Never let it be said that I waste perfectly good food. After making a pan of each of the Valentine cookies noted on the last post, I put the rest of the dough in the refrigerator to regroup. After thinking about it a bit, I let both doughs warm just enough to be malleable. The "hearts" were still wrapped in waxed paper, so I gently rolled them on the counter, in the wrapper, to try to get them as circular as possible. Then I patted the chocolate dough into a flat rectangle the length of the other cookie roll. That was then wrapped around the roll, pinched and prodded to make a pretty even, and sealed, covering and then the entire thing was returned to the refrigerator to chill completely. Sliced and baked like any refrigerator cookie (350 degrees, about 8 to 10 minutes), they came out looking like this:
Arranged on a plate as above, they were okay--and the flavor was excellent, though the chocolate was not very strong. If I were to deliberately make a cookie like this again, I'd a) omit the baking soda in the white layer completely, b) add more cocoa--maybe double?--or melt some chocolate chips to stir into the dough or c) increase the ratio of chocolate dough to white dough.
To be honest, I probably won't make these again--they were okay but not all that special looking to me--but I wanted to demonstrate that even things that seem to be failures can be salvaged, sometimes in "creative" ways.
What are some of the things you have done to "fix" a baking or cooking mistake? I'd love to hear more ideas.
