Flat and round on the page, with a slightly ruddy texture. Not so much eye-appeal against the insistently modern black background of their photo (one-fourth of the way down the page). These cookies might have been hockey pucks or cow pies. Maybe hard, maybe soft, but they were the first chocolate cookie in the book, maybe a sign of good things to come. Right away I thought of the "Famous Wafers" I buy every holiday season only to pulverize them for my rum balls recipe. I hoped my home made cookies would prove more worthy of eating in cookie form than the store-bought. Turns out the two cookies have only two features in common; they are both thin and richly chocolaty in flavor. Beyond that, my work was worth the trouble. This dough sets up firm and smooth after three hours in the frig, and I found them more friendly to roll out than cookies of the 1940's. Way to start the day right. The scent of dark chocolate permeates the kitchen as they roll, and completely ...
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.