I am in the middle of an art theory class which makes me want to bang my head against a wall, so I have been coming up with lame excuses to *not* read the chapter on semiotics in the late-modern. I know, I'm such a grown-up. Yesterday, I rearranged the living room furniture all by myself for no good reason other than I didn't want to read about minimalism (that pull-out couch is like a ton of bricks, too.)
Today, I decided to make cookies. These cookies, specifically. Needing exactly 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda, which is *supposed* to be similar to the Swedish bikarbonat, so thats what I used. It is rainy and chilly today, and I figured it'd take at least 20 minutes to go buy the walnuts and raisins, and a good chunk of time to grate carrots and make the dough. And because tiny Swedish ovens such as ours are configured with only ONE baking rack (seriously?!?) it would take at least 4 or 5 rounds of 12 minute baking cycles to bake all of the cookies. So I was looking at a nice hour and a half of non-reading time.
I should probably get my head checked, I know. Just read the damn book!
And I felt even dumber after taking that first round of what should have been plump, moist lovely little mounds of carrot cake cookies out of the oven. Flat as pancakes. And not fluffy American pancakes, *Swedish* pancakes (so, flat as crepes.) With little nubs of walnuts and raisins making the only 3-dimensional forms on the sheet.
There was no saving them, either. They had started to get brown & crispy on the edges, but the centers were still too soft, so I had to scrape them off the sheet onto a plate in one amorphous pile of carrot-y, cinnamon-y mess. But what do you do with an entire bowl full of dough? It was good, but I couldn't eat the whole thing raw (I thought of it, though!) I dumped it all into a small loaf pan, and I have a feeling that it too will be an utter failure.
Stu had a brilliant suggestion: to use it as ice cream topping. So I'll stop by and get a tub of vanilj glass on the way home from work tonight. Seriously, no more baking soda disasters. How do Swedes make cookies? They can't all be flat pepparkakor?!?
Thanks for the laughs :) The cookies do indeed look flat, but maybe they taste good?? Enjoy!
ReplyDeletehave you tried just using more baking powder.
ReplyDeletebaking soda + cream of tartar = baking powder
try playing with some combination of those three.
Glad my frustrations are at least amusing. Its so pathetic...
ReplyDeleteI have baking powder, and its not interchangeable with soda, which is what all the recipes call for. Maybe I just suck at baking, have only made decent baked goods by fluke in the past, and now Sweden is calling my bluff?