Stained Sunglasses Cookies

Hi everyone, I'm finally back! Thanks to all of you who left comments on my last post; I really appreciated the suggestions :). I'll write about Paris (desserts!) in a future post, but right now I already seem to be behind after my two month break, so let me start off by sharing a cookie I baked back in June, at the beginning of the summer.

Stained Sunglasses Cookies, with cookie frames and candy lenses. They're a twist on the stained glass cookies that are made during the holiday season, adapted for summer. Colorful, crushed candy pieces melt to become lenses as the sunglasses frame cookies bake. After cooling, the eyepieces are "glued" onto the frames with semisweet or white chocolate to finish off these playful, edible sunglasses.

The fun part about these is how customizable they are. I used images of interesting sunglasses: red heart lenses, Lady Gaga's Mickey shades, funky star glasses, the popular oversized black lenses, trendy round shades, and even the old school 3D glasses for the patterns. The dough can be dyed with food coloring to change the frame coloring, while an assortment of hard candy can vary the lens tinting. By the way, the larger actual sunglasses-sized cookies are actually easier to make than the smaller ones, but in the end, they're all worth it.

A Paris!

Hi everyone! Just wanted to let you all know that I'm here studying abroad in Paris for all of July, so I apologize in advance for being slow at updating, if I do at all this month, especially with my lack of an oven here. By the way, do any of you have any suggestions for things that I must see/do/eat/buy in Paris? Any tips? Comments on such would be greatly appreciated :). Oh, and Happy (early) 4th of July!

Gnomes always make me think of traveling, in part due to those Travelocity commercials with the gnome in the hotels, but for the most part, due to Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, those polaroids of her dad's gnome abroad. Since I'm traveling in Paris, I thought gnome cookies and another Amélie reference would be appropriate. If the photo above looks familiar, it's because I saved it from Easter, when I also made a couple of gnome and mushroom cookies (because gnomes always seem to be associated with mushrooms). Enjoy!

Caramel Surprises

Today I'll be sharing a recipe for Caramel Suprises. After making those cookies filled with peanut butter cups last time, I got the urge to make more stuffed cookies. I seem to be getting fond of this type of cookie that has a little something unexpected hidden inside.



Caramel, chocolate, and shortbread just work. The slightly melted chocolate, the perfectly gooey caramel, and the buttery sandy shortbread: three very different textures and tastes that turn each bite of the seemingly simple cookie into an exciting experience for the taste buds. Plus, they're pretty darn cute with the slight dusting of cocoa powder and powdered sugar.

Next time you have a bag of chocolate covered caramels, definitely try these out. They aren't difficult to make; the dough ended up pretty easy to shape around the candies. And the chocolate around the caramel adds another element of surprise to the cookies with no extra work on your part. Rather than just shortbread and caramel, it becomes shortbread surrounding caramel surrounding chocolate.

Jack Sparrow's Tricorne

The weather is sunny once again, so I'll be continuing with last posts's pirate theme. I realized that I didn't make a single reference to Pirates of the Caribbean in my last post, which is odd because when I think "pirates," Disney's POTC always comes to mind. Well, I'll make up for that today since I made Tricorne Cookies.

[map of Piri Reis in background found on Google Images]

What's a tricorne? It's a three cornered hat that was popular back in the early 18th century. An example of this style of headwear is of course Jack Sparrow's hat. I had a bag of peanut butter cups lying around and I thought it would be cute to make little chocolate pirate hat cookies stuffed with PB cups, like nuggets of hidden treasure in each hat. On another note, did you know that there's going to be a fourth movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (May 2011)? I just found out today as I was Wikipedia-ing info on Jack's hat. Enjoy!

[ballpoint pen on a large index card, referenced from Disney movie poster]