full-sugar is sometimes necessary in life. This cake would not exist in a world of diet food, and as much as I love fresh vegetables and minimally sweetened oatmeal, that is just not a world in which I care to live.

This cake is a four-layer cake, divided between the glorious flavors of white chocolate butter cake and champagne sponge. Both are subtle and they blend together into one unbelievable cake so, so beautifully. The fresh strawberries on top and the deep chocolate ganache in between the layers give pops of vibrance to an otherwise pure white cake. The ganache is barely sweet, adding a depth to the cake and cutting the sweetness to be anything but cloying. The white chocolate layers are slightly denser than the fluffy champagne sponge layers, giving it a quiet complexity without calling too much attention to the different textures themselves. It reminds me of the white chocolate cake I made for my sister’s graduation party two years ago, which was received equally well. Both were labors of love – this is no cake walk, as you can tell by the 3 ½ page recipe below, but you also don’t need to be a seasoned baker to make it. Well, maybe you do – although people claimed it looked straight from a bakery, I (my own worst critic) saw the leaning-tower-of-pisa action resulting from a harried car ride to the party, and scrunched up my nose at the drippings from the strawberries, which macerated slightly under the champagne syrup glaze. So my decorating skills could use some work, my finesse could use some finesse-ing, but if the cake that I put on the table can elicit such complimentary responses, I know yours can, too. So maybe you need to be a seasoned baker, much moreso than I am, to perfect the presentation of this cake. But you certainly don’t need overwhelming experience to impress both the people you’re serving and your own taste buds. You just need fortitude, a positive attitude and, well, a veryfree schedule.

One Year Ago: Pasta with Meat Sauce

So you see, that wasn’t so bad, right? I know, I know, it’s like a full-on novel going through the steps of this cake (and I probably should have thought to make some step-by-step pictures for this doozy), but this is not the kind of cake you make because you randomly get a case of the Baking Bug and want to make something on some uneventful, rainy Sunday afternoon. This is a special occasion cake, intended for those moments that don’t come by all that often.  After all, special occasions call for special food, and that’s exactly what you’re getting with this recipe. And the effort you put into it will show, pinkie swear.

I can’t tell you about that amazing layer cake that I made for my graduation party last week. You’ll have to wait just a little bit longer. Today is National Cherry Tart Day and it just so happens that yesterday for Father’s Day I made a really delicious cherry buttermilk trifle, which is kind of like a cherry tart (re: there are cherries in it), only so, so much better. (Can you tell I’m not a big pie person?) I seriously debated telling you about it just yet, first because I thought it might be cruel and unusual punishment to tease you on Saturday with one of the best cakes I’ve ever made and then hold out on the recipe, and second because I didn’t quite nail it. In the end, though, I know it’s going to be a long, long time before I get around to making this a second time, and whether you know it yet or not, you just can’t wait that long for this one.

Everyone at Father’s Day went nuts about this – there were only 5 of us, but even so, it was unanimously well received. There’s this layer of orange sponge cake covered by a thin layer of tangy-sweet buttermilk pudding, topped with dollops of cherry compote and sprinkled with chocolate chips, slivered almonds and fresh cherries for garnish. I meant to put chocolate chunks in the actual trifle layers, and my sister wisely noted that white chocolate would taste heavenly, too; but alas, I didn’t remember that I wanted to incorporate chocolate until the trifle was fully assembled, so I had to relegate them to garnish status. After making the cherry compote, I’m convinced that simply simmering cherries without any of the sugar would be equally successful, but I also had relatively sweet and decidedly un-tart cherries on my hands. I also wasn’t going off of one recipe, but rather pulling from many recipes and my own thoughts, so I wound up with not quite enough pudding to generously coat the cake (which would be the #1 reason why I hesitated telling you about this yet). Double the pudding recipe and you’ll be golden (the recipe below will make the quantity that I made). As it was, it still tasted good and didn’t stop my mom or me from going back for seconds. I would say that it makes 12 servings easily, and it’s filling – that second serving was probably not the best decision I’ve made, but boy did it taste good…


One Year Ago: Lemon Asparagus Ribbons with Pesto

This sounds like a very labor intensive recipe. It kind of is. I had the cake already made and cut into cubes in my freezer from a fondue party canceled at the last minute months and months ago, which really helped to reduce my prep time. But really, it isn’t a difficult dish to prepare, it just takes a little bit of dedication, and the pay off in the end is definitely worth it.

