How Martha Ruined my Sunday

I love cookbooks that have big pictures beside the recipe to remind me that its worth the effort to make whatever I'm making. This was the main reason why I bought Martha Stewart's Cookies cookbook on Christmas break.

I typically don't bake cookies since I live alone and end up eating them all, but this rainy Sunday I decided to pull out the book and try to bake chocolate-black pepper cookies.

1. Sift together flour, cocoa power, salt, and cinnamon into a large bowl.

This is where I started to realize that there was a reason I hadn't cooked any cookies from this book yet. I'm sorry Martha, but the Food Basics doesn't carry Dutch-process cocoa powder. Martha said that this was vital to the recipe since Dutch-process powder is treated with alkali to help neutralize the cocoa's natural acidity. I made a judgement call and used No Name cocoa powder.

2. Put butter and granulated sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix until pale and fluffy. Mix in egg and vanilla. Add in flour mixture.

If I had Martha's money and kitchen size, I would own the Kitchen Aid mixer that she described above. Since I don't have either, I busted out the Huntington Beach two beater hand mixer.

Things were still looking good at this point. Here's what my mixture looked like along with the picture that I still optimistically thought would be my final product.



3. Turn out dough onto a piece of parchment paper and roll into a 2 inch diameter log. Roll log in parchment paper. Refrigerate 1 hour or overnight.

Here's where things got really dicey. Really, Martha? You want me to roll dough that looks like this into a log?



Once I managed to get something that could be called a log together on the parchment paper, actually rolling it up was a mess. It reminded me of the time Evan convinced me that buying coin rollers would cut into our profits too much, except this time I couldn't sit back and watch Hell's Kitchen while he figured it out. No Name cocoa flavoured butter was spilling everywhere out the sides of the parchment.



4. Preheat oven to 350F. Remove log from parchment. Roll log in sanding sugar and slice into 1/4" thick rounds.

Complete mayhem.



5.Bake cookies for 10 minutes, rotating halfway through. Makes about 4 dozen.

Maybe this makes 4 dozen in Martha-land. Here in Erin-world it made 10 balls and 3 clumps.



Next time, Martha. Next time....