Baking Mishaps

I had two duds in a row this weekend and I must fully confess and get them off my chest so that I can get over it and move on. Thursday evening, I planned on making Chrismas cookies but of course, I can't stick with old classics, I had to try something new. I found a recipe for double chocolate sable cookies. The story is that sable is French for sandy ( I can't verify this because I took Spanish, not French, correct me if this is wrong). I am familiar with pecan sandies but I wasn't aware that "sandy" cookies were a whole other class of cookie. I was wrong. I should have known they'd be a flop because the only liquid in the recipe was one measly egg. But I was made temporarily insane with thoughts of the shaved dark chocolate and Ghiradelli cocoa that I'd be using.

So, when the recipe referred to a sandy texture, that was no joke. I had to press this "sand" lightly into waxed paper, firmly pressing and rolling and then chill for an hour. This further annoyed me because I wanted cookies NOW, and I was mad at myself for not reading all the way to end the end of the recipe to find that I would have to delay my gratification. After a very long hour, I removed the chocolate roll from the refrigerator and was moving on to the next step, which included cutting the roll into slices and then chilling the slices another 15 minutes. This was getting really tedious. Fortunately, I didn't have to wait because the roll completely disintegrated when I tried to slice it. Thoroughly vexed, I pressed that stupid sand into a muffin tin and flung it into the oven. Weirdly, they were pretty good but awfully frustrating and time consuming and I will NOT be making them again.

Unperturbed and feeling buoyant after a marvelous roast chicken dinner, I decided to try my hand at making mallorcas, the lovely sweet pastry we enjoyed so much in Puerto Rico. I thought how lovely they'd be with some cafe con leche, with beans I brought home with me. I let the dough rise overnight, punching it down several times while fantasizing about a glistening coil of sweet dough and how good the photo would look on my blog. I lovingly cut pieces of dough, rolled into long strands and coiled into perfect little pastries. I dabbed them with butter and popped them in the oven. After a few minutes, I checked on them. In just a few minutes, my cute little pastries had grown into monstrosities, expanding out of their coils and ruining their lovely shape. Oh well. My rationale is that anything covered with butter and powdered sugar is pretty exquisite so they weren't a total flop. To be fair, I got the flavor right, but they were too dense and dry. I invited Pops in to reminisce about our trip and though he and N. both ate theirs with gusto, I'm pretty sure they were just humoring me. Ah well, I'll have to keep on trying.