Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Shortening, Biscotti and Ghetto Pastry Bags

Random, much?

Like I said previously, the blog fodder fountain is dry. Well, not dry...just trickling a little more slowly than usual.
The other day, as I baked a batch of gingerbread biscotti, I grabbed my camera.
Just for the heck of it.

Up first, a completely pointless shot of shortening!

Wow, I really must have been bored.



The biscotti recipe does not call for shortening, but I had the tub out on the counter because I also made a pot pie for dinner that day. I once told you how, aside from baking with it, I'm sort of afraid of butter. Well, I'm REALLY afraid of shortening; the trans fat hydrogenated kind. So, I buy this ridiculously expensive, non-hydrogenated stuff. It takes me forever to go through a tub because I only use it to make pot pie crust and we might eat pot pie four times a year. It's a good thing I use it sparingly because it costs nearly $8 a tub.


A few years ago my mom bought me a biscotti pan for my birthday. For the uninitiated, biscotti means "cook twice" in Italian. Or something like that. You bake it once in loaf form; slice it and bake again at a low temperature to let the cookies dry out.

Bake it once.



Slice it.

Uniform and uncracked slices are desired.
Obviously, I do not practice what I preach.




Place on cookie sheet.
Such lovely rows.


Bake it twice.

And if you're like me, you'll bake yours in a dirty oven, too.

There's no shame in that.


Crisp and crunchy!


They need a drizzle!

White chocolate.




Ghetto pastry bag.



Fill er up.



Snip the corner off the ghetto pastry bag.




Squeeze.



Needs more.




Drizzle on camera strap.

Sorry for the fuzzy picture; it was an awkward shot to get, plus I had white chocolate all over my hands.

Free form drizzle.

Needs coffee for dunking.


Sorry, no coffee pictures. But I do have a picture of a cinnamon roll coffee cake with cream cheese glaze I made for Craig's work peeps yesterday.



Mmm, I like glaze.

I rose with the roosters to bake the cake yesterday morning; Craig's co workers deserve nothing but the best. Warm cinnamon roll cake on a cold winter morning.

Could there be anything better?

Craig brought home an empty pan, but I scraped up and devoured every last one of the remaining glaze coated crumbs.

Have I mentioned how much I love glaze?

2 comments:

Sissy said...

I have to tell you that I hate biscotti. I'm sorry. You probably don't want to be my friend anymore.

Alison said...

I don't think any less of you because you don't like biscotti.
They're the only crunchy cookie I like. Oh, besides Oreos.
If I'm not mistaken, you also like the whipped frosting on bakery cakes, right? If I haven't ended our friendship based on that fact, then you're safe with the whole biscotti thing.
:)