In addition to the Saltine bark I made yesterday, Jason made some chocolate golden raisin walnut cookies. (Somebody didn’t believe that dessert with Saltines in it would taste good!) We had a little contest today to see which our friends liked better. Saltine bark won, but it was close! Here’s a nice outdoor picture of the golden raisin walnut cookies.
Delicious flaky exterior
Camouflage
Congratulations to my dear sister Lucy, who graduated from college this May! I had this Saltine bark at her graduation party and decided I had to try making it myself. So she gave me the recipe and it’s delicious!
Ingredients list:
A Saltine platoon
Directions:
Yummy
Basically, this is a layer of saltines, a layer of caramelized sugar/butter, a layer of chocolate and a layer of nuts. Hard to go wrong with that! The only problem I had is my caramel layer is a bit too chewy. I’m not sure how I could have fixed that – maybe bake it less time? Anyways, I think it’s worth it. Picking caramel out of your teeth is a small price to pay for something this delicious.
I have gotten a special request (threat?) from my friend Blythe – she needs fudge! Mmmm… hard to say no to fudgey chocolatey goodness. Sadly, I don’t know how much fudge she’ll get as I seem to be eating most of it myself! Anyways, I’ve decided to continue the trend from last time of remaking a previous recipe (Wilma’s Fudge) and then practicing my new hobby – outdoor baked good photography.
Fudge & Flowers
I was going to take pictures of fudge at the pool, but when I got there the pool was closed off! It’s probably for the best as I don’t have one of those floating pool snack trays. Maybe next time… If the pool repair work is anything like our porch repair work, it should only take about a year for us to have access again.
In other news, our cat Ewok is sick. 
She’s the one in the picture in the last post. She had a fever and had lost 1 pound (10% of her body weight). We don’t know what was wrong with her but antibiotics seem to be helping. Now we are trying to convince her to eat more, poor baby! So today the house has been smelling alternately like fudge and various odiferous meaty cat-food. (By the way, the word “odiferous” is from our vet, who specifically recommended odiferous foods!)
Until next time.
I just tried these cookies again to see if I could make them look better. Well, they look perfect! I set my oven to 275 (50 degrees below the recommended 325. Naughty oven.) and was very, very careful not to let the dough warm up at all before putting them in the oven. There was the 2 minutes required to chop the cookie logs and then they either went straight into the oven or back into the fridge to wait for their turn. Beautiful!
cookies in their natural habitat
I’ve decided from now on I’ll try to bake on weekends. We used to bake on Wednesdays because Thursday was Cookie Day at Jason’s work, but that is no longer. I have more free time on weekends to bake, plus then I can photograph in natural light! Much, much better.
And since I seem to be favoring one cat in the photos, here’s another:
Ewok looking out the window
I made cookies for my qual committee. I knew it wouldn’t affect their decision, but I thought maybe it would put them in a better mood so they would be nice to me! (They were). I offered them the cookies and one of my committee members said, “Ooh, cookies. Are we allowed to eat them or is there some rule against that?” (I think there might be).
My advisor said, “Oh, it’s fine, Zoe makes cookies for us all the time.” (It’s true). Sweet, my advisor’s got my back.
These cookies are called “World Peace Cookies”, aka, if everyone ate them we could finally have world peace. Perfect for a blustery Wednesday afternoon qual exam.
Here’s where I found the recipe: http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/01/in-which-world-peace-eludes-me/
Mix the flour, cocoa, and baking soda together with a fork (or sift it… okay, you’re supposed to sift it but I didn’t.)
Using your stand mixer, beat the butter until it’s nicely creamy. Add the sugars, salt, and vanilla extract and beat for 2 more minutes.
Pour in the dry ingredients and mix just until the flour disappears into the dough.
Add the chocolate chunks and mix a little more.
Work the dough into two logs, each 1 1/2″ in diameter. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, or overnight.
It was tough to get a good photo of the logs before slicing.
…Wait 3 hours. I used this time to make another batch of cookies – regular chocolate chip cookies – in case these didn’t work out. Wouldn’t want my committee members eating gross cookies! Baking also distracted me from my exam…
Slice the logs into 1/2″ thick slices. The recipe is very detailed and notes that your cookies might crumble a bit during this step. Mine did, but it was okay.
A lucky uncrumbled cookie.
Bake on a cookie sheet for 12 minutes at 325 degrees F. Again, the recipe was detailed here and absolutely correct. It says your cookies will not look or feel done at this point, and mine didn’t. Take them out anyway! Basically, they are very limp at this stage but as they cool down they will harden. There are no eggs in this recipe so underbaking isn’t really an issue.
Once they cool, you can test them! I have to say, mine did not look like the pictures on the internet say they’re supposed to look. But they tasted great. It seemed like mine expanded/melted more and also developed some holes in them, like they had bubbled during baking. Maybe my oven was too hot? We don’t have an oven thermometer but I have always estimated that my oven runs 25 degrees hot and adjust accordingly. I use this correction because it seems to lead to the right bake time for most recipes. These cookies seem extra sensitive to temperature so maybe my oven is off by more than that. Or maybe it’s because I didn’t sift… I should probably sift.
Funny looking cookies.
Well, this was almost 3 months ago but just writing out this post is making me hungry! Maybe I should bake some more cookies today… In fact, I’m inspired to make a second attempt at these to get them to look right.