that's absolutely beautiful.

oh man me too, and if you have a recipe for them that you wouldn't mind sharing i'd love to try it.

i am not good about taking pictures of things while i'm making them. i was making two types of cookies at once last night so there were minimal pictures. there were more chocolate cherry cookies made, however:




i just call these things 'orange balls'... nilla wafers reduced to crumbs in a food processor combined with softened butter, vanilla, confectioner's sugar, orange juice from concentrate (thawed) and finely chopped pecans:




you roll em into balls and then roll the balls in granulated sugar:




see? i always remember to take pictures like, right as i'm putting them in the oven. these cookies are ridiculous - they taste how cheesecake in a cookie form would. the dough has a block of cream cheese and two sticks of butter in it. you cream everything together and then let it sit in the fridge overnight. roll into balls, shove thumb into the middle of each ball, fill thumb-hole with jam (i made a batch of raspberry and a batch of strawberry) and bake. i also make a chocolate version of these, and a variation where the ball gets dipped in egg white and rolled in chopped hazelnuts pre-pokery and jam-filling (el oh el.)



aaaand on the rack:



recipes:

Orange Balls

12 ounces vanilla wafer cookies, crushed
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup orange juice concentrate, thawed
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans
sifted confectioners' sugar or coconut for coating

combine crumbs sugar; blend in butter. Stir in orange juice concentrate; add vanilla and nuts. Shape mixture into balls, roll in granulated sugar or shake in food storage bag with sifted confectioners' sugar or coconut. Arrange orange balls in single layer on waxed paper-lined cookie sheet; store uncovered overnight in refrigerator for best flavor. Makes about 3 dozen.

Raspberry Cream Cheese Cookies

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup butter, softened
8 oz cream cheese, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 oz raspberry jam (no seeds)


shape dough into 1-in. balls. Place 2 in. apart on ungreased baking sheets. Using the end of a wooden spoon handle, make a 1/2-in.-deep indentation in the center of each ball; fill with about 1/4 teaspoon jam. Bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes or until set. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield: 5 dozen.


Chocolate-covered cherry cookies

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup baking cocoa
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
maraschino cherries, blotted dry

frosting:
1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 to 3 teaspoons maraschino cherry juice

In a mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy; beat in egg and vanilla. Combine the dry ingredients; gradually add to creamed mixture (batter will be very firm). Shape into 48 balls, about 1 in. round, and place on ungreased baking sheets. Push one cherry halfway into each ball.
    For frosting, melt chocolate chips in milk in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat; add cherry juice and stir until smooth. Spoon 1 teaspoon of frosting over each cherry (the frosting will spread over cookie during baking).
    Bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes.

haha, i don't hate it. i'm also not a barista anymore ;)

chicken looks fabulous scooter, i may have to give that a shot. someday i too shall join the bento club!

gah, tell me about it... you should see my kitchen right now. this is why i bake things and foist them off on other people! i'll usually test one cookie out of a batch to see if it passes muster but that's it for me. it's like when i had a job being a barista - before i was slinging coffee for a living, i loved me some lattes. once i started 'crafting' that shit myself, i never wanted to see another frappuccino in ANY state of assembly ever again.

nathan - i did not get to have one of these 'h2o cookies'. i'd love the recipe!

I'm ridiculously broke and ridiculously stressed. I am not going to have time to knit or stitch things for everyone. Fortunately for me I love baking, and do so to relieve stress, so the new plan is to give out tins of assorted cookies for Christmas! In the evenings, I've been trying out different cookie recipes or making variations on ones I've already made. Last night was a chocolate covered cherry adventure, and they were well received by the people that tried them, so I think they're going to make it into the rota. I didn't take too many pictures, cos I was using my cell phone's camera (the batteries in my digital camera were dead and I didn't want to take the time to find/charge more):

Cookie dough gets rolled into balls, then blotted cherries get shoved into holes poked into the doughballs, then the cherries get covered with frosting, then they get baked!



