The Great American Cookie Cookbook

Today I have decided to try a new recipe. On page 44, you’ll find the recipe for Malted Dream Drops. This is the one I’ve decided to try. All the needed ingredients are in my cabinet so I’m good to go. The dough is easy to mix & not at all time consuming. It needs to sit in the refrigerator for an hour so I work on other things.

As you can see, this cookbook is held together by tape.

It’s 2 hours before I get back to working on the cookies. I notice that dough is still a very soft dough in spite of being chilled.  Fill the first cookie sheet & set it in the oven to bake. As I pull the baked cookies out of the oven, I see a potential problem. The cookies have spread out a great deal instead of being a nice puffy cookie as the photo in the book shows. The first thing I do is check the recipe to see if I made any mistakes. This could be quite a problem as the difference in spread will not only affect the appearance of the cookie but also the taste. The cookie dough goes back into the refrigerator for another hour.

Malted Dream Drops are flat & spread out instead of puffy like they should be.

When the first batch of cookies cool off, Sarah & I taste them. This is our sworn duty & we take it seriously. The Malted Dream Drops are ok but nothing spectular. They have a nice malt taste but just don’t impress. We decide to reserve judgment until tasting the next batch. After an hour is up, I throw another batch of the cookies in the oven. The dough is a bit stiffer but still pretty soft. Again, no surprise here, they spread out on the cooky sheet. Again the taste test shows them to be an alright cookie. Our definition of an alright cookie is one that tastes as good as you get out of the box or bag off the grocery shelf in the store. If we’re taking the time to bake them, we expect more!

They didnt come out quite like they should have & still were decent, so eventually Ill come back to them & try again. If I can figure out why they were spreading too much, I know it would make a lot of difference in the taste. Perhaps then, Sarah & I would have a different opinion of them.

Whimisical Bakehouse Cookbook by Kaye Hansen & Liv Hansen

January 24, I received 2 cake books in the mail. One, Whimisical Bakehouse Cakebook, I have been lusting after since before our wedding in August. The book is written by a mother & daughter team by the names of Kaye Hansen & Liv Hansen. They don’t do fondant or gumpaste as they want everything on their cakes to taste delicious. That’s a wonderful philosophy!

On cakecentral.com, I had heard many glowing reports on their book and even more on their recipes which is why I have been so anxious to get the book. It’s a late Christmas present from Sarah, my youngest daughter. Between bouts of sickness & not finding the book locally, I’m just now getting it. Whimisical Bakehouse Cookbook was well worth the wait. I literally spend a couple of days drooling over the pages & incapable of deciding where to start. If you don’t already own this book, find it, buy it. It’s that simple.

Small heart cake pans measuring 4-inches across.

The decision was finally made to start with the Chocolate Butter Cake on page 65. The cake baked up beautifully. I made 2 6-inch layers and a handful of small heart-shaped cakes. Can hardly wait to try it. If I had been able to decide earlier in the day, I could have iced it & tasted it. But that will have to wait for another day. In fact, to be honest, I was so excited that I forgot to take any pictures of the process or the finished cake. That’s excited. I do have some pictures of the book  though for you to view.

Recipe page showing how I mark them.

If you’ll notice the shot of the recipe, I have an inked star by the name. That’s a little tip you might want to remember for your own  cooking adventures. Recipes in a cookbook that meet with my approval, I mark with a star & I also mark them in the index to make it easier to find recipes I’m trying to find & know I have in one of my cookbooks. If I don’t like it at all or think it could use huge improvements, I take the pen & X it out in ink so I don’t make that mistake twice.