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Some people grew up watching sitcoms with their families.  I grew up watching cooking shows on public television.  Long before Rachael, Giada, Emeril and Paula had taken over our homes with the Food Network, there were the Jacques; Pepin and Torres (of course Julia was prior to them, but I wasn’t alive when her first show was on tv)  I would watch with my family in awe at they created masterpieces (a chocolate oven..really?!).

Another show that has garnered great praise in my family is America’s Test Kitchen.  It is fantastic.  (I also highly recommend their cookbook).  For those unfamiliar with ATK, they do more than just cook.  They test and they explain.  For example, in the following recipe, the butter is melted.  They explained this created a chewier cookie than creaming the butter and then showed the crispy creamed butter cookie.  The cook books also provide information such as the preferred brand of peanut butter to use in cookies.  It removes a lot of the guesswork and adds some science.  I love it.  I’m such a nerd.

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Ok…perhaps that title is a bit of an overstatment.  I don’t want to get everyone too excited, but a better name might be, “Mediocre Cookie Experiment” or even just “Cookie Experiment.”  The reason for the experiment?  I felt like baking.  The experimental part was the fact a good portion of my cooking equipment has been packed (I’m moving in two weeks).  It was interesting, but I did manage to find my cookie pan in a box before proceeding.

The other part of the experiment…I’m running low on some ingredients (please see above re: moving).  I had to move around some proportions of the recipe and I also (gasp!) didn’t measure a bunch of things either (which in hindsight might have not been the best idea).  The recipe was Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies, from Martha Stewart.  Ok, they’re actually from Sisha Ortuzar, co-owner and executive chef of ‘wichcraft, a great sandwich (get it?) place that I used to visit in NY.  The only major edit I made to the recipe was for the filling.  I added some cocoa powder to the mix to try and add some chocolate flavor.

The end result?  They’re gorgeous.  They remind me of heartier version of French macaroons.  Taste wise, I actually thought they were a bit too rich initially.  However, they taste much better the next day, so I recommend making them ahead of time.   My classmates liked them a lot (but of course they could just be too nice to tell me the truth).

Although, taking another look at them makes me think they look like tiny hamburgers…

Tartine Bakery.  I went in April while in San Fransisco with my best friend.  I went again earlier this month while visiting Silicon Valley.  I own the cookbook.  I love it.  (well I love the bakery…some of the items in the cookbook are complicated and/or require making multiple items, which I don’t usually have time for).

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So the first oops being of course my lack of posts over the last month.  That whole grad school/finals thing kinda got in the way of, well, lots of things.  But seeing has how I’ve got some time off now, hopefully I’ll be able to cook and/or write about it.

Ok, so the second oops.  I forgot the cord to connect my camera to my computer during my travels (ok, didn’t really forget as much as I didn’t think I would need it.)  Which means I can either go buy a cord, hunt around my parent’s house for something that can work, or I can post things without pictures.  Since I’m feeling rather lazy about the whole missing cord dilemma right now, we’re going with option number three.

I guess there is also a third oops to this post.  Over the weekend I stayed with one of my best friends in NYC, who conincidently is enrolled in pastry school at The French Culinary Institute (yea, my friends are kinda awesome).  Although when I showed up at her apartment on Friday, I was surrounded by cookies.  We’re not talking a batch of your regular toll house either.  There were at least 10 dozen of several different kinds.  So pretty much my final “oops” to this post was the fact that 2/3 meals each day consisted of cookies.  I would pretty much wake up in the morning and eat cookies for breakfast.  I would come home, “not hungry” and yet somehow ended up eating a couple of macaroons.  Oops.

So this is where I would add a couple of pictures of the cookies, which include (but not limited to) macaroons (french kind, not coconut), Russian tea balls, biscotti, chocolate mint thumbprints, gingerbread, chocolate shortbread….yea, I’m pretty sure I’m missing a couple too.

So [insert picture here]

[and here]

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[here too].

Then you drool a little bit.  Then I totally plug her mad cookie skills and say she’s decided to start selling her baked goods.  Drop me a line if you’re interested and I’ll get you in contact.

And we ate and ate.   And when it was all over, we ate again.

The occasion?  My sister was hitched last weekend in an all-out affair.  To give you an idea of what it was like, my family is half-Italian, part Irish and lives on Long Island…in other words; we know how to throw a party.

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