I mentioned in Monday’s post from L’s graduation party that I get a kind of thrill out of planning events. I love to think up themes and create a party around them, from the food to the decorations and everything in between. Unfortunately, I rarely get the opportunity to implement such extravagant plans – I’m almost never the actual hostess, and my family seems to be less and less into actual festive gatherings now that there really aren’t any kids running around. It’s really a shame, but I know that in time, when I own my own house and start my own family, I’ll have the chance to throw the kind of celebrations the nerd-factor-ten part of my brain loves to imagine.

My graduation party last weekend gave me the opportunity to throw one of these celebrations on a miniature scale – I couldn’t go all out on decorations and other thematic elements, but I could create my own menu, and I definitely took advantage of it. Being early June, I felt like it was the right time to do a pseudo “afternoon tea” spread, just, you know, without the tea. I wanted to capture an elegant Sunday brunch in hors d’oeuvres form, and I think it turned out pretty well in the end.

So without further adieu, after much anticipation, here is the Floptimism Graduation Party Recipe Round-Up:

These little brunch appetizers were my favorite of the entire party. The pancake was soft and pillowy, not incredibly flavorful yet certainly not bland, making it the perfect base for the flavorful 1,2 punch of the horseradish sauce and salty-sweet lox. The only true changes I did make were to use lower fat cream cheese in the pancakes and to substitute plain Chobani yogurt for the sour cream in the horseradish “cream;” and the only changes I would make if I were to make these again would be to buy nova smoked salmon to cut the saltiness just a little bit. I also would like to know why my pancakes didn’t puff up as nicely as the ones in the original post’s pictures, but that’s ok.

This almost didn’t happen, but at the last minute my mom decided that we didn’t have enough food, and I pulled out a dip mix that I had bought at a craft show earlier that year. The link is to the company’s site. I’m usually all about 100% homemade, but this dip turned out pretty well and the ingredients are impeccable. It was a good, quick fix to the solution of not-enough-food without needing to panic, run out to the store, or scramble for a recipe when I was already knee-deep in cooking tasks to get everything done in time. I ignored the instructions on the package and made it with 100% plain Chobani instead of a mixture of mayonnaise and sour cream, and I have to admit that I found it to be a littletoo potent with that Greek yogurt tang, but everyone else fawned over it. You can without a doubt get away with making these dips with partial Greek yogurt, but some people might prefer it with at least the addition of a more subdued base to even it out.

This recipe was the simplest to think up, the easiest to execute, and bar-none one of the most popular. One thing I’ve learned in planning parties is that as intrigued as people get by the fancy, sophisticated, and intricate dishes, it’s the simple ones that really light their sparks. At least, that’s what I’ve learned from my experiences. The two biggest hits of the day? Store-bought crackers and brie cheese, and these caprese bites. Here’s what you do: (1) Buy 1 pack of cherry tomatoes, 1 pack of mozzarella balls, toothpicks and a few sprigs of basil. (2) Halve the mozzarella balls and any large cherry tomatoes. Cut little leaf-shapes or strips out of the basil leaves. (3) Stick a mozzarella half through the toothpick, followed by the basil, followed by the tomato. (4) Refrigerate or serve. It takes a little bit of time to assemble since everything is so miniature, but it’s easy as pie and totally stress-less. I think a little cup of balsamic would be great for dipping, but everyone seemed to enjoy them perfectly fine on their own.

