It's a Very Baketress Wednesday

I blogged, then I went to check on my cornbread. To my distinct surprise, I pulled this baby out and my goodness! did it ever look good! You could smell the honey baked warm into the bread. So good. It formed a nice crisp brown layer on the top. Here are the final results:

Mmm, Mmm Cornbread Look at that crisp top!

This was my first homemade cornbread. I have been a big fan of cornbread and corn muffins since I was little, but I have always used a blue box to make it. This summer, Biscuit started to make these delicious savory little corn cakes, and since then, we always keep corn meal in the house.I figured that since we were having chili for supper, that I had to make a great accompaniment. This cornbread will be the perfect compliment.

My other creation did not fair as well. I decided to make Kerri's Nutty Shortbread Cookies. Now, her recipe called for pecans, and she recommended using parchment paper when baking these cookies. I made my first four cookies on a straight baking sheet. These four came out perfect; crisp on the outside, nutty, crunchy flavor. So tasty.

The next batch did not come out well. I took the recipe's advice and opted for the parchment paper. I was disappointed with the results. In fact, most of them broke after they had cooled. I am not sure if, somehow, using the parchment changed the way the cookie baked, but I have to say, I have several decapitated moose cookies on my hands!

These moose lived.

Now, I should probably explain the reason that you will see so many moose cookies on my blog. Moose are by far my favorite animals. Up until this April, I had never, ever seen a moose in person. I was worried that I had forever cursed myself into never seeing a moose because I had once eaten a moose burger. Well, my bad luck streak broke four days before Biscuit proposed to me. My Mom said that I had to be in love before I saw a moose. The April moose was a lovely female, but the July moose was unbelievable. Biscuit and I were living in VT for the summer and I spotted this glorious creature at 6:30am one morning:

MOOSE!

Anyway, I will tell anyone who will listen to me about my love for moose. My students all know that I love moose. For an end of school gift, a student once gave me a sugar cookie recipe and a moose cookie cutter. Well, believe me, anytime I make a dough cookie that requires a cookie cutter, I use the moose. Alas, these are the chocolate-dipped moose cookies.

For some variation, I also chocolate-dipped a heart cookie, too.

Not as pretty as Kerri's...

but at least it's intact.

I still have a lot of apples hanging around. I may peruse some recipes online and see what else I can do to these apples. I will keep you posted on any creations!