
Lunch: Dish of mixed green raisins, roasted peanuts, and chocolate chips. Fruit, protein, fat: a balanced meal.
My afternoon project was Deb Perelman's chocolate hazelnut linzer cookies. I'd considered making these as a big batch of Christmas cookies, so considered this a trial run. The cookies came out beautifully, just gorgeous and festive, as well as tasty with a toasty hazelnut flavor. Each cookie was so hearty and satisfying that eating just one was enough. However. I will not be making a triple or quadruple batch of these as Christmas cookies because they are a HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS. The dough was extremely sticky-- I hoped it would harden up during chilling-- and it did, somewhat, but still required constant flour dusting during rolling and yet stuck to the rolling pin anyway, over and over and over. Cutting, baking, spreading of Nutella, etc., were relatively incident-free, but it is a many-step, time-consuming process. Just not gonna happen in the week before Christmas. (Later note: everyone who ate these cookies were tremendously impressed with them. So, if you are looking for some serious baking cred, and don't have too many mouths to feed, I still recommend them.)
We ate chocolate hazelnut linzer cookies for dessert while watching Survivor.
Snacks: 4 cups coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half, plus a little more at work. A small lump of baked hazelnut cookie dough that was left over after cookie cutting.