The above link will bring you to a much more gourmet-looking “Puff Pastry Squares with Pea and Tarragon Puree,” but I wanted to offer some gluten-free options (as one of my relatives has Celiac) and overall wanted something a little lighter and less indulgent than the puff pastry. I immediately thought of endive, and simply used an endive leaf as a boat for the dip. I look each leaf, smeared it with a scant ¼ teaspoon Dijon mustard, and topped it with about 1 teaspoon of the dip. Overall it made around 16 endive boats of varying sizes (I just used 1 endive). And let me tell you, this dip is fabulous. It’s not a very overtly flavorful dish – all of the flavors are somewhat demure – but calling it plain would practically be blasphemy. This dip is naturally sweet with salty-savory undertones from the cheese and a hint of almost licorice from the unique flavor of tarragon. I couldn’t get enough of this dip, and spread the extra on crackers and raw vegetables long after the endive boats themselves were gone. Ok, not long after – both the endive boats and leftover dip were mostly eaten that day and finished off by yours truly less than 48 hours later. Further proof of how delicious this was.

 

My family member with Celiac also has an egg allergy, so I thought these egg-less and crust-less quiches would be the perfect addition to my spread. It uses lite firm silken tofu (it’s the Mori-Nu shelf-stable kind; the recipe is very specific about the type of tofu used, as apparently other varieties fall apart) instead of the eggs, and turmeric to give it a yellow color. I think some of the party-goers were slightly suspicious, as the texture is not quiteeggy, but no one questioned me and I suspect that no one knew that what they were eating was not actually egg^* (except my family member with the egg allergy, who I very quietly told off to the side and who graciously helped cover for me whenever someone inquired about the recipe). I did run into some snags with this recipe and want to play around with making it again before I say too much, but I did provide the link to the original in case you wanted to take a stab at it yourself.

And then there was dessert. You don’t get a link because I took about 4 different websites and smooshed them together into one fantastic cake. Except, you have to wait for the recipe – la piece de resistance – because it deserves its own post. This cake is phenomenal. It rivals the one I made for my sister’s graduation two years ago, and that was truly one of my finest “creations” (as in, I followed the recipe well – I still can’t take credit for creating the recipe itself). It was certainly sweet enough to be addictive and qualify as dessert, but it wasn’t overtly or overpoweringly sweet. The cake was soft in texture and flavor, pairing well with the frosting and ganache which explode on your taste buds with decadence. I mean really, this cake is out of this world, and I promise that you will be hearing from it again many times on this blog. First, of course, I’ll give you the recipe. But then…ohhhh, then. I have this scheme that I’ve been devising for the most decadent, extravagant cake imaginable, and it involves these two cakes plus five more. That’s all I’ll say for now. 

 So there you have it, after nearly a full week of taunting and teasing you with the promise of revealing my graduation party spread, I’ve finally come through. I hope it was worth the wait!

 

I make to-do lists with goals to accomplish on any given day. Monday, for example, I wanted to have the recipe round up from L’s graduation party posted: check. Tuesday, I wanted to spend time working on my summer graduation course and finish before my dietetic internship conference call at 3pm: check. Wednesday, I wanted to finish up some graduate class homework, write a recipe round-up for my graduation party, have a lovely dinner with L and my aunt and uncle, and drive out to the mountains for a mini vacation get-away with L and my mom.

Wednesday is where it all fell apart.

I didn’t wake up early enough. L’s car inspection that I was driving him to and from took longer than anticipated. When I finally finished my homework I looked at the clock and realized it was 4:30pm. I hadn’t packed yet. I had to leave for dinner at 5. I had to leave straight from dinner for the mountains. I threw everything together and ran out the door and yes, did have a lovely dinner, but was more than a little exhausted by the time I arrived in the mountains at 9:40pm. I can’t remember if I did a #365thanks twitter post last night. I think I did. I should check. I definitely posted on Twitter that the recipe round up wouldn’t happen until today.

And then today is where is fell apart. Again.

I got 2 paragraphs into my post for the recipe round up when a ton of bricks came proverbially crashing down on top of me with one sudden realization: all of my pictures from my graduation party, food included, are on my dad’s camera card. In his camera. At home. 2 ½ hours away. And he’s at work and has much more important things to do than respond to my photo-less crisis.

