rejection cookies. healthy rejection cookies.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Wow Kilbride. WOMP. To which I say, you knew you were reading a cooking blog written by college seniors in the height of their job-seeking neurosis. So deal with it. That said, I wanted to make healthy rejection cookies because unemployed and fat is just too much for me to handle. And we descend on the Dominican in 34 days. Wallowing in self pity is no excuse to use more butter than Paula Dean. As such, I give thee: healthy rejection cookies. In all lower case because you're sad and without job.

Scavenge & secure:

1 cup Whole wheat flour
little baking powder
little salt
1 cup instant oats
1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
little vanilla
egg
a rejection-appropriate amount of chocolate chips

You know how this works. All the dry stuff (first part of the list thru the oats) goes in a medium bowl. Soften the butter in a big bowl in the microwave, add oil, sugars, vanilla, and the egg. Mix til its all smooth and such. Add in all the dry stuff, taking time to appreciate how healthy you are despite your propensity for life-long failure. And hyperbole.

rejection. now with fewer calories.

Once its all mixed add in unseemly amounts of chocolate chips. Which you can do because your saintly roommate stocked up during last week's string of rejections. Old rejected selves lookin out for new rejected selves. Classic.

Eat most of the cookie dough. Bake whats left for 15ish minutes on 350 degrees. Pass out to roomies, accept their assurance that rejection cookies are yummy. Small victories.

peace.love.summerhousing2012herewecome

THE SECOND BEST THING I EVER DID

The first thing I can’t talk about on the internet.

Anyway, Erin and I have been trolling cooking blogs for weeks trying to find something worthy of posting up on crackden, and we finally did: brown butter. It’s a huge deal in the world of internet kitchens, and quite yummy. And then I mixed it with more yummy things and boom, cookies. Round up the following:

1 stick butter
3/4 brown sugar
1 egg
little splash of vanilla
big splash of rum (spiced, of course)
1 cup plus 1 spoonful flour, with dash salt and baking soda
LOTS of cinnamon, like unscrew the top and dump
slightly less nutmeg and ginger
ground cardamom if you have it, cardamom pods (?) if you don’t

So first, you gotta make the brown butter. Which you do like anything else you brown, actually. Dump the stick of butter into a frying pan, and stir kinda a lil bit so it browns evenly. It gets kinda frothy at first, but if you look at it in the spoon it goes from yellow to kinda golden brown and smells delicious. Once it’s golden, pour it into your mixing bowl and let it cool down. At this point, if you have whole cardamom put 3 or 4 into the butter to extract the flavor (SCIENCE, ERIN), but if you have ground cardamom just wait til you do the other spices. For the love of god, take the cardamom pods out before you mix the rest of the stuff in.

When it hits about room temperature, whip in the brown sugar, and then the egg, vanilla, and rum. Gradually mix in the 1 cup of flour with salt and baking soda. In a the measuring cup or a small bowl, mix together the other spoonful of flour, plus a heaping spoonful of cinnamon and healthy amounts of nutmeg and ginger (and ground cardamom, if that’s what you’re using).


Refrigerate the cookie dough for a little bit, approximately the length of one pong game, and then drop by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet and bake for 13-14ish minutes in a 325 degree oven. Then nom away!

In defense of their deliciousness (and possibly my roommates’ propensity for drunk food), I offer the following: the plate of cookies was empty this morning when I woke up :)

THE CHEESER

Its simple. Its understated. It may or may not be laced with crack. But you know what? Sometimes the best things are.

Misleadingly elegant portrayal of the cheeser.

Ingredients:

-- Pillsbury crescent rolls (the dough, still stuck together, uncooked)

-- 8oz block of cream cheeze (the full fat kind. Seriously you can't use reduced fat. I know I struggled with it too. You'll be okay)

-- Wheat Thins (these can be reduced fat. in fact they should be cause you're about to eat a block of cream cheese you fatty)

Prepare yourself to be loved. Seriously.

Roll out the crescent rolls on a baking sheet. Put the block of cream cheese in the center of the dough lengthwise. Press down on it with your fingers to make it a bit wider (wider = more cheeser in your future). Take the left and right sides of the dough and cover the cream cheese, meeting in the middle. You should have about 2-3 extra inches of dough at the other 2 ends, make that neat and fold it on top. So you have a little cheeser present.

Bake at 350 til it looks like a cheeser. I don't know exactly how else to say it, but it take like 12-15ish. The dough should be cooked (the top will be the last part to fully cook, so watch that), but it should still be soft. You don't want to cook the dough til its flaky the way crescent rolls are supposed to be though cause then they'll separate AND LIFE WILL BE AWFUL FOR YOU.

Immediately transfer to a plate using 2 spatulas, put Wheat Thins on either side. The cheeser will be eaten by hand, using the Wheat Thins.  Now be careful, cause this next part is tricky. Cautiously approach living room and place cheeser on coffee table, pull back hands immediately or you WILL get bitten.

The cheeser does things to people. Messy things.

But it is beautiful. I swear. And it makes life good.

Photos © Beegs & Sugarloaf

HAMBURGER CAKE

In honor of Danny coming down to Georgetown next week, we’re gonna give him another recipe shout-out, cause that’s how we show affection :)Danny turned old this summer, and Eclaire and I wanted to give him a birthday cake that rivaled his bacon bouquet.

We tried all versions of “meat” and “cake” that Google had to offer, and briefly contemplated a bacon-dark chocolate cake before deciding to go in a hamburgerly direction. This hamburger cake requires the following:

2 cake-in-a-boxes, maybe one yellow and one chocolate, and associated eggs, oil, etc
food coloring- yellow, green, red
chocolate chips
1 tup white icing, 1 tub chocolate icing

Mix up your cakes. You need two normal round cake pans and a metal bowl that can be baked, about the same diameter as your cake pan. Fill one cake pan a little over half-ish with chocolate for the patty. Fill the other cake pan full with yellow cake mix, and fill the bowl with all the cake mix you have left. This is a bun. Bake. Gonna take a bit longer for the bun, so just keep an eye on them.

While everything is cooling, put a heaping spoonful of white icing into each of three ziplock bags for decorating. Add food coloring so you get ketchup, lettuce, and sesame seed colors. To make bun color, I suggest adding a spoonful or so of chocolate to the white icing and then maybe a few drops of yellow. Go slowly, cause it’s really hard to fix if you make it too dark. Using a blender/magic bullet/knife and patience, grate up a heaping half cup of chocolate chips and stir them into the chocolate icing. Mmmm.... meat.

Now all you have to do is decorate! Start with the bottom bun, and work your way up. In this picture, we used colored corn syrup for ketchup, but that shit’s outta control.