Simple Shortbread, Total Fail

My newest must have kitchen tool, sort of.

  So I have missed you all, I imagine that you are all "where the heck is the crazy lady?"  And I would have to say "who me?  Crazy?"  And then you would roll your eyes, and I would sort of just stand there, it is just how it is you know?

  Anyway I have been at my new job for over a week now, and I love it!  But, I feel like an idiot, like I will never get it all.  I also miss all the time I had to bake and blog.  And so tonight I am jumping on to share a really simple cookie.  One that didn't turn out so well for me, but you might have better luck.  Anyway, life is really good, busy but good, and I hope to be back more often to read and blog. So here is a post I wrote way back last year when I was hoping to have a new cookie to share, then I never did, because it was so bad!  Oh well, could be worse.

 So here you go.

  I had a dream. It was a simple dream. It involved me getting a new kitchen gadget and me using it and me making something so awesome and amazing that people would want my autograph; they would be like "you are the best thing since sliced bread!" And I would be all "duh was there ever any doubt?" And that would be wonderful!

Never knew you could get this in the regular store, I was all panicked thinking I would have to go to a specialty store.

    In real life; I got a new shortbread baking pan. I was all ready to become the famous shortbread baking lady. I even bought rice flour to make it. And well; it was no dream come true if you must know. So basically what happened was I used two cups of butter and ended up with a crumbling pan of half baked and half raw shortbread.

I just lightly oiled the pan.

The flour stuck on in globs so I had to use a pastry brush to get some of it off.

 It was not a good day. I almost cried, I was all "how am I ever going to show my face in public again?" And then I tossed out almost all of it and sat on the sofa and pouted for a while. It was one of those things where I look back now and I know how I screwed up but I am not in the mood to try again, yet. So I figure if nothing else I have a post to share my pictures of failure of and it will fill some void in your heart. You know the void, the one where you need to see how badly I can screw up and still come back for more.

See the dough was so soft and I bet you could even pipe it.  Great now I want to try piping it.

You can totally see how over full my pan is, but I was not going to stop.

It's what I do people; I think of you. But if we could have a moment of silence for those two cups of butter that I will never get back that would greatly help with my healing.

Thank you.

 So I got this pan at the kitchen store and it had a recipe in it, but it was sort of vague. So I went on line to see if I could find out more about the pan and the recipe. Well for some reason the pan wasn't even on the manufactures site, which should have been a big sign that something was up. But I forged on I looked on google to see if there was anything special I had to do to prepare my pan. In the end I figured that seasoning my pan couldn't hurt and that is what I did. I rubbed some vegetable oil on the pan and then sprinkled some flour on it to make sure nothing stuck.   Then I got to making the cookie dough.

See, I should have taken a bunch out.

It looked way worse in real life.

 Short bread cookies
found on the pan instructions

1/2 pound butter
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/2 cake flour
1/4 cup rice flour
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt

Pre heat oven to 350, and season your pan.
Blend the butter until creamy, add icing sugar and salt, blend well.  Add rice flour and cake flour and blend well.  Add half of the all purpose flour and blend, add the rest of the flour and blend. Press the dough into the mold and bake until golden brown.

See all this was almost raw, I was so mad!

 So the first thing about this is that I have not used rice flour before and I thought that it was a neat idea and figured it would make for a nice smooth cookie. So  I measure out everything and mix it all together and that is when I notice how soft the dough is, the recipe says to press the dough into the pan and it was spreadable. Also the recipe didn't say how much it made so I figured I needed to put it all into the pan. But there was way too much. So instead of taking some out and doing two batched I smoothed it out and went ahead and baked the full pan. And that is where I messed up. I put the pan on a cookie sheet just to make sure that it would not over flow. But even after 30 minutes the middle was still sort of wet but the outside was getting dark. So I pulled the tray out and let it set to cool.

