Don't Try This At Home: Key Lime Sugar Cookies

No, really, don't try these at home. They aren't good.

 

Baked and frosted Key Lime Sugar Cookies

I know! They totally look like they should taste good, right? But they just don't. 

The recipe comes from Nancy Baggett's The All-American Dessert Book. It's only the second recipe I've made from the book--the first produced some decent-but-nothing-special fudgy brownies--but these were downright disappointing. 

  

Baggett's The All-American Dessert Book

The Key Lime Sugar Cookies had two flaws: 1) bitterness, and 2) bad texture. The bitterness could have come from several sources. The recipe calls for lemon extract (which smelled foul to me), lime zest steeped in vegetable oil, and reduced lime juice (which also smelled repugnant as I heated it on the stove). One (or perhaps all) of these ingredients made my cookies taste bitter instead of sweet or fragrant like I had expected. It's possible that I bought a bad lime or that reducing the lime juice burned it somehow (though the recipe implied that this was not possible).

Lime zest in oil and reduced lime juice.

The texture of the baked cookies was strange and unappealing. They were hard and sort of gummy, not crispy or soft and powdery (which is what their appearance led me to expect). Which isn't to say they were inedible: the texture seemed correct (neither over- nor undercooked), but just unappealingly dense.

The recipe also made very little dough and surprisingly few cookies.

 

Two little fist-shaped dough balls.

 However, rolling out and chilling the dough in sheets was a fun departure from my usual cookie baking process.

Rolled out dough, ready for the fridge.

 

The little "pills" that soon became lime wedges.

 Lime wedges ready for the oven.

I wasn't even in love with the frosting. With nothing but powdered sugar and lime juice in the mix, it was one-note and sweet without having any depth. And I wasn't very good at frosting my cookies all pretty-like. So they just got wiggles. So there!

 

Wiggly little wedges.

  

Anyway, despite their slightly wonky appearance, I deny any wrongdoing in the botching of this recipe! Why? Well, if only the texture or only the flavor was bad, I could blame it on incompetence. It's possible that I got some proportions wrong, or I burnt the lime juice or bought a bad lime, but I'm a good enough baker that I don't think I would make two major mistakes big enough to ruin a whole recipe!

So now what do I do with The All-American Dessert Book? Will I let two recipes ruin it for me, or will I give it another chance? Only time--and probably this blog!--will tell!

Impromptu Poetry

Today, a patron came into my cafe and asked me to recite a poem.

It's not as strange as it sounds. Everyone who works in the cafe wears a name tag that says his or her name and "My passion is _______." My passion, naturally, is poetry. So it's pretty common for people to ask me who my favorite poet is, or to ask me if I write poetry.

But this is the first person who's asked me to drop some rhymes on him. I instantly went to Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." I've memorized it slowly and by accident from teaching it a few times and from just loving it so much. It's one of those rare perfect poems, so elegant and breathtaking that it never seems to lose its power.

So as I handed back the customer's credit card, I rattled off "Whose woods these are I think I know, / His house is in the village though; / He will not see me stopping here / To watch his woods fill up with snow. . ." The patron seemed surprised! I think that he just wanted to tease me--he's a regular, and an ornery one at that! He expected a blush and a laugh, and he got some melancholy Modernism instead!

Still, poetry isn't that unusual in our bakery. I get poems "stuck" in my head all the time. They'll run through my head, and I'll say them under my breath as I make a sandwich or blend a smoothie. And since my manager likes to sing showtunes and one of the line cooks falsettos his punk rock tunes while pouring bowls of soup, I guess I'm in good artistic company!

But I love those moments when poetry, those beautiful little bits of language, pop for a moment into everyday life. Frost is good for that: a brush of haunting lyricism at the edge of the ordinary.

---------------

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

By Robert Frost 

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

When Laziness Pays Off: Store-Bought Baking Mixes

On hectic, frigidly cold weekends like these, there's nothing better than "baking," by which I mean the kind of baking that involves sitting on my duff with my feet up in the air, smelling the aroma of baked goods wafting through the house and waiting for the timer to ding.

I admit it: sometimes, I love store-bought, easy-to-make baking mixes. I've turned to the ease and comfort of Pillsbury and Betty Crocker more than once, and I'm sure I will do it again.

Of course, there are plenty of sweets that should never be baked via mixes. I've learned from hard, hard experience that spice cake, carrot cake, and red velvet cake mixes are always horrible disappointments, not to mention instant "cheesecakes" of all brands and varieties.

