Baketress Retirement

Biscuit was unhappy as he realized that all the baked goods I were making were causing his weight to steadily increase. I declared that I would go into baketress retirement after I tried one final recipe - Cheesecake Thumbprints.

The cookies themselves seemed like nothing more than shortbread, but what made them wonderful was the cream cheese and sugar mixture that filled them and allowed them to be topped in a number of new and exciting ways. Biscuit was off at tennis, and I was busy filling the kitchen with cream cheese love! Above you can see the little cookies, complete with my thumb prints. These needed to be twice-baked to ensure that the cavities created by my thumb were deep enough to hold the sweet, sticky contents. The cookies needed to be cooled before they were filled, and then baked again, considering that the cream cheese mixture also included some egg in there. A cookie that needs to be baked three times! Oh my! We should refer to these cookies as triscotti from now on!

Anyways, the fun part about them, short of eating them, was decorating them. I used everything around the house. Once the cream cheese goodness ran out, I started filling the cavities with everything from raspberry jam to leftover whippy ganache. The best ones were clearly the cookies with the cream cheese filling topped with little fruits. Here is the delicious little array - I used blueberries, raspberries, and even the cherries my Grandma uses on her infamous Cherry Tarts. All of them were scrumptious.

But, alas, I had to announce my temporary retirement from baking. Biscuit and I recommited ourselves to fighting the fat, save for the trip to Telluride we planned on taking. We were committed to getting back on track. Or were we?