Post baking, and moved to a cool cookie sheet (because I am ghetto and do not have cooling racks anymore)



Tonight will be an adventure in cream cookie variations (cookies with cream cheese in the dough) and probably some peppermint sammich cookies. I can post recipes if anyone wants them! :D

as much as i love bourdain, i would find the advice of a man who has thought nothing of consuming a still-beating cobra heart to be somewhat suspect.

i can go anytime after the 18th of january

girl talk is the shit. this dude on youtube made some excellent videos to go with some of girl talk's songs... he mashes up the music videos just like the songs are mashed up. this is the video he made for in step (it's my favorite song off feed the animals)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6TuMhYg89E

haha, i COMPLETELY forgot i had that in my sig.

whoops.

sorry guys, i get verbose when i'm stoked. (or when i seriously hate my roommate.)

i'll be around on sunday afternoon if anyone wants to play multi or do co-op.  gamertag: Sarahfax

Haha, sorry. Wall of text crits you for 497, you die.

We had a lot of fun the other night, it was like the old school crew back again - me, Gilder, Beek, Yze... it's good times.

Anyone pick this up? I'm having a blast. Beat the game on normal mode co-op with a friend, we're going to do insane mode next weekend. It's beautiful. We would clear an area, and then just wander around and explore and look at everything. We found some of the collectibles this way (collectibles are like the cog tags in Gears 1.) The story line is... well, it's Gears. They tried to add more to Dom's story this go-round, but it's definitely a plotline that they know is being marketed to people that are going to say 'uh yeah... emotional backstory, blahblah whatever, can we just saw shit in half now?'  The controls and cover system are exactly the same, which also means no jumping, but I never really had a problem with that. There are some neat additions though - when you down an enemy, you can now use him as a 'human shield' - this renders you unable to use any weapon except a pistol for the duration of the shield, but it is still pretty effing cool. Another new addition is the ability to crawl - instead of being trapped in one place, furiously tapping the A button when you're DBNO, you can now crawl while tapping A - I think the tapping slows the bleedout just like in the first one. There are also different excecution animations, depending on the weapon you have equipped and which button you press. The achievements have fun names, and some of them give you progress reports as you go - for example, the Seriously 2.0 achievement requires that you kill 100,000 enemies in any mode, and every time you kill another 100 a little alert will popup with a progress bar and a xxx/100,000.

What little of the multiplayer that I've tried is a blast, and the lobbies/options are well done, but I don't understand why they got rid of the custom map cycle feature for private games. The matchmaking is now touted as 'Halo Style' matchmaking, but since I generally play with the same groups of people I haven't tried it. I've played some Warzone (teamsize is now max 5 and you can have AI fill in for missing players!), but I think Horde is seriously my new favorite gametype - that's where you have a team on a map, and waves of enemies spawn that grow more numerous each wave and stronger every ten waves, with fifty waves in all. The map weapons respawn and alternate - so for example, a map weapon spawn will spawn sniper rifle one wave, then torquebow the next. A different spawn will alternate between torquebow and boomshot. So yeah, I'm digging on that. Depending on the achievements you completed in gears 1, you can unlock character models from the first (like Kim and Carmine A.) Also, you can choose your machine gun - the hammerburst looks completely different now, and when you choose your player model you can pick between lancer or hammerburst as your machine gun. All the weapons have varying degrees of stopping power now (lancer fire doesn't just get ignored anymore!) and the shotgun got nerfed - it's nowhere near as powerful and user-friendly as it was in the first, so I'm still trying to figure out how to use it effectively (meaning: actually develop some skill with it since that's what it requires). New type of grenade (ink grenade) creates a poisonous cloud that dissipates after a bit (less than 10 seconds, I think? not sure). Smoke grenades now stun as well as obfuscate, and you can melee a wall with a grenade of any sort to set a grenade trap for when an enemy comes running by. Chainsaw bayonet has changed too - you're no longer helplessly sucked into a chainsaw vortex, and you can now engage in chainsaw duels. If you and another player (AI or human) attack each other with revved bayonets, your saws will clash together and you have to furiously tap B. Whoever taps the fastest in the time allowed is the victor. So, yeah... I've only been able to play a little, but I've had a lot of fun.

A word of caution - if you decide to get the limited edition from Best Buy (which comes with a remote controlled tank) there should be a card in the LE box with codes on it for a gold lancer, the map pack, and a free 48h gold trial. There was a screw up with some of the packaging, and some people that got LE's (like me!) got ones with the wrong card in - it just has codes for the trial and the maps, no gold lancer. Just FYI, if you care about that sort of thing. I am not sure if it is just a Best Buy problem, or if other stores were affected too.

at dulles expo? you should stop by, that's right up the road from me

hey jason! it was nice meeting you - and good to put a face to the voice/xbox gamertag!