Channeling My Inner Martha

I know, I know, I've been bad again. Baking has been happening, I swear! It's just that the blogging part hasn't been happening. Believe it or not, I've been actually doing work lately! Hang on, I'll wait for you to absorb the shock of that statement. Good now? Ok, good.

Like I said, there's been baking. In fact, there was baking during a very special visit from a friend who lives very far away. We made Martha's Ne Plus Ultra cookies. They were quite good but there isn't much to report besides me buying a $2 SlapChop at the Goodwill store to chop pecans because I don't have a food processor. And alas, I ate them all before I remembered to take a picture so you'll just have to take my word for it that they looked and tasted delicious. Oh, one note about these cookies: Martha seemed to think that the recipe made 8 cookies and I made about 30. No one wants a cookie that big.

So that's the Ne Plus Ultra cookie story (by the way, ne plus ultra just means "awesome cookie") and it wasn't very interesting so we'll move on to my attempt to make an Easter themed dessert. When considering what a good Easter dessert might be, I thought long and hard about what would capture the Easter spirit and then I just caved and Googled Easter desserts. Of course, Martha recipes came up with some of the most precious looking cakes ever. I decided to tackle one of her easier ones: Rich Chocolate Cake with Ganache Frosting and Truffle-Egg Nest. Yep. The recipe can be found here. Basically, it's just a chocolate cake with a precious shaved chocolate nest built on top with homemade truffle eggs in the center. Modification #1: I was not making truffle eggs from scratch. I just didn't have the energy or the drive to color egg-shaped truffles robin's egg blue. No freaking way. I bought some Cadbury eggs and called it a day on that one.

The next adventure, so to speak, was the search for the 7 inch cake pans. To give you some context, a standard round cake pan is 9 inches. We had one 8 inch pan (and several 9 inches) but no 7 inch. Oh, and a 6 inch is about the size of the top tier of a wedding cake. So off I went to hunt for the elusive 7 inch cake pan. I asked a neighbor to start with but alas, no 7 incher. I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Kohl's, AC Moore (on the day before Easter, mind you) and nothing. So before even beginning to bake, I was already frustrated. Not cool, Martha. Not cool. I decided to pick up two 8 inch pans for my collection and resolved to watch the cakes carefully to adjust the bake time.

Here's one cool thing about this cake: it's made entirely in a pot. Seriously, all you need is a pot and a whisk. Nothing too interesting to report in the baking process except that I perhaps should have whisked more vigorously in the last step to fluff the batter up more. Anywho, baked up the cakes and left them to cool for a while. Now, here comes another point of confusion: the recipe called for both a whipped ganache frosting and then another ganache topping but I did not realize that upon my first reading. Or second. Or third. By the time I did figure it out, I realized that I didn't have enough chocolate or heavy cream for the second ganache. Maybe I'm just stressed out but this was an extremely frustrating discovery. Eventually I got over it and iced the cake with the whipped ganache frosting and covered it with the thinner ganache. The cake itself came out looking quite professionally done, if I do say so myself (and I do.) I was initially saddened by what seemed like a waste of perfectly good ganache (I pretty much had to pour ganache over the whole cake and let the excess run into the bottom of a pan) but then my mom saved the day by scraping the ganache into a container for later use in strawberry-dipping.

Now, all of this is well and good from a baking standpoint. But now we get to the Martha-ness of the recipe. Anyone can make a simple chocolate cake. It takes a real pro to make a bird's nest out of chocolate. Here are the directions: "using a chef's knife, scrape milk chocolate bar at 90 degree angle, forming enough curls and shards to measure 1 1/2 cups." Sounds simple, right? Wrong. It took three masterminds to figure out that scraping down the chocolate only created tiny chocolate confetti. Eventually (and I do mean to imply that this took some time and some staring at a chocolate bar and some experimentation with potato peelers on chocolate), I discovered that instead of scraping, I could just chop thin slices of chocolate which yielded much better results. Then the last step was to build the nest. I was bad at this. My "nest" didn't look at all like a nest. My sister had to fix it for me. But whatever, I'm not the artistic one of the family. It came out pretty precious looking in the end. Here's a picture for your judgement:

As for the taste, it went over very well with my family on Easter. I thought it was a bit denser than it should have been but maybe that's just a personal preference. I bet having a 7 inch pan would have made it better. Stupid 7 inch pan.

