The Funky Kitchen

Hello lovely readers, I’m looking to hear your opinions on this one:

Have you ever been subject to the ”it’s good, but it’s just not as good as my mom’s”? (Insert other name here: Grandma’s, cousin John’s, Penelope’s)

In Mr’s family there are these rolled out oatmeal cookies that they traditionally have at Christmas. His mum makes them from a recipe that came from her grandma, Mr’s great-grandma. Being that these are the years that Mr and I are going to form the Christmas traditions for our little family, I thought it would be good to get the recipe and include it in the list of Christmas Baking recipes.

Mr’s mum, Heather, gave me the recipe and some very helpful hints: the cookies don’t work if you switch out a different fat for the lard, and never ever EVER add cinnamon. (You know what I said about listening to your Mum? The same goes for future mother in laws, they’re smart cookies too!)

Doing my best to not mess with tradition, I weighed carefully, measured precisely, and followed the recipe to the tee. Hurray for cookie cutter fun, and hurray for some mightily tasty cookies!

Mr was very pleased with the results of our labors; he helped me roll them out and cut out the shapes. And when Mr’s parents came over, they were as well. But then Tom, Mr’s dad, said: “These are good, but they aren’t quite the same as Heather’s.”  

Now I’m not upset, really I’m not. Part of me is wondering could it be that despite my care I just did it a little differently, or do you think that they’re different simply because they know Heather didn’t make them? Maybe I copied the recipe out wrong?

The differences in variables are pretty minimal; we’ve got the same recipe and I followed it closely.   I mixed them up in a metal bowl, maybe she uses a glass one. Superstitious bread makers claim the type of bowl you use effects your dough, maybe it is the same for these cookies. Could that really be the difference though?  Maybe I worked in too much flour in the rolling out process, but the recipe directs you to use flour to make the rolling process easier.

I guess, what I’m really trying to ask is: Do you think that the person making a recipe can effect how it turns out? Is it that the minute ways in which things are done differently by different people that leads to the food coming out noticeably different? Or is it more psychosomatic, our brains tell us that what you’re eating can’t be the same because it didn’t come from the same person so we taste them differently?

These things have been mulling around in my head; I’d be curious to hear what you think.

Rolled Oatmeal Cookies

(recipe from Grandma Chegwin)

2 Cups brown sugar, packed

1/2 pound lard

1/2 pound margarine

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

4 Tbsp hot water

2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp salt

2 Cups flour

5 Cups oatmeal

Directions

• Cream together the brown sugar, lard and margarine.
• Dissolve the baking soda into the hot water.
• Mix the baking soda-water and vanilla into the creamed mixture.
• Work in the dry ingredients.
• Put the dough in the fridge to cool.
• Roll the dough out thin, using flour to keep it from becoming a sticky mess, and then cut out shapes.
• Bake in a 350 ° oven for 8-11 minutes, or until golden brown and fragrant.
• Eat plain, or sandwiched together with raspberry jam.

These are such a lovely cookie. I know you might be thinking, oatmeal cookie – kind of mundane, but this is not a mundane cookie. They’re crispy without being overly crunchy.  The oatmeal toasts up during the baking and makes the cookies almost nutty. They stand up pretty well to being dunked in milk.

If you don’t know what you’re going to leave for Santa this year, I can tell you that he would like a rolled oatmeal cookie.

Mr says: These literally taste like Christmas to me.  A holiday classic!

This time last year: Caesar Cocktail

And the year before: Lemon Roasted Potatoes

It has been arts and crafts week in the funky kitchen house. I have been sewing up a storm!

My laptop has a cute new laptop cozy to keep safe in for when we’re travelling to Ontario next week. This way, I can bring it with me and maybe get a post or two up while we’re out of province! It’s a really easy sewing project that comes together in a snap, and really if your laptop didn’t come with a case, why not make one? The pattern I used, by Amy a la mode, can be found here. I made a few adjustments here and there, but I think it came out just right.

