I Did It!

1 year down and 53 batches made. Yep, 53 - I only need to make 52 a year to stay on track. I had my last 2 batches planned so that I would reach 52, but then our new neighbors brought over a bottle of wine that they had made, so of course I had to reciprocate.

So batch #51 (10/19/12) Oatmeal Raisin Cookies These are the cookies I made for our neighbors. The cookies themselves seemed to be much appreciated - the neighbor said they are his favorite kind. Personally, I like oatmeal raisin, but these weren't quite the soft chewy oatmeal raisin kind that the bakery makes. They get 3 smiley faces from me (Mike - 4)
Our neighbors on the other hand, they seem cool. The wife is pregnant and is actually due the day before me. We both are expecting boys, so yay! Hopefully our two boys get along and like each other. 

#52 Time for Halloween which means it's time for Cory's annual Halloween party again. This year Mike and I went as the milkman and the knocked up 50's housewife.

Candy Corn Cookies Normally the novelty/showy kind of cookies don't actually taste very good, but these are such a soft sugar cookie - it's hard to stop. Writing about it makes me want to go get another one. You know how you can buy a roll of cookie dough from the grocery store and then you slice the dough and bake the cookie? That's what these cookies are except that I made the cookie dough roll. It's probably a bit more work then just buying the log at the store. I had to separate the dough into 3 piles and color the dough orange and yellow (leave one pile white). Then I layered the dough into a shape of a triangle. After it was refrigerated, all I had to do was slice the triangle roll and bake them. Not too hard, right : )

#53 Great Pumpkin Brownie Okay, so I've learned that you really need to have the proper equipment to make some of these recipes. This recipe called for it to be baked on a 12 inch pizza pan; of course I don't have a pizza pan. I decided to put the batter on a cookie sheet. I took aluminum foil and shaped it into a 12 inch diameter circle. When I poured the batter into my makeshift contraption - it went fine. It wasn't until I checked on it in the oven that I realized the problem. Did you know that when aluminum foil gets heated up, it doesn't necessarily stay put. Part of the aluminum foil lifted up off the cookie sheet, this of course led to some of the batter spilling off the cookie sheet. Since the batter was thin on one side and thick on the other, the batter had cooked unevenly. Some of it was burnt and some of it was undone. But I didn't throw it out. Instead, I trashed the burnt part and took all the (mostly cooked) brownie and smooched it together into a 9 inch circle cake pan and let it cool together. This pumpkin brownie called for orange frosting on top of it, so it didn't matter what the actual brownie looked like. Overall, it went over just fine.

Now onto the 2nd year of this project.

Only 2 more batches to go before Friday to stay on track of 52 cookies a year.  The last couple of days cookies:

#49 Cranberry Oat Yummies
I thought these cookies were excellent.  They are a lot like an oatmeal raisin cookie, soft and chewy just like an oatmeal raisin cookie should be.  Instead of raisins, there are cranberries.  The cranberries give the cookie a pop.  Mike however rated these cookies rather low - only a 2 (he hasn't given anything a 1 yet - a cookie is still a cookie).  However I brought these cookies to our church's crafty women day and for my girls' tennis tournament today - and they were a big hit.  So I guess girls like this cookie?   It is a "healthy" cookie - filled with oatmeal, cranberries and egg substitutes.  Mike doesn't usually like things that aren't laden with sugar.  The cookies I made tonight however, got a 5 from Mike.

#50 Chocolate Malted Milk Cookies
It's no wonder Mike gave these a 5 - the recipe calls for malted milk powder, chocolate syrup, semi sweet chocolate chunks and milk chocolate chips - Mike loved it.  Unfortunately he only gets a couple - (spoiler alert) they're being mailed off to Indiana for his Dad's birthday. This cookie is everything you hope for I imagine when you buy it from a coffee shop or bakery or such: a gooey soft large chocolate chip cookie that melts in your mouth. They were good - and quick to make as the batch only makes about 18 3-4 inch diameter cookies. Happy Birthday Lynn!

Big crumbly mess

In the past two weeks, I've managed to make three batches. See I'll get to 52 batches before October 20th.

  #46 Dreamy Fudge Bar Cookies 10/5/12 These were so good, I wish I didn't have to buy it just to try it. That's right, this is my first cookie/bar that I had to buy back after making it.
 I was asked to make bars for a craft show that my church holds every year, and of course what good lutheran church doesn't sell bars.  So I had to buy a bar that I had donated to the church.

This bar was a bit of an adventure to make. The bar itself was fine, however because I was baking, I discovered that we had a mouse in the house. I knew that as soon as I moved into a house with an attached garage that I would get a mouse. The brown sugar I needed for these bars was down in the basement pantry. However, I was not the first to get to the brown sugar - it was torn open and the evidence was there. So sad. Not only was I freaked out about having a mouse, but I had to throw away the whole bag and go back to the grocery store to get a new unattacked bag of brown sugar. No worries now though, it's a week later now and my husband seems to have gotten rid of the mouse.

  #47 Soft Apple Butter Delights 10/7/12 This batch is this year's co-workers first batch for the school year.  My ELL team and I led the professional development this week. We educated the teachers about academic language and how to help all our students use academic language in the classroom. For those of you who don't know - academic language is the language of the classroom, of the workplace and of tests. Students who are english language learners, students from lower income households, students of vocabulary poor households need to be explicitly taught to use academic language. I'm very excited about what the ELL team has been doing in the classroom - it's great to hear students say "I predict the earth material will erode and deposit into a delta because rivers erode earth materials" - yes, that's from one of my fifth graders.

 Anyways, I made these cookies because teachers are exhausted by the end of the day and really don't look forward to sitting in PD for an hour and a half - cookies help. So the lesson to be learned from these cookies for all you readers out there - don't blame the teachers - we are working extremely hard to educate all students and produce deep meaningful thinkers for our next generation (sorry, I'm just tired of society blaming us "lazy" teachers - I wanted to point out just how hard we do work).

 By the way, these cookies were so soft - someone actually asked me if they were muffins that I just cut the tops off.

  #48 Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies 10/12/12 These cookies are where the title comes into play. They are delicious, however, I feel I really should just take all the cookies I got from this batch and mush it together to make one big ball of soft cookie - they fell apart as I took them off the sheets. I think I know where I went wrong with this cookie. It called for dried cherries to then be soaked in hot water and then to be dumped into the dough - cherries, liquid and all. I bought maraschino cherries and dried them out. Then I put them "in a small bowl" to soak in hot water.  There was no measurement listed for the amount of liquid to use. However, I dumped the water out before realizing the liquid was to go into the dough as well. So I then soaked the cherries again and dumped the liquid (and cherries) into the dough. The liquid made the dough very watery.  Upon baking, they just spread out. They were really soft and they taste pretty good - but whenever I do make them again, I think I'll try it without putting the liquid in.