Successes

My friend Suko hosted a Christmas cookie swap- my first ever. After consulting with Adam's mother on a number of traditional recipes, I decided to throw caution to the wind and cook in the Rebecca fashion.

The creative process went as such: I had a jar of bacon bits because I was at the grocery store one time and thought "Why not!" Then T-3 days to cookies I had been making bread and while holding the fridge door open seeking inspiration, I came upon the jar. Day of cookies had me frantic for a guiding flavor ingredient. My essence of orange? Lots and lots of rosemary? What could stand up to and out amongst a sea of sweets? Savory! When everyone zigs, I must zag! And what gets more savory then delicious bacon? Done!

The sugar/flour/butter ratio was lifted from a cook book because while I have my ratio guide book I still have not produced success using it. The amount of bacon bits added was... random. Not really too taste since I didn't taste the mixture till long after. There was beet thrown in for color and then a dash (a half dash more then needed actually) of squid ink to even out the color (based on results from my mini test batch).

The cookies were rolled as thin as possible (since that's what the original recipe I lifted called for) and was an excellent decision. It keeps the bacon flavor frm being overwhelming and lets you nosh on as many cookies as you wish nearly gilt free. How can something so tiny be bad for you? It made cookie production obnoxious though. The dough is a bitch to work with and I had to freeze and re-freeze the dough nearly every step of the way. Mix, freeze, roll out & cut, freeze, pull off of wax paper & cook.

I used and immediately regretted my awesome dual unicorn cookie cutters for the cookie swap. This lead me to labeling them as "Christmas Unicorn Meat Cookies". Waaaaay to much work though. When I hacked into my frozen dough lump for the New Year's party friends were throwing, I went with the much simpler "roll out dough, slice cookies from it" strategy. Actually looks best when cut into thin strips but even that was too much work.

The following recipe makes a LOT of cookies... I'd recommend cutting it in half, if not more. Mix the sugars & butter, then mix everything else. Bake at 350° for ~14 min.

• 1g squid ink
• 99g white sugar
• 226g butter
• 40g brown sugar
• 256g flour
• 30g bacon bits
• 37g finely grated raw beet

In other news, as I hurry to write this post, today Adam and I are currently at cooking 100% of our meals this year. Success! Clam sause, squid ink, linguine, and home made rolls. Here's hoping we can hold to our plan of one home cooked meal a week...

In conclusion: MEAT COOKIES! SO GOOD TO EAT! ... so gross to make ...