TWD - Dorie's World Peace Cookies

Jessica of CookBookHabit chose Dorie's renowned World Peace Cookies for this week. Reading the P's and Q's had me kind of nervous; everyone seemed to have issues with super crumbly cookies that didn't slice well. I've never made sables before so I didn't really know what to expect nor do I know if my cookies do or don't fit the sable description.

I didn't have any fleur de sel on hand and used some finely ground kosher salt instead. When making mine, I possibly over mixed just a tad, but I didn't have issues with the dough not coming together as I made the logs. (well except for all the chocolate pieces falling out). I did notice that when I was trying to roll the logs out it felt like they were hollow and would start to kind of separate and so I'd have to smoosh everything together again.


I froze my dough for about 2 hours and had no problems slicing the cookies. Suprisingly I got 30 out of this recipe. Usually I get much less than the amount Dorie projects.



Taste test: very good, but super rich. My brother ate 3 in a row and I don't know how he did it. This may be partially because I ran out of bittersweet chocolate and used semisweet instead. Le sigh...I really need to start reading the recipes more than a day ahead of time so I have a chance to make sure I have all the ingredients. Check the blogroll for everyone else's results!

TWD and a Celebration

Firstly, I just want to share that I am now officially a CAROLINA ALUM! ...that is, once all my library fines are paid haha. Great success!

On to the baking -

This week's TWD selection from Heather of Randomosity and the Girl was another holiday/busytime friendly recipe. The (mostly) weekly baking is getting me into a much more efficient method of baking, which I hadn't really thought would happen. It's a nice little side benefit to doing this I guess. Anyway, these were a snap to throw together and I could see myself making gobs of them with various flavors of jam.

I don't actually own a scooper that would have been useful for these cookies, so I first tried to use two spoons but the cookies were just ugly. Can't have ugly cookies. I ended up scooping out the dough and then rolling them into a ball with my hands and then squashing the tops down with the bottom of a bowl. I think my cookies were a bit biggah (does anyone else think Old Greg when they say that?) since I only got about 3 dozen.

After reading about some people having their cookies turn pretty dark on the bottoms, I only baked for 10 minutes. My oven/pans have been known to burn things within the recommended time so I played it safe. The cookies did spread a bit - I took care not to overmix at the end so that helped for sure.

My parents once upon a time brought back some raspberry cookies from Seattle and the taste of these reminded me of those, so I thought I'd dust some of them in powdered sugar like the ones I remembered.

Both versions are pretty tasty, though I think next time I would add more jam and maybe heat it up a little beforehand so the consistency is easier to mix into the batter. Other than that they were great! My dad is definitely loving this kick of cookies because he prefers ones that aren't so out of this world sweet and these fit the bill.

Be sure to check out everyone else on the TWD blogroll! Thanks again Heather for a great pick.

TWD - Grandma's All Occasion Sugar Cookies

Ah sugar cookies. Can't have Christmas without them. I am also happy that these were a nice easy selection...I am in the middle of studying for two exams at the end of this week and these made a nice study break.

After reading of some people's issues with sticky dough, I made sure to make my dough earlier and refrigerate it overnight. I had zero issues with problematic dough, and it was actually kind of hard to get the sugar to stick to the sides of my first log because it was still pretty cold.

I made the second log with some orange extract in it. It would have been nice to have some orange zest to put in it, but I didn't have time to go to the store. I was trying to figure out how to decorate these and DUH! Orange and chocolate. That's not weird is it? Hopefully other people think it tastes good too. I love using my little parchment sheets to do decorations like this. It takes about 5 seconds but looks like it is professionally done.


Ta-dah! I even broke out mi madre's Christmas china!



Here's a secret glimpse of what my mixer looked like after T-giving. Didn't even realize it til this week. Ah the shame.

As always, check out what the other Tuesdays With Dorie bloggers have come up with!