21 August 2005
Blogging can be like drinking water: you don't do it as much as you should, but sometimes when you start, you just can't stop. That said, I'll probably go silent for a week now. Can never tell with these things.
Like some little birds I know, I've been very busy today. I woke up early (from a very disturbing dream, which, strangely enough, featured the bizarre character we spotted at Foyle's last week) and set to finishing my big craft room organizathon. By the time Rob woke up (some three hours later), I was finished. I made pancakes for him (with blueberries) and a fried egg/processed cheese/tri-tater concoction for myself (his breakfast, my early lunch).
Since then I've been reading and clipping magazines (does anybody in London need any recent issues of Country Living [UK and American] or Country Homes? With some missing pages? No? Okay, then, I'll just throw them out). Then I made sugar cookies:
I had all the basic baking ingredients but nothing fun-basic (chocolate chips, food colouring, cinnamon), so sugar cookies it was. Half the cookies are frosted with vanilla frosting; the other half are hazelnut-chocolate. I'm always on the lookout for smaller recipes (smaller yield, that is) -- I saw a cookie recipe once that recommended halving for only 50 cookies. Fifty cookies! I've gotten very bad about not measuring accurately, but this is quite a convenient recipe for making only a dozen:
6 tbsp butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 small egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
a sneeze of salt
Blend the first four ingredients, then add the flour and salt and blend until mixed. Wrap the dough and put it in the fridge for an hour. An hour later, start the oven preheating at. . . 185C (good ol' 350F should do it). I rolled the dough out to just under 1/4" thick. I was able to cut twelve round (2.5" diameter) cookies from the dough. Bake in the middle of the oven for eight minutes (more, I'd imagine, if you don't have a fan assisted oven).
The frosting is made from:
1 cup powdered/icing sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 tbsp of milk? 1.5? I just poured little by little until it was creamy enough -- not too much milk, anyway.
1/4 tsp vanilla
I used half of this to frost six cookies. Then I blended in a couple tablespoons of Green and Black's hazelnut chocolate spread (fancy Nutella) for the rest.
Just so you don't forget about the birds (ha!), a picture of a very damp, slightly blurry Ira. He was very enthusiastic about his bath this morning. The cleanest bird in all the house:
Those cookies look really soft and yummy! And your craft room looks nice and thanks for sharing the bird house picture. It must have been that kind of day for more than just you. I woke from a disturbing dream also this morning and then set about getting the deck ready for staining. However I made no blueberry pancakes for your dad, he went out and got us muffins and energy drink to rev us up for a day of work.
posted by Momma at August 21, 2005 12:00 AM