So I’m getting back in the game with a delicious little cookie that’s perfect with some tea or coffee.  The recipe originally calls for wheat germ, but I read a post by another blogger who substituted oat bran instead. Since I had oat bran on hand, I figured it was worth a shot. The result is a delightful, light cookie.

Note that the dough needs to be made at least 2 hours beforehand to allow chilling time. Plan accordingly!

Thanks to Flourchild for the recipe – I’ve basically copied her instructions below.

Ingredients

Whisk together the flour, 1/2 cup of the oat bran, baking powder and salt. Working in the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl,run the sugar and lemon zest together with your fingers until the sugar is moist. Add the butter and, using the paddle or whisk attachment of a hand mixer, beat on medium speed for about 2 minutes, until creamy or smooth. Add the honey and beat for another minute or two. Add the egg and beat for about 2 minutes more, until you have a smooth, light , fluffy mixture. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients in 2 portions, mixing only until each addition disappears. Scrape the dough out onto a large piece of plastic wrap and wrap well. Chill the dough for at least 2 hours, or for up to 2 days.

Getting ready to Bake: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats. Put the remaining 1/2 cup oat bran into a bowl. Remove the chilled dough from the fridge and, working with a spoonful of it at a time, roll the dough between your palms into 1-inch balls. Drop each ball into the wheat germ and turn to coat, then place the balls on one of the baking sheets, leaving about 1 inch of space between them(these don’t spread much). Use your palm or the bottom of a glass to gently flatten each cookie. Bake the cookies one sheet at a time, for 10 to 12 minutes, or until they are just firm to the touch. Transfer the cookies to a rack to cool to room temperature. Repeat with remaining dough. Storing: The cookies will keep at room temperature for about 3 days or wrapped airtight in the freezer for up to 2 months.

Modified from this Allrecipes version.

• 3/4 cup milk
• 3 Tbsp finely chopped fresh lavender, or 3 tsp dried lavender flowers
• 8 Tbsp butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• If, like me, you are a tool who has self-rising flour lying around, you can use that instead of the last three ingredients.

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease two smallish loaf pans thoroughly–this bread likes to stick.

Combine the milk and lavender in a small saucepan over medium heat. Raise to just barely a simmer–you are looking for tiny bubbles around the edges, but not a full boil–then remove from heat, and allow to cool some.

Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs until the mixture is light and fluffy (I did this first with a spoon and did not achieve fluffiness, and it was sub-par. Use a mixer!)

Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; alternate adding the dry ingredients and the lavender-milk to the creamed things until just blended. Pour/scrape into the prepared pans.

Bake for 35 minutes, or until a testing thing comes out clean. Cool pretty thoroughly in the pan before attempting to turn out onto a wire rack. When it’s cool, you can add a citrus glaze if you like. My last one was 1/4 cup powdered sugar / juice of about a third of a lemon / splash of vanilla, but this did not quite seem ideal.

I have the cookies for you.  Unrequited loves will contact you.  You’ll look prettier.  You will see your enemies driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women.

I am much beloved and have friends who like me for my cookies. The first batch was halved, and the cookies barely made it out the door before Gloria and I devoured most of them. When I made this recipe the second time, I came up with about 4 dozen cookies with the Platonic ideal size of a cookie–maybe, 3.5″ diameter? You can make them smaller and more plentiful, or halve the recipe. Moral: only halve the recipe if you have no friends. And be prepared, with the power of these cookies, to make more friends than you ever desired.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

• Rum
• 1 1/2 cups of raisins
• 2 sticks of butter
• 1 1/3 cups light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt (you can use less salt, but then we can’t be friends.)
• 3 cups rolled oats

Step 0. You don’t have to do this, and the second time I made these, I certainly didn’t wish to expend the rum. But if you want, soak the raisins for at least 30 minutes in some rum (I used Cap’n Morgan’s Spiced Rum.) I didn’t think I’d be able to tell the difference, but it does lend a layer of mystique and beauty to the cookie. I’m not even joking. If not, drink the rum, and leave your raisins the hell alone. They’ll still be good, just not sell-your-children-for-raw-c0okie-materials good.

Step 1. Cream together the butter, brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract. Doing this by hand is a drag, so make sure you have a mostly gooey base. The lumps of butter will come out a lot easier when you do step 2, but put something on the television and make sure the whole concoction is mostly free of giant lmps.

• FYI: no one ever has the right brown sugar when they need it. If you were a dunce and could only find dark brown sugar, substitute in about a 1/3 of a cup with white sugar.

Step 2. Whisk (or if you don’t want to wash a damn whisk, fork) together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Then, little by little, pour and stir it into the goop from step 1. You should have a beautiful, smooth cookie dough by the end of this step, with a caramel color.