A Disney Moment: Oliver and Company
I love Oliver and Company. I think it's adorable. And anyone who disagrees is wrong. Again, we see my affinity for cartoon cats and dogs coming out but I think it's a pretty well structured film. I like the pacing. I like the referrals to Oliver Twist. It's certainly not an original story but it's fun nonetheless. Certain moments really stuck with me. Small things like how Dodger struts every time he walks. And to me, a four-legged strut is a bit of an accomplishment. "Why Should I Worry?" is a really fun scene with a truly terrific song. The other musical high for me was "You and Me Together" which is just one of the sweetest things in the world. I may be biased because the girl is named Jenny but I just find that whole song endearing.

Let's see, what else? Oh, I was a bit surprised to discover that I didn't mind having the characters voiced by famous people. Bette Midler voicing the overdramatic show dog was especially perfect to me. Overall, I was just left with a happy feeling when the movie ended. I also really enjoyed the opening and closing landscapes of NYC. That all said, I'm still only giving this movie a 3/5. Why, you ask? Well, because, my friends, we are on the cusp of the Disney Renaissance! Great things to come. But Oliver and Company is still ranking a lot higher than the likes of Fox and the Hound, for example, despite its low group rating.

Shame on the Blogger

Ah, it appears that I haven't posted anything in a month. Whoops. Sorry about that. In that time, the whole format of blogger has changed. Erg. So confused. So anyway, I'm back! I didn't really go anywhere but I guess I've been busy or unmotivated or just plain lazy so despite baking plenty, I've been remiss with my blog posts. So I think I'll just do a very brief catch-up on my projects and then we'll get back to something normal starting this week.

Like I said, I have been baking. But for a while I was making cookies from recipes I had already used. For instance, I made the Cake Boss peanut butter cookies to bring to a housewarming party. Or I made Martha's Snickerdoodles because my boyfriend really likes them. I didn't want to blog about stuff I had already done! That would've been boring. So I suppose I set a bad precedent for posting this month. Ok, enough of me trying to defend myself.

The first new thing that I've made lately was from Martha (naturally) and was a cookie called Buttered Rum Meltaways. These were a fairly uneventful cookie so I'll just give you the highlights. The first thing I noticed was that they have all the fun spices that are seen in pumpkin cookies. So they automatically smelled delicious. The second thing I noticed was that they have a lot of rum in them. Like, 1/4 cup. I mixed up all the ingredients and had to roll the cookies into two 1 1/4 inch logs of dough. That's a really small cookie. Like really small. So small that I triple checked to be sure I had the measurements correct and even watched a video of Martha rolling the dough from the Martha Stewart show. I even got out a ruler for this one! So, I just decided they are supposed to be tiny, bite-size cookies.

To put my laziness in perspective, these cookies had to be in the freezer for about 30 minutes and I left them for 3 days. All I had to do was slice and bake and I was too lazy to do it. Well, ok, slice, bake, and coat with powdered sugar. I thought they were decent cookies in the end but not really to my taste. My mom described them as "like a gingersnap...now they're rummy...now they're like a pie!" They're basically that gum from Willy Wonka that is a meal in a stick of gum. Anyway, decent, but not great. Here's a picture:

Next, I made Martha's giant chocolate sugar cookies for colloquium. The recipe was supposed to yield 8 cookies but that was impractical so I made about 4 dozen. Easy recipe. Nothing super interesting. Fine cookies but not great. I prefer the Death by Chocolate chocolate fudge cookies. I don't really ever feel the need to go back to these cookies. So, moving on. But here they are:

Lastly, my mom and I made Martha's Browned Butter Toffee Blondies. These are freakin' amazing. Probably my second favorite thing behind the Pecan Tassies. It wasn't a hard recipe but there were steps involved. First, we had to brown 2 1/2 STICKS of butter. That's a whole lot of butter. Anyway, we had to cook it in a saucepan until it was "browned," whatever that really means. It smelled good though. Then we had to mix that with a huge amount of sugar and brown sugar. From there, your standard flour, baking powder, salt, egg type stuff. Oh yeah, and vanilla. My mom kind of dumped the vanilla in instead of measuring carefully. That vanilla must have tried jumping from her hands or something. So there may have been a bit of extra vanilla. Oh well. And finally, a cup of toffee bits and a cup of chopped walnuts pecans. That's right, we made a substitution in a Martha recipe. I know that Martha knows best but sometimes in life you just don't want to have to pay for walnuts and you happen to have pecans in your house. Yep, that was indeed the thought process.

