My "skewed distribution" cookies. If you like playing with clay, you'll love making these cookies. Form a long rope of the chocolate part and wrap it in the vanilla part. Bake the two long cookie bars once, then slice (like biscotti), and bake cookies flat for another 5 minutes. Sounds doable, right? The trick is to get each half of the dough the same consistency. The recipe doesn't accomplish that goal; the center is too stiff and the vanilla covering too flabby. I hate flabby. Chocolate center is too dry to hold together. Vanilla layer spreads and spreads. The problem is the timing of the dry ingredients. The recipe wants you to incorporate a full 1/4 cup of cocoa (dry ingredient) plus a half cup of almonds (another dry ingredient) to the chocolate half, at the very end of the mixing. The result? A stiff chocolate dough that barely holds together. Meanwhile, the vanilla layer gets no compensating addition of flour to firm it up. So, the vanilla outer...
I began this blog when my mother was ill and needed enough of my attention that I could not concentrate on longer-form works I wanted to write. I set those aside to distract myself with cookie-making and this blog. Please find my new blog (2020) entitled "Time NOT Lost" at karenbrattesani.blogspot.com, where I explore the behavior I see around me -- both my own and that of others -- and what it says about our changing culture during the coronavirus pandemic. And, I hope, beyond.