Tales from a Czech Kitchen

Tonight is our information meeting about English Conversation; eek! Prayers are much appreciated! Of course we need a snack to disarm people, create a commonality and make the tastebuds happy. So I decided to make butter cookies. Yes, this post is about baking. Yes, there are still pictures in case the content bores you. 

After finding what I thought sounded like a great recipe, I slid my shoes on an traipsed down to Albert, my friendly local supermarket. I needed butter; lots of it. Then I saw green curry paste and coconut milk and rice noodles and thought to myself, "OH! I should buy ingredients for soup!" That was before I remembered, "You can never be too prepared..." and picked up a bag of iced gingerbread cookies. Some people may not enjoy butter cookies, so I grabbed a bag of bacon chips and ....you get the picture. I just had a small hand basket with me, and rule #1 of shopping at these places is, "bring your own grocery tote." I thought, "Eh, this will be no problem. I can shove it all in the 1 little bag I brought!" Good thing my purse that I carry around is essentially a small tote bag as well, because I went a bit overboard.

too many groceries in too few bags

But, I got 4 stickers for being a good customer! I think these are supposed to add up to a discount somehow. Maybe I'm supposed to have a little card these go on...? Not sure how this works. But I like stickers, so that's cool. I'm just stashing them on a little shelf in my kitchen for now.

Don't judge the mess; life happens. But welcome to my kitchen!

Time to get right down in it on the baking! I pulled out my ingredients, followed directions to the T. First thing you need to note other than the different language on packaging, is the way they weigh these things. Butter...I needed "1 stick." That's around 113 grams, fyi.

The extra weight is from the plate. :)

350 degrees, F = roughly 170ish Celsius

Guys, this was an epic FAIL. I read 1 review on the recipe blog that basically said, "My cookies ended up a buttery blob; what went wrong?!" And that's exactly what happened to mine too. Perhaps a little crispier than that poor lady's cookies. But, a blob nonetheless. So I tried chilling the remaining dough for about 45 minutes; still no luck. Just blobs.

before

I call this creation, "Butter Blob Cookies"

And, THAT, my friends, is why it's okay to go a little crazy in the grocery store. There's no such thing as being too prepared; iced ginger cookies we shall have!!!