Things need to have names. I can't just call everything utilitarianly descriptively 'oatmeal chocolate chocolate cookies w/buttermilk and coffee'. In this high-paced world of aggressive market branding, I need to name things with catchy, memorable, distinctive names, lest I be swept up in the latest wave of Pepsi-Chip Super Sweet Biscuit Snacks or something.
So, since these cookies are designed for optimal mailability (spell check has not called me on that, I can not believe mailability is a word!), they are called mail-box cookies for now. Maybe I will think of something better later, I am not totally pleased with that name, but moving on, recipe time:
This recipe is just a modification of the recipe off the bag of oats, but I have made it better by killing the raisins and adding exciting things like chocolate and chocolate chips and coffee. I discovered the outsides made nice-ish crispy shells that kept the insides soft for a notably long period of time, hence my desire to mail them to people.
In bowl the first, cream your butter and sugar together with beaters at medium-high, then add the rest of the wet stuff and beat until creamy.
In bowl the second, mix all the dry stuff.
In bowl the third, combine bowls the first and second and mix until combined (bowl the third should be a symbolic pointer to either bowl the first or bowl the second).
Form into balls the size of the balls inside of golf balls, put on a cookie sheet w/parchment paper, and bake at 350ºF for twelve to fifteen minutes, until they firm up.
The differences between this and the recipe on the bag that I based this on are that I scrapped raisins, cinnamon, white sugar, and most of the flour, increased the brown sugar, added cocoa, chocolate chips, coffee, and buttermilk. As well, I made the cookies larger and formed them into balls so that the insides would hopefully stay soft as they travelled in the postal system.
Essentially, they are either buttery chocolate cut stuffed with oats, or oats cut with buttery chocolate.
If you are lucky, maybe these will show up in your mail box.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Buttermilk Brownies
I love brownies and I love buttermilk, so I thought I'd try and combine the two. Also I am hungry and wanting brownies and no cafes are open past 8:00 PM in this nutty little town.
Anyways, here's the first take:
OK go go go MELT the BUTTER in a pot over medium-low heat. When melted, add the COCOA POWDER, mix well, remove from heat. Add SUGAR, mix, add COFFEE and BUTTERMILK, mix, add EGG (sans shell), mix just until combined. That reads a bit like one of those old-style text based adventure games, doesn't it? Weird. Combine the flour and baking powder in a big ol' bowl, add wet ingredients plus chocolate chips, mix just until combined (but do make sure you haven't left any flour clumps in there, those are unpleasant.
Portion batter into a greased muffin tin, bake at 350ºF for fifteen minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when stuck in the middle of the biggest of those suckers.
You could go ahead and use a brownie pan or something, but then you've got to cut them and things, whereas a muffin tin gives you delicious, good-to-go little servings.
Post-analysis: These are a little cakey. There must have been too much fluid in the batter, and there wasn't enough chocolateyness too them. Taste pretty nice, but they are not what I was going for.
Not terribly sweet, which I like (and mom likes, apparently), and you can't really pick up on the buttermilk flavour too much. I think the simplest thing might just be to stick with cream-cheese if I want to the cultured dairy flavour in brownies, because buttermilk brings too much fluid to the stage.
I may try a brownie recipe with strained yogurt later.
Anyways, here's the first take:
OK go go go MELT the BUTTER in a pot over medium-low heat. When melted, add the COCOA POWDER, mix well, remove from heat. Add SUGAR, mix, add COFFEE and BUTTERMILK, mix, add EGG (sans shell), mix just until combined. That reads a bit like one of those old-style text based adventure games, doesn't it? Weird. Combine the flour and baking powder in a big ol' bowl, add wet ingredients plus chocolate chips, mix just until combined (but do make sure you haven't left any flour clumps in there, those are unpleasant.
Portion batter into a greased muffin tin, bake at 350ºF for fifteen minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when stuck in the middle of the biggest of those suckers.
You could go ahead and use a brownie pan or something, but then you've got to cut them and things, whereas a muffin tin gives you delicious, good-to-go little servings.
Post-analysis: These are a little cakey. There must have been too much fluid in the batter, and there wasn't enough chocolateyness too them. Taste pretty nice, but they are not what I was going for.
Not terribly sweet, which I like (and mom likes, apparently), and you can't really pick up on the buttermilk flavour too much. I think the simplest thing might just be to stick with cream-cheese if I want to the cultured dairy flavour in brownies, because buttermilk brings too much fluid to the stage.
I may try a brownie recipe with strained yogurt later.
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