We moved into our new apartment last weekend, and after an exhausting few days of goodbyes, and also a job interview (seriously folks, fingers crossed) we're beginning the process of settling in. The living room is unpacked, though we don't yet have a couch. The "Red Room" which will eventually be my office has become the breeding ground for boxes we look at and say "later". Our bedroom is... getting there. Slowly but surely. J's office was finished before anything else in the house because he seems to be more motivated than I when it comes to getting settled.
Not, however, more motivated that Edgar, who seems to ignore the mess around him and simply be.
I am, however, settled enough to want to cook. Steak our first night, pasta tonight, and Snickerdoodles were my first baking venture in the new kitchen. I woke up this morning with an insatiable need to utilize my new space. Regardless of the fact that it currently looks like this:
Our thought was that if we put boxes in the middle of the floor in the room I use most, we'd be motivated more quickly to put them away.
I don't think it's working.
We've only barely gone to the grocery store, and have yet to purchase the kinds of ingredients needed to bake anything terribly fanciful or worthy of experimentation, but we nearly always have the needed materials to make bread, snickerdoodles, and brownies. Walking out of the bedroom, I turned to J. and jokingly said, "This is probably a silly question, but Snickerdoodles or brownies?" The answer is almost always the same, and the answer is almost always Snickerdoodles. And I can understand why -- there's something beautiful and familiar about the chewy yet soft interior, the crunchy, flavorful cinnamon sugar crust, and the burst of warmth when you begin consuming these cookies.
And so I began baking... and realized that the full bag of flour I unpacked was bread flour, not all purpose, and that the baking soda didn't make it to Providence. I moved forward, however, desperate to create something, to make this apartment smell like a home, to taste something familiar. Surprisingly enough, I was rewarded with cookies that are somewhat denser, more biscuit-like than my usual, with a lovely flavor, and certainly worth another batch.
They're already half gone.
I'm going to post the recipe just as I made it, flaws and all, because they turned into some delicious cookies.
Ingredients
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups bread flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 sticks butter
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups sugar, divided
2 tablespoons cinnamon
Sift flours, cream of tartar, baking powder, and salt and set aside.
In the bowl of a standmixer using the paddle attachment, or in a mixing bowl, cream together butter and 1 and a half cups sugar on medium speed for two minutes, until smooth. When smooth, add eggs, one at a time, on low speed, until combined. Slowly mix in the flour mixture until combined. Refrigerate at least one hour.
Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees fahrenheit. Mix remaining 1/4 cup sugar and 2 tablespoons cinnamon. Roll dough into 2-inch balls, and roll in cinnamon sugar mixture. Place on parchment paper lined baking sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until surface has just crackled and the cookies lose their shine.
Tonight we're having one of those delicious and impressive pasta dishes that can be cooked with virtually no food in the house, and with inexpensive ingredients, recipe courtesy of my friend and ever-roommate, the very crafty Becky Katona.
More to come!
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