But some things do work, and they work extraordinarily well! Here are three of my favorite lazy-woman's baking mixes:

1) Krusteaz Cinnamon Crumb Cake: Krusteaz's crumb cake is so damn good that it's been mistaken for my grandmother's coffee cake, and that's saying something! The cake is sweet and dense and vanilla-y, and the crumb is, like all coffee cake crumbs, a fantastically bad-for-you-but-so-delicious-you-don't-care mixture of cinnamon and brown sugar. I made this last week when I was dead on my feet but set on something sweet for breakfast the next morning.

2) Simply . . . Chocolate Chip Cookies: Normally, I would never have bought these, but I had a coupon and a hankering for a lazy cookie. Simply . . . cookies are Pillsbury's attempt at making a refrigerated dough that isn't completely stuffed with preservatives. My thinking is that if you're interested in a "healthier," less chemical-ridden cookie dough, you should just mix it up yourself!

But after trying these, I would recommend them to anyone. They turned out perfectly round and neat-looking, and they tasted way better than regular refrigerated cookie dough. I think that they even tasted better than my chocolate chip cookie recipe! I was flabbergasted but very, very pleased.

3) Duncan Hines Milk Chocolate Brownies: Yes, yes, I know, it's so easy to make brownies, but sometimes I don't want to do anything more to a batter than mix, pour, and walk away! More importantly, sometimes I'm at Charlie's house and he has nothing to work with but a half-empty bottle of vegetable oil, four eggs, a non-stick cake pan, and a single mixing bowl. And so the brownie mix comes out!

Besides, let's be honest: as easy and as flexible as homemade brownies are, sometimes I just want that rich, dark, soft, tender, wonderfully homogeneous brownie mix sort of taste. Charlie loves them "cake style," with an extra egg in the mix, and I have a particular passion for that papery little crust that forms on the top of a well-made mix brownie! Mmmmm, you can see it in the picture . . .

Reader, do you have any baking mixes you would recommend? C'mon, spill your secrets! I promise not to tell at the next potluck or family reunion . . .   ;)

Also, didn't this guy at the Heat Eat Review have a fantastic idea for a blog? Why didn't I think of that!

Encouragement

Hi, folks! No, this blog isn't abandoned, just going through a dry spell. I've been working a lot (I put in eleven hours at the bakery today). Once I get my class finished up next week and slog through my first 40-hour work week at the cafe, I'll surely be on track!

I've had some good news this week: The Raven Chronicles, a literary magazine based in Seattle, Washington, nominated one of my poems for a Pushcart Prize! I'm very, very excited about it, and so proud that they thought my poem worthy of being one of the few they nominated in 2010.

It's given me a big boost of confidence when I've been feeling low about my writing. I've managed to write about one poem a month since I've been out of grad school, and I haven't even revised those. I've been seriously doubting my commitment to poetry, but this nomination has made me feel rejuvenated and ready to gear up for another round of poem submissions. So watch out Post Office--I'm headed your way with a big stack of manilla envelopes!

I recently stumbled across Kate Monahan's blog MFA Confidential. In her most recent post, she writes about the vital importance of encouragement in a writer's life. I completely agree with her: I remember every single time that a professor, workshop member, or friend told me that, yes, I could do this, that I could write something worthwhile. And every time it's happened, it's come at just the right time, just when I felt like giving up.

Monahan quotes Anatole France at the end of her post: “Nine tenths of education is encouragement." I believe that this is absolutely true, especially when teaching writing. I've made the decision to never tell a writer "No" in workshop, and I would never tell a beginning composition writer "No" as they worked on a paper, nor would I tell a beginning reader of literature "No" when they first start trying to interpret a short story. I've seen enough students come into my classroom morose and unwilling, convinced that they "are just no good at writing." They cannot learn if they do not believe themselves to be capable of learning, or capable of writing cogently. As a teacher, I try to tell my students "Yes" as much as I can, to focus on the positive, to show them how they can build on their natural talents and what they already know.

Anyway, that's my pedagogical rant for the day. Now, I'm off to bed: gotta get up and sell them bagels tomorrow!  ;)

AP English, Revisited

I finally finished Rebecca, a book that I first read and loved when I was eighteen years old. I've already talked about it here, so there's not much to say except that rereading it has been a disappointment. For some reason, Rebecca lost all its appeal for me: instead of seeming rich, romantic, and relatable like it did in high school, it struck me this time as long-winded, sensational, and inauthentic. (I will say, though, that I was happily surprised by the ending, which I didn't remember at all. What a final paragraph!)

This weekend, I started reading another book that I haven't revisited since high school: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. The novel is about the Igbo people, an African tribe that lived in Nigeria in the 1860s. It follows the life of Okonkwo, a rich and successful member of the Umuofia village who is riddled with fears and insecurities.

