Sweet Sunday's Yummy Lit Review: Chocolate Crackles

 Sweet Sunday's Yummy Lit Review: 

Chocolate Crackles

Decadent.  Rich.  Gorgeous.... and not too sweet. 
Oh my goodness, these cookies are so, so, so delicious!

I have always wanted to try Martha Stewart's Chocolate Crackles recipe.  Dark, chocolatey-brown cookies with a white layer of confectioners sugar are hard to resist.  Really hard.  I decided earlier this week that it was finally time for me to beat my no-baking rut and try this cookies on for size.

The recipe for these bad boys can be found here.   The recipe is also located in Stewart's (2008) Cookies book (that's what I used).

Long Distance Baking

Gingerbread Cookies:
Not a Sweet Sunday Yummy Lit Review

Have you ever baked with a friend over the phone? I never thought of it until E rang me during my gingerbread cookie baking session. I didn't quite feel like putting a stop to my baking nor telling him to ring another time. Instead, with phone rammed between my shoulder and ear, I had a halfway across the world 'baking-with-friends' experience.

Cocoa Ginger Crisps

Sweet Sunday Yummy Lit Review: Cocoa Ginger Crisps

Over the past two weeks I have had E living with me. While we had a great time looking around the city during the day, at night I was privileged enough to dress him up in baking gear and acquire a brand new baking buddy. One of the recipes we tried out was Cocoa Ginger Crisps, a spicy chocolate biscuit.


The Cookie Bible says I will need:

1 cup butter/margarine, softened
1 1/3 cups sugar, divided
1 egg
1/4 cup light corn syrup
2 cups all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons plus 1 1/4 teaspoon Cocoa, divided
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt

Beat butter, 1 cup sugar and egg in large bowl until fluffy. Add corn syrup; beat until well blended. Stir together flour, 6 tablespoons cocoa, baking soda, ginger, and salt; gradually add to butter mixture, beating until well blended. Cover; refrigerate dough about 1 hour or until firm enough to handle.

Heat oven to 375* F.

Stir together remaining 1/3 cup sugar and 1 1/4 teaspoons cocoa in shallow bowl. Shape dough into 1-inch balls; roll in sugar-cocoa mixture to coat. Place about 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 10-12 minutes or until cookies flatten. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.


These cookies were a pleasure to make. There's something therapeutic about rolling brown balls in sugar and cocoa, turning them from a dull brown to a sparkly iridescence. After 10 minutes in the oven they flattened out into a soft, yet crispy texture... and they were ever-so yummy!

To cap it off, the recipe yielded around 4 dozen cookies... just enough to share with CurlyJ and her husband the following night during a trip to Vancouver.

An American Fugitive

Remember the lyrics, "I would do anything for love, but I won't do that"?
Good. I'm sure by now you can hear the song playing along in your mind.
Now, replace the word 'love' with 'books.'

I would do anything for literature, for the written word, to get my hands on a really good book... but I won't do that. Okay, right there we have an accurate description of my day yesterday.

Something happened yesterday that cannot go without being mentioned on CTR. As some of you know from past posts, I am good friends with CurlyJ of Running From Cupcakes (you can find a link to her on my Muses page).

Yesterday CurlyJ and I decided to head south into Washington for shopping. We had grand plans. Our day, which we dubbed Miss J & Ms. C's Day of Adventure, began with a drive down to Lynnwood to visit 1/2 Price Books and Alderwood Mall, followed by travelling further to the Burlington Outlets and Trader Joes.

A lot happened yesterday morning. You know those days when nothing goes right? Well 1 September 2010 was that kind of day. It began with me somehow thinking I had my passport when it was actually another person's in my family. Along the way to retrieve my real passport we almost get into a car crash because a semi truck driver decides to text on his cell phone whilst driving. I'm not exaggerating either - there was definitely some swerving, increased heart rates, and unpleasant exchanges. Oh, and we're in a little car. If the driver hadn't of looked up from that cell phone screen just in time we would have been squished to oblivion.

Once we're finally across the border we both realize Lynnwood is actually pretty far into Washington. We begin to see signs saying we're on the verge of Seattle.

1/2 Price Books was awesome though... it's a relatively small store crammed to the brim with books on every subject imaginable. I easily could have spent many hours browsing the shelves. Oh and not to mention super cheap... I ended up leaving with two books for just under $7.


Alderwood Mall was also worth the long drive down south. This mall is HUGE and has tons of selection. It was so big that as we drove away we saw a segment of the mall that we had failed to visit. Obviously, as the shopaholics that we are, we pulled over and parked again. More stores? More shopping time, please!

Then, at 630PM on the way to Burlington and Trader Joes it happens... the icing on the cake of our crazy adventure. Flashing across highway signs is warnings of an incident. We're told the I5 is closed.

You know those movies where a city needs to be evacuated and the roads become mayhem? That's what the I5 turned into in just a few minutes. There was complete gridlock spanning the I5's five lanes. And to complete matters, we had 1/3 of a tank of gas.

Thankfully we hit the incident shortly after the highway was closed. We managed to file out of the highway with the other drivers and make our way into another part of Washington.

I still don't know where we ended up, but by this time we had very little gas, no map, were isolated by a thick forest of trees, and the only building nearby was called Exotic Tools. No people. No cars. Nothing but Exotic Tools and two lost Canadian girls.

After awhile of driving we ended up at a gas station, which as luck would have it, didn't sell maps. Troy, a friendly gasman, tells us we're in Everett. He also tells us there is a fugitive on the loose in his city and the only way to get home is to drive deeper into the mayhem.

We buy a dinner of champions from Troy after realizing Trader Joes is out of the question. Who said Pringles and iced tea is bad for you?

And then we travel into the heart of Everett. As we drive we see countless cop cars speeding throughout the streets with their sirens and flashers on. We see helicopters flying low above us. We see telephone poles knocked over with their wires cascading down onto the pavement.

The traffic was bumper to bumper in Everett
but calm enough to start taking pictures again.

We make it back onto the I5 shortly after 9PM. We manage to get home just in time for the Late Night News... and it's then that our fugitive comes on the television. All that mayhem occurred because a man didn't insure his car, had a handgun, shot a cop car, fought through a car chase on the I5, and then ran on foot... or something like that, my mind is kind of hazy.

I love America and look forward to my next trip down... but right now I feel like I've been chewed up and spat out by Washington.

I hope those books are worth the trouble we went through to get them!


PS - we had a baking extravaganza the night before all this happened. I got some pretty yummy pictures of the final products but unfortunately no recipes on hand to share. Here's a look at our chocolate chip cookies and peach muffins!

Oh, and the real, impartial story of the fugitive can be found here.