Anyway, Martha had instructed us to butter a pan, lay down a layer of parchment paper, and then butter the parchment paper. We initially resisted this direction but finally decided to trust Martha. It was a good choice. My goodness though, these things smell heavenly. They almost smell like maple syrup. My mom and I were supposed to let them cool completely and then flip the pan upside down to cut the blondies but we didn't even wait for them to cool before digging in with a knife and cutting off a slice. They're so so so good. I mean, amazing. So yummy. Especially warmed up. Mmmmm. I still have a few left and I'm excited to go home and eat one. Oh, we were supposed to use cookie cutters to make shapes. We didn't. That is all, here they are:

A Disney Moment: Great Mouse Detective
On to a new group of 5! Here we get into the Disney Renaissance with Great Mouse Detective, Oliver and Company, Little Mermaid, Rescuers Down Under, and Beauty and the Beast. So, I first saw Great Mouse Detective fairly recently as it had somehow not been on my Disney radar as a kid. It's a pleasant enough movie. It sets a really nice tone with the dancing ballerina toy because the animation in that moment is just so smooth and lovely. But from there, without being a Sherlock Holmes fan, there just wasn't much that grabbed me. I could get the most general Sherlock Holmes references but I think a lot of the nuance was lost on me. So, it's possible that if I had read Sherlock Holmes I would have appreciated it more.

Meanwhile, I loved seeing some callbacks to old films. Namely, Dumbo in the toy shop and the lizard from Alice. It was just a sweet touch. Anyway, the final verdict is that it was entertaining but somewhat forgettable. As such, it warrants a 4/5 (you fiend!).

We're Running Out of Thyme!

Happy Leap Day everyone! And what a joyous Leap Day it has been. To celebrate Leap Day, I decided to make something a little crazier than usual (because anything can happen on Leap Day) and finally make the Martha Stewart Cornmeal Thyme cookies. In anticipation of making these cookies, I had previously picked up some thyme and some Zante currants. The recipe specified dried currants. I combed every aisle of two supermarkets and didn't find a single thing labeled "dried currants" so I picked up the next best thing, Zante currants. Which, as it turns out, are the exact same thing as dried currants. Or at least that's what Wikipedia is telling me. Whatever, I didn't even know what currants were before now. Apparently they're like raisins.

Anyway, slightly stressful shopping aside, I was anxious to try a cookie that had such a seemingly weird mix of ingredients and moreover, was specified to be a tea cookie. This makes it perfect for colloquium where everyone is already having coffee or tea. So, this morning, I had to get my act together and make these cookies in time for colloquium. I was all ready to go and was pulling out the ingredients when I noticed one small detail that I had overlooked. The recipe calls for yellow cornmeal. I had cornstarch. A Google search told me in no uncertain terms that these are not the same thing. I suppose I should have guessed that. I have before seen homemade cornmeal. But, lacking corn to grind (and knowing that it makes a huge mess. Long story. It involves my college kitchen covered in some terrifying yellow paste. Don't ask.), I headed out to the store dressed in my blue and yellow Leap Day best.

Now though, I was really under the gun. I had only about an hour and a half to make the cookies and during part of that time, I had to be on a conference call. Rushing around my kitchen, I started creaming the butter and sugar and gathering the dry ingredients. The butter was not working well for me because one of the sticks of butter had come from the freezer. Whoops. Eventually it more or less got to the right consistency though. For once, I even combined the dry ingredients in a separate bowl instead of dumping them all in separately. I figured that it would be wise to really combine the cornmeal and the flour to ensure an even distribution in the dough. From there, the rest of making the dough was easy.

The last things to add were the currants and the thyme. At this point, I was already on the conference call and let me tell you, thyme was of the essence! Don't you groan at that pun, I've got a million of these. Anyway, the currants were easy to measure out, despite being all stuck together and sticky. It was the thyme that got kind of annoying. I was supposed to finely chop the thyme. But, I mean, it's thyme. It's already super duper tiny. So I didn't chop it. It was really a big thyme saver. Hehe.

Ok, ok, I'm done with those puns now. I popped the cookies in the oven and baked them without any incident. The recipe specified that I should use parchment paper but I think all of Martha's recipes do and I don't mind washing my pans so I didn't bother with the paper. I baked them all up, put them in a container to bring to colloquium, and checked my email one last time before walking out the door. Lo and behold, I discovered an email informing me of a snow day! It's a Leap Day miracle! So, no school for me and no colloquium so what do I do? Well, I grab a cookie, make myself a cup of tea, and snuggle in for a several hour marathon of Big Bang Theory, of course!

Oh, by the way, the cookies are quite good. Not very sweet but a nice, chewy texture and a lovely flavor. And I'm patting myself on the back because they look exactly like the picture. The only problem is that now I have a whole tin full of cookies and no colloquium to bring them to!

