December 3, 2008This is another cookies that will last for weeks! The Pfeffernüsse dough needs to sit overnight before baking. This is a good weeknight recipe in that you only need half an hour one night to make the dough, and another hour the next night to bake them, rather than spending an hour or two one night.
Tired of mailing pictures of the kids? Tired of mailing pictures of the cat with the caption "no kids yet"? You can still make your own Christmas cards with just paper and an exacto knife. And a lot of patience.
Somehow, the impression has gotten around that I'm a "natural" baker; that I arrived in the hospital with a potholder and a bag of flour. (Not true, although I did spend the first five days "baking" in an incubator.) My secret is that I've been baking for a long time, and have managed to learn from my (baking) mistakes.
My first from-scratch baking was for my first Christmas party, when I was 17. I made Ausstecherle and Forgotten cookies, both for the first time.
The Ausstecherle are a rolled and cut out cookie, and the dough is very, very soft. It chills for an hour to make rolling it manageable, but in a warm kitchen, it quickly sticks to everything. To prevent sticking, I floured and floured and floued the counter, the rolling pin, the dough, by hands... By the time I was done, the dough didn't stick, but after baking, the cookies would break apart when picked up. So, I melted some chocolate to spread on top and hold them together. The only chocolate in the house was baking chocolate, probably unsweetened. So, on top of crumbling, dust-dry, tasteless cookies, I had globs of bitter chocolate.
Forgotten cookies are a meringue with chocolate chips. They are my favorite. With an electric mixer (stand or hand-held), they are easy enough, and almost fool-proof if you add the sugar slowly enough. Do you remember 17? Everything had to happen now. Every moment was a chance that could be lost and never come round again. No wait and see, no patience. After slowing adding a couple tablespoons of sugar, the egg whites looked okay, and I dumped all the remaining sugar in. That just deflated the whites, which I didn't notice until after adding the chocolate chips and dropping the batter onto the cookie sheets. The batter should look like giant, white Hershey's Kisses, not flat blobs. And they stayed blobby through baking.
Thus began a decades-long tradition of kitchen disasters and parties for which I am totally unprepared.
Tell me about your own disaster!
Copyright 2008 Susan J. Talbutt; all rights reserved.
Last updated November 2008