(Hazy Shade Of) Winter Cookies

These cookies are the color of my mood. They are mood-cookies. Did you ever have a mood-ring? I did. When I was in elementary school. I quickly figured out its secret. It was sensitive to heat and would change colors as your body temperature fluctuated. I was a skinny little kid though and most of the time my ring only turned dark blue. That's the first color it would go to beyond the default black. If I rubbed my hands together (or put them under warm water), the ring would change to all sorts of lovely teals and amber colors. But it didn't really tell my mood. These cookies though? They are doing just that.

It's five days before Christmas and two days before we leave to go visit family. Everything must be finished in the next two days or it doesn't get done at all. This is a time when I realistically reevaluate everything on my to-do lists and drop the things that are not going to get done. This generally drops my mood exponentially. And so I've discovered that it's not the best time to bake cookies.

Baking is all about the love. And if you're not feeling it, your end result will show it. This is not to say that all baking disasters are the result of a poor mindset. Just that, if you start out that way, it'll show in the final product. Baked goods are empathic. Thus, my mood-cookies: I'm feeling muddled and depressed, the skies outside my window are dark and cloudy, my cookies are muddy gray lumps.

I was sure that I'd created baked-bads instead of baked-goods. But they say that every cloud has a silver lining, and I've always found that to be true. The silver lining of these cookies is that they are really quite tasty, and they go splendidly with tea. They are, in fact, our new favorite tea cookie. They are, in a word, lovely.

Quiz time! Finish the following sentence: Beauty is... a) as beauty does. b) in the eye of the beholder. c) only skin deep. d) vastly overrated. e) all of the above. Substance really is so much more important than appearance. The trick is to find your own real and genuine happy-place and then get baking. If you're happy and you know it, then your cookies will surely show it.

Buttery Jam Cookies from Joy The Baker

My Notes: Accidentally put the eggs in before the sugar. Oops. Used my Triple Berry Jam that I made last summer. The dough turned a lovely shade of mauve. Oven was running on the hot side so the trays sat out waiting for an extra 15 minutes or so while I tried to adjust the oven temp. It dropped too much and the first batch took an extra 5-6 min. since the oven temp was still around 350° for most of the time they were in there. Bah. The mauve-ness made it hard to tell when they were browned. 

They smelled good when I took them out of the oven but they didn't flatten out all the way (maybe due to the temp. problem). And they were a somewhat unappetizing shade of gray now. Don't know if these are going to make it as gifts (as intended) or not. Next time I'll try swirling the jam in last so it doesn't permeate the dough so thoroughly. I also flattened the last few dough balls before baking them to see if that would help... It did. Next time I'll try all that and increase the ginger and jam quantities.

Empathic: Sharing another's feelings as if they were your own.
Answer: e) all of the above.