A Disney Moment: Black Cauldron
To further quote 30 Rock in this blog post, "Oh good God, Lemon Black Cauldron!" It very well might be worse than Sword in the Stone. And that's really saying something. My sister and I actually took a break halfway through this movie! We never do that! But let me bring you back to the beginning...

The beginning confused us. Why? Because we were slightly distracted and then all of a sudden, we're into the actual movie and we had missed all of the credits! We love reading the credits! So we rewound the movie. Watching carefully, we discovered that no, we had not missed the credits. The credits are just at the end for the first time. So we got off on the wrong foot with this movie to begin with.

But it didn't get much better from there. The plot reeked of Lord of the Rings, I couldn't remember any of the character names, and the sidekick creature, Gurgi, was entirely distracting because we couldn't figure out what the hell he was supposed to be. Is he a dog? Is he a mythical creature? Is he Gollum? Regardless of what he was, he was super annoying. Oddly enough, after watching this movie, we met a dog that looked pretty much exactly like Gurgi. The whole movie just felt like torture to watch.

I will say that all of the evil stuff is pretty freakin terrifying. It was like all the worst parts of Fantasia in several really terrifying sequences. I can see why this movie was rated PG. In fact, while I was watching, I even questioned that rating because the whole movie was pretty dark. Ok, rant over. 5/5 and we're done with this block of films. Ugh. Black Cauldron.

I Hate the Smell of Anise in the Morning

Welcome back! This morning, in an effort to make quick and easy colloquium cookies, I decided to head back to Martha and make Anise Drops. I partially picked these because they're on the page opposite the Cornmeal Thyme cookies (coming soon to a blog near you) and partially because I have no idea what anise is and it sounded intriguing.

So, bright and early this morning, I started with the baking. First I had to whisk up 3 eggs until they were fluffy. I had some trouble cracking the eggs. They split the wrong way when I cracked them. It was odd. No shell though, I was very careful. Fluffed those, added some sugar, added some anise extract. I knew the second that I opened the bottle of anise extract that I wouldn't like these cookies. Anise extract smells like licorice and I hate licorice. Not good. But I powered through and added in the baking powder, salt, and flour and that was all the ingredients.

For the next step, I had to pipe the cookies onto the baking pans. Stupid piping. I was instructed to use either a really large tip for the pastry bag or just use the coupling to pipe. So I didn't put a tip in at all. The piping didn't exactly go poorly this time but, as usual, I made a mess. I'm always good with the first filling of the bag but when the time comes to refill it, I always make a mess. Oh well.

Also, once again, I made the cookies too big. I was supposed to get 4 dozen cookies and instead got 3 dozen. Whoops. I can't judge what a 1 1/4 inch circle looks like at all. Regardless, I baked them up and let them cool and the whole thing was uneventful.

I will say this: I dreaded tasting these cookies. I knew I wouldn't like them. But for your sake, dear readers, I suffered through a taste of anise cookie. It tasted as I expected. Like licorice. Gross. On the bright side, the consistency of the cookie was spot on. Martha said they would have a crisp shell and a soft middle and that was accurate. So, success on the baking front, failure on the tasting front. I brought all of the cookies to colloquium so that I could get that awful smell out of my house. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating about the smell. A little. Here's a picture of the cookies:

I was all set to post this one this afternoon but held off until this evening. So as a result, you get bonus baking! Sometimes, when life gets you down (like when you spend time making cookies you don't like), you just want a chocolate chip cookie. So I made chocolate chip cookies. Nothing fancy. Just some good ol' fashioned Nestle Toll House. I've made these so many times that I've practically memorized the recipe by now so there's nothing to tell about baking them. But let me just say, a chocolate chip cookie can really make your day. I will now go continue watching Sleepless in Seattle.

A Disney Moment: The Fox and the Hound
I don't even know how to properly rant about this movie. The fox and hound (I don't even remember their names) are cute when they're little. I like the "Best of Friends" song. But the whole movie is just a mess. The end especially doesn't really make sense. There are no real consequences for the evil hunter man and the fox and hound just sort of reach an agreement that fox gets to live but hound gets to keep hunting foxes? It was a straight up mess. But still less of a mess than the Rescuers. 3/5. That is all. No, wait, not quite all. For a more interesting story, see the plot synopsis of Daniel P. Mannix's Fox and the Hound that the movie was based on. It sounds like Disney should have stuck to the original novel.

Piece of [Cheese]Cake

I finally had a good excuse to make a cheesecake! Yay! Last weekend, in celebration of my aunt's birthday, I decided to make a recipe from Death By Chocolate that I've been dying to make: White Chocolate Cheesecake. This is actually a fairly simple recipe but it takes quite a long time to make. So, for the party on Saturday evening, I started making this cheesecake on Thursday.

