Walnut Butter Cookies

When I started this blog, I didn't like walnuts. I found them bitter and greasy, which is a terrible combination, and I didn't like the texture, which I deemed less crisp than pecans (an objectively superior nut). And maybe it's the fact that I grew up making visits to my great-great-aunt's house in Forsyth, Georgia, where she would give me a pecan-picker and send me out into the yard to gather as many of the tastiest papershell pecans I've ever tasted, but I always felt like walnuts were the nuts for people who couldn't get their hands on good pecans. Well, friends, I now live in Scotland, where pecans are just as expensive as walnuts and... honestly, only so-so. I've spent my entire adult life swapping pecans and walnuts in any recipe that calls for them, but then I started this blog, and something strange happened.

Sometime around September, when I made this Courgette Walnut Bread, I started to like them. And by the time I made this Orange-Infused Cream Cheese Nut Bread, my opinion was firmly pro-walnut. (This was an exciting development for me, as nearly all of Eleanor's dessert recipes include-- either mandatorily or as a suggestion-- some kind of nuts, most often walnuts.) So I was legitimately excited about these cookies: I mean, they have butter in their name. Plus, they include coffee (I mean, instant, but still).

So I figured these cookies would be incredible-- like a moister, grown-up version of a Pecan Sandy, with just a hint of coffee throughout. But... well, I was wrong.

Part of this may be my fault: the recipe calls for 'instant coffee,' which, to me, means instant coffee powder, because if it was it was meant to be instant coffee dissolved in water, wouldn't you just say 'coffee?' Also, the recipe says to 'sift flour, sugar, salt and coffee,' and since I obviously can't sift liquid coffee, I figured it was powder that would then dissolve when the butter in the cookies melted in the oven. It's possible I was wrong about this, because the instant coffee did nothing but burn. It's also possible that something else went drastically awry here, because there was only supposed to be 2 teaspoons of coffee in the recipe, and even if it was liquid coffee, that was still not enough to moisten the dough enough for it to stick together. (I know this because I tried, after the 'powdered coffee' route ended so badly, to re-do the recipe with liquid coffee. It was equally unsuccessful.)

The dough was too dry, so not only did I have to handle it much more than I should have to get it to stick together (which itself made the cookies tough), but also I couldn't 'flatten' the cookies with a sugar-dipped glass because they were so dry that as soon as I tried to, the balls of dough just kind of exploded all over my cookie sheet.

But I tried to bake these anyway, and then this happened on the first batch:

So I knew it was just not meant to be. I still had some cookies that didn't get dropped, so I tasted them and they were terrible. They somehow managed to be both too tough AND too crumbly, and the instant coffee didn't dissolve at all, so it gave the cookies a weird graininess and a burned flavour because, hello, you're not supposed to cook instant coffee unless there is enough other liquid in the recipe to dissolve it.

New! One year ago: Tuna Teriyaki

The verdict:

0 spoons out of five. These cookies sucked.

The recipe:

Walnut Butter Cookies

the directions:

Preheat oven to 150C/300F.
Sift together flour, sugar, salt, and coffee in a medium bowl.
Cut in butter with a pastry blender until it is the size of small peas.
Press dough together and shape into small balls.
Roll each ball in walnuts, place 2” apart on a baking sheet, and press flat with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar.
Bake 15-20 minutes until edges are slightly brown.

Yields 3 dozen.

the ingredients:

1 ½ c flour
½ c sugar
¼ tsp salt
2 tsp instant coffee
1 c butter
¾ c walnuts, chopped

Holiday Almanac December 16: Chocolate Mallow Fudge

For more information on the Holiday Almanac, go here. Or to see what I've been up to on past Holiday Almanac days, check out this page.

When I was in 6th grade, there was an extra credit science project for my class that involved making two different kinds of fudge with two different methods to show the difference in texture between two different types of igneous rocks.

