culinary delights ... and disasters

Ahh, how nice it is to have Winter Vacation! Today we went to Taipei 101 for lunch and then I spent the rest of the day in the kitchen "playing" as Kevin calls it.

Ever since moving to Taiwan several years ago, I haven't figured out how a sugar-exporting country like this wouldn't make and sell molasses. Still haven't figured that out, but recently I found some imported molasses at Carrefour - A French Walmart-like store. I was excited to make some gingersnaps (after the prodding of a colleague or two) and today I got a chance to do just that. I started digging though my goodie drawer and noticed we didn't have any table sugar. Strange, but I moved on figuring this would be a good chance to use up some cheap powdered sugar that doesn't work for making frosting instead. I got to the end of the recipe and realised that powdered sugar probably wouldn't work for rolling the cookies in prior to baking, so I headed out to buy some at the nearby 7-11. Did you know that 7-11 has its own brand of sugar - large or small grain, light brown, dark brown, or (cheap) powdered??

Anyway, back to the cookies - I got back and tried to roll the sticky dough into balls like the recipe said, but it was super sticky. I stuck it in the fridge while I worked on a couple of other projects: starting some yogurt, making a batch of chocolate chip cookies, making and eating dinner, changing a diaper or two, playing with Keanu... you get the picture. When I finally got back to the gingersnaps, the first 5 or so were cool enough not to stick to everything as I rolled them into balls. Nevertheless, I stuck to it (literally) and made a whole sheet of sticky cookies. By the time I took them out of the oven, they were flatter than pancakes - more like crapes. Plus, I could only scrape about 1/2 of them off the pan - the others had to soak off! I added a bunch more flour to the remaining batter and tried again, and again. In the end, we have 14 "perfect" gingersnaps, 4 that are ok, and more than half a dozen crape-thin ones (in addition to the ones that went down the drain).

Moral of the story - it's fun to play in the kitchen, but if you think it's too sticky - add flour. The good news is that all those other things that I did between making the gingersnaps all worked out pretty well.

Good - - - - - - - - - - - - - and - - - - - - - - - - - - - Not so good