Cookie FAIL (Yes, Again)

Things are getting desperate. First I made the "best ever sugar cookies" which were perfectly awful. Good for building a wall, though.

Then I decided that the best thing would be biscotti. Delish, long-lasting, and not hard to make. Also, I had a great recipe from Jen Yu, who lives at altitude (much more so than we do) and thus I could count on not screwing it up.

Not so. Above, my mise en place. It was purty. I set it up with Iain, then he went into his crib to not-nap, then 1.5 hours later we made cookies.


The dough was fine. It's supposed to be hard and dry and sort of thick, because it becomes those rock hard sticks of dippable love that we all know from Starbucks.

But when I went to cut them after the first bake:


Yuck. The pistachios were like bits of stone, the chocolate chips were like molten lava, nothing wanted to cut properly. I made these last Christmas, and they were great. ???

Here's my theory: we still do not have heat. No, really. It's been in the 50s during the day and in the high 30s at night, and our boiler is not yet installed. I'm starting to be irritated. We have space heaters, which are quite efficient and work fine for keeping us toasty at night.

But I can't get my butter to room temp. That's STEP ONE of the recipe. And I just can't get it soft because the kitchen isn't warm. So when I mix, I don't get light, fluffy goodness. I get a butter/sugar paste that's pretty firm. I think that was a problem here. And my chocolate chips were kind of...husky. I think that was a problem, too. Last time I shredded bars because I lacked chips. Shredding makes for more evenly distributed chocolate, and so it didn't get in the way of my knife.

Or, maybe, I've just lost my mojo.

They taste good, though. I can't give them to the neighbors, because they're hilarious looking. But I can foist them on The Maw (see above), who finds them yummy.