2 Weddings and a Funny Recipe

Business first today - The winner of the Green Mint Chip giveaway is ...... Hobby Baker! Please email me your address (to lynncraigATcomcastDOTnet) and I'll get it sent to you right away. Congratulations and happy baking!

This past weekend we had a wedding. It wasn't as stressful as the previous wedding because It was our son getting married, not our daughter. If you're one of those people who has all boysl, I say, "Good call!" Have a son get married is sooo much easier. You put on the rehearsal dinner, show up for the wedding, and smile for the pictures.

Since my daughter was married in our back yard and all of the catering was done out of my kitchen, I had to clean, scrub, tidy, dust, vacuum, and generally get my house looking pristine. For this wedding, I only had my sister staying with us so I vacuumed, swept, and cleaned off the counters. Sort of. I cleaned by baking.



I first saw these cookies on David Lebovitz's site. He called them amnesty cookies. The original recipe called them compost cookies. I call them Packrat Cookies. If you are unable to throw away that 1/2 cup of chips, pretzels, candy or mystery baking ingredients so have bags with a twist ties, rubber bands, or clips, taking up room in your pantry, cupboard, or counter, these are the cookies for you.

I used this baking experiment as an excuse to use up that 1/4 bag of pretzels that no one would eat because they were whole grain, so they tasted "funny;" that plastic container with 1/3 cup of chopped Giandujia chocolate that I bought just to try but never figure out what to do with, the tiny pieces of chips from the bottom of the tortilla chip container, some white chocolate wafers lurking in a zip loc bag, and a few other odds and ends I tossed in there.

Were they the most wonderful cookies I've ever had? Well, no. But they were pretty good. The biggest complaint I got about them was their size. It's quite a commitment to take on one of these cookies. I'm not sure it would work to make them smaller, though, since they've got big chunks of stuff inside. Smaller chunks wouldn't be as fun. It's the lottery of each bite, not knowing if you're going to bite into a pocket of sweet or salty, that makes these so enjoyable.

Also, I baked the sheets one at a time. The first sheet I baked 9 minutes, checked, then baked an additional 2 minutes. They had globby centers and might not have been completely baked. The second batch, at 9 minutes were very pale. 2 more minutes and I checked. Still pale and spreading a bit. 2 more minutes and still pale and I realized when I'd taken the first batch out of the oven, I'd turned the oven off. Turn the oven back on and 4 more minutes had the second batch perfectly baked. I don't know that I'd recommend recreating that scenario, just be aware that the baking time needs some attention.

Now go clean out those cupboards and purge the leftovers. You might find so much that you'll need to make a couple of batches!