Once again, we have a tale of substitutions. I was supposed to make Deep Dark Chocolate Fudge cookies to use for the crust. I didn't feel like making those cookies for the fourth time. Maybe some other time, but not now. So I decided to substitute a plain old graham cracker crust instead. There ended up being two problems with that. The first was that I needed 2.5 cups of graham cracker crumbs. I ended up only having slightly less than 2 cups. Hmm. I refused to go back out to the store but I found chocolate graham crackers in the cabinet. So, I figured, mixing them couldn't be bad, right? Right. So that's what I did. Not an insurmountable problem but a hurdle nonetheless.

The second, and slightly more significant, problem was that I was following the recipe in the book for the graham cracker to butter ratio. I suppose that crushed cookies have a very different quality compared to graham crackers because the recipe called for 3 tablespoons of butter. After melting the butter and mixing it in, the crumbs should have been able to be molded. Not a chance. I ended up using a whole stick of butter for my crust. Ultimately, I really should have looked for a different recipe for a crust instead of just guessing but it worked out fine in the end and I was too lazy to look up a recipe.

So, the crust goes into the freezer to chill while I make the filling. The filling is basically a ton of cream cheese, white chocolate, and eggs. After measuring out 1 3/4 lbs of cream cheese (and mixing it a little to soften it up better), I set up the chocolate in the double boiler to melt. A bit of heavy cream and EIGHTEEN ounces of white chocolate. That's a lot of chocolate. And, I learned my lesson about using good white chocolate instead of crappy white chocolate so I got some nice Ghirardelli's for the occasion. While that melted, I mixed up the cream cheese, sugar, and salt, followed by a half dozen eggs. Literally. I should point out that during all of this, I was trying to work as quickly as possible because it was already about 4 pm and the cheesecake takes about 7 hours to bake and cool. As it was, by my calculations, I'd still be dealing with this cheesecake at midnight. My calculations were correct.

Anyway, I poured in the melted chocolate and some vanilla extract and voila! That was all the ingredients. I poured the mixture into the springform pan and was ready to bake. Now check out these baking instructions: "Place a baking sheet with sides partially filled with 4 cups of hot water on the bottom rack of the oven. Place the springform pan on the center rack of the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Lower the temperature to 250° and bake for 15 minutes. Lower the temperature to 225° and bake for 15 minutes. Then lower the temperature to 200°, and bake the cheesecake until the internal temperature of the cheesecake filling reaches 170°, about 2 hours and 45 minutes. Turn off the oven and allow the cheesecake to remain in the oven undisturbed for an additional 2 hours. Remove from the oven and cool at room temperature for 1 hour. Refrigerate the cheesecake for 12 hours (do not remove the cake from the pan)." Do you understand now why I was in such a hurry? I wanted this cheesecake to be perfect and it had to be pretty constantly monitored.

Sometime around midnight, I moved the cheesecake into the fridge to chill. My boyfriend and I both worriedly noted that the cake still seemed well, not liquidy, but definitely not as solid as one would expect from a cheesecake. I figured that maybe it would firm up in the fridge (since it would be hanging out in there for at least twelve hours).

It chilled longer than twelve hours because on Friday I went to the 2012 USA Curling National Tournament in Pennsylvania. Yes, that's right. I went to watch curling for a full day. And it was awesome. Don't judge.

On Saturday morning, there was one final step to complete. I had to coat the cake with some ganache. I had a ton of Ultimate Ganache in my freezer so I figured that I would substitute the Ultimate for the plain old Chocolate Ganache that the recipe called for. Plus, my crust was a lot less chocolatey than the recipe had specified so it couldn't hurt, right? So, I just have to re-melt my ultimate ganache and...oh yeah, crap, I left it in Connecticut. And I'm in New Jersey. Score. So what does the baker do? She makes more, of course! That process went smoothly so there wasn't much to tell.

