Passing on the family recipes.
Dec. 19th, 2007 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaWe made cookies tonight, primarily to be presents for Alex's nursery school teachers and my coworkers. I remember thinking that Alex might be old enough to help last Christmas, and having her be totally uninterested. This year, "Shall we make some cookies?" propelled her right out of a bad mood and into a state of high excitement.
I made some brown sugar/walnut cookies (not much to look at, but totally yummy) and some snickerdoodles. Snickerdoodles, rolled in red and green sugar crystals instead of the more traditional cinnamon sugar, are the archetypal Christmas cookie in my family. When I was not much older than Alex, I started being repsonsible for rolling the cookies in the colored sugar before they were baked. Now it's her turn.
To be honest, I felt tired and queasy this evening and would not have picked it for cookie-baking had there been alternatives. (We need to give them out on Friday, and tomorrow night we have Avenue Q tickets.) But baking with Alex was a pleasure all the same. I spent so much happy childhood time baking with my own mother. It feels good to carry on the tradition.
I made some brown sugar/walnut cookies (not much to look at, but totally yummy) and some snickerdoodles. Snickerdoodles, rolled in red and green sugar crystals instead of the more traditional cinnamon sugar, are the archetypal Christmas cookie in my family. When I was not much older than Alex, I started being repsonsible for rolling the cookies in the colored sugar before they were baked. Now it's her turn.
To be honest, I felt tired and queasy this evening and would not have picked it for cookie-baking had there been alternatives. (We need to give them out on Friday, and tomorrow night we have Avenue Q tickets.) But baking with Alex was a pleasure all the same. I spent so much happy childhood time baking with my own mother. It feels good to carry on the tradition.
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Date: 2007-12-20 02:49 pm (UTC)1) Use boxed egg whites or meringue powder, so you don't have to figure out what to do with all the yolks. Also, you don't have to bother with separating out yolks.
2) Don't even bother trying if it's humid or damp. The merengues will schlomp.
3) You always have to beat the egg whites + cream of tarter for longer than you think you have to.
4) Replacing half your sugar with icing sugar helps stabilize the egg whites.
5) Line your baking sheets with parchment.
6) Baking at lower temperatures for longer is a good idea—one recipe I've used has you more or less dry them out in a really slow oven (I think it started at 200ºF, then, after an hour or so, you turned the oven off) overnight.
I found this article in Fine Cooking really helpful, though I still put cinnamon, vanilla, and chocolate chips in my meringues (except for one batch, which are chocolate-free because certain people are not cocoavores.)