Movies are still a big part of my life, though I struggle to write about them. It is obvious what sort of material would work well in discussion, but how do I summon those details of experience to the fore? There are some recent projects I want to touch on.
For some reason I decided to make these. Normally I prefer to make non-dessert things, since I am more into savory things. If I’m making cookies, oatmeal raisin is usually my first choice. And I already had all the ingredients the day before I bought a cylinder of raisins.
The initial step turned out to be the hardest. The recipe required about a stick of softened butter–and all my sticks were frozen. I cut up the stick so it’d thaw faster, but faster was still not fast enough. I ended rigging up a lamp so its incandescent bulb poked into the center of the butter bowl. After some time, a 180-degree rotation of the bowl, and some more time, the butter seemed mixable. Handling the brown sugar turned out to be tricky as well. It was old, so I had break the chunks apart. I really should have removed all of it from the bag and grated it to a consistent shape. The amount had to be off since it was still chunky when I measured it. It did end up mixing well enough. The rest of the process was more routine. I put a little too much vanilla–it jumped out of the bottle. My baking soda was several years old. Maybe I could have unclumped the raisins before mixing. I used old-fashioned oats. I didn’t have one of those cookie scoops with the sliding half-ring, so I just used a plastic tablespoon to put the dough-plops on the sheet. Once the sheet was filled with plops I formed them with my hands to make them more circular. Is this a no-no? The recipe said 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. I went the full 10 minutes with both batches, since the golden-brown wasn’t as golden brown as I expected.
I let them cool on the sheet for 1 minute and then on the rack for 15 minutes. I liked them. The main thing was the texture; both the mountainous shape and bottom had a hard crest, while inside there was a softer region with some moisture. If pressed I’d say there was some oddness with the flavor–maybe a soda note? The raisin distribution was not close to uniform either. It’s not a cautionary tale (if someone else made these I’d consider them a success) but I like the finding the full composition since they are already close to what I’m looking for.
I ended up eating most of the batch (I made 2 dozen–is that 1 batch or 2 batches? I feel like we need 2 words here; one corresponding to 1 bowl of cookie dough, and one corresponding to 1 sheet) by the end of the evening, and the last few the next morning. So I guess next time I’ll have to eat like 4 then give the rest to someone else.
