Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

This week is a short week. The university closes Friday through January 3, we reopen on the 4th. And I'm leaving at noon on Thursday so we can get an early start heading to Phoenix.

Last week I'm informed that the new girl is buying sub sandwiches for lunch Monday. Cool. We're not talking Subway, they're from a deli and that's pretty much all they do. Boar's Head deli meats! It was quite good, though I should have gotten double-Swiss cheese on mine. Tuesday my boss gets burritos. She was supposed to get them from this one place that specializes in burritos, but for some reason they were closed. Still, they were pretty good, albeit a touch smaller than I expected.

Wednesday is my day to buy.

Screw this nickel and dime crap, I'm picking up from my favorite Mexican food place! We're having proper food!

Also, I told my boss that I'm going to bake chocolate eggnog cookies tonight!

So naturally the oven died.

Tonight was a little fraught. I believe I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my wife Russet had a bone marrow biopsy. Well, she got the results online Sunday and saw her oncologist Monday. We now have a diagnosis but it doesn't really clarify things - yet. Still some more testing to do. And more on that later. Anyway, it made for a bit of a tense evening. She became rather indecisive and wanted me to make the decision as to whether or not she should have some fish sticks before going to the observatory to do an Apollo laser run. I was literally finishing up the cookies and warming up the oven, but it's not a problem putting the cookies temporarily on hold. So I cranked up the oven from 325 to 430.

And we're both sitting here thinking it's taking the oven an awful long time to preheat.

Finally Russet tells me to go get my infrared thermometer.

The walls of the oven - and this is after a good twenty minutes of the oven allegedly pre-heating to 430 degrees - were around 240 degrees!

So very not good!

A lightbulb is out in the overhead fixture in the kitchen, and I couldn't see very well, so I borrowed Russet's flashlight. Astronomer's always carry flashlights. Unfortunately Russet keeps hers in a perpetually 'almost dead battery' sort of state, but it was enough to look inside the oven. Things seemed okay. I turn it off and hand it to her and realize that it seemed like the left side of the heating element seemed lower than the right. That shouldn't be! So I borrow the flashlight again.

I was correct. The heating element had broken in half.

As Jamie Heineman frequently said on Mythbusters: Well, there's your problem!

Russet immediately assumed we'd have to buy a new oven. Slow your roll there, friend! Most heating elements are socketed and easy to replace. Tomorrow I'll check AppliancePartsPros.com and see if they have a video showing how to replace it, if not I'll check Youtube. I'm confident Appliance Parts Pros sells the heating element, I also need to get a new rheostat for one of the burners that's been slightly flaky for a few years: sometimes to truly turn it off you don't turn it clockwise, you have to turn it anti-clockwise! So I was due needing to spend some money there anyway.

So with a little luck, I can replace that heating element for a reasonable amount of money, and the new part will be waiting for us when we get back from Phoenix!

The last word on the cookie dough: put it in a ziploc in the fridge, I'm going to text my boss in the morning and see if she wants it to bake and bring in to work on Thursday. If not, I'll freeze it and take it to Phoenix and bake the cookies there!

This is what I was making when I recalibrated my oven. I've never made a cookie containing ginger, these were quite good! You want them SLIGHTLY under-done, they'll firm up sitting out and cooling. Rolling them in sanding sugar is important for presentation, crunch, and flavor - it's a good two-person job for a couple or to do with a youngling: one person portions, one person rolls in sugar and places on baking sheets. They poof up a bit and don't increase in diameter too much, so I can easily do 4x5 on a sheet pan for 20 per sheet. Personally, I like to wear nitril gloves while portioning out cookies to reduce hand mess.

The yield of 40 is about right after allowing for test batches to recalibrate my oven.

I used ground ginger with the butter, it never occurred to me to use the fresh chopped ginger that we have in a jar in my fridge. It would have changed the cookie considerably. Oh, well. Something for the next batch. And watch that the added sugar is 1/3rd of a cup: I was hung up on using my 1/2 cup scoop for everything and didn't notice the change. Still, the cookies came out fine.

Oh, and with these being molasses cookies, they'll crack down the middle while baking, a very common characteristic when molasses is used in large quantity. Perfectly normal. Very yummy.

* - * - *

Chocolate-Molasses Cookies

Ingredients
* ½ cup/115 grams unsalted butter (1 stick)
* 1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger (optional) 


* 1 ½ cups/190 grams all-purpose flour
* ½ cup/45 grams cocoa powder
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon ground ginger
* 1 teaspoon kosher salt 


* ⅓ cup/65 grams granulated sugar
* ½ cup/120 milliliters molasses
* 1 large egg

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Melt butter in a small pot over medium heat and add ginger, if using. Remove from heat and let sit a few minutes while you prepare everything else.
3. In a large bowl, whisk flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ground ginger and salt.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together sugar, molasses, egg and ginger butter. Using a spatula, slowly mix into dry ingredients, mixing until no dry spots remain.
5. Using your hands, roll small balls of dough about the size of a quarter (dough will be soft — if it is too soft for you to handle, pop into the fridge for a few minutes to firm up). Roll the balls in the sanding sugar and place on the prepared baking sheets about 1-inch apart.
6. Bake until just puffed and baked through, 6 to 10 minutes. Let cool completely before eating.

* Yield About 40 cookies

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019806-chocolate-molasses-cookies

Chocolate Eggnog Cookie from Seriouseats.com. Their recipe was very poorly re-written which lead me to make two mistakes, but both were recoverable and a fine cookie emerged. The second recipe was very sparse and also needed a re-write. Neither cookie delivered the amount of eggnog flavor that I was looking for, but I may have a solution. When I was searching around for recipes, I found one at King Arthur Flour. Now there's a reputable source, thought I. I was rather shocked to find out that it didn't contain actual eggnog! Instead, they used King Arthur Flour's Eggnog Flavoring. So I think I'll order a bottle of the stuff and add a teaspoon or so the next time I make the chocolate eggnog cookie recipe.

While neither had the eggnog flavor that I was coveting, the chocolate flavor of the first recipe and the texture of the first was better. That's not to say that the second cookie is bad, the nutmeg flavor is excellent and it does have good flavor, though I think it might benefit from a slightly longer baking time or perhaps an increase in temperature. It was just a little soft for my taste.

I don't have numbers for how many cookies the chocolate recipe produces, but it's looking like something on the order of seven dozen.

Also note that the chocolate cookie recipe uses salted butter, if you are used to baking with unsalted butter and adding salt then you'll have to make some adjustments.

Here's the recipes:

Chocolate Eggnog Cookies

2½ cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg, or to taste
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon, or to taste
2 tablespoon baking cocoa

1¼ cups white sugar
1 cup salted butter, softened
¼ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

½ cup eggnog
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large egg yolks

Preheat oven to 325. Melt chocolate chips with butter, cool for 10 minutes or so in the refrigerator until it is a soft solid. While then chocolate butter is cooling, combine the dry ingredients in a bowl. Combine the eggnog, egg yolks, and vanilla extract in a cup, a 2 cup measuring cup will do.

In the mixer bowl add the sugar and melted chocolate, mix in the sugar at low speed until creamed together. Add in the eggnog mixture, beat until smooth. Add in the flour mixture gradually, beat at low speed until just combined.

Using a cookie sheet with a wire rack covered with a sheet of parchment paper, drop rounded spoonfuls or use a scoop, dust tops with cocoa powder. Bake for 23-25 minutes, rotating half way through. Remove from cookie sheet and let cool completely

From http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/12/chocolate-eggnog-cookies.html

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Eggnog Cookies

1¼ cup sugar
¾ cup softened butter

½ cup eggnog
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 egg yolks

2¼ cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp salt

You’ll need two bowls in addition to your mixing bowl, I suggest a 2 cup and 4 cup measuring cup or bowls of similar size.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in the 4 cup measuring cup. Add the eggnog, vanilla extract, and egg yolks in to the 2 cup measuring cup.

Cream together sugar and butter in a large bowl. Add in eggnog, vanilla and egg yolks. Mix until smooth.

Mix dry flour mixture into the wet mixture. Stir together until just combined.

Drop in rounded 1 tbs balls onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle tops lightly with nutmeg. Bake for 18 minutes, rotating trays half-way through, until cookies just barely look done. Leave cookies on cookie sheet for 2 minutes before removing them to a cooling rack to cool completely.

You may need to adjust oven temperature or cooking times for your kitchen.

Makes about 4-5 dozen cookies.

https://lmld.org/eggnog-cookies/