Step 3. Roll up them sleeves and stir in the oats and the raisins.

Step 4. Don’t skip this step. Cover your cookie dough in saran wrap and put it in the fridge. Leave it, like one Miss Britney Spears, alone. The dough needs to rest for at least an hour, until it’s pretty well chilled through. Why? Because it won’t get to be round but also thick and chewy if it the dough has time to run all over the place. Then you’ll have flacid cookies, and your friends will all call me wondering why.

Step 5. Okay, I know. It’s hard to be patient. But look, after a while, go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Here is some motivation for waiting:

These cookies are beautiful.

Step 6. Put cookies on some parchment paper (the baker’s choice for cookies!). I use two large spoons and fill one with a heaping spoonful, then scrape it off with another one. You can shape your cookies to be a little more circular. They’ll expand by about an inch each, so put them a couple inches apart. A dozen per normal cookie tray is good. Bake for approximately 8-10 minutes. I’d say do a batch, and see how they look at 8. They should look golden brown around the outside and still a leeeeettle bit raw in the middle. If they’re gooey in the middle, put them back in for a minute. If you overbake them by a leeeetle, then they’ll just turn out browner, but still delicious.

Step 7. After you remove each batch, let them sit on the hot cookie sheet for about 5 minutes before removing them to a plate where your friends will devour them.

Step 8. JUST BURY YOUR FACE IN THAT BUSINESS.

***

Bonus material: Here are some rousing endorsements of these cookies:

Donnie C.: “10 out of 10.”

Paul L.: “The secret ingredient is crack.”

Q.R.Murphy: Imagine a husk of a man trapped in the vice grip of a diabetic coma, but still giving a thumbs up as if to say, “Totally worth it.” Oh, wait, I think he just said, “These are good.”

Delightful scorpions and seahorsies!  Both easily available in kebab form here in Beijing!  Okay, not so easily available, all the Chinese people I know draw the line at eating scorpions and seahorses.  But not at grasshoppers and fish heads, oddly enough… all seems the same to me.

Hope I didn’t kill anyone’s appetite.

cooling after the second bake

I’ve been craving cookies, but I don’t actually like them so much (too sweet); I just want something to go with coffee, and biscotti are generally not super rich, due to having no shortening usually. Melody recommended this recipe from joy of baking. I like my biscotti as plain as possible, so almond it was, but the link will also tell you how to make a chocolate glaze/frosting, and almond biscotti often have some anise in, too. For the nut-intolerant, cranberries or chocolate chips would probably substitute pretty well for the almonds (and though the original calls for almond extract, I didn’t have any so I just used extra vanilla and it worked fine. I thought about adding some Scotch because I was worried about blandness ["Vanilla extract is alcohol! Bailey's Irish Cream is made of whiskey and sweet and comes in an almond version!"] Then I didn’t. This was probably for the best.)

You need:

• 1 cup blanched, toasted, and coarsely chopped whole almonds
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/8-1/4 tsp salt (the original called for 1/8 and I don’t think it was quite enough.)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• zest of most of a lemon, I guess, but not really grating the pith, just the pretty yellow bit, also a lot of it sticks to the grater anyway so it’s not as much as it sounds

Blanching the almonds: I guess you could buy pre-toasted, pre-chopped almonds, if you’re lame. So preheat the oven to 350F. Take your whole raw almonds and blanch them by boiling some water, adding the almonds and taking it off the heat, letting sit for 1 min (not more! gets mushy and bad!), then straining them out and running under cold water. Now the skins will come off really easily so do that and put your blanched, skinless almonds on a baking sheet. Toast them for ~10min (took me 12 min) till they’re turning a little bit golden and start to smell good. Maybe shake them around a little partway through. Now, have at them with knife. They don’t need to be evenly chopped at all – in fact a mixture of little nearly-powdered bits and halves or quarters makes for a nice texture.

You can turn the oven down to 300F now.

In a smallish bowl, beat the eggs with the vanilla extract – or 1 tsp vanilla and 1/2 tsp almond extract, if you have it, or whatever other fanciness you feel like. In another and larger bowl, mix your dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder, salt. Pour the egg mixture in a bit at a time and mix it into a dough slowly. The original tells you to use an electric mixer; this was the opposite of helpful. I used spoon and hands after electric mixer disaster. When the wet ingredients are about half in, add the almonds.

You should have a thick, sugary dough. Divide into two equal lumps. Flour some countertop; roll each lump into a log about 10 in. long and 2 in. wide. Put them on a lightly greased baking sheet (flouring it might also have helped, in retrospect) with a bit of space between them. Depending on how flat you want your biscotti, you could squish them down a little. Bake for ~40 min or till no longer squishy to the touch.

