TURTLES!

Oh, so much baking has been happening. For once, I'm actually behind in my blogging! Many apologies to you, my readers. As penance, I promise to put up another post tomorrow to get all caught up. Then again, I'm planning on baking tomorrow so then I'll be behind again. Vicious cycle.

Anywho, I've reached an interesting point in my baking journey. My sister and I were flipping through the Pillsbury Best Cookies Cookbook and were dismissing recipes not because they weren't delicious sounding (which they were) but because they were too easy! That's right; if all I have to do is mix a couple of ingredients together, then it's not challenging enough for me and I'm not learning anything. I reserve the right, however, to bake those cookies on days when I have homework to do. So in the end, we decided on a recipe called "Snappy Turtle Cookies" because there was a picture and they looked cute and there was some assembly required. Onward!

The first steps were pretty simple what with your basic brown sugar and butter creaming. After that, I had to add the vanilla, eggs, and the optional imitation maple flavor. Umm...what? Does anyone out there know what imitation maple flavor is? Or where you get it? Because the supermarket didn't seem to have any. My sister decided that maple syrup would be a good substitute. I don't know if it is a good substitute or not because I still don't know what imitation maple flavor is but it's what we used so that's that. After that, added the dry ingredients and then tossed the dough in the fridge to chill.

After chilling, we had to arrange pecan quarters (lengthwise quarters) into groups of 5 to look like turtle arms, legs, and a head. Then we had to roll the dough into balls to be the shells, dip the balls into egg white which was acting as glue, and then plop them onto the groupings of pecans and somehow that makes a turtle. Well, in some cases it made a turtle. In other cases, it made a tortoise or a blob or a starfish crushed by a rock. Also, since the baking pans were greased, the pecans kept sliding away and we had to chase them down to stick them onto the ball of dough which made me question the whole "laying them out on the pan in advance" process to begin with. Seems a little excessive. But sure, I guess some of them look like turtles so that makes it worth it, right?

After baking, the final step was to make the icing to add to the top of the turtle shells. We had to melt chocolate chips, milk, and butter on the stove and stir until smooth. My sister got tired of my stirring before the pot had even heated up and took the pot away from me and stirred in my place. Apparently I was stirring too slowly for her taste. So I got relegated to measuring the powdered sugar. Yup, got demoted in my own kitchen. Now, the icing was supposed to have 1 cup of powdered sugar but it's ok to add more until it's spreading consistency. We probably used at least double the amount of powdered sugar. Oh well. The last step was to frost the cookies. I frosted the first couple with a spoon and my finger until I realized that I was still at home where there are real baking tools including an icing spreader spatula tool. Yeah, I have no idea what it's called but I know what it does! After that, it was smoother sailing. My sister tried to frost a few but she got frustrated and let me finish them up. Then we tasted them and they were yummy. You could really taste the maple syrup in them but it was very good so I think it was a good substitution in the end. So here they are, the snappy turtle cookies and you can decide if they look like turtles or not:

Critical Reception: 
The chocolate macadamia cookies were a hit. I served them up to some friends at home and they liked them a lot. One friend even ate about 6 of them while we were waiting to leave for dinner with another friend (because he was half an hour late and she was hungry)! I still have some left so they'll be brought to colloquium tomorrow.

A Disney Moment: Peter Pan
I love love love Peter Pan. I mean, just about every incarnation of the story is beautiful to me. I love J. M. Barrie's story (from the adapted play), I get chills when I hear Mary Martin's portrayal of Peter Pan, I went out of my way to see the Peter Pan statue in London, I can't help but love every single second of Finding Neverland, and I even love the movie Hook as a spin-off from the original story. So maybe I was too excited going back to visit an old favorite movie but I'm saddened to say that Disney's Peter Pan was a bit of a letdown for me.

That isn't to say that it isn't a fine film. In fact, it's still a great film. But as an adult viewing the movie and knowing the story so well from so many different perspectives, I think I was hoping for a bit more emotional depth in the film. We get to see some lovely character arcs in Wendy and even a bit in Peter but I just wanted more. As I was watching, I found myself thinking that the movie felt more childish than its predecessors. Still fun but not well, scary, for lack of a better term. The villain isn't actually scary at all. In fact, Captain Hook is downright comical, so much so that he barely needs Smee as a comedic foil. The situations the characters get into are never that scary either. The horror elements of earlier films are completely gone in Peter Pan. So for the first time in this project, I really felt like I was watching a movie meant for a child. Which is such a shame because Peter Pan has such beautiful moments and themes about growing up, abandonment, faith, fear of mortality, etc etc that could have been given their due instead of having the kids play Following the Leader for five minutes.

That all said, it seems like I'm really hating on the movie and I'm not. I just wanted more. There are still some moments that I love. I love the very end with the ship shaped cloud. I think Tinker Bell is a well-executed character. I think that Peter Pan impersonating Captain Hook in the cave is hilarious. But most of all, I love the You Can Fly song. I love it for many reasons. The first is that if any choir anywhere ever needs a good example of how to properly do dynamics, they should give this song a listen. The harmonies and the crescendos and decrescendos are perfection and the singer in me geeks out every time I listen to it. The second reason is that my sister and I shamelessly crack up every time Michael has a line. Most notably, when he says, "He flew!" and "Cmon Nana!" I really can't explain it but we just think he sounds ridiculous anytime he talks and we enjoy impersonating his extremely childish voice. And aside from those two reasons, the lyrics (in the latter half of the song) are so joyful and just awesome.

Ok, so this was a long review but it's a classic so there was a lot to be said. In this grouping, it's only earning a 3/5 which was a bit surprising to me because I honestly thought it would be 1 or 2. Oh well, I guess that this whole project is an "awfully big adventure" of discovery.