Finally, it was time to cut and eat the cake. Sadly, I forgot to bring candles so we had to make do with a tealight placed on top of the cake. Nevertheless, we cut into it and...horror. You could see the fear in everyone's eyes. It did not, in fact, firm up as it chilled. The cheesecake ended up being more like a pudding in the middle than a cake. We passed slices around anyway and I dove right in for a taste. And it was delicious. I mean, really heavenly good. I ate two slices. And you all know that I don't really have a sweet tooth. So pudding or not, the cake was a hit because the taste was so good. My theories on the consistency include a) the huge amount of melted white chocolate just makes it that way and b) my mom's oven temperatures aren't correct. But here's a couple pictures:

A couple of notes: First, I could have used some more graham cracker crust because (as you can see) it didn't make it all the way up the sides of the whole cake. Second, I was supposed to top the cake with white chocolate curls. That didn't happen because I'm lazy and because I didn't have a block of white chocolate with which to make the white chocolate curls. Lastly, on some of my more recent projects: my mom and great aunt adored the pignoli cookies and said they were perfect. That's good because I hated them. There was consensus that the Martha snickerdoodles were better, though the JoC ones weren't bad. And, the highlight of my week: after eating a couple of snickerdoodles at pre-colloquium tea, one of the professors exclaimed that the cookies were not i.i.d. and discussed with another professor whether they were mixture normal or stratified cookies. If you get that, you're a nerd, and you have my pity.

A Disney Moment: The Rescuers
Here we go with a couple of awful movies. The Rescuers had a couple of fundamental flaws and generally was just sort of...there. Nothing exceptional. Nothing to make you remember it. Certainly nothing to warrant a sequel (unless the purpose of the sequel is to give the protagonists a second chance to get it right). The premise isn't bad: a UN of mice rescuing kids. The main problem though, is that you don't even really see the girl they're rescuing until over halfway through the movie. So you can never develop an emotional attachment to her. And then, when you do see her, she comes up with her own plan for her rescue. She doesn't even need the mice! She did everything herself and she was occasionally just really dumb.

Also, why are all the animals the same size??? The mouse, rabbit, owl, turtle, and mole are all exactly the same size! That doesn't make any sense! That fact annoyed me quite a bit so this movie ranks a 4/5.

Last Snickerdoodle Standing

And the blitz of baking blog posts continues! For a while now I've had Snickerdoodles bookmarked to be baked at some point. There are three reasons for this. First, they're quick and easy to make. I could tell that just by looking at the recipe (which doesn't include any weird ingredients). Second, I don't think I've ever had a snickerdoodle in my life. I didn't even quite know what they were even though I had heard of them with popular enthusiasm. And third, snickerdoodle is just a funny word. A word that this blog doesn't recognize as even being a word. Highly inconvenient.

Smooth baking plan for colloquium cookies, right? If you think so, you must be forgetting a key quality of the author/baker. Namely, that I'm crazy and things can never be easy for me. Here's the issue with the snickerdoodles: I have two recipes for them. I have the classic Joy of Cooking recipe and I have the Martha Stewart recipe. Knowing that I had both recipes, I consulted the books to see if they're basically the same. They're not. I mean, they're not even close to being the same. Not only do they have different proportions of butter, sugar, and flour (which really are the main components of the snickerdoodle), but they also have completely different ingredients! Seriously, JoC calls for baking soda and cream of tartar (by the way, who even knows what that is?) and Martha calls for baking powder! Baking powder is what causes cookies to grow and get fluffy so I automatically knew that these would be two different cookies. So what is the baker to do? Which should I choose?

Both, of course.

I wanted the opportunity to really compare the two cookies. I don't think I could have done that if I made one cookie one week and the other a few weeks later. My memory is definitely not that good. So I decided to cook both for a good old-fashioned taste test. And on top of that, it was a race against the clock because I only had about 3 hours before I had to leave for class/colloquium. Sounds like a challenge to me! May the best cookie win!

I started out with Martha's recipe. Let me tell you, I was like a baking machine. Everything was moving like clockwork. Like I said, snickerdoodles are easy. The really fun part came in when I had to roll the dough into balls and roll the balls in a cinnamon-sugar mixture. It was fun because it reminded me of making monkey bread. I haven't had monkey bread in ages and it is so so so good. I should make myself some monkey bread. Anyway, back on topic, Martha warned me to leave a lot of space for the cookies because they really grow as they bake. As a result, I only put 6 cookies on each baking pan. They did in fact grow but they didn't run into each other and they puffed up rather dramatically. Definitely a thick cookie. I'd say on average, they're about two inches high.

While those were baking, I rolled out all of the Martha snickerdoodle dough and put them on a plate before baking so that I could clean the bowl and get started on the JoC snickerdoodle dough. I told you, I'm a baking machine! By the time Martha's snickerdoodles were done and cooling, I was already done with the JoC dough. I decided to cut the JoC recipe in half because the yield was 36 cookies and I didn't have that much time to bake them. The recipe was easy to cut in half though so no harm there. The only harm came in baking them. They really really spread out on the pan. Martha warned me, JoC didn't. Hmmm. I'm having some trust issues with JoC.