Despite the fact that my science average that year was something like a 98%, I (of course) wanted to do any project that involved cooking, so I made two batches of fudge and brought them in for my class. But I must have done a terrible job of explaining what the point of the project was (ONE BATCH OF FUDGE WAS COOLED QUICKLY AND SO IT BECAME GRAINY! THE OTHER BATCH COOLED SLOWLY AND WAS THICK SO IT'S TEXTURE WAS DIFFERENT!), because after my whole class had tasted it, I asked my best friend what she thought of it, and her only response was 'well, it tasted kind of... sandy.'

And therein ended all future forays into the world of fudge-making, until this week, when I had to attempt again. My fudge this time around tastes sandy again, despite not having been made with the intention of looking like igneous rock, and it's bitter and somehow too dark, despite being made with a marshmallow base.

The verdict:

1 spoon out of five. Maybe if you like fudge, it would be ok, but I think it's too dark, too bitter, and too grainy. Find yourself a better recipe, or, if you wait long enough, I'm sure I'll find one for you.

The recipe:

Chocolate Mallow Fudge

the directions:

Grease a square pan and set aside.
In a saucepan, combine sugar, butter, milk, and marshmallows.
Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until the sugar is dissolved and marshmallows are melted.
Boil 4 minutes, stirring constantly.
Add chocolate, turn heat to low, and stir until partly melted.
Remove from heat and stir quickly until chocolate melts.
Pour into prepared pan and allow to cool.
Cut into squares.

Makes 2 pounds.

the ingredients:

2 c sugar
¼ c butter
¾ c evaporated milk
9 marshmallows, cut into eighths
8 oz semisweet chocolate

Holiday Almanac December 7: Mystery Fruitcake

For more information on the Holiday Almanac, go here. Or to see what I've been up to on past Holiday Almanac days, check out this page.

Let’s be real, have you ever actually had a fruitcake? I’m going to assume that if you are my age or younger that you haven’t. You’re probably super familiar with the jokes in every Christmas movie about them, but you’ve probably never actually had one.

Spice cake batter, including cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and cloves.

I tried to dress it up, but it somehow just was even sadder.

And consequently, you probably have no idea a) whether you like them or b) how they are supposed to taste.

I don’t either, but I am fairly confident that most fruitcake recipes don’t start with making a cake, then destroying the cake by mashing it up with a batch of white frosting. Regardless, here we are, and although we’ve covered ad nauseum how much I adore frosting, I also hate raisins and I’m pretty meh about candied cherries, so I was not holding out a lot of hopes for this cake.

(Please also note that I cut this recipe in quarters because I was fairly confident that I didn’t want a 6 1/2 –pound fruitcake in my kitchen.)

But you guys, this recipe. This recipe is, quite possibly, the worst recipe that the box has generated so far. I would rather eat Wind Pudding than this cake. I would rather eat French Pudding than this cake. I would rather eat Chicken in Chicken Sauce for dinner every night for the rest of 2015 than eat this cake.

No, just no.

This could have been user error: maybe my proportions were wrong; I pared it down so much from 6 ½ pounds that I was doing a lot of complicated math in my head and quite possibly did some of it wrong. But even if I got the proportions right, I just don't think this was going to be a winner, and boy was I right.

P.S. Adorably, today in the Holiday Almanac reminds the reader to tune in for the '1 ½ hour production, live from New York!' of Philadelphia Story, 'brought to you by Betty Crocker.'

The verdict:

0 spoons out of five. Do not make this fruitcake. The only mystery here is who would actually eat this monstrosity.

The recipe:

Mystery Fruitcake

the directions:

Make yourself a spice cake and some white frosting.
Mix together cake and frosting, crumbling cake as you go.
Add all other ingredients and press firmly into a pan, then throw the pan away and eat something different.

the ingredients:

1 spice cake, recipe of your choosing
1 batch of white frosting, your favourite recipe
1 handful pecan halves
1 handful dried currants (or raisins or sultanas)
1 handful dates
1 handful candied cherries
1 handful candied citrus peel