Bon Bon Cookies

These bon bon cookies are for my college newspaper's staff. There are lots of different possibilities, so there is something for everyone.

You can make these with plain dough or chocolate dough. The icings can be plain or chocolate also. I used chocolate chips or walnuts for the centers of the cookies. The toppings are icing, alone, with pecan chips or with shredded coconuts. You can also use colored sugar on top. (I forgot to.) For centers, you can also used candied cherries or pitted dates.

Every time I have made these, the dough has been dry, so I had to add the cream listed below. If you make the dough without cream, please tell me!

The recipe only makes about two dozen cookies, but the icing recipe makes enough for almost two batches. I did a full batch of regular icing and a half batch of chocolate icing. I still had a little of each icing left over.

The recipe is slightly time intensive, as you have to form each ball around the chosen center and you have to ice and top each one. The baking time isn't bad, but you have to wait for the cookies to cool before you ice them.

Sorry for the bad close-up picture. (Again)

Note the size. I've made these a few times. The recipe says "level tablespoon" of dough for each cookie. Try not to over-do the size. You want these to back through to the center, especially if there is chocolate that needs to be melted together.

Things I liked:

• The variety of cookies
• Fun with icing

Things I want to work on:

• Trying other flavors (ie mint or lemon)
• The toppings don't always stick well to the icing. Is there a better way?
  

RECIPES USED

BON BON COOKIES
1/2 cup butter 3/4 cup confectioner's sugar 1 tbsp. vanilla 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp. salt 1 oz. (1 sq.) unsweetened chocolate (only if making chocolate dough)
Fillings (I used semi-sweet chocolate chips and walnut halves) Cream Food colouring

Mix butter, sugar and vanilla. Blend flour and salt in thoroughly, by hand. If making with chocolate, melt the unsweetened chocolate square and add in. If coloring, add food coloring. Keep mixing by hand. If dough is dry and crumbly, add 1-2 tbsps of cream. Dough should be able to stick together in ball or log.

Heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Wrap level tablespoons of dough around filling. For chocolate chips, I suggest three or four chips. Roll into ball with hands.

Place balls 1 in. apart on ungreased baking sheet. Bake 12-15 minutes, until set but not brown. Cool before decorating.

BON BON ICING

1 cup confectioner's sugar 2 1/2 tbsp. cream 1 tsp vanilla food coloring
For chocolate: 3 tbsp. cream 1 oz (1 sq.) unsweetened chocolate

Mix all ingredients. For chocolate, melt the unsweetened chocolate to add and use 3 tbsp. of cream instead of 2 1/2.

SUGGESTED TOPPING
Shredded coconut chopped nuts colored sugar

Recipe from 1972 Betty Crocker Cookie Book

While Chocolate Chip Maple Cookies

Sorry for the bad picture! My digital camera is a little special, by which I mean bad.

These were for my friend Jessica. I thought she would like something that looks pretty and tastes interesting. The cookies have pecans, maple and white chocolate chips in them. They are good with or without icing.

The recipe didn't specify light or dark brown sugar, so I used the dark I had lying around. It made it a little more difficult to see how baked the cookies were.

I'm also pretty sure the maple flavoring I used was a little old. It tasted strong enough, but was very dark and thick. This made the icing darker too, I think. The magazine I got the recipe from had much lighter, almost white, icing.

I also opted for white chocolate chips, rather than vanilla chips. I couldn't find the vanilla.

Things I liked:

• New flavor to try: maple. Delicious
• Nice over-night project. Make the cookies one afternoon and wait to ice the next morning.

