Wednesday, February 22, 2012

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.

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