Sweets Musings - 032107

Yippee! I got the touch back. It's been so long since I experienced true pleasure when I baked cookies. I think I put too much preasure on myself, as I usually wanted to bake 2 batches or more to feed a lot of people. However, my co-worker is having a birthday tomorrow, and I baked a batch of Not Your Nieman Marcus's Chocolate Chip Cookies from Nancy Bagggett's The All American Cookie Book, and it was wonderful! Nothing like baking one batch of a drop cookie, using excellent chocolate, to put the baker back in my hands. I got to use my meat pounder to make the cookies flat. heheheheh. Actually, I bought it many years ago for that purpose only as I was baking very big cookies. It's the cookie pounder more like.

Speaking of the taste, the recipe calls for pecans or walnuts, but I have hazelnuts, and I tell you those Italian bakers have something going. Hazelnuts and chocolate are the basics of gianduja a standard in Italian bakeries. It's just a very good taste.