Things I want to work on:

• Baking time and how well baked. Most of the time, I have to undercook in my oven, but these took at least a minute over the minimum time
  

RECIPES USED

White Chocolate Chip Maple Cookies
1 cup shortening 1/2 cup butter (softened) 2 cups packed brown sugar 2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract 1 tsp. maple flavoring 3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsps baking soda 2 cups white chocolate chips 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Cream shortening, butter and brown sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well. Beat in vanilla and maple flavorings. Gradually add flour and baking soda.
Stir in white chocolate chips and pecans. Using a rubber spatula may be best for this part.
Drop rounded tablespoonfuls about 2 inches apart, on ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 8-11 minutes, until "golden brown" or firm.
Cool for 2-5 minutes on sheet, then transfer to wire racks with a spatula.

Maple Frosting (and Topping)
1/4 cup butter (softened) 4 cups confectioner's sugar 1 tsp maple flavoring
4-6 tbsps milk pecan halves

Cream butter and confectioner's sugar. This will be thick. Beat in maple flavoring.
Add milk, one tbsp at a time, to reach spreading consistency.
Frost cookies after they have cooled.
Top with pecan half.
Allow to sit to harden frosting for at least two hours.

Double Chocolate Drop Cookies

I made these for my friend Darr. He didn't want almonds, lemon, coconut or cherry in his Christmas cookies. I know he likes chocolate, so I made the double chocolate version of the chocolate drop cookies. The recipe is at the bottom of the post.

The recipe book said to bake these on ungreased sheets for 8 to ten minutes. Baking for just seven minutes was leaving them with burnt bottoms. I put aluminum foil on the baking sheets, dull side up. That helped a lot.

You can put browned butter glaze, mocha icing or chocolate icing on these, but I opted not to. I am shipping them and that seemed a bit much and messy.

Things I loved in the project:

• Easy to do
• Chocolately fun
  

Things I want to work on:

• Black bottoms!
  

RECIPES USED

DOUBLE CHOCOLATE DROP COOKIES
1/2 cup butter, softened 1 cup sugar 1 egg 1/3 cup buttermilk
2 squares (oz) unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled 1 tsp. vanilla
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 tsp. baking soda 1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup chopped nuts 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Melt unsweetened chocolate. Mix sugar, butter and egg. Mix in melted chocolate. Stir in buttermilk and vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda and salt, blending in.
Mix in nuts and chocolate chips.
Chill for 1 1/2 hours.
---
Heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Put aluminum foil on baking sheets, dull-side-up.
Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of dough about 2 inches apart on sheets.
Bake six to seven minutes, making sure the bottoms are not burned after six minutes.
Cool on sheet, then on plate.
---
Made about 4 dozen for me. You can ice them after cooling them. I used three different baking sheets, so just be prepared to keep cycling them through.

Recipe from 1972 edition of the Betty Crocker Cooky Book.

Mary's Sugar Cookies - Decorated

This batch of cookies are my Christmas present for my friend Emma. She is currently working on a presidential campaign, so I included a cookie decorated as a candidate (top-center of the first picture) and some red-white-&-blue decorated candy cane cookies. I used the "Mary's Sugar Cookie" recipe, with "Easy Creamy Icing" and "Marie's Chocolate Icing." All of those are listed at the bottom.
There is the Santa cookie (bottom center), which I am particularly proud of. I was decorating using the "plastic bag" method of icing. You just cut the corner of a baggie, scoop in some (already dyed) icing, and push through. The little Santa came out better than most of the others, I think, mostly because of the nice consistency of the red icing and the fact that I was willing to be patient with it. The dark pants on the others are chocolate icing, which I couldn't use the plastic bag method with, because it had to stay hot while I was using it.

The candy cane cookies and wreath cookies were fairly easy to decorate, although making stars without proper icing tips was somewhat hard. The problem with these was the cookies themselves, not the decorating. These candy cane cookies are okay looking, but they could get slightly over-expanded, so the shape would get lost, especially after putting on the white base coat. The dip would disappear. The wreath cookies were made with two cookie cutters, one inside the other on the dough, then taking out the center part. With no center, the wreaths baked a little more thoroughly than the other cookies. They were browning while others were barely firm. I just swirled the icing and added red "holly" dots. The red icing wasn't firm enough to add three little beads of icing to make it look like holly. Instead, I just made larger dots.

