the great food blogger cookie swap: brown butter cookies

You know what's a great idea? Getting over 600 food bloggers to bake cookies for each other. When I read about this crazy scheme on A Bitchin' Kitchen, I knew instantly I had to get involved. The deal is this: you bake a dozen cookies each for three bloggers, and you receive a dozen cookies from three entirely different bloggers. However, my matches were unusual, there were four of us in a group and we all baked cookies for each other. I think this must be because we were the only people on the planet who requested no chocolate.

I received black sesame shortbread from Kyleen at sixteenbeans, brown butter chai shortbread from Heather at Tea with Me and cranberry apricot biscotti from Melissa at West Coast Nest. Thanks to you all for these lovely gifts which were all exceptional and imaginative. I erased morning workouts with all of them and I'm not sorry!

sugar and spice cookies

I've noticed that whenever I follow cookie recipes, I end up with far fewer cookies than the recipe predicts. It never fails. Sure, you could blame the fact that I'm a spoon-licking dough-eater when I bake... but I didn't eat 35 cookies worth of dough. Yeah, you read that right. This recipe was supposed to make 55 cookies, but it made 20.

Like I said, it's not exclusive to this recipe. It's every recipe. Am I living on another planet? Could I have eaten 35 cookies raw? The logical explanation is that I just made my cookies too big. In fact, a quick glance at this particular recipe indicates that I did and I'm probably a repeat offender in this respect.

silk dragon jasmine tea shortbread

I woke up this morning to a wonderful present - the first snowfall of the season! What an excellent excuse to bake shortbread - you know, Christmas and all. I've lately been toying with the idea of different scented shortbreads (this may or may not have something to do with The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap 2011...) and suddenly it hit me: jasmine shortbread. Though jasmine tea and shortbread come from totally different parts of the world, it's a perfect marriage of flavours and textures - the floral notes are subtle, but there. The tea adds a little bit of texture to the otherwise melt-in-your-mouth characteristics of shortbread.

I used the organic silk dragon jasmine tea from DavidsTea - why? Because, as they say, its scent is magical. It's lovely, delicate and smooth. It's instant relaxation in a mug, especially on a snow day. Feel free to use whatever jasmine tea you have on hand, but if you live near a DavidsTea, I recommend you pick some up... and not just for the cookies!

lavender shortbread

You know what I realised today?  I've been spelling lavender wrong for my entire life. No joke. In my head, it's always been lavendar. Where this comes from... who knows?

I've always been a pretty good speller. I've avoided the confusion between there, they're and their and I've never typed 'congradulations' on anybody's Facebook wall. I wrote a lot in my rapidly disappearing youth - I spent a lot of my childhood typing awkward nerd stories into the DOS version of WordPerfect. In my early twenties I wrote even more awkward nerd stories which still exist on the internet under a pen name that I will never admit to. Now I write facts in emergency mode for a living.

But 'lavendar' isn't the first spelling mistake revelation I've had - it was only about five years ago that I stopped writing 'rediculous' and about one year ago (the shame!) that I abandoned 'alot'. My dad, at one point a professional editor, is facepalming as he reads this, I'm sure. None of this, of course, has anything to do with lavender cookies (or mythical lavendar cookies), which are buttery, delicious, melt in your mouth and absolutely pop with lavender flavour.

moose shaped owl cookies (happy belated canada day!)

 

These were supposed to be posted yesterday for the holiday, but we had a bit of a crisis in squirrel land over the past couple of days and needless to say, the cookies didn't get posted. They also didn't get eaten, even though I made them on Wednesday night. They taste awesome though, believe me!

You may be wondering why I call these "owl cookies" even though they appear to have nothing to do with owls. I'm up to my old tricks of recreating food in my kitchen that no longer exists to buy. For the longest time, there was this little bakery by the corner of 10th and Sasamat in Vancouver. They sold these huge owl cookies. They were sugar cookies made with oatmeal and whole wheat flour, rolled out and cut out with an owl-shaped cookie cutter. I was a relatively picky eater and not excited about whole wheat anything at the time, so it's a pretty big statement to say that I not only ate them, but I loved them. So many of those owl cookies made it into my happy little belly.

chai-spiced almond cookies

I have a bit of a thing for cardamom. I'm a freak for chai tea and chai lattes, particularly those from the grillcheeserie, otherwise known as Le Lapin Pressé. Seriously - they are the best. They use actual teabags and not syrup a la Starbucks.  Go there and try one, then have a grilled cheese. And a cappuccino. And a little bunny rabbit cookie.

The first time I ever bought cardamom it was to make these cookies. Ever since then, I've put cardamom in everything - cheesecakes, frozen yogurt, fruit, coffee... you name it, I've eaten it with cardamom. Even more exciting are the little green cardamom pods you can get at Indian markets - often I boil them along with my water when making tea. In these cookies, however, I've used the standard ground cardamom that you can find at the grocery store. If you're near an Indian market, buy it there and save a few bucks. You can spend them on chai lattes!

orange blossom sugar cookies

 

Did you ever watch Pippi? I watched those movies over and over and over again when I was a kid (on beta, because I'm old). If you did, I dare you to watch them again. I watched the first one about two years ago and I was shocked at just how awesome and surreal it was. There were many laughs. Pippi kind of blew my mind! 

The reason I mention Pippi is because I'm reminded of her every time I bake cookies that require a rolling pin and cookie cutters. Incidentally, like Pippi, the cookie cutters I used (aside from the bunny) are of Swedish origin - they come from Ikea - so I'd like to personally thank Sweden for inspiring a fun afternoon of baking!