Digestive, Marzipan, Macaroon and Sugar Cookies

On the third of April it was my dad's girlfriends twin sons birthdays, wow that was quite a mouthful. Since I wasn't going to be there to celebrate with them I decided to make them a bag of goodies. The first thing I included were these digestive cookies. I'm not sure if I have ever had digestive cookies, I feel as though I have, but the knock-off versions. I decided to make these however since I had rolled-oats and since I am moving in twelve days I don't want to bring a thousand things of food back home, since my mom has a ton of her own baking supplies, and the majority of my supplies are in bags, I don't want them falling all over the place. This was definitely worth using up the rest of the rolled-oats for. The cookies were sort of heavy, but they just tasted healthy. The only problem I had with these is that I found them to be INCREDIBLY flaky even after being in the fridge for the recommended time. When you took a bite they would just fall apart. Kind of annoying. I decided however that I didn't want to clean up a thousand crumbs so I dipped some in chocolate. This made them even that much better!

Recipe taken from http://swirlandscramble.blogspot.com/2010/01/homemade-digestive-biscuits.htmlThe next thing I decided to make were Marzipan cookies. I had never had these before, but boy am I glad I was attracted to the chocolate-covered coins, http://blueridgebaker.blogspot.com/2010/02/chocolate-dipped-marzipan-coins.html

In the recipe it says you need 1 cup of blanched almonds. Let me tell you how annoying of a job it is to blanch almonds. I did not buy almonds with their skins already removed because I have three bags of almonds, and I don't want them going bad. So I blanched. In order to blanch almonds, you immerse them in hot water for a minute, drain them, rinse them in cold water, dry them well and start removing their skins. Well honestly, their skins or shells whichever you'd like to call them do not come off so easily. My thumb started bleeding under the nail because the almonds cut them. For half a cup it took me 2 hours, why? It was definitely worth it though.
Anything with almond in it is a hit in my books, I mean, I even use almond extract when I make pancakes. Maybe it's the Italian in me, I don't know, but I love the taste. I hope the boys like these ones because of the amount of time it took to make them, haha.
The next cookies I decided to try and make were chocolate dipped coconut macaroons (http://blueridgebaker.blogspot.com/2009/11/chocolate-dipped-coconut-macaroons.html). These were... quite the challenge if I do say so myself. I did everything as stated. These balled up really nicely, so I was really happy, "she scores again" is what I was thinking to myself. After eight minutes, I turn the oven light on and see a giant patty of coconut. I immediately took the oven mit and took them out. I took two spoons and started forming macaroons once again. This seemed to do the trick, but the sugar and the egg whites made a really gross mess on the silicone mat, and it was hard to work around that. I put the macaroons back in the oven, after another eight minutes I peek in again, and they've done it again those buggers. So, I took out another two spoons from the drawer and did the same thing. This time it worked. When I took them out when they were ready they had kept their shape. However, I noticed that they looked hollow. I took them off the silicone and started placing them on wax paper, however, when I did this I was rolling them gently so that they had the macaroon shape, because right now they looked more like, well not macaroons.

As I mentioned, I'm not sure what went wrong exactly, because I follow baking recipes to a tee, cooking I'm more willing to experiment, but items such as flour, eggs, baking soda I will not divert from, spices and chocolate amounts are different stories, but this was odd. I did the right amount of sugar to egg ratio, I just don't think my oven was in a good mood. No, I'm kidding, but if anyone has any idea as to why this would happen, I'm all ears, because these are definitely something I would like to make again, I loooove coconut!The last cookies I decided to make for them were sugar cookies. Really, I was killing two birds with one stone here (excuse the saying, I'd never kill a bird), but, I was having the most insane craving for sugar cookies. I kept putting it off too because of how unhealthy sugar cookies are, but I had an excuse now to make them. I had been thinking about the camp I went to when I was younger, and my favourite thing, honestly, was their sugar cookies. They were just amazing, and I hadn't had sugar cookies that good, until this recipe http://www.ourbestbites.com/2008/12/sugar-cookies.html They were phenomenal. I took very small amounts of dough when actually making them, and let me tell you I was really considering just storing the dough in the freezer and not even making the cookies at all. It was blissful. I seriously felt like I had gone to heaven, yes they were THAT good.

I decided I wanted a mix of sugar cookies. First, I started off with the typical sugar cookie - rolled in sugar, I used sanding sugar for this
Next, I decided to toss in some cinnamon into the sugar, to have a Snickerdoodle effect to the cookie.
Lastly, I decided to leave some un-coated so that I could dip them in chocolate. This made the cookies even THAT much more amazing than they already were, and I honestly didn't think they could get any better than this. I made these cookies pretty thin because I wanted A LOT of sugar cookies. I did get tons, however, there were quite a few that I did leave thick and they were amazing, definitely the camp cookie I was looking for. When I make these again, and I know that these are in my future, I'll simply double the ingredients and make them thicker because they were too die for. I hope you enjoyed this post, I know I had a ton of fun making these! Definitely try out the sugar cookies though!

Have a great day :)