Experiments in the Kitchen

 Today was a gloomy, grey day - perfect for baking. I wanted to make cookies so I asked my husband what kind he wanted and his suggestion was Chocolate Thimble Cookies. I make these at Christmas every year and they are his favourite (they're one of my favourites too), but I ended up giving most of them away this year and I did promise him I would make a batch just for us. It is now June....I guess it was time.
Chocolate Thimble Cookies are made with a chocolate dough that you roll into balls, then in nuts (pecans are best), the when they're on the baking sheet, before they go in the oven, you make a depression in the middle with your finger. When they come out of the oven, you put 4-5 chocolate chips in the depression and when they melt, you swirl them with a toothpick. (A traditional version of these cookies are called thumbprint cookies and are usually a white dough with jam in the middle). 

Experiment #1:

Terr's suggestion was to make the dough chocolate/peanut butter - I can't believe I had never thought of this before! I figured I could just substitute half the butter for peanut butter and everything would be good. Yeah, that didn't work too well. My dough was really dry and crumbly and was impossible to roll into balls. I ended up adding more butter (in total about 3/4 of what the original recipe called for) and even then they we drier than they should have been. I managed to roll them, though they did fall apart a wee bit when I tried to put the depression in. They actually managed to hold together fairly well as they baked and weren't too dry to enjoy. The flavour was incredible and I would totally do it again. Lesson: substituting peanut butter for butter does not work. Next time, add the full amount of butter, plus the same amount of peanut better. If I need to add more flour, so be it.
Was it a success? Yes! Just a few minor tweaks and they'll be perfect!

Experiment #2:

I also wanted something that I could take in my lunches to have for my coffee break. I toyed with the idea of muffins, but decided on biscuits in the end. But, of course, I couldn't make just plain baking powder biscuits - I was in a creative mood. I settled on Peach/Passionfruit Raspberry biscuits. I had a jar of Peach/Passionfruit curd in my pantry and some frozen raspberries. I had to adjust the amount of flour becuase of the curd and the raspberries, but they totally turned out. They're a little spongier than normal biscuits and are more like a scone.   
Was it a success? Totally! They are delicious and will be nice in my lunch.So good, in fact, that they are this week's featured recipe!