Cookie Pizza

Now, unless you count slice-and-bake, I don't think I've ever made cookies before. So naturally for my first attempt I chose a complicated recipe, made a lot of substitutions, and didn't follow their directions. Interestingly enough, it worked. Sort of. This recipe is largely based on one I found here, with notable changes.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup	unbleached all purpose flour
1 cup	chocolate chips
1/2 cup	dried cranberries
1/2 cup	softened butter
1/2 cup	sugar
1/2 cup	brown sugar
1/2 cup	sour cream
1	large egg
5 tsp	jellied cranberry sauce
1 tsp	vanilla extract
1/2 tsp	baking soda
1/2 tsp	salt

Procedure:
Combine flour, salt, and baking soda. Set aside. Beat sour cream, egg, vanilla, and cranberry sauce. Set aside. Preheat the oven to 375F.



Thoroughly mix sugar, brown sugar, and butter. Add sour cream mixture and mix well. Incrementally add in flour mixture while mixing until all has been added. Stir in cranberries and chocolate chips.



Butter a pizza pan, ideally one that is very large and/or has a lip around the edge. Spoon dough into one big lump on the center. Spread it out until it's most of the size of the pan and roughly uniform thickness. Try to make it a bit thicker around the edges and thinner in the middle, since the middles of things tend to cook more slowly. Bake for about 20 to 25 minutes, until golden brown. Allow to cool in the pan. After it's cooled down you should be able to remove it to serve (or you can just break off pieces of the hot cookie and munch on them).



I called this a success because I ended up with something edible made mostly out of sugar. However, Aaron and Katie have made me aware of the error in my ways. There are a few things that should be noted.

As I made it, this isn't really a cookie. It's very bread like. The amount of batter per square inch of pan was just too large. The solution is to just make the cookie thinner, either by using a larger pan or by making two cookies instead of one.

I also found the cranberries to be completely overruled by the chocolate sweetness. Honestly I don't have the baking expertise to safely recommend a solution to this problem. However, it was my impression that the dough was on the dryer end of the cookie dough spectrum. I suspect that doubling the amount of cranberry sauce would not disrupt the balance of liquids and solids. Cranberry juice concentrate might work better but it's hard to find (the stuff you buy is either sugary cocktail or mostly grape juice). For some serious pizzaz a few minced fresh cranberries could be added. I would also decrease by a third the number of chocolate chips or maybe substitute them for white chocolate.

This is something I will be very happy to revisit. With some help from the neighbors this cookie disappeared before this entry was even written.

Great Grandma's Candied Apples, Take Two

Loyal reader, thanks for sticking around. I know I haven't written to you in a while. My first update of the weekend is a bit of a revisit. I again tried to get my great grandma's candied apples to work. Again, they didn't. But at least the things I did differently had an effect. Let's jump right in.

Ingredients:
1 cup water
2/3 cup sugar
4 1/2 small granny smith apples

Procedure:
Preheat the oven to 350F. Peel, core, and quarter the apples. Bring the sugar and water to a soft boil and add them. Keep the water just barely boiling until the apples are tender, about 20 minutes. Since they will try to float and push each other out, you'll have to rearrange the apples every few minutes. This will also allow you to keep an eye on how tender they become. If they get too soft, you're making applesauce.



Pour the apples and sugar water into a small pan and place in the oven with the expectation that they'll soak up most of the fluid and turn pink. It's supposed to take about half an hour. You may notice that mine did not turn pink, though they did soak up most of the liquid and didn't disintegrate.



They're sweet, but I wouldn't really call what I'm ending up with "candied." Considering the rave reviews I've heard from my mom and great aunt about these apples, I imagine I'll have to re-revisit this recipe.

Sass Yams

Dearest readers, I've missed you. I know you've been checking back patiently, waiting for me to write to you again. Unfortunately, I've spent the last few weeks getting beaten up by a Canadian physicist. Most of my cooking recently has been old favorites which keep me fed but make for poor updates.

But not today. Today I took a great step towards fixing a recipe I continue to be excited about, the roasted orange sweet potatoes with chicken.

Last time I was unimpressed by the rub and decided to return to it later. I realized recently that I can figure out a solution without dealing with chicken at all. The chicken will work out fine no matter what since chicken breasts don't taste like anything. What's important is the fine tuning of the sweet potatoes.

So I proceeded to make a rub as if I were going to use it on chicken, then cook sweet potatoes with it. It turned out very well so I will use this same recipe the next time I make a roasted chicken and sweet potato adventure.

Ingredients:

3	sweet potatoes
2	oranges
1	lemon
2	garlic cloves
1.5 inches	fresh ginger
1/3 cup	brown sugar
1 tsp	ground cinnamon
1 tsp	black pepper

Procedure:
Zest oranges and lemon. Set aside zest and squeeze one orange's worth of juice into a large pan. Peel sweet potatoes and cut into wedges. Place them in the same pan and add water sufficient to cover them. Boil for 10-15 minutes to soften them while you preheat the oven to 350F.



Mince together all dry ingredients, garlic, ginger, and the zest. Add a little of the juice from the second orange in order to make this easier. You will end up with a paste.



Drain the potatoes. Spread the paste and remaining orange juice over them as uniformly as possible. This can be done by adding the paste to the sweet potato pan, squeezing the orange over the paste to soften it, then mixing it together (gently! don't mash your potatoes!). The lemon should also be juiced over the potatoes at this point, though I forgot to do so.

Butter a baking sheet and spread the potatoes out in a single layer. Roast for 20-30 minutes, depending on how dry you want the "skin" on the wedges to be. Sprinkle with salt and serve. Makes 3 sweet potatoes' worth, obviously. This is really more of a snack than a meal so it's debatable how many servings that is.



I added the garlic and black pepper to this otherwise sweet recipe in tentative quantities but it's clear that they belong. Next time quantities of each will be doubled. Additionally, the amount of orange flavor you get from an orange just can't compete with the plethora of strong flavors present. This recipe could be profitably supplemented by a sploosh of orange juice. Similarly the fresh ginger could use the help of perhaps 1/2 tsp of ground ginger.

Again, this recipe exists for the purpose of research on roasted orange chicken with sweet potatoes. Next time I use this mixture, along with the changes I've prescribed, the technique will parallel my previous post.