The first half of the novel describes Okonkwo's rise to eminence and relative happiness, but the second half (which I haven't started yet) tells of his fateful fall and the arrival of the first white missionaries in Nigeria.

 
In high school, I found Things Fall Apart to be flat, unsophisticated, and disturbing in its brutality. I think that I never gave the novel a chance: I assumed that we were reading it to be cheaply multicultural, and so I never looked beyond its anthropological details or its deceptively simple narrative style. I never stopped to think that my AP English teacher taught the novel alongside Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre and The Canterbury Tales on purpose!

This time around, I've realized that Achebe is incredibly smart about people and their motives. Even though he's writing about a time and culture that is different from my own, I recognize his character types, their fears, desires, and ambitions. Instead of seeing Okonkwo as a wife-beating jerk with some real anger issues like I did in high school, I now see him as someone not unlike myself: I, too, have been known to work hard and act tough because I fear looking like a failure.

Anyway, I'm delighted that my opinion of this book has changed. Not only am I enjoying rereading it, but it makes me feel like I'm growing up a little. I can see a depth and sensitivity in Achebe's writing that I missed before. He reminds me of Dostoevsky and Jane Austen in that they all write honestly about the faults and foibles of real people. They understand that each individual is a mixed bag of rages and loves, fears and braveries, failures and successes.

I'm teaching Things Fall Apart in class over the next few weeks, and I'm excited to talk about it with my students. I wonder if they will love it, hate it, or feel indifferent toward it. We'll spend our class time talking about tragic heroes, Achebe's battle against racism and colonialism, and the importance of oral storytelling to the Igbo, but I'm most excited to talk about my students' experience of reading the novel. I hope that they will do a better job than I did of reading the novel for the first time; I hope that they will see the complexity behind its simple surface.

Whoop(s)ie Pies: Tangling with a Pennsylvania Dutch Classic

After spending eight hours on my feet making sandwiches, salads, croutons, and hot cafe beverages for hundreds of bakery patrons, is it really a good idea to go home and attempt a monster batch of Whoopie Pies?

 

A miraculously successful whoopie pie.

No, it isn't, but that's what I decided to do last Friday night.

I should have known that I was too tired for baking. I couldn't measure the ingredients for the life of me, and the mixing process was downright harrowing: I forgot how many scoops of flour I had put in at one point ("Was that scoop four or five? Do I risk two more? Four or five?! Gaaahhh!"), then I confused the baking soda with the baking powder and had to estimate the difference between one teaspoon and one-and-a-half tablespoons, and then I almost added an extra half cup of milk to the batter (the measuring cup was poised above the bowl when I said to myself, "Wait a second . . . wait a second . . . No! Stop it, hand! Stop!").

But I just had to have a whoopie pie. I hadn't had one in at least a year, and my whoopie pie biological clock was apparently ticking. I used to occasionally buy them from an Amish farmer's market near my house in State College, PA. According to Wikipedia and WhatsCookingAmerica.net, whoopie pies are a Pennsylvania Amish tradition. They used to be made from leftover cake batter. Amish wives would take the extra cakes, fill them with creamy frosting, and hide them in their husbands' lunch pails. When the men would open up the boxes and discover the pies, they'd shout "Whoopie!" Though the cakes originated in Pennsylvania Dutch country, they've spread throughout New England and are becoming popular all over the U.S.

Despite my struggles, my instinctive pie lust won out and the whoopie pies survived. In fact, nearly a hundred individual whoopie cakes survived, and I was baking the darn things until 12:30 in the morning! The recipe is huge: it calls for six cups of flour, two cups of cocoa powder, three cups of sugar, and three cups of milk.

 

The mixed batter.

The resulting batter is smooth, fluffy, and very, very abundant: using my large cookie scoop, the recipe made 98 individual cakes, which made 49 whoopie pies!

 

Scoops of batter.

 

The cakes on their own were dark, delicious, and rich due to the high ratio of cocoa powder to flour, not to mention the fact that there's both butter and oil in the batter recipe*. The bottoms were damp enough to cling to the parchment paper, and the tops were sticky enough so that the cakes glommed onto each other when stacked.

 

The baked whoopie cakes, plus the crumby remnants of the first sampler cake.

The frosting was no less rich. In fact, it's better not to think about the frosting at all. In fact, it's better not to read the next two sentences if you're weak of heart or stomach. So just repress this, will you? The frosting is traditionally made with Fluff, whole milk, and shortening. That's right, pure butter Crisco, straight from the tub.

 

Sweet, fluffy death.