One of the icing problems that you can see clearly on the wreaths is maintaining icing consistency. The bottom right wreath's icing has spread much more than the center left's. Part of this has to do with when I recut the hole in the baggie, making a larger hole. It also has to do with heat. The green icing was all from the same batch, but the heat of my hand made it spread more. So, when I needed it to behave more, I refrigerated it and worked with another color elsewhere. It worked okay, but not great. Suggestions? I should have added colored sugar when the green icing was wet, but I forgot. Oops!

There are six Christmas trees total. Each have chocolate icing at the bottom, for the trunk. It is much thicker than the "easy creamy" icing used for everything else. I didn't know how to make it thinner and still trust it to dry and solidify properly. I suppose I could have bought chocolate bark, but that seemed a bit much. You may not be able to see the yellow at the top. Another example of slightly too runny icing making it look sloppier. I like the dots at ornaments, because ornaments can be any shape. I used some left-over white icing for a garland. I think it came out well, especially with the colored sugar.

These stars are done in a circle, sort of. The outside "spokes" of one correspond to the inside "solid" part of the next. I tried doing spokes first and doing solids first. Doing solids first worked better. The reason there is a weird circle on the yellow and white centers is because they were both spoke-first. The dark colors of the spokes could be seen through the center, so I had to add extra to cover it up. Lesson learned!

These are the "others," including an ornament looking red and green and sparkly with colored sugar. There is the crazy looking one on the left, which is over-iced. The star is chocolate icing with green put on top of it.

Things I loved in the project:

• Icing with the baggies
• Using black food coloring
• My Santa cookie

Things I want to work on:

• Icing with baggies
• Chocolate icing
• Making icing of consistent thickness (not runny!)

RECIPES USED

MARY'S SUGAR COOKIES
1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar 1 cup butter 1 egg 1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp almond flavoring 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cream of tartar

Mix sugar and butter. Add egg and flavorings. Mix thoroughly.
Mix in dry ingredients.
Refrigerate 3 hours.
---
Heat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Lightly grease baking sheets.
Divide dough and roll to 3/16 in thickness on a floured board.
Cut with cookie cutters, reusing dough as necessary. Use a metal spatula to transfer the cut dough, especially if the shapes are hard to keep with raw dough.
Bake 6-8 minutes, until firm but still golden. Let cool on cookie sheet for at least five minutes, then transfer to wire rack or plate. Let cool completely before icing.
---
Made 3 1/2 dozen for me. The cookies tasted great. If you aren't going to ice them, you should sprinkle sugar on them before you bake them.

MARIE'S CHOCOLATE ICING
1 tbsp. butter 1 square (oz.) unsweetened chocolate 1 1/2 tbsps. warm water
1 cup confectioner's sugar.

In a double boiler, melt butter and chocolate.
Blend in warm water. (I used a spoon for this recipe, rather than a mixer.)
Beat in confectioner's sugar until icing is smooth and at desired consistency.
---
I kept it mildly hot while I used it. This makes a lot of icing. I would have halved it for this project, in retrospect.

EASY CREAMY ICING
1 cup confectioner's sugar 1/4 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp. vanilla 1 1/2 tbsp cream

Blend it all together, adding cream only as necessary for easy spreading.
Divide up to tint.
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I made this recipe four times to make enough icing. There was some left over for some of the colors, but four batches was about enough. I should have added less cream to at least two batches, so mix everything but the cream and then add it as needed.
The "plastic bag" method of icing is described at the top of the post. I'm too cheap to buy proper frosting bags with tips.

All recipes from the 1972 Betty Crocker's Cooky Book.

My parents read me Greek Myths instead

Fairy tales may end in horror: Sci-Tech: News: News24

This is an old story
I just felt is should be somewhere I'll remember it

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Because NewsCorp is evil...

... This is what I can't use anymore: NEWS CORPORATION

Which includes HarperCollins, which means I have to even check at the book store. God dammit why did I look this up?

