home sweet home

I am sitting in my kitchen, posting a blog while some cookies bake in the oven. I am baking for a potluck at work tomorrow, and for our sandwich ministry December meeting (at which we make sandwiches then have a snack feast at our friend Grace's house), and for Andy and Alex (because last time I baked cookies I did not bake enough to leave sufficient quantities at home for them to eat). The cookies are a double batch of mocha shortbreads. It's a recipe that I cut out of the newspaper years ago. Here it is:

1 cup butter
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract (I left this out tonight because one of my co-workers is allergic)
2 tsp strong brewed coffee
1 Tbs cocoa
1 Tbs fine ground coffee
2 1/2 cups flour

Cream the butter and icing sugar. Then add the salt, vanilla, almond extract, brewed coffee, ground coffee and cocoa and stir well. Then mix in the flour. You pretty much have to use your hands at the end, but not too much. You don't want to melt the butter.

Shape the cookies onto a cookie sheet. I make them lozenge shaped and poke holes in them with a fork, but that's just me. Bake for 15 minutes in a 350 oven. They are done when they are slightly brown on the bottom. While they are still hot, pat them gently into granulated sugar.

They are barely sweet, very buttery-coffee-cocoa tasting and yummy. Make lots. That's a single recipe there. You might want to just use a whole pound of butter and double it.

I am looking forward to having Fiona bake cookies in our kitchen. Before she left for university, she had pretty much taken over as the family cookie baker. Now that she's away, we are mostly deficient in cookies except when I get the occasional urge.

I am also taking szechuan green beans to the potluck at work. The theme for the potluck is "naughty or nice." I'm not sure which the beans are, but I think the cookies are definitely naughty. If you eat one with a glass of Gran Marnier or a shot of Sambucca alongside, that is definitely naughty, but probably too naughty for work. That's another good reason I made enough to keep some at home.

Eleven days until Fiona comes home. Or only 10 days if you are in New Jersey, because it is already tomorrow there. Fiona, I hope this still counts as blogging Monday.

question: do you bake cookies?

mompoet - home is sweet and soon will be sweeter with the addition of our best cookie baker