And That's Why You Always Bake Before Finals

Hey guys, you know what's better than taking classes? NOT taking classes! It's currently finals week in the most baking-free semester known to mankind. But now the semester is ending and that means there's time to bake again! Even though I wasn't taking any classes (and thus have no finals to take to stress out about), I did spend this semester teaching a course for the first time ever. That's right, I'm mad with power. Therefore, the only thing about finals week for me to worry about is giving my students an exam.

Now, let me give you some background on why I'm baking before giving a final exam. UConn has switched its course evaluation system to an online system. Two friends and I postulated that this would mean a lower response rate than the in-class paper evaluations (which is the opposite of what UConn seemed to hope to achieve besides the whole saving trees thing). We subsequently made a bet that whoever got the lowest response rate pre-bribery would have to buy lunch. Pre-bribery, I didn't lose. Then we decided to add bribery to the mix. I told my students that I'd bring cookies to the final if I won the bet. Well, I didn't actually win, but I didn't lose either. So I'm bringing cookies anyway. Because I'm nice. And frankly, I'm happy to be done with teaching and this is as good an excuse as any to bake!

I have no time nor energy to actually challenge myself tonight so I went with the old standby: Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookies. No nuts, no fuss, just good ol' chocolate chip. Because who doesn't need a nice chocolate chip cookie after a really challenging exam an exam that fairly tests all of the material covered. I decided to make a double batch because I have 40 students and people who have been craving my baking for a while now. So according to the chocolate chip package, that would be 10 dozen cookies! Sounds about right.

There's something so calming about baking. I can't quite describe it. But even when I'm gabbing on the phone with my sister and adding the ingredients, it just starts to put me at ease. Anyway, it's been so long since I made these, I initially couldn't remember how many sticks of butter went in. Other than that though, things went smoothly aside from one really stubborn egg that didn't seem to want to crack. The shell cracked but the membrane wouldn't break! So weird. Also, I was reminded of the time when I was shopping with my mom Santa for my KitchenAid mixer and was discussing what size to get. And I remember saying, "I'll never need that bigger one, that's ludicrous! When would I ever be making that many cookies?" Yup, now is when I could've used that bigger one. The dough was practically spilling out of the mixing bowl. Whoops.

This is a short blog post because there's really nothing to say about chocolate chip cookies. But it is good to be back in the kitchen. Here's a small sampling of the huge number of cookies I'm baking:

They're delicious and they came out perfectly (seriously, I didn't burn a single cookie. They are ALL perfectly baked!) and I can't wait to share them with my students and friends. It's good to be back. And if any of my students are reading this right now, GO STUDY!

The beginning...

Everybody needs a hobby. That much is well known.  I have many, many hobbies.  After two years of graduate school though, I decided that hobbies are not enough.  A person also needs goals in life.  Now, I don't mean abstract goals or super long term goals.  I mean goals that will distract me from the black hole that is life at UConn.  That said, academic goals (i.e. things that must be completed in order to achieve my degree) are boring and are a poor distraction.  I decided to collect ideas for a non-academic goal over the summer and I got many awesome suggestions.  I considered the ideas carefully but none of them had really grabbed me.  So I came to UConn for my third year still without a concrete non-academic goal.

Then, yesterday I was cleaning my living room (since my house is always a disaster area) and I found a cookbook that I had received as a housewarming gift: Taste of Home Contest Winning Annual Recipes 2010.  I started flipping through it and quickly decided that it's a pretty terrible cookbook.  But some of the dessert recipes intrigued me.  And while I'm pretty terrible at cooking, I'm not half bad at baking though admittedly, I haven't done that much baking in my life.  Finally I was inspired.  And Muse, your name is Cookie Dough Truffles.

So here I am, blogging for the first time in my life.  I figured it could be fun to keep a record of my adventures in the kitchen.  Picture it: a poor grad student with very few baking tools (seriously, I only have one tiny cookie sheet and 2 Pyrex bowls to work with currently) who doesn't much like getting her hands dirty while cooking.  Should get interesting.  This won't be Julie/Julia though because I don't currently even have a cookbook to bake my way through, nor do I have a concrete endpoint in mind.  Yet.  In the meantime, here's my recap of my first baking adventure:

As I mentioned, the recipe that caught my eye was for cookie dough truffles.  I am a cookie dough fiend.  Everyone knows this.  If I could have a cookie factory of my own, I would.  The recipe itself was pretty straightforward.  Make some eggless cookie dough, roll into balls, cover in chocolate.  Not hard right? Hah. Hurdle number one was that the recipe called for "dark chocolate candy coating".  Now, I don't know what that is and I didn't see it in the supermarket so I got some dark chocolate chips and hoped that would suffice. More on that later.  The second hurdle I faced was my lack of skills with a can opener.  Go ahead and call me weird now but I don't typically eat anything out of a can.  The only times in my life I have ever opened a can were on Thanksgiving opening chicken stock and at my house we have the church key style can opener.  I don't have one of those so I struggled and made a mess with the can opener I have.  Good times.

At this point, the balls of dough had to chill in the fridge for an hour (which, by the way, got interesting because as I said, I only have one baking sheet and I made way more than one baking sheet of truffles.  However, a metal rack covered in wax paper sufficed) so I decided to Google what exactly chocolate candy coating is.  Apparently it is not just chocolate.  Oops.  So I was stalled on my recipe until today when I went to the store to get shortening to add to the melted chocolate (P.S. shortening is code for Crisco. Who knew?) .  After that, I did the whole melting chocolate in a small bowl that's sitting in a large bowl of hot water thing.  Then I was told to coat the balls of cookie dough in the chocolate.  The cookbook recommended using a fork to dip in the chocolate.  I quickly decided this was a terrible idea and led to lumpy and thick chocolate coatings so I just dove in and used my fingers.  After getting about 3/4 of the way through, I realized I was running out of chocolate but didn't feel like melting more because my hands were all chocolatey so the last 1/4 of the batch has a really thin coat of chocolate because I used every last drop of chocolate in my bowl.  After chilling again, I pulled them out of the fridge and tasted.  These things are delicious and really really sweet.  Sadly, I don't think my homemade chocolate candy coating is great because they're not supposed to melt in your hand and they kinda do right now.  I think I'll just keep them refrigerated and spring for some real candy coating in the future.

I'm hoping to bake something new sometime next week and start foraging for some real baking equipment. Thanks to anyone who read and here's a picture of today's accomplishment: