Updated: This morning I was visiting blogs and the fabulous Mary of The Food Librarian showed me how I could jazz up my holiday photos with Flickr (click Edit Photo and then the Create tab at the top). I am feeling much better about my sad little volcano cookie now that it’s festively adorned. Thanks Mary 🙂
Just in the nick of time….I’ve got an hour until the clock strikes midnight and I miss my TWD deadline!! This week’s TWD was chosen by Macduff of The Lonely Sidecar: cafe volcano cookies. I debated about posting my cookies this week because, as you can see, they’re not much to look at. In fact, some might say they’re a bit of an eyesore. In the end, I figured since I gave the recipe a shot I might as well post about my results.
These cookies are composed entirely of just 5 ingredients: almonds, walnuts, egg whites, sugar, and espresso powder. You simply toast the nuts, pop then in a saucepan with the egg whites, sugar and espresso powder to warm everything through and then bake them. Simple, right? Well, not so much for me. Somehow I managed to screw them up. Dorie says they’re supposed to be puffed, cratered, shiny and dry after baking, but mine just looked like the same little pile of nuts I put in the oven before baking. Oh well, you win some and you lose some….
I don’t really like nuts so I didn’t try these, but I asked my mom to sample one when she stopped by this week. She said they’re weren’t bad and that they reminded her of crispy chicken skin, which made me think I might have gone more wrong with these than I thought 🙂 Many thanks to MacDuff for hosting this week’s very interesting recipe! You can find the recipe on her site or in the book. If you’d like to see what the cafe volcano cookies should have looked like, you can visit the other bakers’ sites!
Lemon Bars
Glazed Grapefruit Cake
Orange Sherbet
Meyer Lemon Pound Cake
You thought yours were bad? And you say that after you saw mine?
Mine were a bona fide disaster – at least yours resemble cookies.
Crispy chicken skin? LOL! I found it impossible to predict what these would actually look like.
Well, they’ve definitely got the colour of fried chicken. but I’m sure they were dieicious.
Mine never cratered either — they just sort of stayed a bundle ‘o nuts. They’re not attractive cookies, to say the least, but I ended up liking them. I’m glad you posted them!
yaaaah, mine weren’t exactly belle’s of the ball either. but yours do look better than mine. that’s something… right?
Ha! Crispy chicken skin! lol. These were definitely an interesting pick–not my favorite–but so easy to make! Happy Holidays!
Hmm… crispy chicken skin wasn’t exactly what I think we were going for… 😛 They actually look pretty good – and I promise, if you like nuts, they’re really tasty!
crispy chicken skin? ha ha!!!
My son would have loved them then.
You are too hard on yourself- I think they look cute and kudos to you for trying them out and not skipping!
Hmm, maybe you cooked them too long on the stovetop? I didn’t love these at all. I did think they were fun to make, but that was about it. Definitely not a repeater
Love the holly!
Looks so cute with the bit of holly!!! Glad that was helpful. I didn’t get a chance to make these cookies. Glad you were able to! – mary
It doesn’t matter if it turned out to be like that. They still look nice and yummy! At least, yours was that nice looking. My disaster was trash.
Ah, I love that little jazzy sprig of holly you topped off that cookie with! Have to say, yes, I do, that this were a BIG hit around here…they didn’t stick around long enough for me to even get a photo of the taste tester this week. I only made half a batch…the word on the streets here is that they would like the other half batch asap. Yours look fun and I think they look delicious.
Even without the holly, your photos always make even something less successful look beautiful! I’m sorry these were a disappointment (unless you’re aiming for the crispy chicken skin lovers) but good for you for posting them!
If somebody told me my cookies tasted like chicken skin I might be worried too! The little holly sprig really does make it all better, though! I’ll have to check that out, because I had a few photos of “brown food” that I forgot to garnish…
Hm… these look like mine… although everyone’s looked different. Very strange – but thanks for the “chicken” comparison…. I’ll forget I read that! 🙂
Glad you tried them though! They look like mine!