On 2016-12-17 2:07 AM, dsi1 wrote:
> On Friday, December 16, 2016 at 2:34:19 PM UTC-10, Dave Smith wrote:
>> Holy cow. December is flying by. I made my light fruitcake last month. I
>> had been thinking about mince meat tarts and shortbreads, but I thought
>> it was too early. Today I realized that it is only 9 days away. This
>> afternoon I made three dozen mincemeat tarts. Tomorrow I will make some
>> more tarts and some shortbread. The shortbread needs at least a few
>> days to develop.
>
> My daughter made some cookies. Pretty little things.
>
> https://www.amazon.com/photos/share/...3TKe6lJa2kGkXi
>


Nice. I used to always avoid those silver ball bearing decorations
because I had had so many rude surprises when I chomped into a cookie or
cake and almost broke a tooth. Not too long ago I had something with
fresh silver ball decorations and they were fairly soft.

I am thinking about making some Empire Cookies. They have them in most
of the local bakeries and charge a bundle for them. They aren't hard to
make and I have a surplus of butter.

Meanwhile... I may have messed up a batch of shortbread cookies. I
thought I had more flour on hand so I had made two batches of pie dough
for mincemeat tarts. I had planned to make shortbread today and figured
there was enough flour on hand to make one batch and I could make the
other one later. I had left the butter out on the counter to soften. I
know they are rich and I had my mind set on one cup, so I cut off one
cup and creamed it with the sugar. Checking the flour required I noticed
that the recipe says only a half cup. I added another half cup of sugar
and creamed it in. Now I have a bit of a problem. Double batches of
cookies never seem to work for me, and I don't have enough flour for a
double batch. I am going out in a few minutes to get more flour and
will decide if I am going to risk a double batch or try to halve the
creamed mixture and use half of it with each dose of flour. I am just
not sure how much of the creamed butter and sugar I can get and how
evenly I can split it. At least this recipe calls for using only 1 3/4
of the 2 cups and then adding in the extra 1/4 as needed to get the
right consistency.