recipe rescue

Monday night I had another baking episode. I was trying to find and make a recipe for cookies that would be gluten free and not require special flour that we don't have. I was thinking along the lines of oatmeal and corn starch, so I googled and found a recipe called Brazilian Corn Starch Cookies, which go well with coffee. It calls for the following:

2 cups cornstarch

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter

Form into balls and bake at 375 degrees for about 7 minutes (paraphrase of instructions).

Simple enough, right? Well, I followed the recipe and they turned out great. . . . if you wanted to taste what a sand dollar would taste like as a cookie! They were very flat and hard/gritty/crumbly. I added some oatmeal in hopes that it would "do something," and then I realized that I used cornmeal instead of corn starch - two whole cups! My mom helped me to find a fix by adding milk to make something more like sweet cornbread muffins (I poured them into mini muffin pans), and they aren't half bad. I like them anyway - whether or not others do is another question.

So I hope you enjoyed my little baking episode. Angela tells me that I need to write these things down. I'm not so sure they are that great (my recipe alterations), but they can make a good story now and then.

Oh, and I was very pleased to rediscover the secret to my chocolate chip cookies - I always use a certain recipe and trade the optional 1/2 cup of nuts for oatmeal. However, the past several months they have not been turning out and it's boggled me, especially because I actually do follow the recipe each time (minus the one change). It turns out that I needed to double the amount of oatmeal, which I probably did all the time and then somehow switched back to the amount called for in the recipe (for the nuts). Yay! I am happy that I can be confident in my cookie recipe again...that is, if we have normal flour and butter in the house (not bread flour or cholesterol free "butter!"). I have my recipe back...just in time for cookies to go out of style with winter. Oh well. :-)