Friday, July 25, 2008

baked goods

These days I feel so emotionally drained that I haven't really felt like eating much. This “blah” mood has resulted in as minimal cooking possible. My basic staples have been string cheese, yogurt (that fiberone yogurt is pretty good, you can’t even taste or feel the fiber. and inulin is great), and fruits that you just wash and eat (blueberries, strawberries, grapes). When emotions take a toll on you people revert to the "binge eating" mode or the "i'm just not feeling hungry" mode. I fall into the second category which I guess is the better of the two.
Anyways, here's some pictures of the yumminess I baked last month:

I love lemon bars. One of my goals in life is to create the ultimate perfect lemon bar recipe with a gooey tart filling with a barely there crispy shortbread cookie-like crust. The closest recipe I've found is the Barefoot Contessa's recipe.
Then I decided to make cinnamon rolls. I borrowed one of those "Best of America's Test Kitchen" cookbooks and tried to make a light cinnamon roll. Boo. It could be my fault because I did not have buttermilk so I soured SKIM milk with vinegar, so I lost some fat in the process. The rolls looked really good, but were too bready and dry. I think gooey, sticky, over-indulgent, "I-don't-wanna-know-how-many-Calories-are-in-this" rolls are much better than lowfat ones. I will now refuse lowfat rolls and only go for butter-coma, cream cheese-laden rolls from now on!

















Korova Cookies. I have never made these cookies before, but Anita at Dessert First proclaimed these Korova Cookies as her favorite. She is like the cookie expert, so I decided to make these cookies. And oh my goodness, these cookies were good! I made a few alterations to the recipe and used a mixture of all kinds of chocolate I had laying around (ghirardelli 100% cacao, neuhaus chocolate, some tollhouse morsels). The dough was quite crumbly to work with and the final cookie was not sweet like typical American cookies, but the texture and the flavor was quite good. It was a really chocolate-y cookie with an unusual almost crumbly texture. mmm....this will definitely be a part of my favorite recipe collection.

4 comments:

K and S said...

everything looks so yummy. I had wanted to comment on something that came through my reader, but when I went to your blog it wasn't there...I hope you will keep at your PHD I know it is a year to go, please at least finish or you may always feel like you should have.

Anonymous said...

When I have a lot of stress I also fall into the "i'm just not feeling hungry" mode. Hang in there lauren! :)

genkitummy said...

kat- thanks for your advice. believe me, i don't want to give it up. yeah, i deleted that post b/c i didn't want to bum people out with my non-food life. my fiance and i have a better tentative plan so that i won't have to quit the program, but we'll see what happens. it's quite complicated so i'm just crossing my fingers that everything will work out.

lori-thanks. things are definitely better now.

Michelle said...

You've got soooo much going on my dear, no wonder you are feeling drained. Hang in there and just take care of yourself! These recipes all look wonderful (even your low-fat cinnamon rolls look delicious, despite how they may have tasted!) and I think I may just have to seek out those cookies!!