So you see, I can’t write my recipe round up yet. Or at least, I couldn’t write a very exciting one. After all, it’s the pictures I know you really care about. A recipe round up of only words just wouldn’t do. I promise to have the recipe round up posted on Saturday, but until then, I thought I would tide you over with a Thirty Minute Thursday post. After all, it is Thursday!

Before the school year ended, I turned to Rachael Ray’s recipe for walnut-sage corn cakes. I made several changes to the recipe and the only one I regret is ignoring the suggestion to serve them with a drizzle of honey. You know me; I get so stubborn about added sugar in any form. I just thought that eating the cakes plain or even with a dollop of salsa, they’d be fine, but in my head I can taste the flavor of the corn cakes meeting the flavor of sweet honey drizzled on top, and it’s magical. It really is. The cakes themselves are subtle, almost buttery from the walnuts that brown slightly when they contact the pan while cooking. And if you just add that touch of honey, that little touch of sweetness, you’ll have something truly special. If you make these before I have a chance to try them again, please let me know how they are, how they were intended to be. 

 

There’s a part of me that dreams of becoming a caterer. I briefly considered that career path, until I realized how much I value my weekends and holidays. The hours just aren’t for me, yet I still get so excited when I have to opportunity to plan and execute a menu for an event, no matter how big or small. Usually, that’s pretty limited, but L’s and my graduations gave me two new excuses to get in the kitchen and bake/cook up a storm. Unfortunately for my sanity, they fell on the same exact weekend. Fortunately for my sanity, I was only taking care of a portion of the desserts and none of the main dishes for L’s, and although I was “catering” my own from start to finish, it was a much more intimate gathering and therefore significantly less stressful. And since I’m sitting here typing this update for you, it means I survived to tell you all about it.

Almost all of the recipes I made were a success, yet I didn’t really change much about any of them so I thought rather than featuring each individual recipe on this blog, I would write two round-up posts: one for L’s graduation from Saturday, and one for mine, which was yesterday. I have plans to tweak and play with some of the recipes so you’ll surely be seeing more of them and in more detail in the future, but for now, you can at least see all of the delicious food that tore me away from blogging this weekend!

So for L, his mom had ordered a cake from a local bakery and had asked me to supplement it with essentially whatever else I wanted. This, I translated to whatever else L wanted. He had previously told me that he wanted gingerbread, but I teased him into embarrassment accidentally because I thought it was endearingly uncommon to choose such a Fall-associated flavor for early June. I threw out a ton of options, mostly focusing on his school colors as my inspiration, all of which were met with total unenthusiasm. Needless to say, it took some back and forth before we settled on a sure crowd (and L) pleaser: cookies. Lots and lots of cookies.

 

The first request was for a peanut butter cookie, one of L’s favorites yet one that he doesn’t get to eat all that often. I made him a batch for a birthday a few years back (one of the most popular recipes on the blog!), but used Jif peanut butter because people swore to me that my beloved all-natural varieties would crumble to pieces when used in a cookie. And while L loved them and they looked beautiful, it was time for me to defy all the nay-sayers and give my natural peanut butter a chance to shine. I found a recipe from Joy the Baker for cookies that specifically called for natural peanut butter, and decided that was the one. The ingredient list was short and the preparation was simple – what more could you ask for? Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of them because I knew they weren’t blog ready after I snuck a bite from the cooling batch. Don’t get me wrong, everyone loved them, but they’re not quite it. The recipe isn’t perfect. I found it a little too sweet, and although L didn’t use those same words, he did say that the peanut butter flavor could have been stronger. The dough wasn’t the easiest to work with, either – the cookies did not crumble in the end, but the dough was delicate and not as cohesive as I would have liked. I think I can remedy this without adding chemical-laden artificial peanut butter to my dough, so I’ll be experimenting with those little tweaks and hope to have The Perfect Peanut Butter Cookie for you in the somewhat near(ish) future.

