MORE BAKING

Yuck. I have another winter cold. Not a bad one, but the ones that make you functional, yet still tired. Thank God for Dayquil. I don't know what I'd do without it. Except that it does make me kinda loopy. For some reason, I keep thinking it's Friday when I know it's Thursday. Perhaps it's just wishful thinking. When I get sick, I either completely lose my appetite and shed a few pounds (the good sick) or I am constantly hungry. (the bad sick). I'm currently hungry. I told you guys that when I get bored, I start baking, which is what I did last night. And due to the hungry-sick, I've already consumed two cookies and it's not even noon yet.

So even though I knew I was coming down with a cold last night, there was nothing to watch on TV. More than that, I knew I'd be at work all day today and I needed to have snacks for my car ride up to Manchester tonight (I'm teaching a class up there) so I willed myself to bake some cookies. I once again turned to my Martha Stewart Baking Handbook (Maybe I'll make my way through this before the end of the year...but I was thinking, at least Katie has someone testing out all the recipes before she gets to them) and I decided to bake the Chocolate Brownie Cookies since I didn't have enough butter for any other recipe and this one only required 6 tablespoons rather than 2 sticks.

So I set about making my cookies, which was pretty easy. And you can see them below.Before I stuck them into the oven, I formed the dough into balls and smooshed them down a little. Unfortunately, they didn't spread all that much, so the first batch turned out to be a little round and fat. I improved the second batch by smooshing them down more, but my fingerprints were stiff left in the cookies after baking.

After tasting the cookies, I decided they weren't the best cookies ever. I mean, they're ok, but they turned out to be a little dry and just weren't as tasty as the Chocolate Chunk Cookies. Plus, since I used high percentage chocolate, they weren't that sweet. I thought this would be offset by the cup of sugar that went into the recipe, but next time, I'll aim for a lower percentage chocolate. Or dip these guys in melted chocolate. At any rate, I'll continue baking my way through this book and will let you know the results of each recipe.

Oh, and as a totally unrelated side note, since I know that only my friends really read this, Tim Gunn is making a guest appearance on Ugly Betty tonight. So don't forget to watch!