Bloody Fingiz and Cookies From Heck

Well, due to a month of being sick and a month of preparation for The Palladium gig, I had no time to plan Halloween themed foods, create my costume, carve a pumpkin or even go apple picking! Halloween was practically non-existant. Now, this makes me very sad because Halloween is my absolute favourite holiday of the year. I don't know why. Maybe because it falls in my favourite season, maybe because I love horror movies and being spooked out, maybe because I love seeing kids be creative and dress up, maybe it's because I love cosplaying and creating unique costumes (often with the help of others), maybe I just love being creative in general. Or maybe, just maybe, I love apples. Whatever the reason, I skipped out this year. Almost.

Not to let this fine holiday completely slip through the cracks, I happened to see a comment on Isa's post from Bazu, about a finger recipe LindyLoo posted a year ago.

They are almond sugar cookies, shaped like fingers! Blanched almond slivers are used for the finger nails and it looks so creepy. I love it! A very simple recipe, tasty too. I have to say that the recipe directions for the dough didn't work out so well for me. The dough was incredibly dry. I had to add a lot of water to get it to a doughy consistency. Perhaps it was my mistake because the pictures of her cookies look absolutely terrific.

Either way, mine came out awesome. I couldn't find vegan/organic red decorating gel anywhere, not even online. :*( So I put a couple of drops of vegan & natural food dye around two finger nail beds. (I didn't want to waste my dye, as it was 6 bucks a bottle!)

The result?



Awesome! It gives me so many ideas for next year. Hopefully my costume will be done, I won't be sick and we can have a real party!

Now, for a blunder:

At my job, they had a bake sale to raise money for charity. When I heard 'bake sale', my ears perked right up!

I have a wonderful recipe for really soft batch chocolate chip cookies that everyone who has ever tasted loves more than anything.



Well, not this time.

My tub of sugar became infested with those little black bugs that live in your cabinets if you don't clean them out frequently. So I had to toss the whole thing! That means that in the middle of preparing my batter I realized, 'Oh. I have no sugar.' So I had to send out for them and all that was left in the supermarket was Florida Crystals demerara sugar. It was too late to go to Whole Foods. I was stuck.

So I tried it, thinking, 'What's the worst that could happen?' Let me tell you, demerara may be a very organic, raw, natural version of sugar, but it does NOT go well in cookies. It made the texture very grainy, like biting into a sand-filled cookie. The taste was a little 'off' as well, being that they add molasses.

Needless to say, no one liked them. NO ONE. Except for Mike. But I don't work with him, so it doesn't count. ;) Next time I go back to my organic cane juice sugar.

In any event, I won't be cooking with demerara in the near future. Not unless you have a recipe it actually works in?