Cookie Delivery

Before I begin, I just want to say this:
Shelled pecans are dangerous little nuts that should come with warnings on their packaging:
WARNING Do Not Attempt To De-Shell Entire Package With Fingers-or- Excessive Pecan Shelling Can Be Hazardous To Your Thumb.


Stupid innocent looking nut

I learned this the painful way.

-On a side note: I also discovered that the most efficient way to get the little buggers out (if you, like me, do not own a nutcracker) is by throwing them hard on the ground. They crack open quite beautifully this way-though some might question the ingeniousity of the method on the basis of hygienic concerns-

The reason I was shelling pecans of all things was because I wanted to use them in the chocolate chip cookies I was baking for my brother.

The last time I'd attempted to offer my cookies to him was during his birthday last year. I baked an assortment of cookies, put them in a pretty tupperware box, ventured out to the post office, endured looks of ridicule from post officers, paid for express delivery! only to have the cookies ROT in some obscure post office in Shanghai due to the fact that my brother was not home to receive the package and never went to collect it.

*breathes* I have gotten over that.

Since I am visiting him in Shanghai for the weekend, I figured that I could make a personal cookie delivery.

Bahtiyar once mentioned his like for Famous Amos and Mrs Fields, so I thought he might appreciate homemade cookies since you can't get either kind in China. You can get big cookies at Subway but they just suck.

I decided to bake him chocolate chip cookies using a recipe from Smitten Kitchen (a food blog I've come to like very much).



The thing about the recipe is that it calls for ALOT of chocolate chip, I'm talking about A WHOLE FREAKING LOT. The chocolate chips hold together the dough instead of the other way around...


...which is supposedly a good thing.

You see, personally, I don't appreciate chocolate much. I'm more of a nut-nut. I have great difficulty sympathizing with nut haters. If I had it my way, there would be nut chip cookies with no chocolate. If a chocolate chip cookie did not have nuts in them, I would not even want to try them. (but this isn't about me)

According to Smitten Kitchen, chocolate lovers apparently dislike having nuts because they don't want the "glorious" taste of chocolate to be overpowered by the nuts.

So I chopped up the pecans to the point where they were just nut specks. It was like mincing garlic but more fun.


Fact: Talia experiences maniacal pleasure when chopping chocolate and nuts. It is possibly the funnest part of baking.

I usually make my cookies big and soft, but my brother is a bit of a couch potato and I thought he'd enjoy having bite-sized ones.

BAD IDEA.

I almost burnt the little balls of dough and they came out really hard.


I fed two to Andy who, between loud crunches, informed me with all the decorum of a diplomat, that they were indeed slightly overcooked. He then proceeded to eat some of the cookie dough and declared that they were destined to be hard cookies.

Suspecting that I shouldn't have skimped on the butter, I threw the rest of the batter into the fridge and whipped up soft oatmeal cookies.

Those thankfully turned out delicious and beautiful. I divided the dough into three parts and made raisin, pecan and orange zest flavored oatmeal cookies.



I then baked the chocolate chip cookie dough at a higher temperature, making them bigger this time and watched over the oven like a hawk.

This time they came out chewy.






Anyway, my brother ate them just now and he liked them. He is usually very picky with food. I am happy. Blistered fingers and all.