Pretty much (as I expected) we got fluffy, soft cookies from Martha and thin, crispy cookies from JoC. Here's a couple of pictures so you can see the difference. I tried to angle the camera so you could see the different heights but let's face it, I'm no photographer:

In case you couldn't tell, the one on the left is Martha's. Now, on to the taste test! I tasted Martha's first. I even took notes on the taste! I was very scientific about this. I think I need a hobby from my hobby. Anyway, Martha's cookies had a very smooth taste. I can't think of a better way to describe it. It's buttery and feels like it melts in your mouth. It has a tiny bit of crisp on the outside but then it gives way to a nice, cakey center. Sweet, but not overpoweringly sweet with just the slightest whisper of cinnamon ("cinnamon!").

Next up was the JoC cookie. Definitely crispy and crunchy. Less sweet than Martha's but also less flavor. It mostly tastes like the doneness of the bottom. By that I mean, the cookies weren't burned by any stretch of the imagination, but it's that almost caramelized sugar taste on the bottom. They're not bad. But they're just not as good as Martha's.

THE WINNAH:

Martha Stewart Snickerdoodles.

Excited by the results of my experiment, I cleaned up my kitchen and put my cookbooks away. While I was doing that, I glanced at the Pillsbury Best Cookies cookbook. They have yet another recipe for snickerdoodles! Again, completely different! How can there be so many recipes for one cookie? So, in the end, Martha wins for now but may be challenged another day.

A Disney Moment: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
Ok, I'm about to make a very unpopular statement: I'm not crazy about Winnie the Pooh. And especially not this movie. I thought it was sort of boring. And overly childish. And mildly terrifying with the winking stuffed Pooh at the end. Throughout the movie, I found myself trying to read the words in the book instead of watching the animation. I really can't explain why it didn't grab me. The music is pleasant enough. The animation is fine. I actually love how well the storybook is integrated into the story (as well as the narration). Eeyore is probably the most unconventional character in a kids' movie and I always liked Tigger and Piglet as a kid. But I just couldn't get into it.

That all said, it's still ranking a 2/5. Think about that. That must mean that we have three real duds coming up. And we do. We actually have a movie that rivals Sword in the Stone for my least favorite film coming up. So, something to look forward to.

Half the Cost, Twice the Thinking

And with barely enough time for my mixing bowl to dry, we're back! In fact, we're back to the Cake Boss cookbook. The reason I ended up baking practically back-to-back is because these cookies needed to rest overnight. And what are these cookies, you ask? Why, Pignoli cookies, of course! For those of you who are significantly less Italian, pignoli cookies are pine nut cookies. I honestly don't think I've ever had one before so I've been looking forward to these for a while now.

To start with, I decided to halve the recipe. Here's why: the recipe calls for 1 pound and 9 ounces of almond paste and 1 1/2 POUNDS of pine nuts. Now, almond paste isn't really easy to find and it's not cheap. And pine nuts are really not cheap. And remember, I'm a broke grad student. As it was, making 24 cookies instead of 48 was stretching my wallet. I don't say this to complain. It's just a caution to those who want to follow in my footsteps and make these cookies. The ingredient cost is high.

That all said, halving the recipe was not without its hurdles. The almond paste part went fine (think of it as a substitute for butter in cookies). The powdered sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon halved just fine. But the recipe called for 1 1/4 cups sugar. I don't have a 1/8 cup measure. So I eyeballed it. What else was I supposed to do? Convert 1/8 cup to tablespoons? Not happening. Similarly, the recipe called for 1 tablespoon of honey and I don't have a 1/2 tablespoon measure. Do they even make those? In any case, I eyeballed that too. Don't look at me like that! I'm lazy, remember?

After adding all of that (in one single step), I had to "paddle until smooth with no lumps remaining". No lumps, you say? How is that even possible? There's nothing wet except 1/2 tsp vanilla and 1/2 tbsp honey! I paddled much longer than specified (in fact, I probably over-mixed the ingredients) and eventually, there were very small, equal-sized lumps. It was basically a crumbly dough so I don't know how else it should have looked. Anyway, the last thing to add was the egg whites. The recipe called for 5 extra-large egg whites. So halve that. Hmm. Half an egg white? Really? That one you actually do have to eyeball and there's definitely nothing I could have done about that. Dividing by two is stressful.

