First batch

I tried my hand at homemade Oreos tonight, but due to my mistakes, I imagine they look better than they taste. If you'd like to attempt to make them, correct these errors that I made.

-Roll the dough out more.

You can see that the wafers are a lot puffier than what you expect from Oreos. I thought I'd rolled them out enough, but clearly that wasn't true.

-Don't use powdered sugar of uncertain age that has been in the cupboard probably picking up other smells.

The filling definitely tastes off, and I think the blame falls on the powdered sugar. I was surprised how much the texture and consistency of the filling is like the "stuf" in Oreos.

-You don't need to make as much filling as is suggested. I didn't come anywhere close to using it all.

-Use the suggested food coloring if you want the cookies to resemble their inspiration.

I decided not to bother with food coloring--it isn't essential--but without it you can't sell the illusion of homemade Oreos as much.

On the positive side, the lid from something in the spice cabinet works very well for cutting out the cookies. With all that didn't work, I found these pretty easy to make. Now that the rough draft batch is out of the way, I'll have to do them up right.

Substitute

As I've mentioned, it's a busy, busy time for the secret (and currently intermittent) knitter. I've tried to cook more this week to combat the various things I've been dealing with. Time in the kitchen can be a good way of getting out of my head and simply focusing on the matter at hand.

I've been wanting to make chocolate chip cookies all week but didn't get around to doing it tonight. For this batch I elected to mix things up and use an ingredient I've never used before: blue agave nectar.

My mom and one of my brothers are on some special diet that strikes me as being excessively restrictive, but that's neither here nor there. They can't have white sugar, among other things. Naturally, their dietary requirements was quite the topic of discussion--and a driver of some food selections--during the holidays. Long story short, blue agave nectar and stevia are among the sweeteners they are permitted. I received some of the former to try out as a sugar replacement, so I finally put it to use for these cookies.

Per the information I found on the web, I cut the amount of sugar needed by twenty-five percent--this stuff is sweeter--and lowered the oven's temperature by twenty-five degrees. I may have left the cookies in a minute or two longer than usual, but I was just using the upper range of the suggested baking time.

So how did it work? The dough didn't have the graininess that I sometimes get when making these with white sugar, but in general it tasted the same and had similar consistency. The baked product has a lighter, almost cake-like texture than what I typically get. I can detect a slight difference taste-wise, sort of as if there was honey in the cookies.

As experiments go, this one was a success.

The secret ingredient

I've been wanting to bake something for awhile, but it wasn't until tonight that I fired up the mixer. I have to give a hat tip to Jenn for bringing my attention to this cupcake recipe. I followed her slightly modified version and also excluded (yikes) the whipped cream and doughnut on top. I used a large muffin pan and the regular chocolate chips I had on hand. I made a glaze, but I don't think that it's needed. One of these hot from the oven is terrific.

Baking reminds me of my paternal grandmother Lova, and it's not just because I have her KitchenAid mixer. She cooked a lot, whether it was making cookies and pies that my brothers and I would enjoy after school or preparing meals every Tuesday night for the Rotary meetings at church. I can remember the homemade noodles laid out to dry on almost every surface in her tiny kitchen and in another room. Returning to college or where I lived post-college almost always meant being sent off with an individual sized pie or a small pan of apple dumplings. She was not a talkative woman. She best expressed her love with what she produced from her oven and how she doted on us boys.

She lived a small town block from us in the home her husband built. The white house with the red and white aluminum awning was across the street from the grain elevator, the family business that my grandfather also built. I assume she was actively involved in the business when he was living. I know she was after he died some time in the 1960s. Even into her 70s she was doing the books, waiting on customers, and carrying feed bags to their cars and trucks.

I never knew either of my grandfathers--both had passed before my parents met--and my maternal grandmother Ruth died when I was in second grade, I think. I can remember her, but she lived a couple hours away. Obviously I didn't see my mom's mother as often as my dad's, who was the only babysitter we ever had and someone I probably saw on a daily basis.

My brothers and I spent plenty of time at her house. We would hide in the basement pantry where jars of home canned items lined the shelves and knock pool balls around on the pool table with fallen cushions. In the wood paneled attic we would flip through The New Book of Knowledge collection and my dad's old Bowman baseball cards. And of course we would raid the kitchen for whatever she made or the red hots tucked away in a cabinet.

She was a quilter. I can clearly picture her sitting in the basement under a naked light bulb working on a quilt, something I imagine she spent many evenings doing. I don't remember ever seeing her knit, but in my own knitting I feel a connection to her as a fellow crafter. I feel like I understand what it must have meant to her to make quilts for my brothers and me, her only grandchildren. I'm sure that she would have been surprised that I enjoy knitting. I expect it would have tickled her too.

Thanks to Donna for the remembrance of her grandmother and inspiring this post. This turned out to be a lot harder to write than I anticipated. Memories are powerful things. She's been gone for three years, and it's in writing this that I realize how much I still miss her.