Next, we pinpointed a dining hall favorite of L’s: Oreo cookies. No, I don’t mean actual Oreo’s or homemade versions of actual Oreo’s. I mean cookies, coated completely in Oreo crumb deliciousness. These were hands down the hit of the party. People couldn’t get enough of them! The dough is pillowy and rich – breaking one in half is like eliciting a symphony straight from heaven, and taking that first bite brings you one step closer to nirvana. And believe me, it is with great pain that I say this, because I recently gave up high fructose corn syrup only to find out that Oreo’s contain it, meaning I let myself try half of one (for experimental purposes, folks! The things I do for you…), and then cut myself off. I’m not really sure what to do about it, either, because these cookies are absolute perfection and there’s no way around the HFCS. For the Oreo crumbs I bought an Oreo pie crust and crumbled it with a fork, and though there may be knock-off Oreo cookies, there are not knock-off Oreo cookie crusts. I also don’t think it’d be possible for me to go the rest of my life without ever having these again. It’s quite a conundrum, but I’m actually considering breaking my rules for the occasional batch of these beauties. Me, little type A personality, stick-to-the-rules-for-the-sake-of-sticking-to-them, me. If that doesn’t convince you how good they are, I really don’t know what will.

 

After the Oreo cookies, we decided on a Snickerdoodlerecipe. If there’s one thing L loves, it’s cinnamon, and a soft and chewy cookie rolled in the stuff is right up his alley. I ran into some snags with these – to be fair, already that day I had baked up nearly 7 dozen cookies and was probably not in the clearest state of mind. I was pulling out raw cookie dough from the oven thinking they were done, knocking a few of the unbaked dough balls right off the cookie sheet and onto the scorching hot oven floor (and then nearly blinding myself when later trying to reach into the oven only to be met with stinging smoke from the burnt cookie remnants from those dough balls), running out of oven space, baking them for nearly twice the amount of time the recipe indicated…I was terrified that I was going to wind up with little saucer bricks of cinnamon and sugar. They weren’t as pillowy as the ideal snickerdoodle is (in my book), but people still loved them and could not say enough nice things about them. They were not little sauce bricks – they were soft, cinnamony, and enjoyable. I just don’t know if the recipe has a few flaws or if I need to give them a second try on a day when I’m not on cookie overload, so I don’t want to feature them on here just yet. You’ll definitely be seeing versions of these in the hopes of redemption in the future of Floptimism, though – I promise.

 

And, finally, I was given Baker’s Choice – I could choose any fourth cookie I wanted. I still wanted L to be pleased with the results, so I settled on this little gem – a Strawberry Shortcake Cookie. These were the last cookies to be baked on Friday. By the time they went in the oven I had been in the kitchen for 12 hours and had over 10 dozen cookies packed up in Tupperware. If I thought my mind was elsewhere with the Snickerdoodles several hours earlier, I was really in questionable shape by the time this dough was ready to come together. Still, it was easy to do, and interesting in that it employed mixing techniques more akin to a pie crust or scone than a cookie. They wound up being like little cakes in cookie form, very delicate but ultimately a pleasant surprise that everyone raved about. The strawberries had a bit of a tang to them, a little bite that was almost reminiscent of a cranberry baked good. It really countered the sweetness of the cookie itself beautifully. I wonder if the cookies were meant to be sturdier, but then I added a little too much extra heavy cream and consequently changed the texture a little bit. Like I said, I was more or less delirious by the time I was going through the motions of this dough so, like the Snickerdoodles, I want to play around with the dough more before I devote an entire entry to them. However, people also went crazy over these, so I couldn’t leave them out of this round-up. In fact, last night L was just slightly hungry so he opened up the container, took one out, closed the container, and ate it…and then opened the container back up and ate three more because they are “so good that they make you hungry.” Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

So there you have it, the 13+ dozen cookies from L’s grad party in all of their glory. I couldn’t have been much more pleased with how they turned out, and hope to have the opportunity to play around with them and share the absolute, hands down, perfected versions with you later on.