Now comes my favorite part: a pastry bag. Who here remembers the last time I had to deal with a pastry bag and how stressful it was? I do! As a result, I took this whole step as slowly and as carefully as possible. First, I cut two pieces of parchment paper on which I had to pipe the cookies. They kept rolling up in an obnoxious manner so I had to weigh the corners down with various kitchen knickknacks (including, but not limited to, a steak knife). Then, I had to fit my pastry bag with a #6 plain tip. Fun story about my pastry bag. It's a lovely canvas bag and it came in a little kit with a bunch of decorating tips and for the first 3 months that I had it, I couldn't figure out how to properly affix the tips. I tried a lot and the directions didn't make any sense to me. My mommy had to show me how and then I felt stupid. Dark times.

Aside over, back to the #6 plain tip. Looking for the #6, looking for the #6, why, oh why, don't I have a #6? I have a dozen decorating tips. I have #2 and #4 plain tips. I have fancy flower tips. I have no #6 plain tips. Perfect. Deducing that the hole for the #6 was probably larger than that of the #4, I picked a shaped tip that had what I considered to be a large enough hole to squeeze the dough out of. I ended up going with the #96 tip. Who knew that a person could ramble for a whole paragraph about decorating tips?

After stressing out over decorating tips, I filled the pastry bag (which was surprisingly not the worst) and was instructed to pipe the dough into circles 2 inches in diameter and 1 1/2 inches high. I had some trouble making circles at first. They turned out kind of squiggly. Then I realized that I had to a) take it slow and b) not hold the pastry bag so high. But the 1 1/2 inch height made me nervous. My cookies definitely looked too thin. So I ended up piping a second layer on top of my cookies. Piping is a pain. It hurts my hands. In the end though, it didn't end up being so bad. I was one cookie short of my intended goal of 24 cookies but that's still much closer than usual for me.

Wow, long blog post, so many steps. For those of you paying attention, you'll realize that we still need to add some pine nuts! I was instructed to spread the pine nuts out on a baking sheet and then pick up the cookie-covered parchment paper and invert it over the nuts. Press down into the nuts and lift up and put aside. I really wish I had another pair of hands helping me. I was very afraid that the cookies would fall off the parchment paper and it was hard to control where the cookies went on the pan. And, in fact, I should have spread out the pine nuts better because on the second flip, some of the cookies landed on the pan instead of on the pine nuts. As a result, I made a mess (as usual) and ended up pressing several pine nuts into cookies by hand.

Let rest overnight. Whew.

I baked the cookies and they had a really interesting aroma. Not as good as the oatmeal applesauce cookies but definitely interesting. It was probably the cinnamon and pine nuts. They looked nice, they smelled nice but sadly, I don't like them. I tried one and I practically spat it out. Maybe it's just me though. So the jury's still out on the Pignoli cookies. Here's a picture:

Oh, and by the way, I'm not the only one who can't divide by two. At the end of the recipe, there's a note that says that since you won't use all the pine nuts, you could use half as much and press the nuts in by hand. So, instead of using the 5 cups (about 1 1/2 lbs), you could use 2.5 cups (about 1 1/4 lbs). Yup. 1 1/4 is obviously half of 1 1/2. If the baker and an editor can't divide by two, I shouldn't be expected to either. So there.

A Disney Moment: Robin Hood
I LOVE Robin Hood! 1/5! Possibly first out of all so far! Well, more like it's a three-way tie between Dumbo, Lady and the Tramp, and Robin Hood at this point. Still, what an awesome movie! I suppose I should at least explain why I love this movie so much. First off, the opening credits. It's hamster dance, people! The song is great, seeing all of the characters during the credits is great, and the whole thing is just a fun way to set the tone. I especially love the minstrel rooster as the narrator.

The whole movie has good pace. We establish the characters early and quickly. The driving conflict is obvious and we even get a love story that doesn't completely halt the progress of the plot and instead incorporates the love story as part of the conflict (i.e. using Maid Marian as bait to catch Robin Hood).

The animation throughout is pretty solid. Not quite the works of art that say, Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty were but definitely solid. I especially love the effect of the waterfall during the love song. And speaking of songs, I loved all of them. From the humorous "Phony King of England" to the lazy but jaunty "Oo-de-lally" to the sweet but thankfully brief "Love" to the absolutely heartbreaking "Not in Nottingham" it's just perfection. Honestly, as a kid, I remember getting restless during Not in Nottingham but as an adult, it almost made me cry Pixar-style. It was just a really heart wrenching scene that I hadn't paid much attention to before.

Aside from all that, there are small things that really put the movie over the top like Richard the Lionheart being a lion. The snide remarks by Hiss, the snake. Archery! (I love archery.) I honestly loved every second of the movie and really want to watch it again right now. A+ to Robin Hood.