Project Idea

Hmmmmm, Three hundred words... I don't think I can count higher than ten. Well, If you read my twitter post from a few moments ago, you will know that my original plan failed to appease my parents. My first thoughts when I heard about this project went to Julia & Julie, that movie and book about Julia Child and the amateur chef who goes through her cookbook in a year. Going though the actual cookbook over the summer would be madness, especially for a devout vegetarian who couldn't even watch a lobster die, let alone kill and cook one. My choice of cookbooks led me to the desert section, where I found several that I would love to try, but none that I could complete in three months. The only book I found that looked plausible was The Ghirardelli Chocolate Cookbook. It has a total of eighty-seven recipes, combined, they would overwhelm my summer and escalate grocery bills with all the fancy chocolate. The everyday cooking routine required was out of the question, I have two summer camps planned and a one week vacation with my mom, plus other small events that, despite the fact that I would much rather hide in the kitchen, I will be forced to attend.  So, I will have to go with plan- B. Plan-B includes going though as many of these recipes as my parents will allow (about twice a week was agreed upon), and determining my success ratio. For each burnt pan of cookies, how many masterpieces will I create? Or will it be the other way around? As of now, I have a 1:1 ratio. That is right, I have already made two batches of cookies and failed one of them. This was on 6-11-10, the day before my cousin's baby shower. Yes, it was before school ended, but I was too exited by my new cookbook to not want to start. The first section of my cookbook is "Chocolate Cookies", and I dared to make Chocolate Checkerboards and Chocolate-Dipped Lemon Cookies. The lemon cookies came out fine, even if the shortbread was crumbly and the chocolate had some difficulty hardening with the humidity. I consider these minor issues, they were still a hit a the shower and i received many complements on them. The other batch was a different story. I am not sure exactly what went wrong, one sheet turned out undercooked and the other two sheets were overcooked. They all had this in common though: they had melted into puddles as soon as they were heated. I did not notice any major flaws in my measurements I was baking, but I do recall that the dough was sticky and hard to work with even when it had been chilled, and I expected my mixer to yield more dough then it actually did. Looking back, my best guess is that I only used two cups of flour instead of three. As for the one undercooked two over cooked cookie sheet dilemma, it was getting to be late at night, an I was probably not paying too much attention to what I was doing, and I lacked parchment paper.