To celebrate the end of my first semester in law school, I invited A and Nisha up from Tioga County and (e:TinyPliny) over from the Mayflower and we made cookies and cholay! It was certainly a cross-cultural experience - (e:TinyPliny) got to lick the beaters for the first time ever and we got to saute cumin seeds in peanut oil! ((e:heidi) is a dork!)


Cholay and pulao - mmmmm now I understand how to make a proper garam masala. My apartment smells like an Indian restaurant! :-)



We made my great-grandmother's molasses cookie recipe and made oodles of tiny cookies, perfect little bites of yummy goodness. A and (e:tinypliny) rolled out the dough and cut out the cookies.




(e:tinypliny,47194) was horrified by the amount of butter and sugar involved in making cookies - this recipe calls for 1 cup butter, 1 cup white sugar, 1 cup brown sugar AND 1 cup molasses, then sprinkle sugar on top before baking. She requested that some cookies be left naked (see cows below).



We also made molasses crinkle cookies, someone else's great-grandmother's recipe, which uses very similar ingredients but has a very different result - a sharper cookie, less cakey. They get rolled into little balls of dough, then dipped in sugar before baking. Here (e:tinypliny) becomes enthusiastic about butter and sugar :-) I've spent a little bit of time trying to figure out how to make these ones without butter and sugar - honey & applesauce seem like the best substitutes for the white sugar and butter - does anyone have any other suggestions?



(Nisha was pretty good and stayed on her turtle most of the time. (e:heidi,45816))