Black and White Cookies

Tuesday again. That means I'm now going into week 4 of STI. But luckily this is the last full week and by the end of it... MOMMA WILL BE HERE! For, as yet, unplanned birthday festivities. Around here for birthdays people just tend to go out to one of the two bars in town- but I have very little interest in that as bars really aren't my thing. So I may end up just having a quiet evening with Momma and a few of my buddies here instead. There is no Coldstone Creamery around here for me to get my annual ice cream cake, so I'll have to think of some alternative.

Other birthday plans include: Being awesome, eating Mac and Cheese/ Fruity Pebbles/ other crap I never let myself eat anymore.

Now to recap the from yesterdays day-off. It was the annual company party at the Lohbauer's and we were all asked to bring something! I was super excited to have an excuse to bake again and so I got a little ambitious with my choice. I decided to make one of my favorite things of all time- Black and White Cookies.

Black and White Cookies are a tad more complicated than your average cookie I think- just because the icing means there are a few more steps involved. But I can say that they turned out to be a success.

The cookie part of these cookies is a bit more like a cake than a cookie. Mine ended up being a little denser than the ones I've had in the past- mostly because I couldn't find cake flour and I decided to use up what was left of my whole wheat flour which made the batter kinda heavy. I also used almond milk instead of regular milk which I think made some sort of texture difference as well.

Still they turned out fine. I have to say that it was a bit of a challenge though to find the stuff I needed in the kitchen of Greater Grace. I'm kinda starting to long for a kitchen of my own where I have all the stuff I need, know where everything is, and don't have to share with SO MANY PEOPLE. Dare to dream.

With these cookies you turn them over and frost the flat side of the cookie. You make the white frosting first and do one half of all the cookies.

Then you melt in chocolate, corn syrup, and cocoa powder to make the black frosting. This was a bit tricky for me as I had to make a double boiler of sorts with really old and crappy supplies. I think I succeeded, however, in at least not burning the chocolate and frosted the other halves.

And they turned out lovely.


So after I finished the cookies I was left with a huge bowl of chocolate frosting in front of me. I partially lost the battle with said bowl of frosting before I destroyed it and so decided to work off my sugar high at the gym. Then it was time to head off to the party with Andre and Michelle.

The party was very nice- lots of delicious food was had- and my black and white cookies were soon gone.

Oh! and did I mention that this blog post comes to you from my newly resurrected laptop? So glad not to have to do this in the office anymore!

There we are reunited!

So... goals for this week? Well I completed the ones from last week- ran 12 miles and went to both spin classes. This morning I did not get up and run like I normally do because I'm still all sore from going to the gym yesterday loaded with sugar! So I'm thinking I'll run this evening instead and set my goal for this week at 13 miles. We'll see if I can stick with that with birthday fun rolling around. What do YOU think I should do for my birthday?

Recovery

When you pack several dozen young artistic type people in a relatively small space for several weeks at a time, inevitably, every once in a while the stars will aline and give you a night where- to put it mildly- the shit hits the fan. Every dramatic thing that has been simmering away in the summer heat will, all at once (with the help of copious amounts of alcohol), explode to the surface. One of these infamous night's took place on Friday. Friday was the opening night of Richard the Third. A night when somehow I couldn't turn around without seeing some dramatic story unfolding. Many a thing took place, many a tear was shed, and by the end of the night there were 3 drunken and weeping women in my dorm room (I include myself in this), each one more distraught than the last. Quite a sight to behold.

Now you dear readers (assuming I have any besides my mother- which I 'm really not sure I do)may be wondering what exactly went down last night. That I cannot share since it is possible that SOMEBODY I work with might actually read this (doubtful but not impossible) since I do put the links up on my Facebook. Suffice it to say that it was some theatre geek craziness across the board, but nothing to worry about. As far as I know, everyone survived...

And so Saturday was spent in recovery. My personal anger from the previous nights events was not completely abated, and upon waking up after heading to bed around 4am I celebrated surviving the night by hitting my end table, making my computer fall on the concrete floor. Ah the joy continues... so now my lovely laptop is some form of broken and has been sent off to Best Buy for repairs. But I'll probably loose all my info, pictures, and music. I suppose that's what I get for letting my anger bubble to the surface once every six months- apparently this is far too often as far as karma is concerned. So until I get it back there will probably be no more pictures on this thing.

Which is a shame because...what better way to recover from a frivoulsly tragic evening and a morning of breaking one of the most expensive things you own then with pancakes? I took some pictures of said delicious pancakes, but alas am unable to share them. But anyway they were whole-wheat oatmeal blueberry pancakes with crunchy almond butter and banana slices on top- and they were perfect. I made a few changes to the recipe- only used half the oil and used brown sugar instead of white sugar because I like it better. I mostly made them because blueberries were on sale this week and as a thankyou to Momma Bear Michelle for taking care of me in my state the previous evening. She enjoyed them immensely as well I am told. Not to mention that pancakes are the perfect hangover food. (I actually wasn't hung over, but I never need an excuse to eat pancakes)

And now that I am fully recovered I turn my attention to the ridiculous stressfulness that is sure to be STI. I am trying to be as prepared as possible- but this is difficult when one really has no idea what one is supposed to be doing. Most of the participants arrive tomorrow and on Tuesday the maddness truely begins.
On the plus side I am now moved into Greater Grace and have enough kitchen and fridge space to cook whatever I want- just not sure if I'm going to have any time. I guess we'll find out.