Except I will totally keep watching a couple programs on Fox, like House and Bones (oh wait, thats it). I'm still trying to figure out how House gets replayed on USA, which is owned by NBC Universal.

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Writer's Strike: What I Will and What I Won't

I am currently engaged in a year off from college. Its weird and strange. And full of TV. My parents just got the Verizon FIOS package thingy, so there are even more channels. When I am/was at college, streaming video from the major networks is the best (only) way to get my fix of Grey's, B&S, Battlestar, etc.
Now I feel guilty because people weren't getting paid. I didn't realize I was sitting through the fifth recitation of the value of Florida Orange Juice (as a FL girl, I feel compelled to mention it is wonderful) or through the same damn "soothe a crying baby" commercial FOR A PROMOTIONAL BIT.
One of the bloggers asked how America is viewing narrative. It's a great question to ask here. Another blogger/striker mentioned that the lack of support for the writers tended to do with how Americans view work, as something to hate rather than to enjoy, and how they view intellectuals/creatives. I'm acreative. I bake instead of cook. I craft instead of draw. I want to serve my country through working for the government. BUT I value those in the creative world. I know that Brothers & Sisters and Battlestar Galactica have affected how I view the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and war in general. The Office has convinced me never to sell paper... or sell anything. I read books regularly, thank you. I read magazines and the newspaper and despair over print media's decline.
But I also watch television. And read about television at TWoP. And enjoy the arcs and continued narrative. Its like Dickens's and the like's serial structure in newspapers a century and a half ago. Long and winding and full of plot and comment. You can't tell me you haven't watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy and wanted to know what exactly was next, like the people on the docks waiting to discover what happened to Little Nell. (Would that be called spoilers 1.0?)
I like television more than I like movies a lot of the time. I like to get invested. Rory Gilmore was exactly the same age as me and her grandfather was, by general consensus of the folks I've asked, entirely too like my father for words. The Petrelli family is so implosive that it makes me thank sweet Jesus that I am an only child, and then turn around and watch Micah be an only child. I like the extended nature of three episodes of a series dedicated to the President's daughter being kidnapped and the Constitutional crisis it might create, when a couple years before I watched a single episode all about the power of the filibuster and a grandpa's love.

So here is what I will and won't do to support writers, who create a lot of the reason I keep watching TV, who deserve health care and pensions and a future at their jobs as much as anyone:

I WILL stop watching TV shows on the network sites. No more ABC.com player, CBS.com player, or NBC.com player.

I WILL watch only live TV, DVR'd shows and whatever I can steal online or have saved from recording off my TiVo.

I WILL send my friends in NYC cookies to offer to striking writers. I WON'T promise my friends won't eat the cookies themselves.

I WILL remember this strike past the first week. And the second week. And the third week. Because if the writers are in it for the long haul, so should their consumers.

I WON'T stop watching America's Next Top Model. Because I am rooting for the ditzy and stupidly named Chantal like it is no one's business.

I WON'T watch any "reality" shows that I do not already watch. Which means I WILL watch ANTM, AFV, The Hills, Run's House and Mythbusters (is that a reality show? because I also won't stop watching the History Channel) and nothing else "unscripted". I just also realized that a good new year's resolution would be to stop watching so much reality TV.

I WON'T watch Ellen, at least not for a while. She is afraid of being in breach of contract. Tell that to the hyphenates.



My daddy taught me that you honk for unions. My conscience taught me that decent people don't cross picket lines. I know that these writers are like most other union members out there: consistently screwed by people about fifty rungs above them on the ladder. It's sad that the production crews in every facet are about to suffer, but if SAG and the Director's Guild just get on board quickly, there might be enough to end this post haste. Because I care about Meredith and Christina & Kitty and Nora & Betty and Henry & Starbuck and Apollo & Nick and Tripp & Pam and Jim & Liz and Jack & even the ladies on Wisteria Lane. And I care about the people who made them.

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