Sandwiches are fine.
I like Sandwiches, I eat them all the time.
I eat them for my supper and I eat them for my lunch.
If i had a hundred sandwiches, I'd eat them all at once.
The lyrics for the classic children's song ring true for us this week, or me anyway. This is Erin. Sara has gone off on a quest for softball glory and is at a tournament in Tucson. So, I like peanut butter sandwiches. It's a great stand-by when you're hungry and it's even better when you do what I did and put peanut butter frosting in the middle of 2 chocolate cake type cookies, mmmm sweetness! I was in the mood for cookies since they are my favorite thing to bake and I was warming up for our Third Quarterly Challenge coming up: Cookies!!
I found this recipe in the Williams-Sonoma cookbook. I picked this recipe thinking it would be like the ginger snaps we made early in the year and the recipe would be online...no such luck. So, I can't link to it but I'll tell you all about it.
Like many good cookies, this one starts with lots of butter. Unlike many good bakers, I started out with bad butter. I had it out to get to room temperature and then I began to cream it with the sugar and felt that something wasn't right, or smelled it rather. I don't know if I can say that butter has a smell, maybe a bit sweet smelling but it definitely doesn't smell like cheese which was what I was getting. This wasn't good. I usually think "oh it'll be alright" and just continue but this definitely wasn't salvagable. I scrapped the butter and started again. The problem I had was that I didn't have time for it to warm up so I did a sped it up a little. I cut the butter into small pieces and placed them onto a plate. This is a pretty fast warm up but I nuked it for 5 seconds just to be sure. Success!
All the ingredients came together and made a pretty cakey cookie dough but I didn't come up with the recipe. What do I know? I could understand why the next step was to refrigerate the dough so I did it.
The next part didn't make a whole lot of sense. It called for taking the dough and rolling it into 1" balls using moistened hands. Wetting my hands did not help. The dough was very sticky and hard to work with.
Then the recipe called for flattening the dough balls on the baking sheet with a cup with cocoa powder on it or a spatula. This was also difficult as the dough just wanted to stick to anything it touched and flattening didn't really occur.
Then as you can see, the cookies came out way too big. I was imagining that they would be smalled sandwiches and wasn't happy with this crowding so I cam up with my own solution. I was also surpised to see that the flattening step was completely unneccesary. The dough kind of melts into a pool and then bakes up into a cookie. I would have expected this cooks.com but you, Williams-Sonoma? I'm disappointed.
I used a teaspoon to measure out the dough. Got about a half a spoon measurement and just pushed it onto the pan with my finger. Minimal touching was the key.
See, much smaller cookies. No worries about crowding here.
Cookie puddles!
Peanut butter frosting for the middle!
And there's the finished product. This is a pic of the bigger ones. They were a hit. If I make them again though, I will be modifying the recipe for maybe a less cakey cookie/less sticky dough. I'll post the recipe here if I do it.
Lessons learned: Start with fresh butter. Also, don't be afraid to stray from a recipe even if it is published in a well respected book.
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