 I let it cool a few minutes then flipped the whole thing onto a cookie tray and it fell apart.  The middle was soft and not cooked and the outsides were really crusty.  I even cut it to try it.  Now I will admit it was a nice melt in your mouth soft short bread, or at least the few edges I ate were.  So I cut it up thinking it would set up, but it didn't.  So I took a few pieces to work and no one ate them.  I really cannot blame them.  Just means I need to try again, and I will and it will be amazing.  I won't add this recipe to my index yet until I figure it out, so stay tuned I may be brave enough again before 2014 you know.

This went to work, and it never got eaten.

Ice Box Cake

  So this is another fast post, so much happening in my life that I have not really had any time to do any baking.  If you ask Hubby he would be all "it's about time!!"  And he would be right, sort of.  You see, as of Tuesday I will have a new job.  I finally found a job close to home, which should allow us to save some money.  Which I plan to spend on candy, or pay bills.  I prefer candy, just so you know.  

 I have been working a long way from home for my day job for almost 11 years, this job has been the one I was at just before I got married, I had Pork Chop while I was here and lots of other stuff.  I am so nervous. Do you think my new co workers will like me?  What if I shared my candy?  Well either way, it is happening.  Tomorrow, and I am so ready!

  I will still keep my part time job, because I really like it, and any extra money will put us that much closer to having our debt paid down.  Or you know, allow me to buy more sugar to bake with.  Also I think this will mean I may have to cut my posts down.  I aimed to do two posts a week, and sometimes that was just not possible.  And so I am going to aim for one post a week, if I get two in, it will be a bonus.  If not, well, I am still here, and you have to admit, I am awesome.  And humble, don't forget, humble.

These were right on the end cap at wal mart, so I grabbed them, and then Hubby put them away and I almost forgot about them.

 So this simple treat was due to the fact I was really wanting something like cake, but didn't want to actually have to make it.  Or leave the house to buy it.  I have heard about ice box cakes for years, and I was all "seriously ice box cake, isn't that just a cold cake?"  And obviously like most things, I was wrong.  I went on Pintrest and found out that an ice box cake is basically wafer cookies and whip cream.  And you have to let it sit in the fridge for about 4 hours for it to be ready.

  Not sure if I should point out it would have taken me 10 minutes to drive to the store and buy some cake, but whatever, I didn't even have to get out of my pajamas to make this, so it was worth it, sort of.

This was my little bowl to try, I didn't realize how little you got out of the ingredients I had.  

 I wanted to make this to share with my co workers and I had this plan of doing cake in a jar, but when I pulled out the jars I had, they were the bigger ones.  But I figure that would be fine, more cake never hurt anyone.  So I cleaned all 12 jars and got to work.  And I totally just made this recipe up.  Because I am smart like that.

Ice Box Cake
by me

-2 cups cold whipping cream
-1/4 cup sugar
-1-2 TBSP vanilla bean paste
-sleeve of chocolate wafer cookies

You can use any sort of container, I made one in a little cup so I could try it.  All you have to do it whip your whipping cream with the sugar and vanilla.  Then either spoon or pipe some cream into the bottom of your container, add a cookie and just layer it.  You want enough whip cream so that the cookies will have enough moister.

Yep that is just a big blob of whip cream, it was so good.

 Once you have done that, make sure to cover your cake and let it set in the fridge for at least 4 hours.  I couldn't wait and tried after 3, the cookies were not soft all the way through by that point.

So after all that I got three jars people.  Not enough to share at work.  I put one aside for one friend there, she is never there and always misses the treats.  But then I got sick and didn't go in the one day she was there.  So I may have eaten them. Maybe.

So I think this was really good, those cookies are very rich and chocolaty and I think the sugar in the whip cream was a must, or it would have been weird.

 Anyway, I bet I will be back soon, well I have other posts ready to go, so no worries there.  I just cannot believe I am going to have such a short commute, I used to spend over 2 hours on the road a day.  Now, maybe 30 minutes.  Maybe.