Salted shortbread cookies wearing chocolate pants
I spent Saturday morning tempering chocolate for these salted shortbread cookies (above), which will be a part of a cookie plate at a luncheon my sister is hosting.
It reminded me why I like to consume chocolate, not temper it. It seems like a pretty simple process—take it up to 122 degrees, bring it down to 81, then take it back up to 86—but it sometimes doesn’t work out and you have no idea why. Is it humidity? Barometric pressure? Sometimes it just likes to be mercurial and you must try and try again and conquer it.
Taste-wise, there’s a playful balance here between the salt and the sweet and the chocolate. I could give you the recipe, but then I’d have to kill you. I kid! If you’d like it, please write me.
I also made Martha Stewart’s carrot cake cookies with cream cheese icing for the plate. You can get the recipe online or in the book.
Sea of carrot cookies
I’m generally against the idea of and weirded out by carrot cake (‘Why is there a vegetable in my cake??’) but these are plain delicious. The cookies are chewy, and the sweetness of the icing is just right, plus I used really flavorful (and happened to be organic) carrots and golden raisins. I took some to a gathering after (related post coming) and friends gobbled them up.
The third part of the cookie plate were sesame tuiles. They’re normally light and thin and crispy, but I didn’t take any photos as they turned out, er, not so light, thin, and crispy. To get them looking perfect, you need a tuile template, or an infinite amount of patience to spread the batter evenly in a uniform shape on the Silpat. But after the chocolate, the tuiles were an uphill battle. Here’s to hoping the shortbread and carrot cookies will distract the guests.
Baking While Depressed 