So I have the ovens all full of meringues – Mark’s, too – since they’re the required gluten free cookie kind for my cookie demo at the Monona Public Library, thus getting a little bit of time for some cookie catch up.
I guess it was a productive weekend – but that didn’t stop me from waking at 5:30 on Monday morning fretting about how am I going to get everything baked.
On Saturday, Rach & I organized a going away brunch for DB & Chris. Since they are heading to Atlanta, the food was Southern-themed. The main dish was a sausage & egg strata, that I made with good Willow Creek sausage and the surplus bread cubes that didn’t go into the Thanksgving stuffing. It’s kind of homage to DB’s mom’s breakfast casserole, that uses wonder bread and Velveeta and Special K. There was ambrosia – I used fresh pineapple and oranges and sweetened coconut, and even though oranges were the 1st navals, and not as good as they should be later in the season, it was a dish that was greater than the sum of its parts. A big green salad, and I put out the roasted beet, blue cheese, and walnut salad that had been a Thanksgiving side dish (so more using up leftovers – since it was a non-paying crowd, I felt free to do so!) And pecan sticky buns and the fruit cake gems for dessert.
Really nice, but an interruption in cookie season.
Cinnamon Stars (Zimtsterne); Ginger creams; Moravian Ginger Thins & sugar-topped snaps made with the leftover UN-rollable dough
I had to run a few errands after the brunch, so I didn’t get down to cookie baking until 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon. I made the above – the cinnamon stars, and a big batch of the ginger thins, because they are going to be the required vegan cookie for the demo at the library. I had a memory lapse, and started greasing the cookie sheets with butter, but fortunately remembered vegan requirement. I separated the baked on buttered sheets ones out, and baked the rest on sheets greased with vegan shortening. I frosted the ginger creams, and made all the ruggelach dough.
Sunday was ruggelach day. I spent 3 hours rolling out mine, and then about an hour and a half making the Lora Brody ones. I took a break to watch the Boardwalk Empire season finale, and then made a bunch of the slice & bake doughs, the windmill cookies and the pistachio cranberry slices.
I tried to do four kinds on Monday and just couldn’t so it. I made the cranberry-orange-chocolate chip cookies that I liked a lot last year, and I kept thinking as I scooped them out that the dough was different somehow. I finally realized that I had made them with dried cranberries last year. This year I used the fresh called for in the recipe – the moisture in the cranberries made them a much cakier cookie – almost like muffin tops, IMHO. They’re for the library cookies thing. Then I made the almond cookies with the chocolate stars glued on top – it was the dough that ate New York. I have almost 200 of them.The whole batch of dough wouldn’t fit in my mixer and I had to divide it and recombine – and I had a vague recollection that last year the same thing happened. I made a note on the recipe for future.
And I made linzer thumbprints. Last year I made them as an extra. I made Nutella sandwich cookies with a Dorie Greenspan hazelnut sable dough, and with the dough that couldn’t t be rolled out anymore I made the thumbprints. I liked them better than the sandwiches, so i just made thumbprints this year, but I think that next year I will do my own linzer dough instead of Dorie’s. I’m also going to do a plain butter sable with the Nutella.
Maybe if I had not had so many almond stars I could’ve gotten to four, but tonight I couldn’t do it either. I made the Hootie Swirls ( peanut-butter chocolate brownies) and the chocolate chip meringues for the library cookie event – (they’re the gluten free variety), and the pine nut macaroons. But I just couldn’t make it to four kinds in one day – at least starting after work – I think I can do four kinds easy on a Saturday. I counted and I have 18 kinds left to go, and six days, which means I only need to do three per day and make it. Whew.
rolling ruggelach
Ruggelach brown sugar topping
almond stars
Linzer thumbprints
