(no subject)

I am baking Christmas Cookies today using as my workspace the (now covered) dining table in the dining room of our *carpeted* apartment, and I just feel the need to say:

DUSTBUSTER FOR TEH WIN!

Had a little flour spill a few minutes ago, and almost panicked... hehe.

Kitchen Mojo

There's something almost sacriligious about the idea of improving on certain recipes. Particularly old family recipes that have been handed down the generations. You know the ones, old favorites from when you were a child. Maybe things you only got to have once a year, around the holidays. For me, that was always my grandmother's Peanut Butter Christmas Cookies. They weren't anything special, really. Turns out she got the recipe off the back of a thing of Hershey's Kisses. It's the recipe for "Peanut Blossoms" on the back of every bag. I never knew that till I was an adult, or I would have been baking my little ass off let me tell you. I was addicted to those things. Still am.

So it is with great pride, and some sadness, that I must announce I have surpassed my grandmother's recipe. And this year my experimentation isn't just a minor cosmetic change like using rollos or white chocolate hershey's kisses as the topping. It's not even a small innovation like using a bit of honey as an added sweetener, or switching to organic ingredients where possible. I have fundamentally changed the nature of my grandmother's cookies: I made a batch using Whole Grain Oat Flour.

I gotta tell you, in my book the taste is out of this world. It's a richer flavor than the regular flour gives it, and it really compliments the peanut butter and chocolate nicely. Plus, certain people with Glutin Allergies *coughaekiycough* should hopefully be able to eat my cookies and not die. Sadly, I have not yet been able to locate shortening without soy lecithin, and I used a bit of soy milk in the recipe instead of regular milk, so they will still kill rialian. Sorry about that, Ri. Working on it. :) Does anyone know if lard is an acceptable substitute for shortening in baking recipes, and if so what proportions of it? Or otherwise know of a non-soy variant of shortening and where I would be able to get my hot little hands on some?

Next experiment: Corn Flour. I'm kinda afraid that batch is going to turn out disgusting, but my curiousity has gotten the best of me. 'sides, you never know unless you try. :) This is particularly true in cooking. :)