Biscotti get their name because they’re baked twice (oh, Italy, you are so clever) so now you have to slice them and bake them again. But first, let them cool for at least 10 min! Then use a large serrated knife and caution. Mine crumbled a lot. Cut at an angle to make the right shape. I couldn’t get 1/2 inch slices to not break, but remember they will be hard and you will have to bite them so perhaps don’t go much thicker. Arrange them lying down on your baking sheet and stick them back in the oven, flipping halfway through, for about 15 min per side, or (again) until not squishy.

Let them cool and make coffee! I will be having mine with moka coffee for breakfast tomorrow.

I feel like avoiding the world but love preparing sweet, lemon-y foods, so crêpes it is! Crepes are the best bought off of street corners in Paris, but, being both classy & delicious, one can’t go wrong making them on your own.  I’ve seen a few recipes for an incredibly runny egg batter but I stole a more forgiving recipe from Alton Brown. I’ll experiment with others later on.

Ingredients

• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup flour
• 3 tablespoons melted butter

This is basically no work to create as all of the art is in the flipping. Mix everything together; the batter should be homogeneous and without air bubbles. I used a blender for the mixing and refrigerated the batter overnight to allow it to settle. Reduced the air bubbles allows for easier flipping without any ripping.

I added two tablespoons of sugar, a teaspoon of Vanilla & a dash of Lemon Extract to turn my concoction into more of a dessert dish. The batter smelled strong, but the flavoring was just about perfect; distinctly lemon without overpowering any toppings.

Coat a small pan in non-stick spray or butter and drizzle a thin coating of batter into the pan.  (Thin crêpes tend to taste better, cook faster & you get more of them. Win.)  The outer edge of the crêpe will cook faster than in middle; after ~60 seconds, the batter should change from a light, runny consistency to a darker, solid state. The cooked portion will keep its form enough to allow you to flip the crêpe without too much disaster…

Add a topping, roll them up and enjoy. Alternatively, terribly crass, very hungry people, like me, also enjoy eating them plain.  Yarrr.

I am at Karen and Spanky’s house.  There are Street Fighter 4 sounds and egg beater sounds in the background.  We have had a Tea Party, limited in size but not limited in scope.  We don’t have pictures of our full spread, because food pretty much disappeared when it hit the table.  Also, the table was not large enough for all the food we made.  Also, our designated food photographer was too busy stuffing her face full of food (and thus taking care of our table space problem) to document all of our spread.

Drinks:

- Earl Grey Creme tea (from Teavana)

- Homemade ginger beer

- Storebought ginger beer

- I had a muthafuckin’ Vault. But that was just for maximum cooking power

Food:

- Cucumber, cream cheese, and whole wheat mini sandwiches

- Rosemary ham, cream cheese, and whole wheat mini sandwiches

- Bacon-wrapped stuffed jalapenos

- Cranberry scones

- Bacon and cheddar scones (see recipe below)

- Mumsy’s  buttermilk cake

- Vanilla cupcakes with strawberry whipped cream

- Clotted cream and blackberry jam from jars

The Baconator

The sandwiches ended up leaving us prematurely, and Gloria ate all of the cucumber, so I could not make more. The rosemary ham is delicious–I found it at my local Harris Teeter, so you might find some where you are too.  The bacon-wrapped jalapeno thingies were from a recipe I got from The Pioneer Woman, who has uncontrollably good taste in food.  Even people who couldn’t take the heat did not in fact have to get out of the kitchen.  Gloria’s bacon and cheddar scones rounded up the savory foods. We remarked later that they tasted a lot like the Asian pancakes Yulin posted about.  They would probably taste like a complete breakfast with a side of scrambled eggs.

Oh god... cupcakes...

I could comment on the cranberry scones and clotted cream and the buttermilk cake, but I couldn’t do them justice.  Not when my heart belongs to the queen of all desserts, the vanilla cupcakes.  Although I love cupcakes, I have never eaten one and been utterly consumed with the urgent need to eat another.  These cupcakes were like watching a hot chick happen to drop a quarter in front of you.  You watch her bend over, and all you want to do is throw another quarter out there, so it can keep bending over. And you know, because of the delicious whipped cream, that she will still be moist and not overpoweringly sweet and perfectly flavored and covered in strawberries again and again and again………..

Shit.

The point: I could eat a lot.  Karen has promised that she will post her exact demon recipe, to capture the hearts of men by singing them into the sea.

Quote from the room: “Oh god, he’s got a purple thong on. Oh shit.”

I think I have to go.

The moral of the story is to never underestimate the power of Smarties.