BLOGMAS DAY 7: HOBBLING TOWARDS BUS FOOD

Anyhoo, as I mentioned below, I went ahead and made some cookies today. The few that I've had seem quite delicious. Okay, let's write this. I'm tired.

CHOCOLATE RAIN COOKIES

Yeah fine. I'm tired and not in teh fun and wacky way.Nope, just the bitter and cranky way. Murr. Either way, the cookies are delicious. You should have some. But you'd have to find me first! Bwahaha.

Anyhoo.

I LOOK AWAY FROM THE CAMERA WHEN I GET INGREDIENTS

So for these cookies you'll need:

1 stick (~125 g) butter
275 g brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
40ish g cocoa powder
250 g flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
70 g white sugar
70 g confectioner's sugar
Cinnamon

Yeah, that's right. Not 1 tsp cinnamon. Not 80 tonnes cinnamon. Just "Cinnamon." I don't know how much I put in. Wanna make something of it? I will straight up take you down right now. By which I mean I will fall asleep and you'll be all, "Aw that's adorable, maybe I should take a nap too," and just like that I've snatched a draw from the jaws of victory. That's how I roll.

SOME STAY DRY

So the first thing you're going to do is measure out your sugar- I didn't have tightly packed brown sugar, so I measured the same volume as 300 g sugar. Clearly I am the paragon of science, because there's no way I could have added the incorrect volume like that, right? Anyhoo, you mix in your butter and vanilla until it's reasonably smooth- you can probably do better with an electric mixer than I could with my wooden spatula.

After that, you're going to beat in the eggs one at a time. This is going to leave you a really soupy batter, but it won't stay that way for long. Oh boy will it not stay that way for long. And I'll try to fill some space for the next picture rather than actually do something sensible like adjusting the size of the soupy picture. That would just be absurd, am I right? Of course I am, I'm writing the blog I MAKE THE RULES I AM THE LAW. LAAAWWWWW.

Ahem. And now back to the recipe.

See, you're going to combine the rest of your dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, salt, and baking soda) and then add them to this soupiness. I overestimated the soupiness and threw it all in at once. I would recommend doing it gradually just for the sake of ease. Because damn is cocoa dry. That stuff was a pain to mix in. And that's around when I threw in the fabled Cinnamon. How much? Uhhh two or three puffs from the can thing? I don't know. I could have added more, I could have added less. Stir it some more once you add however much I didn't say to add. And now here comes the hard part.

Are you ready?

You put it in the fridge (covered) for a few hours. THE HORRORS!

No seriously. The horrors. That's what's about to happen.

BUT OTHERS FEEL THE PAIN

You may notice the difference in the quality across these
balls. Well, once they start getting warmer, they get a whole
lot gooeyer (gooier?) more gooey, and as such much harder
to handle.

See, after you take it out of the fridge, you need to roll the dough into balls a bit more than an inch across. This goes pretty well at first because the dough is cold. And then you start running into visceral horror. Your hands are covered in batter. You try to do something to get it off but it keeps spreading. Soon it's enveloped you and you've become one of the chocolate people I mean what no that's ridiculous there's no such thing as chocolate people and this recipe is TOTALLY SAFE AND YOU SHOULD NOT WORRY ABOUT ANY SPORES OR SUCH THINGS. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED AND DELICIOULATED. Either way, keep on making those balls. Once you're done, put them back in the fridge while you get ready for the next step.

Measure about 60-70 g white sugar into a shallow bowl or some other surface/receptacle. Now, take the balls and roll them in the sugar. The problem I had here was finding space for all my balls. There were just too many and they were too big for me to fit on the plate that I had, and things got a bit dicey for a bit. Thankfully things came out just fine. And now, put them back in the fridge.

Now measure out about the same amount of confectioner's sugar as you did white sugar. I tried to sift mine, but failed for about half of it, so do as you like I guess. Also prep a cookie sheet with some butcher paper or some such. Anyhoo, now roll the balls in the confectioner's sugar and maybe pat off the excess sugar before putting it on the cookie sheet. Set your oven for 375 F/T6/190 C, wait for it to heat, and cook these bad boys for about 8 minutes. Mine came out with rather soft and chewy centers, which I like. Plus they just looked good to begin with.

Going in!

So far I haven't tasted too much of the cinnamon- maybe it got concentrated in one dose somewhere. Also, the recipe I had said it would make 36 cookies. Considering how much of the dough I ate before it hit the pan, it really makes like 72 cookies at least. And that's with a smaller (half) amount of butter than it technically called for. Not that I'm complaining- I needs food for the bus ride to Belgrade. (Note: These cookies were ALMOST called the Belgrade Bus Bombers, but I thought that might be in questionable taste/tempting fate a bit much for my liking.)

Coming out!