"Every cookie is a sugar cookie. A cookie without sugar is a cracker."
Gary Gulman
These are my 14 year old grandson's favourite cookies, so he gets some as a present at Christmas and last week's birthday. Well he's a teenager, and what on earth do you buy a teenage boy?
They are from an old Woolworths Fresh Ideas Magazine - a couple of years ago I think. They are called Gingerbread crinkle cookies and I have to say they are very easy to make and, so I'm told, very delicious. And don't they look good - because they crack in the baking and because you roll them in icing sugar before baking.
Anyway, because I had very little else to give him by way of a present, I decided to make these Caramelised white chocolate and macadamia cookies from Verena Lochmuller in the latest Ottolenghi book - Comfort as well. They looked delicious and were a little bit different it seemed to me. The recipe is not up online as yet, but may eventually be if somebody has a go at making them. Today, however, I had a quick look and there are lots ot recipes for caramelised white chocolate cookies - not always with the macadamia nuts. Mostly they have you make your own caramelised chocolate, whether it be caramelising the chocolate yourself or just mixing white chocolate with caramel - salted or not - or even with fudge. There are heaps of recipes and I did not look at them all.
They were all, however, a lot simpler than the recipe I made, even though it was made with a block of Caramilk from Cadbury's. They were a little bit of a faff to make to be honest, and part of the faff was needing to rest the dough in the fridge for a couple of hours, which I had not noticed - and so they only got an hour or so because everyone was arriving sooner than a 2 hour wait would allow. Which perhaps was why mine - a few of which you can see here, did not turn out quite right. They oozed all over the baking tray and were subsequently thin with no crispy edges. More chewy than anything.
They tasted OK but nothing amazing. The thing that really got to me, however, with both of these recipes - well any cookie recipe is the vast amount of sugar and butter there is in them. Not to mention the chocolate in the case of the Ottolenghi ones. I was appalled, although I consoled myself by reasoning that they were a treat - for a birthday.
Although ordinary in taste - to me anyway - they are also, I can see and sort of admit - moreish. It is tempting to go and eat the rest of the cookie whose corner I had broken off. Well they were a massive sugar hit. And whatever your poison there will be a cookie recipe out there to tempt you - even the so-called healthy ones, must surely have some kind of fat and sugar or sugar substitute in them.
And is it just a coincidence that they really are an American thing, considering the size of their obesity problem? As Felicity Cloake said of the Puritan British immigrants who populated early America - "the Puritans clearly left their recipe books behind when they fled these shores." For the rest of the world - including the British eats biscuits -"something "small in size, thin, and short or crisp in texture". A biscuit to an American is more like a scone. And a cookie - the Ameican invention is loaded.
There is obviously a whole lot more to say about cookies but that's it from me today. I was just horrified at the huge amounts of sugar and butter. I had to go out to the supermarket to buy more butter. But for an occasional treat - probably go for the ginger ones.
YEARS GONE BY
October 29
2023 - Solving the leftover problem - 1 - a quiche made from some leftover cannelloni and sausages - sounds weird - but it worked out OK.
2022 - Salmagundi - an oddments post
2019 - Lobster or crayfish?
2017 - Nothing
2016 - Small happinesses
Cookies are a very American concept I feel (without much evidence) = sort of US decadence and large tummies!