Cookies gone bad

I love the internet, sometimes, most times. It brings the whole world to my fingertips. Zillions of recipes from cooks and bakers around the world and in my back yard. Cooks with varying skills levels and tastes. And cooks who might even have typos (eek) in their recipes. I was invited to a gathering on Sunday. As my M.O. I like to bake a tasty treat to bring along. Cautioned early on the hostess' kid is allergic to eggs I was left with a bit of a baking challenge. I was thinking cookies, so I do what I do when I'm contemplating what to bake/cook. I googled "cookies without eggs" and got many, many pages of options. I like to look for familiar blogs and websites when I randomly search for recipes, after three or four pages I didn't see anyone I know. I then started to check out recipes, weeding out the ones that looked wonky or ingredients I didn't have or won't use, like lard. No lard on hand, not baking with lard. Feel free to voice your opinion, but I doubt I'll sway. And by wonky, sometimes people post recipes that only make sense to a select few or method is so disjointed that you know things will go bad quick. At face value my chosen recipe looked spot on. I went to work. I even opted to double the recipe, lots of yummy cookies! I swapped lemon for almond in the flavoring. I added some purple sprinkles (pixie dust to ensure a Raven's win) and then.... "Preheat oven to 450." My gut said "NOOOO!" My head said "NOOOO!" My fingers dialed up 450 and we baked. In case you are wondering, a temp that high yields a very cake like cookie, that stays soft and limp. The texture not very cookie like. But I baked on, in my happy place, hoping the next cookie sheet or the sheet after would be better. Not so much. Guess I could have dialed the oven down, didn't. I kept baking.

Rule of thumb, don't trust everything you find on the internet, especially that email requesting $2,000 wired to Jamaica and you will get $100,000 in return. Some things just aren't right and this cookie recipe was one of them.

Yummm.... Eggnog cake

I don't usually make resolutions, New Years' related or otherwise. I more commitment phobic preferring to make more subtle promises and set "life improvement" goals. One such goal is go back to my blog. I have not stopped baking and cooking, I only stopped writing about it. Not sure why. Something to do with cupcake frosting, I got tired of making frosting and the whole thing came to a halt. Crazy, right? So I'm back and I promise to hang out for a while, maybe even embrace frosting again, who knows. Its a whole new year!

First recipe of the year, Eggnog Cake. Fitting right? We had the better part of a container of Nog left over and I kept tripping over it in the refrigerator. (Rob had one glass of said eggnog and deemed it much thicker than he remembered and moved on. Isn't thickness part of the eggnog charm? Maybe thinned with a wee bit of rum?) For me, often its a single ingredient that spurs an entire recipe. I like to make the most out of my groceries, hating to let ingredients go to waste. It makes me crazy to have my refrigerator bogged down with items not in "active duty." So, Eggnog Cake. Tasty and pro ported to be good with coffee too. Thank you Nancy for the recipe. http://tinyurl.com/2w7aw84.

For the record I baked two loaves, one with rum flavoring and the second with a bit of actual rum, Kracken.