I rediscovered how good cocoa drop cookies are. Cole and I were hanging around the kitchen one Saturday afternoon and we both wanted chocolate chip cookies, but we were out of chocolate chips. I looked around and saw that we had cocoa powder and oatmeal and set off to my favorite recipe sites to find a recipe. I didn't have my mom's recipe in my recipe box and it was too late at night to call Wisconsin.
My sisters used to make these in the summer because they were quick and you could chill them in the freezer. I found about six different recipes, and looked them all over and settled on one which included peanut butter. My mom's recipe doesn't have peanut butter in it, but it sounded good and with the main ingredient being oatmeal, it practically made them a health food.
Mary also remembers eating these as a kid, so we greedily squirreled away a pan for ourselves and would sneak cookies from the tray during the afternoon when the kids weren't looking.---
The other dessert highlight of our month has been the apple tart tatin. It is like an upside-down apple pie that only takes 45 minutes to make. brilliant. I wish I could take credit for this, but we saw the recipe on Australian Master Chef and I had to try it.
Again, this was another evening dessert emergency. We had successfully used up all the cocoa powder in the house perfecting the cocoa drop cookie recipe and there were apples sitting in the fruit bowl.
I cored the apples and set them aside, got my crust ready and then started in on the caramel. My first try is bubbling away in the pan in the picture above. I used butter and raw sugar, which seemed like it was going to work until it quickly turned on me and burned. Raw sugar is a fickle beast not to be trifled with.
After successfully chipping out the burned residue from the pan, I looked up another recipe and used brown sugar and water for the caramel base. It is certainly not as nice as a caramel made from refined sugar and butter, but it worked and we were able to start simmering the apples on the stove.
After the apples have cooked on the stove for a few minutes, I slapped a sheet of pastry over the top of the bubbling apples, tucked them in and slid the whole thing into the oven. twenty minutes later, it was ready.
After it has rested for 10 minutes, you flip the pan over on a plate and if you did everything correctly, the caramel hasn't welded the apples to the bottom of the pan and it comes loose. A perfect blend between a baked apple and a pie.
