Cookie Exchange Party 2008
Sat 12/20/08: 1st annual Cookie Exchange Party. Six parties showed up and swapped 4 dozen each. Clockwise: spritz flower chocolate ginger molasses with M&M, spritz heart chocolate ginger molasses with sanding sugar, Pfeffernüsse, Earl Grey tea cookie, raspberry Jammie butter cookie, Chewy Cherry Choc Roca bar, and peanut butter cookie with Hershey's kiss.
Awesomely, ALL of the cookies were delicious and luckily, very different from one another. (There was the chance that 3 people could've brought chocolate chip cookies or that 2 would show up with the same thing since i didn't implement strict rules. I did not specify "only holiday cookies" nor "no duplicate recipes allowed.")
We served mushroom puffs, 3 kinds of little sandwiches, assorted cheeses, artichoke dip, tangerines and pepp patts. The party was a good length at about 1.5 hours. The *only* thing i would change for next time is: MORE COOKIES. Our bunch was barely enough for ourselves plus a little for both of our families -- and since be and i baked separate batches, we netted a combined 8 dozen+! The cookies were all so delicious i didn't want to give any away! Anyone up for a spring swap? I really don't feel like waiting a whole year to do this again!
Cheap
Saw this
article from the NYTimes on
Jenny 8's blog:
...there’s a good chance that your deliveryman is being paid almost nothing, with cash tips being his only real source of income. And restaurant delivery workers — particularly Asian-restaurant deliverymen — labor under brutal conditions. These are not union workers at hotel restaurants shrieking about the loss of a pedicure benefit or some other luxury.
Asian-restaurant deliverymen risk their lives every time they set out on their bicycles and travel miles to deliver orders. When they are robbed, a Saigon Grill worker reported, they have to compensate the restaurant for the lost money. When the weather is bad, the workload increases because more customers order in — and then complain if their food takes longer than usual to arrive.
Consumers are largely to blame for this state of affairs. We demand rock-bottom prices. Plenty of New Yorkers are happy to pay extra for organic groceries of dubious merit, but if pork fried rice goes up a dollar at one place we order from any of the five other places in the same delivery radius. We expect free cold sesame noodles, quartered oranges and cans of soda.
And because the price of the food is so low, even the tip isn’t high as an absolute number. There’s only so much money a deliveryman can make $2 at a time.
Not to mention the extremely high murder rate for deliverymen, particularly Chinese immigrant men working in urban areas.
It's interesting to me how people refuse to pay more than $5 per entree at Chinese restaurants or for delivery. These are the same people who routinely pay upwards of $20 for Italian entrees that consist of nothing more than mushy pasta.
Pepp Patts
It's 3am / can't sleep / had an annoying day. Good thing i'm still in the mood to bake and cook; our first ever cookie exchange party is tomorrow in about 13 hours. I'm serving tea sandwiches, hot drinks and savory appetizers since it's between meals.
Tonight i baked 8 dozen
Earl Grey Tea Cookies which came out awesomely crumbly, citrusy and a wee bit salty. So far, all the Martha Stewart cookie recipes i've tried have been delicious. I really wanted to make the
Chocolate Crackle Cookies but have had no luck finding Dutch processed cocoa in Philadelphia. If i don't find it at
Fantes in the morning then no Crackles! (Note the online version of the recipe is different than the one published in the special Holiday Cookies magazine i have.)
While the EGTCs froze, i made a batch of
DIY Peppermint Patties.
J sent me the recipe a while back and i LOVE peppermint patties. Annoyingly, my hand mixer busted in the middle of whipping the middles -- anyone recommend a decent hand mixer? -- so i had to finish it by hand. Shockingly, the middles are quite tasty. "Shockingly," because it's basically a ball of buttery, minty powdered sugar. If i did it again i would actually temper the chocolate and perhaps use a different kind. The 70% Gran Saman from
El Rey is good on its own but too bitter with the sweet creamy middles. Overall i would say they're good and i would definitely make them again. I got 43 patties, each larger than a Junior Mint but smaller than a York.
But what i REALLY want to make are the SNICKLES from Chow's
Make Your Own Halloween Candy Bars. All of the bars look awesome but the Snickles picture makes me salivate. Perhaps i'll attempt that later this month!
Fruits
I think my two most favorite fruits of all time are Moro blood oranges and black raspberries. They've bumped Champagne mangoes, persimmons and crispy Pink Lady apples from the top. Blueberries and Bing cherries are up there somewhere, too.
I'm resisting myself from ordering boxes and boxes of Fruit Delights from
Liberty Orchards. While Trader Joes sells the same thing for much less, they don't offer a Tropical, Fiesta (sweet hot & sour!) or Locoum assortment. I'm salivating thinking about the Locoum flavors: Cinnamon-Walnut, Rose-Pistachio, Orange-Blossom-Almond, and Lemon Delight. be and i are almost done with our Trader Joes Fruits of Fancy box and i'm getting worried...
I'd also love to check out the Pates de Fruits from Whole Foods. They also sell the
Charles Chocolate version which includes: Raspberry, Blood Orange, White Peach, Papaya, and Passion Fruit. Damn, i'm going to have to personally indulge in that $22 box of craziness.
Am i lacking vitamin C or something? All i want to do is gorge on fruits!
Candy!
A few weeks ago we attempted to watch the
giant pinata get demolished. Good thing we left early! The only positive thing about the day was FREE CANDY. Sure, most of it was Frooties (fruit Tootsie Rolls) and Caramel Creams but free candy is free candy. We also picked up some Big Hunk, Abba Zabba and Look! made by the
Annabelle Candy Co. I wasn't into the Look! and Abba Zabba, but the Big Hunk was strangely delicious -- i think it was the peanuts.
Last weekend be and i stumbled upon old skool candy jackpot bizarreness. It seems that someone at the $5 Below store at the Gallery Mall is a fan of candy; one could find the typical movie-sized boxes of everything, alongside old skool candy, gimmicky candy and some small-company candies. We walked away with a Peanut Butter
Goo Goo Cluster, a
Zero bar and a
Zagnut. The Zero and Zagnut bars are now manufactured by Hershey's but the Goo Goo is still independent.
I love nuts and peanut butter but the Goo Goo Cluster didn't do it for me. Perhaps it was the cheapy chocolate coating? I'll give it another try just in case. Zagnut is basically a crispier Butterfinger with a coating of toasted coconut flakes. Definitely sweet and delicious. The Zero was strange at first but as i kept eating it, it really, really grew on me. Once you get over the "white fudge" coating (aka fake white chocolate), the inside is a nice, chewy, nutty, roasty, caramel stripey block of goodness. And now that i've taken this picture, i can finally consume the remains of my candy!