But enough about nutritional values: the frosting is okay when sampled with a fingertip--it's fluffy and creamy and mildly sweet. But it's fantastic when sandwiched between two moist, dense, dark-chocolatey cakes. 

These tasted exactly like the whoopie pies I bought at my farmer's market in Pennsylvania. When I ate my first one, I could almost see the mounds of fresh corn and squash and shoofly pies, and hear the Dutch accents on the air!

When you have your head about you, this recipe is actually very simple and very rewarding. Whoopie pies make for great bake sale or birthday party fare, if you're not in the mood for decorating a big honkin' cake. They're easy to make assembly line-style: just mix, bake, cool, slap on a coat of frosting, sandwich, and stack! And, of course, you get a lot of product while dirtying only a few mixing bowls. 

 

About one-fourth of the total recipe output.

This recipe comes from Moody's Diner through FoodNetwork.com. The recipe for the cakes is nearly perfect, but I agree with the Food Network commenters who thought that the frosting was very authentic but a little too synthetic/nauseatingly rich. Some of the comments suggested Martha Stewart's whoopie pie filling recipe, which I'll probably try myself next time.

Whether you fiddle with perfection or not, I strongly recommend giving whoopie pies a try: you'll never eat another mass produced Moon Pie, Swiss Roll, or Oreo again!

---------------

Whoopie Pie

From Moody's Diner and FoodNetwork.com

Cakes:

• 3 cups sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 6 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 tablespoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups milk
• Filling, recipe follows

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, or preheat a convection oven to 315 degrees F.

In a large bowl of an electric mixer, beat the sugar, butter, and eggs together until well combined. Add the oil and vanilla and beat again.

In a separate bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients. Add half of the dry mixture to the egg mixture and beat or stir to blend. Add 1 1/2 cups milk and beat again. Add the remaining dry mixture and beat until incorporated. Add the remaining 1 1/2 cups milk and beat until blended.

With a large spoon, scoop out 32 circles of batter onto a baking sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool.

Spread filling onto 16 circles and place remaining circles on top, to make 16 Whoopie Pies.

Filling:

1 1/2 cups shortening

3 cups confectioners' sugar

1 1/3 cups marshmallow topping

Dash salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/3 to 1/2 cup milk

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine all ingredients except the milk and beat well. Add just enough milk to achieve a creamy consistency. Spread filling across cooled cookie circles.

 

The finished whoopies.

 

*Please note that whoopie pies are a leading cause of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and Weight Watchers memberships. Please consume with discretion. And a napkin.

Update

Hi, folks! Long time, no blog!

I'll try to get back to blogging regularly soon. I'm finally getting my schedule under control. I've finished my application for the full-time teaching gig. I think it went really well--now I just have to wait and see!

This week, I've been learning a lot at my bakery-cafe. I have a big ol' slice on my thumb from a rogue bread slicer (yooowww!), but I've also learned how to slice bagels and bread safely by hand using a giant bread knife. I've learned how to make every sandwich in the shop and a few of the salads. I've baked cookies, scones, and baguettes in the industrial ovens. I'm starting to know the ingredients of most of the food that we sell. Come on in and ask me about the smoothies or the soups or the turkey sandwich--I dare ya!

The treacherous bread slicer looks something like this.

 

But this, for some reason, I can handle!

For my class, I've been reading up on literary criticism and literary theories. These theories are incredibly influential in contemporary literary scholarship, but I somehow made it through grad school without reading up on any of them (hmmmm, maybe I should have taken that Intro. to Critical Theory course everyone kept talking about . . . ).

 

Wearing glasses to class will make me look smarter, right? Right?!?

There's nothing like teaching something you've never studied before to set your heart racing and your palms sweating! It puts you in the same position as your students, but the difference is that you have to explain it to them, answer their questions, and sound like you know what the heck you're doing! Ack!

But now that I've gotten through the readings and given them a little thought, I feel well-prepared for tonight's class. There's nothing like learning on the fly to burn something into your memory for life. Well, except maybe scarring yourself on a bread slicer--I think that makes you learn even faster!

For both of my jobs, I've been on a very steep learning curve. It's been overwhelming sometimes, but I love it: my brain feels extra juicy and absorbent and active all the time. I love how busy I am these days. My hours are always filled (which leaves little time for blogging, writing poetry, and looking for other jobs), but it's a great change from the last six months--I got so sick of moping around like an unemployed lump on a log!

In conclusion, folks, things are going well. And one of these days, I'm going to have the time to bake and blog about this: Whoopie Pies, an old east coast favorite! I hope that they turn out just like the ones from the Amish farmers' markets in Pennsylvania!

Like all good things in the world, Whoopie Pies combine cake with frosting with more cake.