Things to do on a rainy day: Bake cookies!

The kids’ swimming lessons were cancelled again today—this time because we were in the middle of a thunderstorm and the Y had to close the pool.  I’m still not entirely sure why it is they have to close an indoor pool for a thunderstorm, but since it’s out of my control, I suppose I just have to deal with it.

In the interest of finding something fun’ish for the kidlets to do while they were stuck inside, we came up with the idea of making cookies.  Daniel was all for it, but Sylvie (in her pre-teen, angsty way) decided to spend time in her room brooding instead.  So be it.  She missed out on some super fun cookie making madness.

Sean was asking for peanut butter cookies, so I found a recipe here. I figured the easier, the better for my guys.  I took a shower and left the boys to their work.  They didn’t disappoint:  perfect peanut butter cookie taste, texture, and… some other third thing that escapes me right now.  Anyhow, they were good.  And Sean’s creative use of cookie cutters paired with the fork-tine crosshatching was really cute.  ☺

I’m probably going waaaay out on a limb here, but I think I want to make Chana Masala tonight for dinner.  Yes, the kids will most likely freak out.  They will likely cry and complain and claim that I’m the worst mother in the world for trying to force them to eat chickpeas.  They will dither and delay and dillydally, determined to deviate me from my planned dinner (like that alliteration?  Hah!!).  I figure if I make them eat at least one or two “weird” meals a week that maybe we’ll expand their ridiculously small palates.  I really would hate to see them living on macaroni and cheese (or even “cheeze”) forever.  There’s so much more interesting food out there to try!

I still want to try the chocolate tofu that’s sitting in my fridge right now.  Of course, now that I have it, I don’t entirely know what to do with it.  Put it in a smoothie with a banana and some peanut butter?  Mmmm…  Use it for pudding or pie filling?  I did just find a recipe for a cookie crumb crust that calls for Newman’s Own cookies, and I just happen to have a package in the pantry…  Find some other way to use it that I hadn’t even thought of yet?  The possibilities are endless!

I would be completely remiss if I didn’t plug my sweetie’s thread over on Post Punk Kitchen’s forum .  He’s getting popular, and he loves every minute it.  Come to think of it, I should probably start reading and contributing over there, too.  Those ladies are my vegan heroes.  ☺

Today was a most disappointing day in the kitchen.

First, I made cornbread muffins and totally left out the sugar.  I also ran out of cornmeal and substituted corn grits for half of it.  They weren’t bad, but not exactly what I was hoping for.  Sean insisted that they were okay, but I’m going to try it again sometime.  Sylvie liked hers, and Daniel said he liked them, too, even though he only took one bite and left the rest on his plate.

Then there was dinner itself.  I made pinto beans with vegetables and vegan red wine over brown rice, and it was received with a little less enthusiasm than I had hoped.  After the disappointing cornbread muffins, I just didn’t have the heart to dice up a carrot, so I used frozen mixed vegetables instead.  They cooked so long that they really didn’t have any flavor by the time it was all done.  And the red wine flavor was a bit strong, even after I cut it in half and used water for the rest of the liquid.  There was a puckered face to accompany pretty much every bite taken by the kidlets over the dinner table tonight.

As a reward for their perseverance and relative lack of complaining, I made the cupcakes that are pictured above.  Adorable, aren’t they?  They’re chocolate cake using this recipe with peanut butter frosting piped into the centers and around the top edge, and then chocolate buttercream from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.  I’ve made all of these already, except for the chocolate buttercream.  It’s pretty similar to the vanilla, though, so I wasn’t too worried.  The frostings came out perfect.  The peanut butter was so much better than the last couple of times I made it—probably because I used super creamy peanut butter this time instead of the natural stuff that’s never quite as smooth.  But this is the only time I’ve ever gone ahead and iced the cupcakes without actually tasting the results of the baking first.  Usually, I have enough batter left that I can make some mini cupcakes, and they’re perfect for taste-testing.  The batter was so thick and dense this time, though, that it barely filled my cupcake tins.  I let them cool, piped the peanut butter inside them, and then got creative with the edging.  Then I did the chocolate buttercream, and they looked positively wonderful.  I gave one to Sean and took one for myself, not really noticing how very heavy they were this time.  I just thought I overdid it on the icing.

They’re terrible.  Dense, half-baked, and just generally nasty.  No flavor, gritty, and just… Yuck!  I checked them to make sure that they were done, and the ones in the front seemed fine.  It looks like some of the fuller muffin cups weren’t quite baked all the way through, though.  And they barely rose at all.  Maybe I used whole wheat pastry flour with this batch?  I had all of the dry ingredients pre-mixed in a Ziploc bag in the pantry, and I can’t remember what I did.  Oh, well.  Maybe the kids will enjoy them.  I’ll just make sure to use plain old all-purpose flour from now on.  That was just entirely too sad to ever repeat ever again.