What were they supposed to look like?

This morning, while working my way through the posts that accumulated in my RSS reader overnight, I came across a post on my friend Nicole's house's food blog. The post dealt with the making of Afghans, a type of cookie that is popular in New Zealand. Immediately upon reading the post (and the linked recipe) I decided that given the limited number of ingredients required I would give them a shot.

The first problem that I encountered was that the recipe that I had called for ingredients to be measured by weight and I did not have access to a functional kitchen scale. After a little searching I found a few recipes online that seemed similar in ingredient proportions to the one that I first examined. Eventually I settled on something of a hybrid of a few of the recipes (strangely I didn't choose the one that was entirely in units that I could actually measure).

After a few minutes in the mixer it was clear that the dough that I was in the midst of creating was not turning out like other cookie doughs that I have made. The dough seemed particularly heavy on sugar and butter and light on things like flour (or other ingredients that would diminish the 'melting' effect). Of course this effect was likely compounded by the fact that I, almost consciously, confused ounces as a measure of volume with ounces as a measure of weight (a problem that contributed to to the imbalance between the butter and the flour).

Given my unfamiliarity with the recipe I decided to just trudge along and bake the dough that I had in front of me, even though over-melting seemed like a very real possibility. I guess at this point I could have added a little more flour to stiffen things up, but I decided not to as it seemed likely that this batch of cookies was already beyond repair (it is rather unfortunate when you have written off a baking project before anything has even been put in the oven).

Not surprisingly, my greatest fears about the outcome of my cookies were confirmed when the first tray was removed from the oven. The cookies, which were supposed to be ball-shaped, melted into thin disks that were unmovable while hot. Given my lack of access to magic and my unwillingness to resort to additional flour, when the second tray came out of the oven it exhibited similar problems. Fortunately, once cooled, I was able to get most of each cookie from the trays to a cooling rack (though all cookies showed at least some signs of damage).

Sadly, or maybe happily, the icing I made to accompany these cookies turned out quite nicely. Of course because of the brittleness and poor quality of the cookies I didn't ice all of them, or even most of them.

So now I have most of a batch of good(ish) chocolate icing and similar portion of a batch of poor chocolate cookies. I guess the final upside is that our contribution to this week's compost collection will be larger than it otherwise might have been (though as I am sure that we are the apartment that contributes the most already this additional contribution won't be much appreciated by our neighbours).

Amazingly, though I am not sure if it is because of or in spite of today's failure, I am quite tempted to try Afghans again. The original blog post (and that the recipe calls for corn flakes) is still tempting me as much now as it did this morning. Hopefully in round two, if there is a round two, I will be wise enough to at least use a recipe that provides quantities of ingredients in units that I can create rather than units at which I have to guess. I guess the other thing that I could do is try to convert this motivation to bake into a desire to bake bread (as we all know that stuff is almost impossible to screw up, or at least be in a position where a fix isn't possible).

A Few Quick Notes 64

-Today was a pretty nice winter’s day, not to cold and not so hot that I was sweating as I walked around. The only downside of today is that the sidewalks were a bit slush covered, a bit of a remnant of the snowfall earlier this week.

-Neil arrived safely, though about an hour and a half late, on Thursday night. Fortunately his bags came off of the plane quickly and we were able to take a taxi directly to Thomson House, where we had a few drinks and some good conversation.

-Today, after we woke up, we went out for some shopping/touring. On foot, we visited many of the major streets and shopping districts, as well as a few that weren’t quite so famous or well known. I think that we started of our day in the dollar store arena and then proceeded to visit all kinds of other stores. At one point we visited a discount tool store where they were selling the largest wrenches I have ever seen. Though we did not buy that much or any big ticket items we were able to each pick up a few things. My most significant buy was a plunger for about $1.29.

-As we were just about done with our shopping expedition Neil and I both noticed someone walking out of the music building that looked somewhat familiar. We both immediately thought that it looked like Ed Squires, but that it couldn’t possibly be him, even though this person was carrying a drum. As we continued walking we started to talk about the striking resemblances, and the fact that both people were percussionists.

After a few feet of this person walking behind us he called out, which I thought he was doing because I kept staring at him. It turns out that he recognized us and that we had recognized him, though just not really expected to see him in Montreal.

As it turns out, we were basically heading in the same direction and we were able to make sure that he found his way to his bus, I even hooked him up with a bus ticket so that he wouldn’t have to pay full fare.

-In honour of Neil’s trip I decided that I would cook a rabbit. I mentioned this to my classmate, Nicole, a few days ago and she indicated that she was interested in trying my rabbit.

So last night I made my first roast, stuffed rabbit. It was pretty tasty and easy. It turns out that it only takes about an hour to cook a rabbit, there isn’t too much meat on them. I was pleasantly surprised at how moist and tender the meat was. If they weren’t so expensive, about 17$ a kilo, I would consider buying them more frequently.

Post-rabbit we went over to Thomson House. All in all, the evening was very enjoyable.

A Few Quick Notes 43

-In the past 24 hours the temperature has really risen in St. John’s. Yesterday at about this time it was almost -10, and now it is just about 0. The forecast is predicting that it will hover at about this or a slightly lower temperature for the next few days.

In Montreal they are in the midst of a freezing rain warning. Such events have a history of causing serious problems in the areas. Earlier this year freezing rain brought down all kinds of trees and branches, knocking out people’s power for days.

-Yesterday I went skating for the first time in a few years. It was a strange feeling to be back on skates after a multi-year absence. The up side was that I learned that my skates needed to be sharpened, the downside was that I did not figure this out until I was on the ice.

My current plan is to take my skates back to Montreal so that I can go skating in the various ice rinks that are built around the city, particularly the one that is located in the Old Port of Montreal. This rink in particular is impressive when it is all open, skaters have access to a huge ice surface.

-Today is New Years Eve.

-I finally got around to getting some contact info for a few friends of mine. The nice thing was that in one instance I was actually able to talk to my friend rather than just getting his phone number.

-Sorry about the slow down in posting over the Christmas season. This should be rectified upon my return to Montreal. It is likely that Neil will still post less than his fair share once he returns to Halifax.