And a partial appearance by Trooper! Hi puppy!

I’ve been working on a quilt for a dear friend of mine….

This quilt has been photographed in the very elusive mixing bowl stage. It may not look like a quilt yet, but it will turn into one!

Making some modifications to a hunting jacket…

And also slowly but surely hand sewing the binding onto the quilt I made for Mr and myself. It is going to take forever, but my technique is vastly improving.

Sometimes I wish there was an odometer on my sewing machine, so I could see how many kilometers I’ve gone.

What does this have to do with food? Let me tell you. All of this sewing requires the following: a cup of tea, and something to nibble on.

Brown Butter Brown Sugar Cookies

(adapted from Megan at Take a Megabite)

1/2 Cup butter

1 Cup 2 Tbsp flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 Cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 Tbsp brown sugar

1 Tbsp sugar

Directions

• Brown the butter. Allow it to cool until it starts to solidify again.
• Preheat the oven to 350° F.
• In a mixing bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients: the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
• In another mixing bowl, whisk together the cooled brown butter with the brown sugar, egg, and vanilla until smooth.
• Combine the wet mixture and dry mixture, forming your cookie dough. This cookie dough is heavenly!
• In a shallow dish, stir together the second measure of brown sugar with the white sugar.
• Roll out small balls of cookie dough, and roll each of them through the sugar mixture in the shallow dish.
• Bake the cookies on baking sheets until the edges start to go golden (~8-10 minutes).

Brown butter brown sugar cookies are magical. They taste of caramel, toffee, a little bit of molasses. The brown butter makes them feel fancy too! I keep imagining them sandwiching ice cream and knowing that it must be done.

Having made them twice now, a piece of advice: I got impatient waiting for the brown butter to start to solidify and popped it in the freezer to get the job done quickly. This was a mistake. The butter got too solid, and still being impatient, I just went with it and mixed everything together. This lead to some cookies being super brown buttery tasting, and some barely at all. They were still awesome, just some more than others. The moral of the story is that it is much nicer to distribute fairly, and that patience is a virtue.  Your cookies will be better for it.

Mr says brown sugar brown sugar cookies are awesome and deceptively nutty.

This time last year: Watermelon Sorbet

And the year before: Pure and Simple Applesauce

When Mr sets off on his adventures with work I make a point of trying to send him with a snack of some sort. I do it so that he’s reminded that I’m thinking about him and sending my love, but also so that he’s got something to munch on if he gets hungry, or he can share with the people he’s with.

On Monday morning when he headed out, he left with a container of Fudge Drop cookies in his bag. They are kind of a cookie-brownie hybrid, gooey and unctuous but still cookie like enough to hold together. From what I hear, Mr and his fellows quite enjoyed them.

Fudge Drop Cookies

(Recipe from King Arthur Flour)

8 oz chocolate (I used 4 oz dark (70% cocoa), 4 oz milk)

3 Tbsp butter

1 Cup sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp espresso powder

1 tsp vanilla

1 Cup flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 Cup chocolate chips

Directions

• Melt together the chocolate and butter.
• In a second bowl, beat together the sugar and eggs until they are frothy.
• Combine the chocolate mixture with the egg mixture, and then stir in the rest of the remaining ingredients.
• The batter will be very loose, it will look like brownie batter. If you try to form it into cookies now, you will end up with puddles. So pop your cookie ‘batter’ into the fridge so that it firms up into a dough (~1 hour).
• Spoon the dough onto cookie sheets, to your desired size, and bake until just set (~11 minutes) in a 325° oven.

What I really love about these cookies is that they are covered in the shiny, cracked top that brownies have when you bake them. So cute! The espresso powder in these is a little bit much for me, coffee flavor makes my stomach turn, but it does intensify that chocolate (and Mr loves his coffee).

Mr says: These are like brownies disguised as cookies; soft insides with a nice crusty outside.

This time last year: How to Hard Boil an Egg

And the year before: Potato Salad Revisited