Apple Cider Cookies!

Okay, so the icing is … evocative, and you can tell exactly which cookies were iced by my wife, she of I Might Not Want A Lot of Icing, and which ones were re-iced by me, of Fuck Diabetes More Icing, but the house smells Goddamned delicious and I have actually managed to successfully bake something.

Credit to @bdylanhollis over at TikTok, who found the recipe (he cooks vintage foods, and his account is fantastic,) baked better-looking cookies than mine and is also more entertaining.

The recipe: in a large bowl, combine 3/4 cup of softened butter, 1 cup of brown sugar, 1/2 cup of regular sugar, and mix. Add an egg. Mix again.

In a second bowl, combine 2 cups of flour, a pinch of salt, a teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoons each of nutmeg, allspice, ginger, and cardamom, along with 2 teaspoons of cinnamon. Mix.

In yet another bowl, chop the hell out of an apple (I used a Fuji, and probably could have used one and a half or two of them, since they were small) and add a quarter cup of apple cider. Note that in the video he appears to be using way more than that; I assume that’s just for filming purposes.

Add the bowl with the flour to the first bowl, mix, then pour in the apples and mix more. Mix forever. The dough will be super sticky, which is fun.

Chill. He doesn’t say how long; I gave it 25 minutes and called it good. Get ’em onto a baking sheet (this was enough for 26 cookies using one of those dough-baller-thingies) or two and bake at 350 for “at least” seventeen minutes; I gave them 18 1/2 and they were still super soft out of the oven but I don’t think they were underbaked. They’re just soft cookies.

For the icing, mix 3 tablespoons of melted butter, a third of a cup of cider, and powdered sugar. Lots of powdered sugar. Just dump a whole bag in there. It’ll be fine. (Directions are “until it’s thick.” This will produce way more icing than you need and probably not as much as you want.)

Ice and eat. Then lick the icing bowl. My God.

Once you see it…

IMG_2061…which, hell, probably won’t even take that long, you won’t be able to unsee it.

Not much happened today, other than some work in the bathroom (yes, that’s still a thing) while my parents watched the boy.  And then all the sudden we finish our pizza dinner and I look at my watch and holy crap how is it 7:00 already?  

So, yeah.  I’ve sorta been bereft of interesting things to say lately, sorry about that.  But at least there’s this lovely picture to look at.

In which mmmmmm

photoLet it be noted:  I am listening to “Heroin” right now.  Easily my favorite Velvet Underground song.  I can’t pretend I was/am a huge Lou Reed fan, but the man will be missed.

I spent all day cooking, in case it wasn’t perfectly clear from paying attention to my blog or my Facebook feed or my Instagram feed.  I, uh, may have gone slightly overboard in making certain that the public was informed of my actions.  That said, there’s something fun about deciding you’re going to feed a bunch of people– my excuse was that my aunt was in town and I’ve never had the opportunity to cook for her– and so we got everybody together at my brother’s house and I cooked for everybody.  The menu:

  • Baked ziti (Foodspin)
  • Apple crisp (also Foodspin)
  • Oatmeal cookies (MLW cooked these; not sure where the recipe came from)
  • And white chocolate and Candy Corn cookies (from Averie Cooks; they looked exactly like that.)

The family contributed bread and salad, which was basically everything else we needed.  Holy god did I eat good today.  Everything Foodspin does is gold; I will buy the hell out of Albert Burneko’s cookbook as soon as someone gets the bright idea to shove money at him until he writes one, and the apple crisp (which he incorrectly calls an apple crumble, but I’ll forgive him) is a goddamn revelation with vanilla ice cream on it.  Holy crap.

Also:  Take Averie seriously when she says to try to keep candy corn from touching the baking sheet, if you decide to make those cookies (and you should; they’re awesome.)  I may have finally kicked my baking bad luck; other than the occasional chewy patch on the cookies (which is what happens if the candy corn melts on you) everything I made today was awesome.

‘Twas a good day.  Now if I could just get someone to write tomorrow’s lesson plans for me.

Dessert 1: Cookies, eventually.

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In which TODAY WE BAKE

Oh man oh man oh man oh man dudes.

Dinner at my brother’s today, and MLW and I are bringing most of the food.  There will be SO MANY food pictures later.  One of the recipes I’ve made before– I’m good at my baked ziti and have made it a few times and it’s going to be delicious and I’m not going to screw it up.

But dessert.  I’m making dessert too.  Two different kinds!  Cookies and apple crisp!  And I’m going to screw both of them up because the universe will not let me bake correctly.  So you have an “I’m an idiot” post to look forward to later!  You guys love those!

Wheeeeee!