Things, Including Cookies
Game night: check. Apparently I can too feed seven, but I need to remember by table really only seats six.
The electronics plague is back. My cell battery hiccuped Saturday, and I believe I've destroyed the baby laptop's third A/C adapter in 3 1/2 years. I break laptop adapters with depressing regularity; I blame HP's engineering. (I continue to ignore the misappropriation of a desktop replacement as an actively mobile device.) I was thinking it might be time to order a second cheap knockoff A/C adapter, but then Windows stopped booting, and when I unplugged it and put in the recovery disk, magically sensed the disk and booted from the hard drive, just as I was settling in for an evening of sandwich with troubleshooting. Neither of these should have had an impact, but lo: the baby laptop booted. The issues with all things plugged in make me think the baby laptop has a death wish, but if it'll hang on until Windows 7 is out of beta, I will swallow all my usual griping and just buy something.
Between game night on Friday, socializing in Baltimore on Sunday, meeting C. in Crystal City on Monday night (which was really cool, except for the part where I got totally lost finding her hotel), and work scheduling and work baby showers with cookies, I am way behind on my reading lists, so if there's anything that applied to me in particular, please point me at it.
The important point of all this is my continued quest for the perfect butterscotch walnut cookie.
Recipe as of last tonight:
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
2 cups packed light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 to 2 cups crushed walnuts
Preheat oven to 350. Melt butter in a saucepan. Stir brown sugar into it until dissolved. Realize you don't have enough sugar, and send roommate to store for more. Leave butter and sugar mix as-is on warm stove until she gets back. Move to mixing bowl, and beat in egg and vanilla. Fake-sift flour, baking powder and salt (dump half the flour in a bowl, add everything else, dump in other half of flour. Pray). Add flour mixture to butter mixture. Add walnuts. Drop well apart on greased cookie sheet (I use parchment paper instead) and bake for 10-12 minutes. Realize your test cookies look flat and awful, move mixing bowl to fridge for 5 - 10 minutes, try again. It helps. Also, notice that, with two racks in use, the cookies on one rack (top?) look better than the other.
I think I'm either overbeating the butter, or the eggs, or need to drop the cooking temp another 25 degrees. The butter-sugar temp may also be an issue; it may need to be cooled more before adding everything else. Or maybe sifting the dry ingredients really does make a difference.
The electronics plague is back. My cell battery hiccuped Saturday, and I believe I've destroyed the baby laptop's third A/C adapter in 3 1/2 years. I break laptop adapters with depressing regularity; I blame HP's engineering. (I continue to ignore the misappropriation of a desktop replacement as an actively mobile device.) I was thinking it might be time to order a second cheap knockoff A/C adapter, but then Windows stopped booting, and when I unplugged it and put in the recovery disk, magically sensed the disk and booted from the hard drive, just as I was settling in for an evening of sandwich with troubleshooting. Neither of these should have had an impact, but lo: the baby laptop booted. The issues with all things plugged in make me think the baby laptop has a death wish, but if it'll hang on until Windows 7 is out of beta, I will swallow all my usual griping and just buy something.
Between game night on Friday, socializing in Baltimore on Sunday, meeting C. in Crystal City on Monday night (which was really cool, except for the part where I got totally lost finding her hotel), and work scheduling and work baby showers with cookies, I am way behind on my reading lists, so if there's anything that applied to me in particular, please point me at it.
The important point of all this is my continued quest for the perfect butterscotch walnut cookie.
Recipe as of last tonight:
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
2 cups packed light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 to 2 cups crushed walnuts
Preheat oven to 350. Melt butter in a saucepan. Stir brown sugar into it until dissolved. Realize you don't have enough sugar, and send roommate to store for more. Leave butter and sugar mix as-is on warm stove until she gets back. Move to mixing bowl, and beat in egg and vanilla. Fake-sift flour, baking powder and salt (dump half the flour in a bowl, add everything else, dump in other half of flour. Pray). Add flour mixture to butter mixture. Add walnuts. Drop well apart on greased cookie sheet (I use parchment paper instead) and bake for 10-12 minutes. Realize your test cookies look flat and awful, move mixing bowl to fridge for 5 - 10 minutes, try again. It helps. Also, notice that, with two racks in use, the cookies on one rack (top?) look better than the other.
I think I'm either overbeating the butter, or the eggs, or need to drop the cooking temp another 25 degrees. The butter-sugar temp may also be an issue; it may need to be cooled more before adding everything else. Or maybe sifting the dry ingredients really does make a difference.